Sunday, December 05, 2004
War on Terror, my a...!
"The United States has a strategic problem: its war on terror, unlike its long fight against Communism, is not universally seen as the pivotal global struggle of the age...these continents are more or less united in a critical view of an American power routinely described as hegemonic and intent on using the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to impose what Candido Mendes, a Brazilian political analyst, called "a civilization of fear."
Indeed...
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Reading is Overrated
Yet, I still think that reading is overrated. Here's why:
1 - Reading is usually NOT the most efficient means of accessing information. The best way is to talk to someone who has the information and in so doing, interacting with the data. Do you REALLY need to read that 500-word tome to find out what you need to know about, say, herbal medicine? Wouldn't it be more efficient to ask someone who is an authority on the subject? That way you might find precisely what you need to know and even question the source for clarity.
Of course, it might be useful to read a textbook if you want to master a subject. But even in this case, it is arguably more efficient to interact with subject matter experts.
2 - We overrely on reading to access "truth" or other forms of information. I believe it is literally true that all the answers we need can be found by going within. But we tend in this information age not to trust nor nurture our inner senses. In addition, our modern tendency is to buttress what we think we know by attributing it to some other so-called expert, e.g. "well, so and so said..." My belief is that recognizing the validity of the reading-accessed information is in actual fact a form of recognizing what we know to be true already.
If this is true for more abstract forms of information (e.g. "truth") it is likely also true for technical forms of information. I am not a Da Vinci scholar, but perhaps he utilized his intuition -- his inner sensing -- to discover his many technical contributions, many of which he did not find time to execute.
I don't mean to suggest here the philistinish view that reading is an inherently useless activity. Reading helps orient us, helps us discover -- in a sense -- what we know is true already.
Finally, gentle reader, I've hope you've enjoyed reading this!
Comments?
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Task and Process
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Friday, November 05, 2004
Four More Years
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Election Day
Well, I have NEVER been so invested in an election. A Kerry victory today would be nothing less than a victory of light. Reverse, if Bush wins
Hung Over
In the afterglow of my “Afternoon of Poetry and Storytelling” with Ibou Ndoye, I am metaphorically a bit hung over. The reading was great fun – if a little undersubscribed. Yet my 30 days poetry collection remains about a third finished, work is sparse and I am back to the regular irregular. Just downloaded a tape of me pitching the Game of Games on a Rochester, NY radio station. A welcome antidote to a day of otherwise near-drudgery.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Playing the Deeper Game
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
"Hey, we're a star!"
star
Originally uploaded by Angelojohn.
This morning I was interviewed about the Game of Games by Stephen Jacobs, Professor of Information Technology at Rochester Institute of Technology and host of a show called What the Tech. Been a while since I'd done any voice PR so I was a bit rusty. My five minutes of airwaves exposure kicked in the memory of previous days and tricks I used to get on radio or TV. It is kind of a lifestyle and, to work, needs to be part of a regular routine. What it involves is endlessly recycling clips, audio tapes, video tapes -- any PR about you. Polishing these off and sending targeted cover letter(s). Leveraging every media appearance or mention into other, better media appearances or mentions. Repeating this endlessly.
In the internet, niche-market age, there are more outlets than ever before. With attention spans contracting in response to ever-expanding streams of information (and advertising), it is difficult to be successful without knowing how to play this game. But the rules fortunately areen't that difficult to master. It's more about persistence and confidence than anything else.
Of course, I can hear you smirking now: "Hey, if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?!"
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Sunday, October 10, 2004
New Tools and Services
Current favorites:
Onfolio: I find this “content management” tool – enabling one to easily collect references in the form of links or whole pages – indispensable (translation: something I actually paid for). It makes collecting and publishing material for e-zines easy.
21Publish: A new tool, introduced to me by Fernanda Iberra, that enables group or community blogging. We will use this as the glue that binds gamers playing The Game of Games.
Aweber: There is a bit of a learning curve here, but this for me is the best e-zine service out there. It lets one craft autoresponders, which will be a necessary and central part of my efforts to create solo-games for coaching clients.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
"affirmation"
open door
Originally uploaded by Angelojohn.
here
stumble forward
another try
push
brittle
bones
one more
time
up
crooked
streets:
hard-hearted
new york
here
cold
wind
slaps
hard
across your
face
water
falls
down
purifies
night
winter
once again
rain
step around
old
ruins
failed art
memory
step around
be
nimble
hurry
pick up
your pace
behind you
litter
all the times
you screwed up
picked yourself up
and walked
each time
sudden
dawn
blank
canvas
upon which
to paint
things
fall
apart
shatter
come back
together
life finds
a way
to open
a door
*******
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Friday, October 08, 2004
Reflection on the intro Game of Games
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"Affirmation"
“affirmation”
here
stumble forward
another try
push
brittle
bones
one more
time
up
crooked
streets:
hard-hearted
here
cold
wind
slaps
hard
across your
face
water
falls
down
purifies
night
winter
once again
rain
step around
old
ruins
failed art
memory
step around
be
nimble
hurry
pick up
your pace
behind you
litter
all the times
you screwed up
picked yourself up
and walked
each time
sudden
dawn
blank
canvas
upon which
to paint
things
fall
apart
shatter
come back
together
life finds
a way
to open
a door
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Poetry, Again
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Thursday, September 16, 2004
"I Cheated"
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Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Tech Blues
I am by my count around three days behind, counting the break I am taking today. I'm liking what I am writing, which is a good sign...
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Macros: Thirty Days Project
Anyway, about the macros. I have thought for some time that a good sci fi story would be about a guy in the near future who makes macros for a living, macros that do very complex things. After a while, he has too many macros and at the same time wants a new challenge. So he creates a macro that controls all the macros. Then, I Robot-like, the macros take over.
Ah, this sort of thing's been done!
Sunday, August 22, 2004
The third day of thirty days
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Bipolar Moon
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Saturday, August 21, 2004
ThirtyPoemsinThirtyDays
Would be good to start a concurrent project -- one part of my office cleaned on 30 days.
What is this thing about goals and setting targets? I wonder if this is a particularly contemporary, Western, particularly American thing to do. When I asked friends of a Buddhist master I knew of the master's daily schedule, they replied that he "lived the dharma." Meaning, he had no "schedule," as such, but instead responded to what was put before him.
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Saturday, March 06, 2004
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