:: Camping ::
6:45 & B @The Yacht Club (near center camp, visit me after you reg at playa info) (next to pie camp 3.14)
:: Working On ::
http://www.burningman.com/installations/10_art_honor.html#subway
:: Partying ::
False Profit Tuesday Night
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=148470641837860
http://infectprofitrelax.org/
This is Dan. Yes, he’s wearing a mumu and a pair of fuzzy pink monster boots while riding a unicycle…and drinking a beer. In case you’ve ever wondered, this is exactly what Burning Man is like. Dan is a super awesome guy and a phenomenal aerospace engineer. He also works at Syynlabs making videos like this:
The Department of Defense is unable to account for the use of $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion it spent on reconstruction in Iraq.
Source: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (PDF).
Via The Wikipedia:
He elaborated Christoph Martin Wieland’s concept of the Schöne Seele (beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by his reason, so that Pflicht und Neigung (duty and inclination) are no longer in conflict with one another; thus beauty, for Schiller, is not merely an aesthetic experience, but a moral one as well: the Good is the Beautiful. His philosophical work was also particularly concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, such as the Thirty Years War and The Revolt of the Netherlands, and then found its way as well into his dramas (the “Wallenstein” trilogy concerns the Thirty Years War, while “Don Carlos” addresses the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain.) Schiller wrote two important essays on the question of the sublime (das Erhabene), entitled “Vom Erhabenen” and “Über das Erhabene”; these essays address one aspect of human freedom—the ability to defy one’s animal instincts, such as the drive for self-preservation, when, for example, someone willingly sacrifices himself for conceptual ideals.
>> I edited this Wikipedia entry to be gender neutral.
The list of amazing and ridiculous changes wrought by internet is undeniably massive. In my mind, one of the most important is in what it means to be an editor. Traditionally, the sheer cost of publishing meant that people had necessarily limited access to information.
>> The editor has gone from dictating what we can read to telling us what we ought to read.
Not long ago Amazon announced that ebook sales just passed physical book sales. Welcome to the future =)
People are always saying that the pen is mightier than the sword but one thing I like is that you can also stab someone in a throat with a pen…like in The Borne Identity
A few nights ago I got absorbed in several fascinating conversations with @Corbett, Broxton and Anselm. Of course, I failed to realize that the nice safe place I parked my bike became a dark corner in one of the sketchiest parts of San Francisco after sunset. I had to pay The Crackhead Tax with my rear wheel.
n. The cost payed by being complacent about a society that accepts widespread homelessness and drug addiction.
Nearly 1 million children in the United States are potentially misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder simply because they are the youngest — and most immature — in their kindergarten class, according to new research by a Michigan State University economist.
These children are significantly more likely than their older classmates to be prescribed behavior-modifying stimulants such as Ritalin, said Todd Elder, whose study will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Health Economics.
Such inappropriate treatment is particularly worrisome because of the unknown impacts of long-term stimulant use on children’s health, Elder said. It also wastes an estimated $320 million-$500 million a year on unnecessary medication — some $80 million-$90 million of it paid by Medicaid, he said.
Elder said the “smoking gun” of the study is that ADHD diagnoses depend on a child’s age relative to classmates and the teacher’s perceptions of whether the child has symptoms.
:: Unsurprising via ScienceDaily via @ChloeCockburn ::
San Francisco is a place where you can get seasonal affective disorder in the summertime.
This is, I think, a typical Bukowski quote. It’s marked with the blatant immediacy prevalent in the drunken mind who found salvation in the bottle. It is at once a procedural truism and a rather myopic false dichotomy.
If you slice time very thinly, the statement “you begin saving the world by saving one person at a time” has to be true. In a deeply linear, causal universe it can’t help being otherwise. Yet, a single decision made in an similarly thin slice of time can just as equally affect millions of people simultaneously. It is intended to be a statement of universal truth but actually means nothing.
Bukowski’s “grandiose romanticism” is rendered inert by any large scale project from building a dam to running a corporation or nonprofit. His striking cynicism is borne primarily from the loathing poetry of a misanthrope. In regards to politics, one can easily point to the struggle for the 8 hour workday or the creation of the EPA as counter examples.
Interpreted in a less critical view, Bukowski might simply be saying that we could all do some good by focusing on the individual. Reaching out and making someone’s life just a bit better. No one is against that but I don’t think it saves the world. You save the world by building smart organizational structures and incentive systems that benefit as many people as possible.
I’ll grant that his writings are, at times, melodic but they are equally suffused with a myopia that is usually just inaccurate. The alcoholism that made him a notable writer also restricted him from accomplishing anything that might have informed that writing with grace. At the end of the day this is a lovely but feeble quote which can’t see outside the bar it was composed in.
Patrick Stewart recounted how the studio resisted his casting as Captain Picard. “Wouldn’t they have come up with a cure for baldness by the 23rd century?”, the studio asked. “In the 23rd century,” answered Gene Roddenberry smoothly, “no one will care.”