Author: admin

I’ve been writing a post a day here since January 1, 2008. Little by little, it all adds up.

This week, out of curiosity, I went back ten years to see what I was saying in this blog a decade ago. Immediately I was swept back into another world, one that is oddly near and distant at the same time.

A decade is an interesting length of time. It’s sufficiently lon g that we’ve gone through many changes, yet we clearly recognize the person we encounter as ourselves.

It’s funny to of myself this way, two versions of me divided by a decade. If the person I am now could give one piece of advice to the person I was ten years ago, I wonder what I would say.

I do understand how it makes folks litiginous
Historical crimes against people indiginous
It’s so very awkward, that this very nation
Was built through a process of extermination
Now there is pushback and now there is rage
It’s the dawn of a far more enlightened new age
They’re toppling statues with vigor and glee
Of Columbus and Wilson and Robert E. Lee
New days are here from Duluth to the Bayou
But what will they do in Columbus Ohio?

Suppose you could take a mood pill that would put you into any mood you want? Would you use it?

I am not talking about intoxicating substances such as alcohol which impair your judgement. I’m suggesting something more down to earth.

Suppose I want to be sober and thoughtful at some point in the day, but lighthearted at another. Or I want to be rueful, or sentimental, or amorous, or coldly analytical.

If something like that existed, and it were truly reliable, I can see how it might be a very good thing or a very bad thing. I just can’t figure out which.

I’m thinking these days of my friends to the north
Where I’m no longer free just to venture on forth
I was sorry to hear that the border is closed
I’m starting to think we are royally hosed

This was such a good country not too long ago
Now it’s all being Trumped by an idiot show
Next thing you know, it’s democracy’s fall
Then Canada says we must pay for the Wall

Ever since I was a child, whenever I see lightning I start to count. It all has to do with physics.

Sound travels through air at around 1,000 feet per second. So it takes about five seconds for sound to travel a mile (5280 feet).

Since light travels, well, at the speed of light, we see a lightning strike essentially instantaneously. But the accompanying sound of thunder takes longer.

For every mile of the distance between you and lightning, there will be about a five second delay before you hear the thunder. For example, a lightning strike two miles away will be accompanied by a clap of thunder after about ten seconds.

Late last night there was a thunder storm, so I started counting in my bed. Until, that is, I saw a flash of lightning and heard a clap of thunder at pretty much the same time.

That’s when I hid under the covers and wished I didn’t know so much physics.

Sometimes I rail against the heat of summer. It can be incredibly annoying to try to get through the day when it is hot, humid and muggy.

Winters can be even worse, chilling you to the bone on really bad days. Then there are the various seasonal hazards: snowstorms, hurricanes, and the other varieties of extreme weather that Nature throws as us.

I have a cousin who lives in L.A. Like me, he was born in NYC, but unlike me, he has escaped to a paradise of perfect days. It’s never too hot or cold, there is little humidity to speak of, and snow is nonexistent.

I completely understand why he would make that choice. Yet I have a feeling that without the extremes of weather, my life would be somehow impoverished.

So there you have it, a fundamental choice: I choose weather, and my cousin chooses no weather, and neither of us is wrong.

Seems to me there is a metaphor lurking here somewhere.

From time to time I like to switch up the tools I use to prototype things. It’s not that one tool is better than the other. It’s more that changing tools seems to keep me from falling into too much of a familiar rut.

Sometimes, for the same task, I will use 2D software tools, or 3D tools. Sometimes I will use commercial software, and other times my own home-grown code base.

And then at other times I will just pick up a number two pencil and a piece of blank paper and start sketching.

I think it’s not the particular tool that matters, but the greater awareness that comes from not taking your tools for granted. Ironically, it turns out that keeping yourself a little off balance can be good for your productivity.

I love poetry. And like most people, I place it in my mind into a category different from prose.

It seems to me that there is some connection with music here. The rhythmic aspect of poetry reaches us in an emotional place that has more connection with music than can be achieved by words alone.

Now that I’m thinking about this, I wonder whether there is a similar quality to montage in film. Can the rhythm of cuts within a scene be thought of as a kind of visual music?

Perhaps great composers, poets and film editors should be thought of as part of a large collective of what might be called rhythm artists.

I suggested yesterday that people will gradually move away from cities. Alistair countered that cities provide cultural advantages to proximity to culture.

So there is a distinction to make here. It comes down to why you want to be near a city.

Commuting in five times a week for a 9 to 5 job is one thing. Going to the city on a Saturday evening to meet friends for a concert and great restaurant experience is something else entirely.

If you assume that a city exists not as a place for everyone to work, but as a cultural resource, that changes how you organize the city and its surroundings. It would still make sense for people in service and entertainment industries, such as restauranteurs and actors, to live within the city itself.

But for everyone else, transportation to and from the city would not focus on a daily commute, but rather on after hours travel to and from the city once or twice a week.

If we start with this general model, I wonder what future cities would look like.

The pandemic is forcing much work to become more virtual. People are now centering their lives more on home and family, and social structures are rearranging.

It’s not clear that everyone will want to back to a world of commuting and office buildings. As people learn how to better work at home, they will gradually see advantages that outweigh the disadvantages.

If so, then after the pandemic is over, we may start to see a decisive and permanent shift. People will move away from geographic areas that privilege work life, toward areas that privilege home life.

There could therefore be a permanent drop in population places like New York City, which are all about the advantages of urban density, including access to high paying jobs. Instead, people might migrate to the midwest, where housing is both larger and cheaper.

If you can buy a big house for not so much money, and still hold down a high paying job while spending quality time with your family, why wouldn’t you?