Monthly Archives: June 2013

Americans

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I was forced to watch “despicable me 2” yesterday. And it was appalling.

Set in suburban USA, complete with exotic mall scenes, the plot is basically “shoot and chase” with a PC subplot of new love between mature agers, inclusive of approval of adopted kids.

You have to wonder if even the Americans get bored with the disappearing act (up their own arses).

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Spiritualism

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There is “reality” and then there are emotions, which seem to be a second derivative of one of many realities.

Attempts to control emotions, in order to realise a better version of reality, have dominated the thoughts and writings of many of our great spiritual leaders.

As it turns out it’s not about domination: rather it’s about balance, awareness and “weighted” constraint. These attributes lead to a freedom of the spirit from the tyranny of the mind.

Here is a quick cheat sheet on the subject; (a) age helps, such that our pattern-recognition thought-processes have data to work with, (b) caring about the subject matter is important, (c) and it is key to somehow have freedom from orthodoxy of thought, (d) awareness of the previous journeys of the spiritual leaders helps, but this has to be tempered with the understanding that one person’s journey cannot be codified into a blueprint for all others, (e) one must have love and other genuine emotions in abundance, rather than an over-emphasis on left-brain or no-brain living.

The rest is up to you.

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Pagerism

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This blog only contains original quotes. I am not quoting others at all….all my thoughts, pictures and words are original so far as I can recall. This is a reaction to the Facebook plague of people posting ‘picture quotes’ and rotating madly in the reflected glory, as substantiated by the ‘likes’ and ‘comments’. Its not plagiarism because the source is usually noted, but it is dodgy, so we need a new term – I will call it ‘pagerism’.

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Work

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You do need to monitor your love of your work. If you get that pit in your stomach when you turn up in the morning then it’s time to look around. It can’t always be good, but it should never make you frightened or depressed.

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Pokies

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The guys who make pokies have been studying the science of gambling addiction for decades. To wit, the bloody annoying music that the pokies make must actually work.

For non-gamblers the pokie music might just be about as annoying as sound can get. Does this mean that the gambling addiction part of the brain is sequestered away with the part that also processes music?

Just maybe, the best way to treat gamblers for their addiction is music therapy.

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Information assymmtery

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As a rule of thumb I never try to exploit asymmetries of information. An example would be trying to earn some money from one company or another just for making an introduction of sorts, even if it was an intelligent match making effort.

The reasons I do not try to exploit these situations for personal gain are; (1) once my knowledge is shared I have no role and no more information to leverage, (2) and this leads to other parties only being reluctantly willing to part with money, after the fact, for something they already have received, (3) which then means there is a complex contractual discussions with a dance of veils, all before the knowledge is shared: its all so silly I can’t be arsed, (4) there are any number of consultants running around this city (Sydney) trying to exploit information asymmetries and I really don’t want to be associated with them in any way, (5) once people understand that I freely give away hard-to-gain information then the deal-flow flows, my way. So I can sit there fishing away, for the price of bread crumbs, waiting for the big one to come along.

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Pragmatism

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He said he was pragmatic but as it turned out that meant he didn’t think at any depth about anything in his life.

As a result he was ill-prepared for the personal apocalypse that came his way.

Pragmatism is a useful facade so long as that is all it is.

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Politics in Australia

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Here in Australia we have an entrenched political system that is dominated by two sides of politics that, not surprisingly, have been around, in one form or another, since they themselves organised the system.

We have a conservative party that oddly calls itself Liberal. And then we have a Labor party, complete with American spelling, that supposedly represents what is left of the unskilled wage earners.

In reality they both serve whoever pays them the most. Politically they take notice of the swinging seats and that is the end of their genuine representative duties.

It sort of works because the country runs itself to a large degree. God help us though if we ever need genuine leadership in a crisis….

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Start-up, not

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Just about every day I have another email from some young entrepreneur wanting to meet to meet me to discuss fund raising for their start-up.

There is a real problem out there, and the problem is that the early stage technology sector in Australia has been so unprofitable for so long that we have run out of fools willing to invest.

Except for the government of course!

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Misogyny

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Like all curses, misogyny is rarely absolute: it being a dislike of, contempt for, or an ingrained prejudice against women.

Right at this moment our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has pulled the misogyny card in an effort to pull back some of the lost ground she has in the lead-up to the next election. Apart from this being very cynical politics that will barely work, it simply underlines the fact that she isn’t much of a statesperson.

Moving on the from the circus politics, she does has a point. Many of those men and women who are motivated enough to get into the game of politics, or those that feel the need to influence these clowns on behalf of their own self-interests, also have character flaws that seem to be be correlated with non-nonsensical attitudes such as misogyny and racism.

To dislike or act against another, or a group of others, just because they appear to be different belies a total lack of common sense, and also a fundamental sense of insecurity. And, specifically with regards to misogyny, to feel that half the population of people on the planet is ‘them not us’ is downright fucking stupid.

I have met enough misogynists to be able to assert that there are two types; those that have learnt this behaviour whilst young and if given counselling could unlearn it, and those that really and truly yearn for past days when women where servants or slaves or worse. This lot are downright dangerous and need to be ring-fenced.

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Facebook again

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The only way you will get me on Facebook is if there is a version that is secure (from government eyes) and is not-for-profit, and that also has technology to filter out all missives from the desperately lonely seeking to create the impression of not being so. It would also help if the interface wasn’t so daggy.

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Legacy

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If a multi-billionaire really wanted to spend all his or her money and leave a legacy, then the way to do it is to buy up as much back-catalog content as possible (books, video and music) and convert it to commons.

Not only would it make the purchased content available for free, it would screw everyone else trying to exploit back catalogue content. And it would further legitimize bit torrent by swamping that market with free content.

Copyrights are simply way too long; incumbent interests have had their way yet again.

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News

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We need a Wikinews that works. Instant and daily news compress, by the people for the people. Less lies by the few, and more lies distributed over the many.

Since Wikinews is time dependent (unlike Wikipedia) it needs to be updated constantly. The current Wikinews model has failed for the want of a motivating force to give it real-time relevance. Also there needs to be a means to customise it for locality and personal interest.

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Body

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Approaching fifty: it’s become clearer to me how important it is to keep my body in good shape. Strength and flexibility, combined with aerobic fitness.

A really large fraction of the state of your mind can be traced back to the state of your body.

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Dreams

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I got on the turps and went to bed without any water. I kept having these dreams about being thirsty and not finding water. Finally I woke up and, of course, I found water.

With this data I can hypothesize that waking hours represent ‘real’ life and dreams are there for other purposes but do not represent a genuine alternative reality.

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Silence

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I told him I really wasn’t interested in a conversation about his kid’s schooling, golf, footy, renovations, partnership politics, cafe racing or the legs that just walked past.

It appeared that we were out of things to talk about.

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Complexity

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Every since the enlightenment (which gave us the cause) and the industrial revolution (which gave us the means) we, in the West, have been striving to improve society through the introduction of rules and regulations. Its been a case of two steps forward and 1.9 backwards, but progress has been solid over almost three hundred years. To a large extent we are free of tyranny, our bodies are cared for and there are opportunities for those who want them.

The price we have paid is complexity. Every time there is a a problem to solve or an opportunity to grasp our political leaders, at our insistence, implement new laws and regulations. We are drowning in compliance.

Also the commercial world has kept up with the politicians by bombarding us with as many complex products and services as they can imagine; technology has allowed them almost infinite creative freedom in which to bamboozle us with bullshit.

Its got to a point that people are simply not coping with every-day complexity. We may be free of tyranny of the body and, on paper, we have freedom of thought and speech, but our souls and minds are now fully servile to levels of complexity that we can hardly deal with.

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Italian mineral water

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When I think about the food miles it’s madness that I drink Italian mineral water. Santa Vittoria or San Pellegrino.

The reason I drink it is for the minerals. I spend at least an hour a day on the bike and another hour either in the gym or on the squash court. I need the minerals otherwise I start getting cramps. And there isn’t another way of getting them that I like.

Why do Australian ‘mineral’ waters have no minerals in them? Odd

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Inspiration

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It is clear to me that kids in primary schools really miss inspirational teaching. Its just so much drudgery to them.

Occasionally some interesting person drops in to a class and inspires the kids, but this is a once-in-year event, if it happens at all.

Our teachers are over-worked and under-paid bureaucrats and we can’t expect them to turn on the inspirational tap on a daily basis, if at all.

Maybe we need to utilise our population of recent retirees and get the best of them to spend an hour or two a week with a class to pass on some life-education and some inspiration.

If they won’t do it voluntarily then maybe a tax break or two on their superannuation might do the trick. Once they start I think they would be hooked.

Then, of course, a quality control mechanism will be needed to filter out the less capable and less inspiring, and also to judge when the use-by date has been reached.

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Education

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Now that I am having direct exposure to public schooling I can start to see why people are sending kids to private schools. The teachers seem to behave like they are in a bureaucracy and their level of commitment to feedback and responsibility appears very low. Now I have to temper that view with the knowledge that I work in the high-tech entrepreneurial world where everyone is highly skilled and highly motivated; the contrast is extraordinary.

This is a problem with so many layers its almost not worth worrying about, since I can’t fix it. It just means I will have to work that much harder to fill the educational gap for my daughter.

Ignoring that insight, I wonder if it would help if we paid teachers more and required them to do less? Obviously that is one solution. I am not sure it would work unless we also made teachers directly responsible for outcomes and treated parents like customers. That last one worries me for some reason.

The point of education is to lift people above the fog of bare existence, that is to give them more skills than are required just to cope with the complex world we live in. Ideally we want our kids to have the skills and confidence to solve problems and grasp opportunities. We want them to be good people and to treat others fairly. We want them to be able develop life philosophies too … the ability to position themselves comfortably into a personal world-view.

This is only going to happen if the teachers and parents cooperate because one or the other of these is not sufficient to create these outcomes. It seems to me that teachers, unfortunately, see parents as a necessary evil, to be avoided at all costs. Wrong answer – parents are the key partners in creating the educational outcomes that we all want to see. It’s a shame most parents are such dickheads.

I give the whole educational system in Australia (and I am including the home front here) a C+. Lots of room for improvement. However the current efforts to improve the system are focused on cost efficiencies and levelling of the opportunities, and not genuine across-the-board improvements (as I see them). The fundamentally flawed nature of education will not change.

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Fear

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My daughter, at the age of 9 and quite a bit, has discovered mortality and the fear of loss.

My job is now to explain that (1) she cannot let herself be crippled by these fears, (2) fear is there for a reason, and that reason is to motivate you to do something about preventing the things you fear from happening, and (3) fear is an emotion; you have to take the bad ones along with the good ones. Cutting yourself off from your emotions is not the answer.

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Toe shoes

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Toe shoes certainly look different don’t they? A lifetime’s orthodoxy on the subject (shoes) proffers  me an immediate negative image. Even the US army had banned them for reasons of ‘image’!

Which means I have to try them. I am like a moth to the light, when orthodoxy is being questioned.

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The Internet of Things

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The Internet of Things describes the realisation (a few years back) that the majority of data flipping around the internet is generated by machines and not humans. Human-generated content includes emails, texts, photos etc. Machine generated content is everything else which generates information that is transmitted – a classic example is a sensor punching out information at a regular interval.

I think there needs to be two levels of further refinement to the concept of the Internet of Things:

1. Firstly, there needs to be a measure of how ‘far’ away from human intervention is the generation of certain automated data. For example if a sensor is designed by humans then although the information it generates is part of the Internet of Things it is only removed from human intervention by a first-order. What is more interesting is when the ‘machine’ that generates the data is further removed from human intervention, i.e. the product of machine learning or machine and/or software replication. And we will then see subsequent generations of machines, each further removed from human intervention. Pretty quickly our level of understanding and control will depreciate. Whether this will have any real consequences is moot.

2. Secondly, ‘silence’ in the Internet of Things is important. By silence I mean that humans will not be not required to see the data. Currently much of the data generated by machines in the Internet of Things is brought to the attention of humans. An example is some automatic sensor in a lighting system of a house which sends information and alarms to a smartphone app so the owner can modify various settings. Increasingly the use of the data will be automated and will by-pass humans, and thus appear silent to them.

Both of the trends described above lead to a very complex Internet, effectively a control system for the human ecosystem, over which humans have little control and understanding. We won’t have the luxury of turning off the Internet at any time (since we are already completely dependent upon it) either. We will just have to trust in the machines. Maybe some smart people can figure out how to model the whole thing.

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Marketing

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Life in the West can now be divided in two by (a) time spent being marketed to, and (b) time spent not being marketed to. For some busy people, buried right in the middle of the corporate world, I wouldn’t be surprised if a time-and-motion study discovered that more than 50% of their waking hours are actually in the ‘being marketed to’ category.

In the physical world the great undiscovered opportunity is the Antarctic (which we haven’t raped for resources yet). In the soft-drink world coke thinks of its market share as the percentage of all liquids consumed. Similarly the great undiscovered marketing opportunity is sleep-time. Some marketing research group will finally realise that they need to target all hours not just waking hours.

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Organizations

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I once had the chance to lead a very large team in a corporation. Given the bullshit of the modern corporation it’s simply way too easy to destroy the spirit in people.  Unless you are a sociopath or you are actively lobotomising yourself, it can be a soul destroying experience.

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Money

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The Chinese really only care about money. They don’t seem to value much else. No wonder they revere their visions of the U.S.in the nineteen fifties.

They certainly do not value any source of innovation. All they want to do when they see innovation is rip it off. They think in the ‘personal’ and rarely in the ‘collective’, and with very little awareness of karma. Which makes them very bad candidates for communism.

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