You know what I’m talking about- it’s that sudden snap in someone’s actions, that excitement and readiness to go, that real drive to go and pursue something- it’s the drive that makes someone awesome at what they do. Yet even so it’s something that can easily sound hollow when that spark isn’t there, which usually happens in the context of a tool rather than a concept. Can you see someone really get excited about blogging? No. But can you see someone being an avid educator? Absolutely: Their excitement comes from the contribution they provide and the respect they earn rather than the tools they use.

The best way to describe it, perhaps, is to separate passion and the expression thereof. As an example, I’m going to use my own dad, because frankly he’s the best example I can think of. His primary passion is problem solving. Taking the crowbar of his brain and jamming it into a particularly interesting problem to see if he can crack it is what he lives for. Now imagine how this might express itself, in how many different situations this might apply.

Need extra paper? I did- overcoming a particular challenge or problem is applicable almost anywhere. In his case the long-term chosen primary expression is quantum physics, but there’s no reason it couldn’t have been radio repair, satellite telemetry or dog training since each of them provides a series of always new and increasingly complicated problems to solve.

So lets get around to what your passion might be. Is it exploration? Healing? Craftsmanship, education or guardianship? I’d give you a long list of how to figure this out, but chances are it’s already blatantly obvious (you may not have bothered to look). Remember it’s not what you do, it’s why you do it. Take a long hard look at your day to day, figure out what you really look forward to, why, and find the common ground amongst them all.

Got that? Good.

As anyone who’s been around me for more than half an hour or so can attest to, I flame more than a broadway chorus line. I also love to dance, thus have assumed a certain… ahem… flair, and as a result I set off gaydar’s simply by walking into a room. This isn’t exactly a bad thing- the entire term metrosexual has been coined to describe people like me… except unlike the true metrosexual I’m not really an art snob and my sense of fashion is best described by what it isn’t than by what it is.

Now, normally I’d laugh it off, but today has… sparked my frustration about the entire situation. Why now? It was pointed out to me that my less than stellar dating success (understatement) might be a direct result. It’s funny how something so obvious to an outside observer can escape my own notice, but now that it has I’m mildly worried about my long-term love life. And, most of all, how I’m going to react to this.

Fact is, I love who I am. I love the things I do, I love my job, my friends, and frankly life couldn’t be going better right now. I even love being single- the independence is nice, I love being able to do what I want when I want it, and even though I’ve been single for a little too long at this point I’m not about to rush into something just because I’m lonely.

An yet that biological pressure remains, and now that I have something measurably ‘wrong’ to point at as a cause, I’m worried I’m going to start overcompensating to overcome it. I’m sure we can both imagine a long list of activities and actions that would fit in that category, so let’s just not go there, alright? I’m not about to go hunt and kill small animals, buy a sports car or so similarly idiotic things just to shore up my own ego (It really doesn’t need it).

I guess the long and short of this post is that I’m really not going to change anything about who I am and what I do, because I like who I am. I’m just venting.

First of all, in an effort to deal with blog neglect I’ve shifted my usual authoring time to before work rather than after. Afterwards there are simply too many distractions- mental, physical and… ahem… social for me to really get focused on my thoughts and get them down. Whether I can keep it up is anyone’s guess, but for now I’ve got a nice cool morning, a full battery and a patch of sunshine to write in. What else could you want?

Secondly, we had our annual reviews here at work recently, and by all accounts I did pretty well. I had to go out and get a short-term prescription for insulin to deal with much of what was said during the review, and after a rather superfluous compensation discussion (what am I going to do, argue about a raise? Oh no! You’re giving me more money! Whatever will I do!) I’m now happily sitting on a modest increase. Given that my last three places of employment didn’t really believe in “raises” per se (one of my coworkers was fired because she asked for one), it’s a welcome change.

Thirdly, we released a bunch of new content for my project, HP Print Studio yesterday, which marks our first major push for international content. Included was pretty much all of south america, so in the end it was only two new languages (Portuguese and Mexican Spanish), but given that every country can customize the application down to the last background image, rolling out those 18 new countries was no small feat.

Of course, doing a rollout of that scale showed some of the cracks in our localization strategy, so I won’t lie and say it went smoothly. I was at work until very late on wednesday resolving last minute inconsistencies, and had to give up my weekly salsa lesson/social for the project (which I find amusingly ironic- latin america, salsa… get it? . Having said that, I now have intimate knowledge on what’s broken and how to fix it, and an initial cost/benefit analysis means we might even be able to charge the client for it (though at this point I’m doing it simply for my own peace of mind).

Lastly, we had some… unfortunate downsizing at work. I won’t go into the detail of who, how and why, just to reassure my readership that I wasn’t affected (well, other than the shell shock). The reason I brought it up is because, having gone through two business evaporations, two acquisitions and a few other unfortunate staffing events, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of event handled so well.

How do I mean that…

First of all, most of my downsizing experience has been reactive, in that a business had to suddenly adjust to an unexpected market adjustment or ‘catastrophe’. Fact is that most of those events could have been predicted with a little foresight, and reductions came as a surprise to the majority of the organization- even HR in some cases. My takeaway from those was that the business is poorly managed, and that there is no real driver at the helm. In short, that the only direction the business had was as a result of momentum.

In contrast, everything about yesterday’s event seemed strategic, well thought out and considered, and ultimately necessary. It was done because of the recession- I won’t lie there – but it was also done because of a whole host of other (undisclosable) conditions had been factored into the decision process. My takeaway here was that not only is there a driver at the helm, that driver also likes to to pull into a garage every so often, adjust the mix, check the fluids, clean the filters, refill the nitro and get a new set of fuzzy dice for the mirror. In short, someone who knows exactly what’s going on under the hood.

Having said that, if any of my former coworkers would like me to use my burgeoning network within the digital creative community to help connect them with potential opportunities, let me know- I’ve made some contacts through the Adobe User Group that may prove valuable.

Of course there are some caveats- I scaled my speed down to a 10 minute mile with ten second negative splits on the mile, so other than the distance increase I wasn’t really pushing myself. Even so it feels like a significant accomplishment not only because it’s the longest I’ve ever run in my entire life, but because I’ve also managed to break past the 3.1 mile mental barrier that comes with training for a much shorter race.

What really struck me about the whole experience is how easy it was to go the extra mile(s). Once I’d gotten up to speed and convinced my body it wasn’t stopping anytime soon, it was just a matter of keeping my mind occupied while my feet did all the work. My iPod really helped with that, but I’m told the bigger races don’t allow headphones. I can already imagining myself stopping after the 3rd mile because I got bored and saw something shiny lying in the road.

Also, pacing is a challenge. It’s easy enough on a treadmill, but when I run outdoors it’s hard for me to throttle back right at the start because I have no real way yet of judging how fast I’m going. This will probably come with time- after all, I started running when it was cold out and I’m a huge wuss about running in subzero weather. Once the weather gets nicer and I can actually run to work I’ll hopefully get better at this.

I find it odd that so many people who train for marathons treat them as single-shot goals. If I’m going to train for something of that magnitude I’d rather build up to it gradually so it’s something I can do on a regular basis, rather than give my all for one big herculean effort and then go back to life as usual.

So where to go next? Well, the mileage buildup program I’m on right now is having me do 6 miles (~10K) next weekend, so I’m within spitting distance of one of my goals. Additionally there’s a half marathon in April that I might accelerate my training for, but part of me isn’t quite ready to make the commitment yet: I want to make sure I’m comfortable at longer distances first (see above), and I still haven’t decided if running is going to supplant dance as my primary personal time suck.

Speaking of dance, on a whim I went to a Swing dance workshop in Dayton last Saturday (whose web page seems to have disappeared), and I had an awesome time (though they ran late and thus I had to miss the last lesson). Reading the description of the event you might have thought that it was a standard series of classes with fancy names- starting with the basics and then building on the same. In reality, the classes assumed that you had some Lindy background already, and rather than boring everyone with relearning the basic, really dug into the nuances and details of good technique. In short, it was Basic Lindy for Advanced Dancers. A day extremely well spent.

Of course, the event also came with a bit of a somber note; on the drive back my mind went into self analysis mode and came to the rather alarming realization that I am once again falling into my old Pittsburgh social patterns: I end up a part of so many social groups that I never seem to be able to really belong to any single one. How I personally define this problem is fairly moot, because I already know what the solution is: I have to give something up. Be it running, be it dance, be it blogging or cooking or my geeky gaming habits, something has to go so I can refocus on the remainder and really commit to them.

Is this anything new? Are you kidding? I’ve known this for years.

I would like to expand on this a little. As a member of Mensa, an organization that prides itself on the intelligence of its members, I have found a significant lack of actual, true genius amongst their ranks. Individuals whose Ideas are so profound, so earth shattering that they redefine even the basic patterns of thought that we, as individuals, are used to. No, instead I find these insights in individuals whom I encounter in everyday situations, people met in parks or coffeeshops, individuals whose names I don’t even remember but who manage to convey in a few short words what other “intelligent” individuals might take years to discover, simply by virtue of experience.

True Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. IQ, as tested today, is a measure of capacity and potential, not use, and to give an individual a ranking based on their capacity is like telling a Prius it’s better than a semi by virtue of gas mileage alone. And thus the more I think about it, the more I realize that Genius, true Genius, is not defined by such things as IQ, but rather defined by how useful the intersections of domain knowledge that an individual has are. It’s your education, your life experiences, and your memories on how your brain has met and solved problems that define genius, not the details that you might have retained from each of them.

Don’t ever discount someone’s ideas because you think they are less intelligent than you. Given their background, they may very well hold the key to your problem.

In the case of brains, it’s definitely not the size that matters- it’s how it was used.

The following question is asked: “What does the computer of the future look like?” Discussion follows. Things are moving online, so the need for the desktop will dwindle. But then there are games, right? They’ll always need more hardware, but even there that hardware is becoming so specialized, with expensive graphics cards and embedded physics, that sooner or later that niche is going to specialize itself out of the desktop computing market. Developers will still need power, yes, as will those that deal with graphics and video processing, but in the end that’s a pretty small market, yes? Everyone else will simply need some kind of a portal device to online applications. There may be voice recognition, there may be contact management, who knows. In the end, the home computer of the future will no longer require processing power.

So if power is not a requirement, what else will happen? Well, mobile computing is brought up. If customers are going to rely on their computers even more in the future, they’re going to want rapid access to said information. Will the home computer be portable? It very well may be, constantly connected so that the web applications will always be available at a touch. But the need for a larger screen will never dissapear, so perhaps it’s a two-piece device. Regardless, sooner or later the room comes to a consensus that the computer of the future will be a screen, and a portable CPU/Memory unit, and the key selling point of the device is simplicity and interoperability.

“What will this portable unit do?” The answer is “Everything anyone can do on their desktops today”: Email, browsing, games, office applications, movies, music… you name it.

“Which of those can we do now?” Games require too much hardware, unless we want to make Gameboys. Email and browsing… well, the networks arent’ well established enough. No-one’s got a battery good enough for music, office applications require a large interface and screens aren’t large enough… so the only real thing remaining is …. Music. And once technology catches up, we can start adding the other ones, right?

Apple started with the iPod the same time that they started working on OSX. The seed of portable computing and an operating system built on a scaleable kernel. Since then we have seen the advent of larger portable storage, a move to safer flash memory, better batteries, larger screens, enough processing power to do video. Driven by sales and technology improvements in cellphones, we’ve seen a continued convergence of technology. This convergence has brought the mobile market ever closer to the desktop market, but not on the playing field of processing power, but rather on the playing field of actual customer useage. More features do not matter to the everyday consumer- simplicity does. We are not all technowhizzes who can dissasemble a computer and install our own RAM- people like us are in the minority, regardless of what you might think. Make the interface intuitive, the functionality what-I-need and no more, and you’ll have a customer for life.

And now, with the release of the iPhone, the plan suddenly becomes clear. While wireless providers have pushed the limites of what our phones are capable of, desktop hardware and software producers have mostly abandoned developing the functionality of the common user to really push into the niche of power applications. Who really uses more than the basic features of Word, after all? Games are moving more and more to the world of consoles. In the meantime, Apple has moved off into left field with its iPod and with clever advertising and a seeded and loyal userbase has overrun that market, and now- flush with an absurdly strong brand message and five years of tenure as a leader in technology, interface, innovation and simplicity is revealing its hand to the world.

Lets be honest: The iPhone appears to be one step away from the holy grail of mobile computing. It performs all basic communication options that other cell phones can, and the entire product has been designed to scale: It runs a kernel that’s a scaled down version of what’s running Macs right now, proving that as mobile hardware capabilities increase, they can easily add to the feature set to bridge the gap between the mobile and the desktop. It’s an excellent test platform for the large questions that remain on mobile UI (How do you format a word document on a PDA, for instance). Memory, screen resolution, battery life… all these things will only improve over time- hardware presents the only limitation, and that’s only temporary. Really, the only thing we’re lacking is a screen to plug it into… and we’ve all seen the iMac.

And I wouldn’t be surprised that the strategic vision for this was hatched five years ago. Brilliant.

Where it all started

Some of you know this, but I might as well clarify. About a month ago one of my lymph nodes swelled up to the size of a walnut. Under normal circumstances this isn’t a problem- we all know our lymphnodes go nuts when we’re sick… except I wasn’t. We’re all familiar with the twisted paths our mind can wander when panic sets in, and I wasn’t an exception. Lymphoma, Hodgkin’s Disease, you name it- I was suddenly forced to stare into that black abyss of uncertainty, the eradication of my identity upon death before my time.

So I went to see a doctor, because I knew that’s the only way I was going to get some answers and some peace of mind. His response was what I expected: It’s probably just you being sick, some kind of subdermal accumulation of infectious material that causing inflammation. Keep track of it for a month or so, and if it’s still there come back. At the time it wasn’t very reassuring….. but then I called my sister (Vet) and she managed to give me the reassurance I needed, at least for the time being.

A Crisis of Faith

But that didn’t remove the initial fear of staring at death, and having to come to terms with it. Fundamentally, this is perhaps one of the most difficult questions in the world- after all, death features prominently in most religions (in addition to morality and ethical codes). What amazes me is that my previous relatively strong sense of faith has been, in a nutshell, utterly shattered by this experience. It just didn’t hold up, and my confidence in my view of the cosmos just… well, withered under the undenying gaze of uncertainty. There are principles I continue to hold in regards to this- not blindly following the regurgitated and conveniently interpreted dogma of centuries of previous generations, trusting my gut more than my mind… but now that I don’t really have a place to start anymore, it’s become a lot more difficult.

That fear continues to stay with me. That fear of falling asleep and never waking up, never finding out the ending to all this, of having my identity utterly eradicated when the clock on this frail form winds down. It really is a terrible, terrible thing to stare at, to come to terms with, to really, really try to figure out while I’m still alive and kicking. After all, our survival instinct has gotten us this far, and yet intelligence… consciousness… drives us to confront the one thing survival is trying to prevent. We think about Death, we try to alleviate the fear thereof by giving it meaning, but in the end we really don’t know.

Nihilistic ramblings

That particular confrontation then got me thinking about my life, what I’m doing with it, what things I value, and all the trappings I surround myself with. None of them really matter. What items I have here… the television, the alcohol, the couches, the laptop, the dance shoes…. when I keel over, that’s it. I acquire them for personal satisfaction, as a status symbol and nothing more. So what’s the next logical place to look for something that might give someone a little bit of purpose? Well, other people seem to work, for a while. Making someone elses life incredibly special, helping people achieve their goals, supporting a community, underpriviledged children, all that jazz.

Except… when they die, that’s it. And while I play a major role in their lives, they’re still the primary actor, and I’ll probably be cut on the second reel- if they make a change, what meaning will that instill on my own life? Will I have been the person who helped them achieve what they otherwise wouldn’t have? Was it someone else?

How about contributing to society? With the amazing amount of noise out there and people clamoring for fame and fortune, it does strike me like an excellent opportunity to make a difference. But then I think of the soldiers in Iraq, those who have died and whose identity has been snuffed like so much tobacco, and I realise that there’s no way in hell I can accept being a peon to the whims of someone else, especially if I cannot guarantee their intent to contribute to society. If I strike out on my own, however, I try to join the press of people who want fame out there with this agenda of social change that’s likely going to get lost amongst the noise.

I think fundamentally it comes down to the fact that I do not want to be a cog in the wheel, just another pawn, a single thread in a huge tapestry. I want to, I’m trying to, I’m going to shine. Not through my children, not through those whom I help, not through my possessions, but simply by virtue of being myself and my actions. And not just any shine- I want to have a positive impact of significant magnitude- a new type of environmentalism, a new view on life, a new philosophy of positive thinking… I can think of a lot of things I want to do, a lot of opinions I have that I think could help so many people.

And if I manage to do that… well, I think I can live with my name being forgotten.

Diversity and Simplicity

Except to do that I need to focus, something this ADD child here considers the most difficult task of all. I really do do too many things with my life, have too many posessions, too many obligations, too many friends, too many hobbies, you name it. I, quite simply, do too many things. Now I’ve complained about this before, but so far I haven’t really done anything about any of it. Yes, I’ve talked a good talk, but like the eternal excuse of “I’ll go to the gym next week”, I’ve never followed through. Maybe that’s where all that apathy I used to have went to- the desire to seek importance through complexity has taken such strong root that I can no longer bring up the effort to simplify.

And there is truth in simplicity. There is the ability to focus, to relax, to perfect, to consider and dream. To really think about something, to explore an idea farther than until the next deadline. It’s actually a trend I’m starting to notice amongst all these freaky people I hang out with- there’s a… sense of fatigue, noise pollution, disgust with modern society. People hate all the advertisements, all the marketing spin, all the buy buy buy, give give give. The competitve nature of the world is turning everyone off to the methods that once worked, and the only thing said persons can think of is how to come up with the next big idea on how to get people to buy something.

Know what? I think it’s all going to come crashing down. We’ve lived in a period of constant advancement for so long, within the next decade or so it’s going to collapse. All those MBA’s out there (like myself) who’ve studied marketing will discover that their shouts go unheard, their campaigns are ignored, and when they try to shout louder they will find that they have lost their ability to do so. It will be a gradual, but determined shutting out, a shift to narrowmindedness, a movement to such personalized polarization that even an individual can no longer find common ground with someone else because they are so fed up with the noise that they can no longer accept a dissenting opinion without putting up blinders. Think I’m wrong? Tell me, are you a Democrat or a Republican? Do you watch CNN or Fox? Oh no, you’re the openminded one, it’s everyone else who just doesn’t get it.

Yet I cannot condemn simplicity- I find its beauty often enough, and I’ve been known to stop on my walk home just to watch the sun set over the Point. There’s a certain type of simplicity, however, that I want to pursue, one not born of blindness and hatred, but one born of the Truth I’ve mentioned above. Cut out the advertising, cut out the noise: Cut to the core of the matter regardless even of your own opinion, and you may very well find something worth keeping. I’m not talking about political Truth, or economic Truth… I’m talking about (pardon the poetic drivel) the fact that a sunset is beautiful and should be enjoyed. About the feeling of camaraderie felt when in the company of friends. The shade of a Tree in the summer, the power you feel when you close your eyes to feel the wind.

Furthermore, I hold that such simplicity can very easily be applied to that which seems to polarize us most these days: Politics. Ideals. Such things as corporate governance, social security, medicare, liberalism and conservativisim and capitalism… all these things are artificial constructs, frameworks of pure throught created by ourselves and then applied like some veneer against the real world. They’re fancy words, strung up in creative ways, and as they are layered on top of another the real meaning becomes obfuscated.

Where do I think the truth lies? What is that one, single Truth that provides a baseline for everything? Do you honestly think I have the slightest clue? I certainly don’t, and in my own idealism I consider all others to be Naive. Goals don’t matter. Politics don’t matter. Corporate misconduct doesn’t matter. The composition of the senate doesn’t matter. They are merely aspects of the environment in which we find ourselves, tools to be picked up, used, and discarded, and as such I couldn’t care less about how they came to be, or the Right or Wrongness of each, because I know that even in what others would describe to be the perfect society (regardless of what their idea thereof is) I would pursue the same goals… only with different tools, the ones at my disposal at the time.

Why do I do all this?

So what are my goals? Well, good question. Right now I pursue environmentalism, because ensuring the survival of this planet for future generations is a real, concrete goal that isn’t just a verbal construct. Anything further than that is largely dependent on what I find on the way. Being hampered by all the current obligations I hold however is no help, and I thus turn to trying to identify which of these actions do not have the aspects of simplicity that I’m looking for.

Work and school, those are aspects of our society, things that are necessary for being able to remain active in the environment. I pursue them so that I have the means, given the current system, to continue. My freelance work is… well, it is similarly an extension of that, though it doesn’t really contribute anything but stress. The work in particular is catering to the continued proliferation of noise, and while I will continue with the conclusion of that project, I doubt I will take on similar projects in the future.

The three other things I do with varying frequency then are exercise, dance, and game. Usnsurprisingly, once I cut away all the chaff and noise, I discovered that simple core that kept me coming back. For exersise it’s the simple feeling of health, that sense of value I get from being a healthy indivudal who is not restricted from action by his body. The second, dance, is all about control and balance and the joy of the music. Yes, they are very complicated ways of moving our bodies, and the action itself is hardly simple, but the feeling I get, and the joy I feel when doing it is. Lastly there’s game, which I now realize I do purely so I can feel that sense of belonging to a larger group. It’s about the camaraderie, joining together in a common activity, and to some extent meeting new and interesting people.

Con report

So this, then, is the state of mind that I find myself in as I get on the plane to ICC. I slept on the way there, checked in, changed for Mage, and dissapeared into something that, ironically, is an imaginary world that is both the ultimate expression of pure thought and imagination and the epitomy of a constructed environment that seeks to conceal the real world. I enjoy myself, but my mind was on the festivities to commense that night. Armed with my flask and enough pepsi to keep me awake… well, it was fun. It was amazing. It was all about the people, and not at all about the game.

Perhaps I should highlight the irony a bit more: Here is a system that adds another layer of rules and complexity on what already exists in our society, and yet by participating we may establish the stories and common ground necessary for phenomenal social bonding. Complexity leading to simplicity, such a potent combination that even without ever having met a particular individual ever before, the common ground established… even when we’d never heard of each other before… crafted a connection stronger than steel, a baseline that no matter who it is, no matter where you meet, there exists a solidarity and comfort level that can be easily nurtured into real friendship.

Enough with the philosophical wanking, then. I had a great time, and want to send out a couple of explicit thank you’s to the following people: Roo James, for the Waltzes (So *that’s* how you do a cross step). Pouncy, for dinner (watching your face when you took the first bite was precious). Julie, for the dance and the uncanny similarity in so many things (You sure we’re not related?). The Guy Who Helped Me Stumble Home On Friday, whose name I don’t remember. Kylee, for filling three hours of airport wait time with the opportunity to make yet another friend. [censored] and [censored], for having the kindness *not* to scream my name while you were having sex in the bed next to mine. Anthony, for letting me into the CV plot and damn fine Magery in general (even though you looked irritated at something). Jessi, for being awesome about the RPS outcome. Squirrel, for not keeling over on me when I fed you protein to stop the shakes (Yes, I know how that sounds, the wording’s intentionally sleazy because the activity was not). Peter, for the shirt (I still haven’t seen a picture).

And everyone else as well, thank you, though I feel positively horrid about not mentioning you specifically. The games were good, the company was amazing.

Some notes on Cam Popularity

I did come out of the con with one concern though, that being the phenomenon of Camarilla Popularity. I know many people there whom I know for some reason or other, people I’ve seen play big characters or hold huge positions or do various and sundry things in the org. And yet… I see them marginalized. You’re not an officer? You’re not a high-status person? Well, tough luck, I don’t want to talk to you.

What surprised me is that, at least in the public parties, this extended even to normal social interaction. I remember two ICC’s ago when I was essentially a nonentity in the organization, and I had a really tough time getting any kind of social presence in the public parties. The private get togethers were fine, people I knew, the tribe I’d become familiar with. But above and beyond that it was rather difficult to make a dent. And now? Everyone knows me. People go out of their way to hang out with me. When I do silly antics OOCly people start joking about how it would be funny if Mr. White did these things. I get invited to parties and people are like: Oh, it’s you! And thus I wonder- is it me? Have I changed significantly? I’d like to think I did, but… well, random strangers are unlikely to recognize me anymore.

Where am I going from here?

Well, the node is still swollen, though I’ve had a chronic sniffle for the past month or so. I call the doctor after Orlando. I’m still afraid of death. This will not change until I “do” something with my life, and at least I now have a goal, if not a plan. I still do too many things, but I’m going to ditch freelancing once I’m done with the current obligations. I’m not at all worried about my Cam Popularity when White goes poof- because right now, I’m making friends that I hope will last.

The European organic market is significantly more mature than the US market, with 3.4% of its farmland certified organic. Top country on that list? Austria, with 9.7%. After that it’s Sweden, Greece, and Denmark. In contrast the US has… get this… 0.2% organic farmland. Mind you, it’s growing at 20+% a year, and there’s significant consolidation going on in the sector (actual acerage is three times as much as austria, with half as many actual operators). From trends I see in europe and some analyst reports, it seems like we’re going to see that growth rate in America increase for at least another 5 years, and then eventually settle do a more respectable 7% annual….

…and remember, there’s a finite amount of cropland in the US. 442,120,449 (average) acres, of which we’re looking at a 30% fallow rate.

Anyway- total EU vs. USA is 5M vs. 800K acres, but the market sizes are 13B vs. 10.3B. This is likely because the EU has 17 times the operators(134K vs 8K), leading to strong diseconomies of scale. But it also gives us a good idea of where the rediculously large markup we’re seeing in the US (100%+ per channel point) will move in the not-so-distant future.

More discoveries as I come across them. Or I might just post the paper.

It’s a distinctly individual, personal experience with every listening.

Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to it. That’s because this is information directly related to what I’m doing for work. One class is Marketing Planning and Strategy, the other one is Brand Management. Together, I think they’ll sync well to get me into the magical world of understanding how various brands get sold.

Why is that… well, I’ve found that as I progress through this program I gain a significantly different perspective of the world, especially when I go shopping. I no longer buy at large-brand stores unless I like the tricks they’re using to get me to shop there. I prefer independent boutiques because they tend to carry higher quality products (Penzey’s Spices is a great example, but then I’m a bit of a cooking snob). It really all grows from an increased sense of awareness- yes, others might look at wal-mart and cite articles and studies and other miscellanea in an effort to discredit them, but none of them really know exactly what tricks ‘ole Walt is pulling to nevertheless be a frightening moneymaking machine. Or maybe they know, but they can’t see how it all fits together, or so forth. I’m not trying to insult anyone here, it’s just that once one can put names to specific pieces of the puzzle it demystifies the nebulous nature of sales and marketing. Instead of some amorphous blob of ‘businessmen are evil’, I’ve learned to look at an organization and see its upstream and downstream, its stakeholders, pricing model, market position, etc, and wrap all these things into a single mental framework that explains it all. The catch…. once it’s demystified, I can’t hate it anymore. The decisions that were made appear perfectly rational, and in some cases are even peculiarly brilliant.

And yet I retain a disdain for shopping at Wal-Mart and other stores. Self-analysis brings me to an interesting conclusion- it’s no longer about what the company does, because I know what it does now. It’s about what I see myself as doing. Shopping at Wal Mart would be an insult to my pride. I know how things work, I know why they make money, and I know why it makes economic sense for everyone else to shop there…. therefore I’m better than them, and should separate myself. And yet there’s a reversal: when I walk past Fifth Avenue or any of the trendier places Downtown (that mind you in no other town would be seen as I’m about to describe them) I don’t go in. Why not? Because I’m not good enough for them. Unless I can whip out a Platinum card and walk in smelling like million-dollar trust fund, there’s no way I’m going to walk in there. Hell, I’d even think about getting dressed to go shopping to walk into some of these places. Odd, huhn? Both of those, the ‘better than’ or the ‘not good enough’? That’s the power of Brand and Image.

Which brings me back to my roots. Because on some level, I’m still wearing sneakers, still in denim and a t-shirt, no matter how much money I gained/lost in the market today. I’m that guy who walks into Primanti’s for a beer and artery-clogger and wipes his hands on his pants before walking into Sack’s Fifth without batting an eyelash. You don’t know if I’m rich, you don’t know if I’m poor… the only thing you know is that I seem perfectly comfortable in my environment.

Chances are, your intuition went: 10 feet, 25000 miles? There’s no way, right? That’s certainly what I did, but I also was pretty bloody suspicious simply because with questions like this the answer is rarely the obvious one. Some of you anal retentives maybe even got out your calculators (damn cheaters!). Turns out that, of course, the intuitive answer is the wrong one.

Why? Well, consider: Circumference is 2Pir. Well, the original wire is 2 * Pi * earth = 25000, and the second is 2 * Pi * (earth + x) = 25000 + 10’. If you multiply out the second, you end up with 2 * Pi * earth + 2 * Pi * x = 25000 + 10’, and then just subsitute the first equation and we find out that we have 2 * Pi * x = 10’, x = 1.59’.

Now, realize what we just did: We cancelled out the circumference of the earth. That means no matter how large the object is, if we add 10 feet of slack we’ll increase the radius by 1.59’. Every. Single. Time. If you wrap a wire around a kumquat. If you wrap it around the horsehead nebula. The Andromeda galaxy. It doesn’t matter.

Now what would your intuition say if presented with the same problem?

Part of our class today was to prove that overall, intuition cannot be trusted. Another part was to demonstrate that everything, down to math, down to time, down to every consistent measurement that we base all our sciences on are effectively just relative and/or subjective measures. Seems fairly straightforward, really: You can’t measure anything objectively- objectivity simply does not exist, cannot exist (Take that, Ayn Rand Fanatics!). Goedel proved this, in fact, when he showed that all logical deductions are based on a finite group of assumptions, which are individually based on a finite group of assumptions, which are individually based on a finite group of assumptions… you get the idea. In a nutshell: Everything is subjective. Everything.

Now from a personal perspective, this really bothers me. Be that a bred-in desire for engineering level precision, a hatred for fuzzy math, doesn’t matter- I don’t like not having a precise, definable answer. So what do I do? Well, it turns out that rather than using hard facts for decision making, you use relative measures. A is better than B. I prefer eating Bratwurst five times more than munching on a carrot, but the guilt I feel from eating one is 6 times more than the carrot. Subjective measures, yes. Personal measures, yes. But ultimately, measures that can be used.

But how do you get subjective measures that actually valuable and not simply your intuition? That was glossed over, but my own brain immedieately made the jump to a marketing technique called Conjoint Analysis, which originally was just a linear regression given certain criteria, but more recently a Bayesian something-or-other is used. In a nutshell, you are given a series of combinations of all factors that are reasonably randomly chosen per case, rank them, and then the math will actually give you coefficients that represent relative weights in regards to the whole, from which one can easily derive relative importance to each other.

So then what. Well, Prof. Saaty explained the equations- basically it’s simply a weighted average and eigenvector comparison, normalized against the whole and subsequently performed against whatever criteria dependencies you have (The O is greasier, but much closer and cheaper, etc etc).

So… that’s my insight? My intuition? Well, I have to do a decision for my homework. We’ll see whether it holds water.

Now, I’ll be the first to scoff at statements whose vague bounds leave so much to interpretation that your only choice of response is to take a large hit of weed and go “Whoa…. that’s deep man”. It’s a gross simplification, yes, but if you begin to apply it to the rest of your life you realize that it’s a good litmus test on whether something is a worthwhile pursuit. I also know that some would make the distinction between that non-worthwhile pursuits are nevertheless necessary. I would agree, if in the end those pursuits are necessary steps to a greater love- Student loans, for instance, are a step on the path to academic achievement. Given that, what are you doing right now? Do you love it? No? Then change it. Slowly, quickly, drastically, dramatically, it doesn’t matter how, just do. If it’s as simple as putting a snow globe on the desk in your cube and shaking it every half hour, do it. If it’s handing in your notice and running off to become a park ranger, do it. If it’s burying yourself in the insanity you’ve already wrapped around yourself, do it. As long as you love what you’re doing, do it.

Some time ago, Anthony responded to one of my standard “Why isn’t life going my way” posts with something like “I have the feeling you’ll be sipping champagne in the winners circle at the end regardless of where you are right now.” At the time, I was skeptical, and simply accepted his statement as something that couldn’t really be argued with someone who didn’t have all the facts. Since then (With judicious kicking from Alyssa) I’ve accepted the common wisdom of perceptive value: The winners circle is all about where you perceive yourself to be. So where is my life right now? I am fortunate in that at this point in time, everything I do, I love. Everything. From organizing my apartment, shuffling around money and finances, dancing, gaming, hiking, blading, you name it. My financial future is far more solid than most people I know, I’m coming out of a degree program with all cylinders firing, I’ve shed most of my social reservations (retaining just enough shy to be cute), I’m physically fit and reasonably attractive, I have hobbies I enjoy, skills I’m refining, and a lot of friends I’d bend over backwards for and who do the same for me. If that’s not the winners’ circle, I don’t know what is.

I’ve won. I have won the game of life. I’ve got my bottle of Guatemalan Rum and am kicking back in denim and a tshirt on the beanbag in the winners’ lounge, waiting for someone else to show up to start on the champagne before the ice melts. My backpack and hiking gear is next to me, just in case I need to go out into the world and personally deliver an invitation, and I’m not afraid to brain the bouncer if he’s stopping someone else from coming in.

Life is good. Love is life.

I think what I need is a serious confidence boost. Not compliments, not reassurance, no- something with substance, something I can point at and say “That makes me special”. For a while it was weightloss. Then it was Salsa. Then there was cooking, and recently the Cam’s taken on a bit of that, but I’d rather not rely on something that’s as transient as the next combat-mook’s trigger finger. The reason being if I don’t consider myself special, I don’t have enough confidence to give to other people. Also, I need to read The Book again, and respond to a cubic fuckton of emails (sorry, Becky, but I’ve been under a deluge recently), and write a presentation on Data Mining to present to work tomorrow (the one I started on got eaten by the Save Early Save Often bug).

I wonder if I can do any of that outside in the nice weather… hey! I have a back porch! A winner is me!

…but then, I’m usually a pedestrian these days. Go figure- our fat cat lifestyle might do what no ‘live healthy’ campaign can do: Gotten people off their fat asses and onto a bike . Imagine what life would be like if instead of driving 10 miles to work, we bike it. 10 miles, from my own experiences blading, is nothing: I do three to five at lunch, and that takes me half an hour.

Of course, this also means that the urban fabric is going to contract, devaluing far-flung realestate and increasing the value of inner city land. Chances are we’ll see the creation of new towns and cities as humans congregate around a job source… though frankly, that’s going to take at least a decade or two.

That quote has been running through my mind rather often recently. I’m increasingly discovering that there are only so many things I can keep in conscious memory. As a result, my brain has adapted in that it requires a certain amount of chargeup time to really focus on a particular task, but once it’s gotten there I retain the scary efficiency that I pride myself on- sortof like loading a program into Ram, ironically enough. There are other coping mechanisms- regulating most aspects of my life, ensuring that I lay a solid theoretical foundation underneath my applied knowledge so that if the upper tiers dissapear I can derive the necessary functions on the fly, associating musical styles with productivity, self-programming locations with particular tasks so it’s easier to ‘get into the groove’, as it were… and all of these methods are becoming less and less useful.

There is a conflict in my mind. A conflict of patterns of thought, a conflict of knowledge and priorities and logical structures. On one side, there’s the Creative me, already marginalized by the Developer and partially incorporated via a blissful glee when I manage to figure out a particularly bit of code. Then there’s the Developer, that machine of logical procedures that fires out code. And now there’s the Businessman, the rational decisionmaker who’s most concerned about the ins and outs of statistics and decision support. They don’t like each other. They don’t work together well. And they each demand more cycles day by day.

The most obvious example of this is ASP.NET vs. Investments. As we are a primarily ASP based office (Yes, I know, shut up), I’ve been trying to teach it to myself, while at the same time Studying Investments and Data Mining and VB For Office and Salsa and Swing and a whole host of other things. I just… I can’t do it all.

And that pisses me off.

But that’s not really the crux of the matter. I am staring at myself and realizing that no matter what I do, it is the distinctly different methods of thought that restrict me from advancing in each of these. I am, slowly, crawling my way up step by step, but it’s getting slower and slower going, and I’m realizing that the more of each I’m trying to cram into my brain, the more each of them is coming into conflict with the others.

From here on out? Good question. We’ll see. I figure, there’s a breaking point coming, where I have to, almost literally, tell part of my brain to go fuck off and leave me alone. Alternatively, I can try integration, but that’s like trying to study something completely different.

Oh well. I guess this makes sense to some people. It sortof made sense to me.

On a complete tangent, I’m giving up LARPing for Lent. It’s been a solid part of my life for the last 10 years, I figure I’d cut it out and step back a bit.

She wanna rub me down, keep my muscles strong

Keep it going on, from new york to hong kong

Think of something freeky in a crazy form

As long as I don’t have to put ma pants back on

She’s the girl I never had, the girl of my dreams

A body like a lamborgini covered in jeans

Too much for a man much more than I can stand

Wanna pack my bags and move to japan….

So, interested in supporting the artists, I decided to see who it was by, and whether they had CD’s.

“China in her Eyes”… by… Modern Talking?

WTF? No, seriously, I remember these guys from the days of New Kids, A-Ha, Europe, and big-hair Metal… but here’s the catch: They were never really big in the US, so the only reason I think I know about them is because I lived over in europe during the 80′s. Now I’m sure many of you remember the legacy of the 80′s. Teased big hair, shawls, latex pants, stonewashed jeans, Miami Vice? Take those memories, and then realize that during that time European popular culture tried to emulate that of the US, and did it badly. Think David Hasslehoff’s Pop Star Career. That’s the environment in which I grew up.

And then it hit me: I didn’t grow up in the 80′s. I grew up in a bad sweatshop copy of the 80′s.

So I boiled it down. What’s the problem? Language. We have a language problem. It’s no tower of Babel, but it remains at its core the exact same problem. So instead of thinking in terms of targeting content at different people, lets think in terms of internationalizing it… for the world contained within this company. We start with enUS… and go to enUSsales, enUSdesign, enUS_dev, etc… and then let each user choose the language they are most comfortable with.

The next problem, however, is translation. The problem increases exponentially as more languages are added, and we run into the problem that maintaining such a diverse body of information becomes practically impossible. And yet, here we can draw back to our commonalities for the solution- I do know how to speak to a sales person. In fact, I don’t even have to consciously shift gears in my brain to talk to them, it’s automatic. All I have to do is recognize my audience, and the way I author my content becomes intuitively targeted towards them… and while I might be missing important vocabulary, once a change has occurred it is simple enough for one of them to adjust my phrasing to make more sense.

Thus we come to the last problem- culture. This does require a bit more maintenance, on behalf of everyone. But then, that problem’s wrapped into the contributor vs. consumer problem, the process integration problem, and the education problem, none of which can be easily addressed by a technological process because of the number of human factors involved.

Nevertheless, I keep thinking about this. What would the qualities of a global government be? First of all, it must be fair and ethical. Corruption only undermines and destroys any legitimacy, and therefore any public mandate that it might have. Second, every officer must be accountable, for without such the maxim of power’s corruption becomes true. This is perhaps the most difficult problem, because as evidenced by some modern ‘democracies’- the greedy will collaborate and attempt to subvert for their own interests. Third, it must be participatory. At no point should anyone not have the opportunity to participate in their own governance.

Does this necessitate a Democracy? No, not necessarily. I’m not sure what would be the best form of global government. I suspect that a Federation would be the easily accepted answer.

I have always considered myself a Citizen of Earth, rather than a citizen of Germany or Austria. It’s a global perspective that’s odd, in my belief. I am a patriot of the Human Race, a firm believer in both social and physical darwinism. I believe in the mandate of each human to improve the survival of the species as a whole, regardless of race, religion, upbringing, or geographic location. And while I appreciate the use of conflict toward this end, I feel that the time of physical conflict has passed. The arenas in which our conflicts now reside are mental and social, science and society.

And thus I wonder- is global unification possible?