The irony ….
Rihanna has .. taken over control of an account set up by her record bosses on the social networking website.
[She] was tired of seeing "corny label tweets" attributed to her - so she's taken the page over.
The pop star wrote on Friday, "So now that i finally took over my Twitter page no more corny label tweets......lol! whaaasssuupppp ppl!!!!!
Is it just me or is that really funny? I mean isn't "lol! whaaasssuupppp ppl!!!!!" about the corniest tweet you ever read?
Original article at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/dailydish/index#ixzz0yCnpZ9aR
My writers don’t even realize that they get it, and that makes me happy
- Image via Wikipedia
For those of you that haven't been following along all these years, let me restate one of my fundamental beliefs - writers shouldn't ever worry about layout. Writers are incredibly good at writing. Some writers are also really good at layout. Those two things are very, very different though. Good writing works no matter what the design is. The converse isn't true, though. Good design fails when the content isn't valuable.
My job is to make the writers more effective. When automated publication gets in the way of writing good content, I've made things worse, not better. On the other hand, when a writer has gotten to the point where she's complaining that the automated build doesn't do something she can easily do manually, and she's complaining not because she wants to do the formatting herself, but she's complaining that the build doesn't do the thing she could do, I smile.
I've gotten through to her. She gets it. Not just logically, but viscerally. She doesn't want to make the fix manually, even though it's easy for her to to do it. She wants to write and leave the layout, the publication piece, to me.
It's a good Friday.
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Happiness – it’s more than “Am I happier than I was a minute ago?” and yes, Phoebe makes me happy
Many studies show that parents are less happy then other adults without children. I've never really believed the results of those studies.
The academic side of me says,"Well, they did the research, who are you to question it?" while the realist in me tells me that I'm happier as a father then I've ever been, my brother is happier as a father, my father is happier as a father, etc.
So, why the disconnect? I think Jonah Lehrer nails it in his post, Family Life : The Frontal Cortex. He writes,
And yet, these subjective self-reports and ethnographic videotapes also miss something important. The fact of the matter is that it's much easier to quantify pleasure on a moment-by-moment basis, or document the swing of cortisol levels in saliva, that it is to quantify something as intangible as "unconditional love". Changing a diaper isn't enjoyable, and teenagers can be such a pain in the ass, but having kids can also provide a profound source of meaning. (I like the amateur marathoner metaphor: survey a marathoner in the midst of the race and they'll complain about their legs and that nipple rash and the endless route. But when the running is over they are always incredibly proud of their accomplishment. Having kids, then, is like a marathon that lasts 18 years.) The larger point, though, is that just because we can't measure something doesn't mean it isn't important, or that we should always privilege the quantifiable (pleasure, stress) over the intangible (meaning, purpose). Real life is complex stuff.
I love my daughter Phoebe. She really is the most valuable thing in my life. Living my life with her makes me happy, even though, at many moments I will report that I am unhappy. Even during those moments of unhappiness, I'm more alive then I'd have been without her.
Before Phoebe (BP), I had time to pursue my own desires. I had time to share with my wife, Betsy. I had time to do nothing. Now, finding time for Betsy is hard, finding time to pursue my own desires is harder, and time to do nothing has disappeared.
Now, life with Phoebe (WP), is harder. I have to manage every moment of my life. I am not the alpha and omega of my life. I think, though, that is what we, as humans really desire. We are a social animal. We are most satisfied, most happy, and most at peace when we are doing something that benefits ourselves but also benefits others.
That's why these studies are, in the larger scope, wrong. They measure the change in happiness, not the actual value of happiness. My moments of frustration or unhappiness with Phoebe are still more joyful then my moments of happiness when I was alone. They are more joyful then my moments with Betsy before Phoebe.
It's obvious, really, when you think about it. What's the most touching moment in a drama? It's when the protagonist's love dies. Why? Because a piece of the protagonist dies too. Our loves, our family, makes us larger than the person we would be without them.
Is my happiness lowered, for a moment, when Phoebe pours her cereal bowl all over the floor? Yes, of course it is. My life is better, though, because she's there to pour that cereal on the floor than if she wasn't there.
The studies are wrong, not in the numbers they report, but because they miss the scope of what life is about. I don't say that because I want to justify my choice of being a parent. I say that because I believe that social science is missing a key component in the study of happiness, and I hope someone will do a deeper, more thorough study of the topic.
Some great writing in “Brodeck” by Philippe Claudel
I'm reading Brodeck: A novel
It's always been difficult for me to speak and express my innermost thoughts in person. I prefer to write. When I sit down and write, words grow very docile, they come and feed out of my hands like little birds, and I can do almost what I want with them; whereas when I try to marshal them in the open air, they fly away from me.
I think a lot of writers feel the same way, but I've never seen it written so eloquently.
Every day, Fedorine fed me with bread, apples, and bacon, which she drew out of big blue canvas sacks, and also with words; she slipped them into my ear, and I had to let them out again through my mouth.
As someone with a toddler, watching her going through the stages of language acquisition, I have to say that this is exactly what I see happening. We feed her words, just like we feed her peas and rice.
It's been a long time since I've enjoyed the words of a book so much. What makes it more amazing is that it's a translation (translated by John Cullen). I wonder how it would read in the original French.
A Former Freeway Turns into a Farm
I used to live in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. I often walked past the remnants of a highway off-ramp that was destroyed during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. Often I wanted to walk through the abandoned lot, but high fences and a natural fear of homeless encampments keep me away. Now I've found that there are braver people then me there - they've turned it into a farm. Okay, well, an urban garden, but still, that's a great use of abandoned space.
Why I cross the street ….
Some people, when they get see a young man, dressed in hoodies and sagging jeans, walking along the sidewalk, cross over and walk on the other side of the street. Me? I cross over when I see someone walking their dog, but only if they have dressed their dog in human clothes. Yes, that's right, they scare me. Not the dog, the owner. I mean, how can you predict how someone that would do that to their dog is going to behave? You can't. It's a sign of a twisted mind.
Email, and the “other Steve Anderson”
It happened again today. Someone signed up for an account, this time at a soccer website, and used my email address.
It's understandable, really. I got lucky. When GMail first started, I got an early invite, and snagged the email address steve.anderson@gmail.com. Due to the way Google does email addressing, I also have steveanderson@gmail.com and steveanderson+anything@gmail.com.
So, if someone says, "Email me at steveanderson16@gmail.com" and the person only hears the steveanderson@gmail.com part of it, I get that email. Same for steveandersen@gmail.com. Same for stevenanderson@gmail.com. You get the idea.
I usually just ignore the emails, but lately I've been trying to get the email to the right person. I mean, if I asked a car dealer for a quote on a car, and that quote got sent to a different Steve Anderson, I'd hope he'd send it on to me. The problem is, how does he know where to send it?
I got lucky the other day. I got an email, not for me, that had a PDF attachment that included the correct email address for the "other Steve Anderson". I sent it on to him and suggested he tell his contacts to update their addresses for him.
That's a bad solution, though. The right solution should be self-service. I should be able to quickly, and easily, forward that email to a service that posts the email in such a way that if the "other Steve Anderson" looks, he can find it. Here's the use case. Follow along and let me know what you think.
I go to a website. It's cool. It's about football. It's about my favorite team, the Minnesota Vikings. I want to write something on the forum, so I sign up for an account. In my excitement, though, I enter the wrong email address. Instead of steveanderson@gmail.com, I enter steveandersen@gmail.com. The Steve Andersen that actually gets email at steveandersen@gmail.com gets the email intended for me. He forwards it to "wrongemail@theothersteveanderson.com". He's done. I look at my email and don't get the activation email I'm expecting. I visit theothersteveanderson.com, see on the "Unclaimed Wrong Emails" list the email I'm expecting. I claim it, activate my account, and move on. Nice, huh?
Now there are all kinds of issues with this idea. What about trolls looking for email address? What about someone claiming all the wrong emails? I don't know how to solve those, but I think the idea has merit.
This sounds like a fun project that one could cobble together using existing technologies. Maybe the right way to do it is via twitter (follow @theothersteveanderson and direct reply to the person that posts). Maybe the right way to do it is via FaceBook. Maybe it's using some kind of web content management system like Magnolia or Drupal. Maybe it could be as simple as having a forum, thread can be opened via email, and anyone that's a member can claim the email by closing the thread.
What do you think? I'd really like some feedback.
Another piece of the puzzle for replacing fossil fuels
Image via Wikipedia
Oslo to Run Buses On Biomethane - the biomethane is coming from their sewage treatment plants, and it's a great way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
That's cool, but, the really cool thing is the way they got to this. Instead of starting with, "Let's use biodiesel in all our busses!" or "Electricity is the only way to go!", they started asking, "What resources do we have to work with?" and came up with this solution.
That's the way we are going to replace fossil fuels - each person and organization (and I include local, state, and federal governments when I say organization) is going to have to ask the question, "What is best for me?".
My boss recently put in solar cells to generate electricity for her house. She put in enough cells to generate about 25% of the power she uses every month. That's what works for her.
We shouldn't try to replace fossil fuels with X, no matter what X is - we need to look at multiple solutions so that we don't find ourselves in the same situation we are now, bound to one source of energy, live or die.
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iTunesU
In the iTunes store, you can find a ton of university lectures by looking at iTunesU. If you haven't looked at it, you need to. There are a wide range of lectures and interviews, and they are all free.
Oh, so far behind
Okay, it's been a long time since I've kept up, so here's a quick laundry list of things that I think are new since I was last posting regularly.
- I got a mac mini
- My wife is pregnant, due in January
- I'm in a great program with San Francisco Zen Center called Establishing the Path of Practice
- I got my wife's hand-me-down ipod video and it's much better for audio books than the ipod shuffle.
- There's still a lot of work to do on this blog, I guess, most notably odd characters in places, but it's mostly working
Questions?