Sinister Dexterity

Sunday-Monday, July 28-29, 2002,
memes

I've started reading Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by Richard Brodie, who created Microsoft Word. I suppose that's as good a qualification as any for explaining how memes, or bits of cultural reproduction, spread whether or not they benefit the host. It's not seeming terribly deep, but it is very accessible, and puts things clearly.

One of the first ideas that struck me in this book was Brodie's loose classification of memes into distinctions, associations, and strategies. The "distinction" meme reminded me of when I took a Japanese class in summer school the summer after sixth grade. I had recently started playing drums, and some others in the class played instruments, so we were interested in finding out how to say that we played drums or whatever. The teacher essentially said that there was one word for playing any instrument besides a drum, and that for a drum you used the word meaning "to hit" not "to play."

I probably protested, as this seemed unfair, but he continued, obviously thinking himself perfectly reasonable to explain that you played other instruments, but you hit a drum. He accompanied this with a variety of hand gestures to illustrate "playing," followed by a gesture to illustrate "hitting" a drum. He was oblivious to the fact that the gestures for playing a guitar, trumpet, etc. had nothing in common, and that the distinction between all of them on one side and hitting a drum on the other was illusory. Sure, one hits a drum, which isn't inherently musical, but one blows a trumpet, which is also not inherently musical, since you can blow out a candle or blow chunks. I was already sensitive to the prejudices that people have against drums as "not musical" -- as in the joke I admit I like to tell: "What do you call people who hang out with musicians? Drummers."

Almost none of the Japanese from that class stuck with me, but this exchange did. I have come back to it many times, first as an example of a specific prejudice — though, I admit, anti-drumming prejudice is relatively benign in the grand scheme of things — and more recently as perhaps the first time I realized how linguistic categories affect our perception. (I have especially been reminded of this recently, when I have dipped into the monumental Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, by George Lakoff.)

To me, it was patently obvious that one "played" a drum just as much as one "played" a tuba; to my teacher — who was presumably a smart guy — it was patently obvious that this activity was inherently different from all otehr types of musical instrument "playing." He could have just taught us that a different word was used, by convention. I might or might not have accepted this tack then, but I would now.

I thought of this story again when I read Brodie's description of the "distinction" meme. (The flip side of this, I suppose, would be the "indistinction" meme — the meme that strumming, blowing, and plucking are in some way indistinct from each other. Both of these could be subsumed into "classification" memes. For example, an all-pervasive meme in American culture is that cows, pigs, chickens, and fish are food, but dogs, cats, and primates are not. I could say that I have broken this meme's grip on me, since I don't eat any meat, but I still think of beef as a food I choose not to eat, not as a "non-food." Hindus would move cows from one side to the other, the French might move horses the other way — I could go on with different examples from different cultures. But all these distinctions are artificial, and exist in our minds because they have been passed on, by our parents, peers and the society at large.

(more later...)

Saturday, July 27, 2002, 12:11 p.m.

"Attend to your needs, but don't confuse attending to your needs with saving the world."
- Daniel Quinn, Providence

I recently finished reading Daniel Quinn's Providence: the Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest, and not long before that I read Ishmael and Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure. Quinn is one of these writers that "changes people's lives." I'm not entirely convinced, but I keep reading him, and he has a lot of interesting things to say. I'm not sure how coherently it all fits together, and reading him doesn't give me the sense of scope and depth that I get from, say Ken Wilber -- but that's a bit like complaining that a composer was more of a late bloomer than Mozart. Give him a try, if you feel like it. Ishmael isn't particularly good as a novel per se, but it is a whole lot of interesting thinking and analysis of society formed into dialogues that are easy to digest. That's the main thing: Quinn is very easy to read, especially considering all the ideas he's working with. I don't know that he's "right," but I think it's good that he gets people to think about the ideas he raises.

I realize I haven't said much about these ideas, but that's for another time.

Thursday, July 25, 2002, 08:38 p.m.

First, Mr. White Power, then I get called upon to accompany a female co-worker into the men's room, and somehow I end up operating the mop. Too much excitement for one day at the library.

Thursday, July 25, 2002, 07:16 p.m.

Working on the reference desk this evening, I just got to help my first real live white supremacist skinhead -- unless, of course, someone tattooed his arm with the letters "SWP" and an iron cross with a swastika in the middle when he wasn't looking. He was friendly enough (to a white guy like me). Might as well help him -- no point in giving him any more grievances against the government.

7/26 P.S. One of the things that is most scary, in a subtle way, about overt racists is how, well, nice and normal they can be. Plenty of guys have shaved heads, and good old vegetarian-Green-party-member-librarian-me wears Doc Martens. So what set him apart? He wasn't fuming about immigrants or anything, just looking for rock'n'roll CDs. Even said thank you. Only his tattoos set him apart from any other rough-around-the-edges blue-collar suburban young man. How many other people do I see in the course of a day who feel the same way he does? I recently read Under the Hood: Unmasking the Modern Ku Klux Klan by Worth Weller, and this liberal journalist came away impressed by the affability of the klansmen he dealt with. It's not quite "the banality of evil" since these are not the bureaucrats that Arendt's phrase evokes. More like regular good-ol'-boys who happen to have the devil on their speed-dial.

Thursday, July 25, 2002, 05:45 p.m.
death by chocolate

Once again, I'm at a loss for words.

Thursday, July 25, 2002, 01:29 p.m.
library outreach

I'm at a loss for words.

Thursday, July 25, 2002, 02:23 a.m.
SETI@home

Join in the fun!

Wednesday, July 24, 2002, 08:22 p.m.
Ken Wilber

I don't know what to say about Ken Wilber off the top of my head, except read him, if you are interested in consciousness, psychology, mysticism, religion or related topics -- and what isn't related, in some way, to at least one of those? I recently finished Boomeritis, his latest book and first novel, which puts a lot of his philosophy into a pretty easy-to-digest story. I can't say that it's a great work of fiction, but it's entertaining and communicates a lot of big ideas. I'm currently reading Grace and Grit, his account of his wife Treya's (eventually fatal) ordeal with cancer. When two people deeply involved in spirituality and psychology deal with such a life-rending process, the narrative (which combines his memories with Treya's journals) is an exploration of philosophies of life, death, and mysticism, as well as the story of a disease. One Taste is one year's journal, written for publication, intended to show how Wilber combines his philosophy and daily life. It's refreshing, after a lengthy disquisition on states of consciousness and the Great Chain of Being, to see a list of current rock bands he likes, or recent movies he has rented. A Theory of Everything is the first one I read, and is a brief summary of the "all-quadrant-all level" model that he applies to all facets of human endeavor. Wilber himself suggests starting with A Brief History of Everything, which I still haven't read, though I bought a copy over six years ago, after [WARNING: NAME DROPPING] Spalding Gray recommended it in the course of the interview I did with him. Why haven't I read it yet? You've got me. I've also read bits of Integral Psychology and The Eye of Spirit, but had to return them to the library and haven't gotten them back.

This is his publisher's page, and this is another site about his work.

Wednesday, July 24, 2002, 06:00 p.m.
semiotic vichyssoise

I've been increasingly fascinated by all the variants on the "Jesus fish" icon that people put on their cars: Darwin, Cthulhu, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, etc. and thought it would be a cool project to track down images and compile all the variants onto one page -- a semiotic vichyssoise, if you will. So I was a bit disappointed to find that someone had already made such a page. (There are others, but this is the most comprehensive I have found.) Then I thought to myself, DUH! It's not like anyone's paying me to do this, and posting one link is much easier than compiling the JPEG archive myself. So there it is. The only one I can think of that isn't on this page is the First Church of Larry fish. Let me know if you are aware of any more, and if possible give me the URL where one can be found.

6:03 p.m.
P.S. Unless this page gets indexed, "semiotic vichyssoise" is a googlewhack.

Tuesday, July 23, 2002, 09:31 p.m.

Back in the dark days of King George the First, I played drums in a band called 133 Elephant Experts. We played a bunch of shows, recorded 4 songs at Enharmonik Studios in Sacramento, and got two tracks on a compilation of Davis, CA bands called "eyes calm film." The band fell apart, and the CD mainly went into the collections of people on the davis music scene.

But, thanks to the magic of the Web — which was in diapers in those pre-Mosaic days — I can give you, kind readers, access to those two tracks. One is Life Size and the other is Needle and Thread.

I was a bit reluctant to mention "eyes calm film" because it was almost a perfect googlewhack in that when I checked earlier today there was exactly one hit for a Google search on "eyes calm film."

Tuesday, July 23, 2002, 05:09 p.m.

Freaky linkage: I started this pitas site because my friend Rich had one, and he always links to pillowfort, so I decided to check it out. When I got all the way to the bottom of the current page, what do I see but a cartoon by Adrian Tomine, who grew up down the street from me in Sacramento, and who once drew a comic from a story I told him. Go figure.

Tuesday, July 23, 2002, 04:51 p.m.
blogs and googlebombing

Longish but interesting article about how to mess around with Google rankings.

Tuesday, July 23, 2002, 12:24 p.m.
good red meat

My favorite Red Meat cartoon in a long time.

Sunday, July 21, 2002, 04:25 p.m.
Anton Barbeau

"I've got the patience of a garden hose..."

Saturday, July 20, 2002, 04:01 p.m.
vegan book and recalled meat

I was going to write something last night about Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating by Erik Marcus, which is the first book in a while that I have read in one day, and the first in even longer that I have stayed up until almost 2 a.m. just to finish. I'm not a vegan (just a vegetarian who goes easy on the ovo and lacto) but I found this book mighty hard to argue with.

You can even download the whole book as a free PDF.

As I said, I was going to write something last night, but then decided to hold off and digest it more, so to speak. Good thing I waited, though, because it gave me the opportunity to link to this article from this morning's N.Y. Times (free registration required).

Saturday, July 20, 2002, 01:10 a.m.
Bailey

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for, pictures of my dog Bailey.

Friday, July 19, 2002, 10:37 p.m.
Get into art

I was really tempted to buy a pair of these when we were in Venice. The price seemed a tad steep at this stand, so I decided to shop around. Most of the tourist junk was the same from stand to stand, but we never saw these again.

Friday, July 19, 2002, 04:53 p.m.

So just when I think it's going to be a boring day at the library, a co-worker asks me to help her print out some pictures from her other job.

Friday, July 19, 2002, 10:43 a.m.
Saffron Days in L.A.

At the library yesterday, I picked up Saffron Days in L.A.: Tales of a Buddhist Monk in America by Bhante Walpola Piyananda. When I opened the cover, I saw a tiny bug, perhaps a mosquito squished inside the cover. I found this poignant and ironic, but the image is as delicate as the now two-dimensional insect, and will come apart if I let my logorrheic analytical mind go on and on about just how and why this is ironic. Without commentary, it's almost like a little haiku. I could scrape out the little bug, but I will leave it, so the next reader will have a chance to think similar (or different) thoughts.

Sunday, July 14, 2002, 02:46 p.m.

Not to sound too much like Andy Rooney or something, but you know what really drives me crazy? People who want a card catalog. The 60-plus set I can almost forgive, but I just had a guy who was probably 40 and a (not as) Young (as he used to be) Urban Professional. Can a card catalog tell you whether the book is actually checked in? Can it tell you where in the system it is? If it is lost? Let you put a hold on it? Blah blah rant rant kvetch kvetch. If people don't like technology they should give up books, too.

Wednesday, July 3, 2002, 06:05 p.m.
Stiglitz interview in Salon

So I've been trying to get a handle on this whole "globalization" thing, and I started reading "Globalization and its Discontents" by Joseph Stiglitz and "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" by Thomas L. Friedman. Not finished either one, of course, because I'm also reading Neal Stephenson and who knows how many other books that tickle my fancy when I'm working at the library. Stiglitz has a good perspective, since he is a Nobel-winning economist who used to be a bigwig in the World Bank, but got fired for being too critical of the excesses of IMF and WB policies. Too many other voices in the globalization debate seem to be pro-globalization economic insiders or anti-globalization protesters who are so far out of the system that I have to wonder if they really know anything about it. (The "battle in Seattle" might have been a good way to get on the news, but I fear not much more than that.)So an insider who is highly critical of globalization is a very welcome voice. If, like me, you don't quite have the gumption to make it through the book, the Salon interview gives a quick overview of Stiglitz's perspective.