336. B2B Expo +

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Medium

Was on Medium just now and I’m still amazed by how much interesting content they have. An interesting piece on Seneca -- one of many? -- and another on existentialism and nihilism. Medium is almost always a handy way to start down a philosophical path. 

Seneca is always a mixed bag for me, Stoicism makes wonderful sense if you are a Stoic, the same is true with Buddhism. But this piece focused on Seneca’s ideas on how best to spend your time, or how best to not waste it. And this is problematic for the same reason Buddhism is problematic -- deciding what constitutes “wasted time” is not easy. Much of what Seneca -- or Cicero, for that matter -- would consider well spent time I would consider questionable at best. I can’t recall the name of the Roman poet I love to quote (Horace) who is so well spoken on enjoying life while you’re young, but I like his ideas too. Seneca was keen on spending time doing things that, in the end, ironically, probably had very little value. In his death tub I wonder if he had any second thoughts. Interesting that Seneca and Marat are both famous for dying in a tub.

Here's Horace:
"Tomorrow and her works defy;
Lay hold upon the present hour,
And snatch the pleasures passing by,
To put them out of Fortune's power.
Nor love nor love's delights disdain;
Whate'er thou gettist today is gain."

B2B 2019

My goal every year at this time is to avoid working Bay2Breakers. B2B is a charming SF tradition, a combination of a footrace across the peninsula and a party. There are clever costumes. There are always nude men. There’s still a lot of drinking. Working it is a pain. For years I dodged it by working Maker Faire and then last year, when we stopped doing Maker Faire, I switched to Himalayan Fair in Berkeley. This year I was unable to get a shift for that -- I’m not the only one trying to avoid B2B -- so I signed up for a Saturday shift at the B2B Expo instead. 

I wasn’t really happy about that move, but it worked out perfectly. For starters, we’ve been getting a series of winter storms in a month that should be the start of our dry season. Saturday was wet in a major way, so much so that they canceled the Himalayan Fair. And the B2B Expo turns out to be held inside one of the enclosed piers on our waterfront. Aside from some leaks, I got to work inside out of the rain on a day of serious precipitation. 

The only bad part was that I had to work my complete shift because we couldn’t finish before everything from the Expo had been hauled away, revealing all the signs and bundles of newspapers and random trash that the vendors left behind. It was a lot like the early days of volunteering for GreenFestival. Except that I was being paid and, being a much smaller event, it wrapped up hours earlier. 


The Bank Cafe

I’m currently sitting in the just opened remodeled section of the Bank Cafe. Now the center of the space is blocked off including the stairs. This is a huge improvement over before. And by that I mean over the previous blocked off state -- but also the remodel is quite nice, with more seating in the windows, for example and a much better sound system with better music to go with it. The most noticeable change, besides the new wood floor, is that everything overhead is now bright white except for the fire sprinkler pipes and the three oversize pendant shades over the central table, all of which are dark red. The new furniture is an improvement. Both better looking and just not as worn out. There are two small “rooms” on the Kearny side, I’m sitting in one now, and it appears that they are intended to have doors for increased privacy, though the doors are not installed as yet.

The biggest improvement is that we now have windows again for the first time in months. It was pretty oppressive. The trade-off being that not as many people have been working here so the WiFi has been better.

80. Medium + Nostalgia

Previous - 79. Backpack + Base isolation

Medium

I'm back at what I'm now thinking of as the Psych-ward Peet's on Market. Because all the seats at the counter facing the sidewalk were taken, I'm upstairs at the counter in the balcony, which looks across at the Phelan Building. What's odd about this is that I'm probably looking into the windows of the Medium offices as I progress through my backlog of Medium stories -- only three more to go!

There are two problems with reading these pieces in such an asynchronous style. First, I read too many pieces at a sitting which doesn't give me time to ponder before I move on to the next thought-stream. And second, it's pointless to suggest edits or make helpful observations about pieces that were published months ago. It's like thinking up clever comebacks, the next day, to statements made at a party the previous night. 

Nostalgia

I'm still re-discovering the music of the '60s and late '50s. I was disappointed in the absence of Brazilian music in the "Top Hits..." videos, so I hunted around for music by "Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66" and the Gilbertos. I'm amazed how well this music has held up. I may like it even more than I did back then. 

The best thing I've found is an album from 1965 (I think), called "Getz - Gilberto" featuring Stan Getz on sax and Joao Gilberto, with a bit of Astrud Gilberto thrown in as well.

What I had forgotten about Brazil 66 is how much they covered Beatles hits. These TV show videos are very much of the time.

In the mid-60's I was still playing trumpet in my school's band and Herb Alpert was my favorite trumpet player. I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that Alpert was married to one of the singers (Lani Hall) in Brazil 66 and facilitated their success.

Still, the two songs I've run into with the greatest nostalgic punch for me were ones I included links to before: "Route 66" (the TV show theme) and "A Summer Place" (the film theme.) They really do take me back to the early '60s in Boulder, Colorado.

Next - 81. Veblen + Barton

73. Aftermath + retirement

Previous - 72. Election night 2016

Aftermath

All the people who wanted change (the Bernie Sanders enthusiasts) and who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton (who was just as bad as the Republicans) are now upset. And all the liberal/progressive organizations are swarming like fund-raising flies.  

Acts of God

The other day I was having lunch with a friend at BrainWash when a crazy person walked up and sat at one of the tables on the sidewalk (we were inside). After sitting there for a while, he got up, picked up his cafe table, and threw it into the near lane of the (busy) street. The table broke into pieces and he walked away down an alley, kicking things and making more noise. 

Several of us retrieved the shards of the table which the bus-boy took inside. They now have one fewer table outside. No one called the cops since that would just be a waste of everyone's time.

Thinking about this today, it occurred to me that this guy was a bit like a dust-devil -- a common phenomena in Arizona where the heat, independent of any other weather event, causes small, tornado like winds that can do minor damage to cars or lawn furniture or the like. It's just something that happens and you can't do anything about it but clean up after.

Cantonese

This morning I was sitting waiting to get my blood drawn for tests and listening to the Cantonese being spoken around me. As I understand it, syllables have a different meaning depending on the pitch. This makes me think that Cantonese could be a great analogue for QED with the syllable being an electron and the pitch representing its energy state. I still have no idea how you would represent QCD with sound, though I'm sure it would sound interesting as quarks (for instance) have so many different qualities.

But what I was noticing this morning is that it must not be the absolute pitch but rather the relative pitch that determines the meaning. There was a woman with a particularly high (and annoying) voice and other people speaking in lower ranges. 

Spacetime is relative, but, I think, in either QED or QCD energy states are absolute. But recalling what Oliver Sacks wrote about people with absolute pitch, it shouldn't be too hard for those people to create a code where words (or phrases) had a different meaning at different pitches. Now that would be a tough code to break, and you could use it over any phone line or even on radio or TV.

My Medium retirement plan

The delight of a steady supply of content. That sentence should be a sub-head but I don't usually do that so, there it is. 

Today, once again, I spent the bulk of my afternoon in the Peet's on Market trying to catch up on my Medium backlog. So, nothing new, except that it occurred to me how great it was to read through so many pieces on so many subjects. I'm still months behind, and therefore out of sync, but couldn't help responding to some of the military articles. With the physics and astrophysics articles I could restrain myself, but I really wanted to chime in from time to time. There was just so much great content to consider. 

At some point I'm going to have to stop doing my greening work. I'm feeling better than I did last year, and keeping in shape all year round will undoubtedly prolong my "career," but I'm already starting to deal with turning 65 next year and I have reason to believe that I won't be getting any younger. 

It's very French (and very optimistic) to use le petite mort to mean orgasm and not sleep. For me the months between October and April are le petite retirement. I'm still doing my HOA work; I'm still keeping in shape for next summer; but I have to acknowledge that at some point in the future this is going to be my life. 

Today I read about QCD, controversies concerning both dark energy and dark matter, plus several other topics, and I had lunch at Bun Mee where I savored my favorite crispy tofu Vietnamese sandwich. I can do this.

Next - 74. Going to the dark side

55. Medium

Previous - 54. Kevin Durant + Fleet Week +

Too much to read

Every day Medium sends me a "Daily Digest" of pieces to read. Sometimes I read them but often they end up in a folder to read later. This summer, what with retrofit hell and everything else, even more digests have gone into that folder. At the same time, the free space in my web-mail account has been shrinking. After going through all my web-mail folders and deleting all the big files I didn't need, I still had too much junk. It finally occurred to me that these digests are bigger than I had thought and collectively are clogging my web-mail. So this week I started working though the backlog. 

It's gone fairly well -- in the sense that I've read through and deleted dozens of them -- but I'm still in February and a new one come in every day. I'm tempted to just delete them all, but I've read some really interesting stuff in the past few days. I could use them as grist for this blog, but that would make the process even slower. It's a dilemma.  

Next - 56. Fleet Week + Dreaming