Thursday, January 11, 2007
What I'm reading:
Another day in the frontal lobe. Katrina Firlik.
Amazon. 2006, Random House www.atrandom.com
Mind hacks.
I picked it up yesterday while out looking for work and vegetables.
This morning a call from a creditor had me on edge so I decided to relax in a hot bath with a good book,and picked this one. (Katherine Hepburn, "Me", is next in that stack.)
The opening paragraph grabbed my attention.
Chapter 1
Scientist and Mechanic
The brain is soft. Some of my colleagues compare it to toothpaste, but that’s not quite right. It doesn’t spread like toothpaste. It doesn’t adhere to your fingers the way toothpaste does. Tofu -- the soft variety, if you know tofu -- may be a more accurate comparison. If you cut out a sizable cube of brain it retains its shape, more or less, although not quite as well as tofu. I read until early afternoon, at which point I went and got things done for awhile.
The book reminds me of one of my many unfinished schemes. Last xmas I read a book gifted by my sister-in-law about neurofeedback, machines which help you track and train your delta, alpha and beta brainwaves. Currently the machines are at the artisan level, specialized expensive rare devices. I'd be interested in encouraging a cheap mass produced model, the i-mind or whatever. It goes on the list of ideas I'll never turn into products via business start-ups that I'll never start up. Had some fun meetings about those in Hawaii.
Friday I didn't get out of bed till I finished the book, so I didn't get anything done today except confirm a job interview for Monday.
I dogeared a few pages to make notes about later, maybe do a link to longer post at some point.
Like the rhinoscerous autopsy, or the story about why to suture a dying suicide-by-gunshot.
This is a readable fun and informative book. One of its undercurrents is how there are more neurosugeons in her tony connecticutt neighborhood than in most of africa, and the strange distortions of the medical economy in the US.
It sounds like it's an area well suited to medical tourism - locate medical facilities somewhere like costa rica of thailand, and fly people there for less than the cost of malpractice insurance in the us. What she pays per year for malpractice insurance is approximately my lifetime's earnings so far. Granted, she does something useful and valued and risky, while I blog, and not very well.
Me, by Katherine Hepburn. I'm writing this Sunday January 14. As I sit here at the computer, surrounded by piles of business correspondence in various levels of crisis that I need to work on, after having had my usual breakfast of maybe too much coffee, I experience anxiety. It's already 4 pm and I'm starting my busy day. I'm on page 105 or so of the Hepburn, having covered her childhood, upperclass progressive parents, Bryn Mawr education, early acting career. Bryn Mawr (sp?) is not far from where I grew up, but is a world away socially. My family was upper middle class, ivy league, suburbal, but a number of rungs down on the social ladder from the Connecticutt (sp?) world of Firlik, Hepburn, and, say, the Prescott Bushes. I once in college drove some kids out to a Piladephia main line Unitarian weekend retreat near Valley Forge and got to see a little of that liberal and monied lifestyle. Where I stayed in Hawaii last month was just down the road from such places, but my brother in law is the help, a gym trainer, rather than one of the rich himself. So Hepburn grew up with a supportive family, with progresive ideals about women's rights and birth control and such, so that they were first shunned and then valued by their social register neighbors. She was both shy and self-confident. Like LBJ or the Kennedys, she was brought up with high expectations, useful social connections, and devoted caring parents. People tend to turn out to be who they are raised to be, with occasional misfires. I have two siblings who are highly successful, one who is happier living in a cabin in the woods with her kids,and then there's me who can't seem to make a go of either the high success route or the muddling through. Hepburn had a brother who hanged himself, probably accidentally, as a teen, which was a big shock to Kate, or Jimmy as she was known in her tomboy days. The book has a distinctive style of storytelling, little snatches of things that she remembers told in a light and amusing but serious way. She writes the way she talks, communicating her history, her values, her mannerisms. It's endearing, and no wonder the book was a best seller.
I'd like to write a book like that someday, which would not be a best seller, because I haven't done anything or been anybody worth reading about. I think I have some history and values and quirks to communicate, that might be a good story if I could learn to polish it, but I have to accept that it's a story with no built-in audience since I am deservedly obscure. I started this blog a few years ago to get some practice at story telling, at writing down my thoughts about life as happens, after I was encouraged to take my words outside the narrrow circle of Wil Wheaton's online forum, where I'd been writing a lot, and where Jyoti Mishra encouraged me to write a book. I know from the hit counter that a few thousand people stop by each year, mostly googling for something else,and from the lack of links to here, no emails, no comments, that I don't actually have any set of steady readers. I write this for myself to help me from going further crazy. At Wheaton's, I at least had a set of steady readers, a community there, a poly-logue, where I was responding to their thoughts and sharing my own. I haven't kept up with that because it's too much damn work and I have a few real world responsibilites I should be attending to instead, but I do miss the sense of community.
I need to spend some time this year plugging back into Raccoon Creek, a cohousing group outside Bloomington that I'm loosely part of. I'm just back from a trip reconnecting with my family. There's a bit of community over at stripcreator where I do my webcomic, there's some regulars at the cofffeehouse, there's a party every saturday at my tenant's that I go to every week, but for the most pat I'm socially isolated and alone. Sorry this turned into a myspace-like rant all about Me; I was trying to dispassionately review the book I'm reading, also labelled Me.
Blogging has been a success for some people and groups,and a successful blog is self-reinforcing,and continues, but like media consolidation elsewhere, a lot of the bloggers are starting to wonder why they blog,and drop out, or get caught up in other things. I've been interviewing for jobs a bit this week, and will continue until I find one. For most people, fulltime work and fulltime blogging are incompatible, especially for people with families. Some bloggers are incredibly productive people,and have support staff, while others have found ways to make blogging pay off,and most of us do it just as an occasional side activity. Some are driven by a sense of needing an outlet. I started my comic strip a couple years ago out of a need for art therapy,and updated daily at first, but now it's more of a now and then.
My election blog gets updated rarely, but at least the one new post per month that was all I promised when I started it. This post is becoming a monster, and I'd better just stop.
1 The American Black Chamber, Herbert Yardley.
2 Marco Polo if you can, William F Buckley.
3 Living History, Hillary Clinton.
4 Maui Revealed.
5 Another day in the frontal lobe.
6 Me, Katherine Hepburn.
Another day in the frontal lobe. Katrina Firlik.
Amazon. 2006, Random House www.atrandom.com
Mind hacks.
I picked it up yesterday while out looking for work and vegetables.
This morning a call from a creditor had me on edge so I decided to relax in a hot bath with a good book,and picked this one. (Katherine Hepburn, "Me", is next in that stack.)
The opening paragraph grabbed my attention.
Chapter 1
Scientist and Mechanic
The brain is soft. Some of my colleagues compare it to toothpaste, but that’s not quite right. It doesn’t spread like toothpaste. It doesn’t adhere to your fingers the way toothpaste does. Tofu -- the soft variety, if you know tofu -- may be a more accurate comparison. If you cut out a sizable cube of brain it retains its shape, more or less, although not quite as well as tofu. I read until early afternoon, at which point I went and got things done for awhile.
The book reminds me of one of my many unfinished schemes. Last xmas I read a book gifted by my sister-in-law about neurofeedback, machines which help you track and train your delta, alpha and beta brainwaves. Currently the machines are at the artisan level, specialized expensive rare devices. I'd be interested in encouraging a cheap mass produced model, the i-mind or whatever. It goes on the list of ideas I'll never turn into products via business start-ups that I'll never start up. Had some fun meetings about those in Hawaii.
Friday I didn't get out of bed till I finished the book, so I didn't get anything done today except confirm a job interview for Monday.
I dogeared a few pages to make notes about later, maybe do a link to longer post at some point.
Like the rhinoscerous autopsy, or the story about why to suture a dying suicide-by-gunshot.
This is a readable fun and informative book. One of its undercurrents is how there are more neurosugeons in her tony connecticutt neighborhood than in most of africa, and the strange distortions of the medical economy in the US.
It sounds like it's an area well suited to medical tourism - locate medical facilities somewhere like costa rica of thailand, and fly people there for less than the cost of malpractice insurance in the us. What she pays per year for malpractice insurance is approximately my lifetime's earnings so far. Granted, she does something useful and valued and risky, while I blog, and not very well.
Me, by Katherine Hepburn. I'm writing this Sunday January 14. As I sit here at the computer, surrounded by piles of business correspondence in various levels of crisis that I need to work on, after having had my usual breakfast of maybe too much coffee, I experience anxiety. It's already 4 pm and I'm starting my busy day. I'm on page 105 or so of the Hepburn, having covered her childhood, upperclass progressive parents, Bryn Mawr education, early acting career. Bryn Mawr (sp?) is not far from where I grew up, but is a world away socially. My family was upper middle class, ivy league, suburbal, but a number of rungs down on the social ladder from the Connecticutt (sp?) world of Firlik, Hepburn, and, say, the Prescott Bushes. I once in college drove some kids out to a Piladephia main line Unitarian weekend retreat near Valley Forge and got to see a little of that liberal and monied lifestyle. Where I stayed in Hawaii last month was just down the road from such places, but my brother in law is the help, a gym trainer, rather than one of the rich himself. So Hepburn grew up with a supportive family, with progresive ideals about women's rights and birth control and such, so that they were first shunned and then valued by their social register neighbors. She was both shy and self-confident. Like LBJ or the Kennedys, she was brought up with high expectations, useful social connections, and devoted caring parents. People tend to turn out to be who they are raised to be, with occasional misfires. I have two siblings who are highly successful, one who is happier living in a cabin in the woods with her kids,and then there's me who can't seem to make a go of either the high success route or the muddling through. Hepburn had a brother who hanged himself, probably accidentally, as a teen, which was a big shock to Kate, or Jimmy as she was known in her tomboy days. The book has a distinctive style of storytelling, little snatches of things that she remembers told in a light and amusing but serious way. She writes the way she talks, communicating her history, her values, her mannerisms. It's endearing, and no wonder the book was a best seller.
I'd like to write a book like that someday, which would not be a best seller, because I haven't done anything or been anybody worth reading about. I think I have some history and values and quirks to communicate, that might be a good story if I could learn to polish it, but I have to accept that it's a story with no built-in audience since I am deservedly obscure. I started this blog a few years ago to get some practice at story telling, at writing down my thoughts about life as happens, after I was encouraged to take my words outside the narrrow circle of Wil Wheaton's online forum, where I'd been writing a lot, and where Jyoti Mishra encouraged me to write a book. I know from the hit counter that a few thousand people stop by each year, mostly googling for something else,and from the lack of links to here, no emails, no comments, that I don't actually have any set of steady readers. I write this for myself to help me from going further crazy. At Wheaton's, I at least had a set of steady readers, a community there, a poly-logue, where I was responding to their thoughts and sharing my own. I haven't kept up with that because it's too much damn work and I have a few real world responsibilites I should be attending to instead, but I do miss the sense of community.
I need to spend some time this year plugging back into Raccoon Creek, a cohousing group outside Bloomington that I'm loosely part of. I'm just back from a trip reconnecting with my family. There's a bit of community over at stripcreator where I do my webcomic, there's some regulars at the cofffeehouse, there's a party every saturday at my tenant's that I go to every week, but for the most pat I'm socially isolated and alone. Sorry this turned into a myspace-like rant all about Me; I was trying to dispassionately review the book I'm reading, also labelled Me.
Blogging has been a success for some people and groups,and a successful blog is self-reinforcing,and continues, but like media consolidation elsewhere, a lot of the bloggers are starting to wonder why they blog,and drop out, or get caught up in other things. I've been interviewing for jobs a bit this week, and will continue until I find one. For most people, fulltime work and fulltime blogging are incompatible, especially for people with families. Some bloggers are incredibly productive people,and have support staff, while others have found ways to make blogging pay off,and most of us do it just as an occasional side activity. Some are driven by a sense of needing an outlet. I started my comic strip a couple years ago out of a need for art therapy,and updated daily at first, but now it's more of a now and then.
My election blog gets updated rarely, but at least the one new post per month that was all I promised when I started it. This post is becoming a monster, and I'd better just stop.
1 The American Black Chamber, Herbert Yardley.
2 Marco Polo if you can, William F Buckley.
3 Living History, Hillary Clinton.
4 Maui Revealed.
5 Another day in the frontal lobe.
6 Me, Katherine Hepburn.
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