Letter Never Sent

Literature / Religion/philosophy — Comments Off
11
Nov 07

Selections from Moby Dick

Last winter I finished reading Moby Dick. When you read a book that is justly revered you cross a line into understanding what all the fuss is about, though maybe even further from understanding. Moby Dick is the kind of book you could never imagine writing yourself.

Melville has this ability to capture and convey existential feeling so that it is beautiful and tangible. In Moby Dick, he does it better than the best philosopher.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off–then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish, Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.
There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
To enjoy bodily warmth,some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:–through infancyâ€™s unconscious spell, boyhoodâ€™s thoughtless faith, adolescenceâ€™ doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhoodâ€™s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundlingâ€™s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.

Related notes on life and death

I’m looking forward to seeing “No country for old men“. Tried to see it last night, but there was a fire alarm at the theatre and they made everyone leave, which, as you can imagine, was very frustrating. As someone who loves both the novel “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy and most films by the Coen brothers, I am looking forward to seeing this adaption of Cormac McCarthy’s book by the same name. Friday evening I read an interview with McCarthy where he threw down a few nuggets:

“McCarthy’s style owes much to Faulkner’s — in its recondite vocabulary, punctuation, portentous rhetoric, use of dialect and concrete sense of the world — a debt McCarthy doesn’t dispute. “The ugly fact is books are made out of books,” he says. “The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.” His list of those whom he calls the “good writers” — Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner — precludes anyone who doesn’t “deal with issues of life and death.” Proust and Henry James don’t make the cut. “I don’t understand them,” he says. “To me, that’s not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange.”
“There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed,” McCarthy says philosophically. “I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.”
“Having saved enough money to leave El Paso, McCarthy may take off again soon, probably for several years in Spain. His son, with whom he has lately re-established a strong bond, is to be married there this year. “Three moves is as good as a fire,” he says in praise of homelessness.”

Religion/philosophy — 3 comments
10
Nov 07

You are a colony organism

A long time ago when I was a courier for Fedex I had a dropbox on my route at the front of a vacant office building. While emptying it of overnight-letter envelopes one evening, I noticed the tiny body of a gecko tucked into the lower lip of the dropbox door. As I had to empty the box each day, I noticed that over the next few days the gecko started to rot. The stench was amazingly potent and widespread especially considering how small it was. It got worse and worse until one day the smell was gone. I popped open the door to empty the dropbox and looked down to find a naked gecko skeleton. A single fat maggot was curled inside the ribcage.

I was amazed at the transformation. The gecko had probably died a few days before after getting trapped inside. Then bacteria had gone to work digesting its dead flesh. Then a fly detecting the stench had come along and laid an egg on the corpse where this newly hatched maggot had made quick work of the remains. Now finally, this maggot was preparing to develop into a fly. It was the circle of life played out in miniature.

It got me thinking. Can we really call ourselves individuals? You can shave off some of your cells and grow them in a dish for years if they have access to enough food. Are those cells you? Where does your body end and you begin? Is it just that plants and animals evolved as intelligent vehicles for multi-cellular life? In other words, what if consciousness is just a highly developed system for protecting and reproducing life? What if we, our consciousnesses, are just an adaptation to better promote a lower-level biological imperative? What if our minds are just the pilots for a lifeboat of individual cells and creatures? A Portoguese Man O’War is a colony of organisms working together as one unit. Maybe we are not much different. In biology there is this theory that the individual organelles of our cells, like mitochondria, were once separate organisms who were taken inside other prokaryotic organisms to live together as endosymbionts. As a single organism. Did the separate natures of each creature disappear when they became one?

What are you? Consider that your body cycles much of its components on a monthly basis as your cells divide, tissues replenish, waste excretes, and nutrients move through your system. Physically, you are never the same person twice. If that is the case, what makes you you?

We know that a body can be kept biologically alive without higher-level brain function. I’m no atheist by any means, but I do have to wonder. As every dream and thought I have experienced has taken place within my body, what happens when my body ceases to function and dies? It stands to reason that whatever I am also dies.

Psychology / Science — 5 comments
09
Nov 07

Morning people vs. night people

(As I post this after midnight)

Being a morning person or a night owl doesnâ€™t just determine when you start or end your workday; your internal clock may help define your psychology as well. A Spanish researcher found that our preference for engaging in activities earlier or later in the day shapes both our perceptions and our interactions. The author gave personality tests to 360 university students, whom he describes as a â€œproper sample,â€ noting that the circadian rhythms of students â€œare not much under the influence of time schedules and social patterns.â€ (Despite the occasional all-nighter, students presumably can follow their preferred sleep schedules more easily than working adults can.) His results offer new evidence that morning and evening types think differently. Early risers prefer to gather knowledge from concrete information. They reach conclusions through logic and analysis. Night owls are more imaginative and open to unconventional ideas, preferring the unknown and favoring intuitive leaps on their way to reaching conclusions. Social behavior diverges as well: Morning people are more likely to be self-controlled and exhibit â€œupstandingâ€ conduct; they respect authority, are more formal, and take greater pains to make a good impression. (Earlier research also suggests that they are less likely to hold radical political opinions.) Evening people, by contrast, are â€œindependentâ€ and â€œnonconforming,â€ and more reluctant to listen to authorityâ€”which suggests that teachers may have several reasons to prefer those students who wake up in time for class.

â€”â€œMorning and Evening Types: Exploring Their Personality Styles,â€ Juan Francisco DÃaz-Morales, Personality and Individual Differences

From Atlantic Monthly via Steve Sailer.

Business / Psychology — Comments Off
09
Nov 07

Book Notes: A Perfect Mess

As I related in the previous entry, I spent some time at the library reading. Most notably: A Perfect Mess. The basic premise of the book is that a certain amount of disorganization is actually adaptive, efficient and beneficial. And, organizing may actually be counter-productive in terms of the energy required to stay organized. What a relief this is for disorganized people. I have noticed that it takes a lot of energy to keep things neat when it would actually be better to just accept a nominal amount of disorder so you can focus on more important things.

I took a few notes you might find interesting:

“Office messiness tends to increase sharply with increasing education, increasing salary, and increasing experience.”
On the questionable value of Jack Welch-ian strategic planning: “Managers import a raft of poor assumptions into the planning process…” Which results in useless or unfounded ‘planning’.
On comfort noise: Telephone engineers actually add a certain amount of background noise to telephone and especially cellphone conversations because people find total silence in conversation unnatural and confusing. Users hate the complete absence of background noise. “Adding background noise to telephone calls signifies presence.” Read more about ITU recommendation G.711.II.
On randomness and noise as a fundamental concept of existence. Example Brownian motion.
“Disorder creates connections.” Mess-driven invention.
Rather than focus on terrorist leaders, FBI / CIA focus on the productive nodes: “In a disorganized network the nodes in the middle carry the greatest workload.”
The cost of neatness: “Being neat requires constant expenditure of resources.”
Robustness of disorder: “Messy systems are more resistant.” Loosely woven.
The popular Noguchi file system is simply a pile shifted on its side. More frequently used items work their way to the front, just as in a pile. In other words, piles are intuitive expressions of higher order.
Messy environments provide useful cues.

General / Society — Comments Off
08
Nov 07

Get the hell out

Back when I was sixteen years old and bussing tables at “The Hungry Farmer Steakhouse”, I had a sure-fired way to let people know we were closing. When closing time came around I just started sweeping the dining room and putting the chairs up on the empty tables. If you were still eating, you got the hint. We wanted to go home. If you didn’t get the hint, I might lean on my broom and glare at you.

Tonight, I was up at the local library here in Lewisville and they had a novel way to tell me it was time to go home. Now, most libraries have an intercom system to tell patrons it’s closing time, but Lewisville Public Library adds a nice touch to it. At 30 minutes to closing, they play a recorded message that the library is soon closing. Then at 15 minutes till they announce again and start playing mellow classical music. It’s not jarring, but it’s different from the usual silence so you feel something about the library has changed. It’s enough that you are mindful of the need to leave. Then at 10 minutes to closing they announce one more time and the music changes to a bubbly jazz music as if to say in a friendly way, “Bounce up and dance on out of here. We’ll see you the next time around.” I wasn’t bold enough to see what happened after that.

Media / Software / Internet — Comments Off
07
Nov 07

Now I get it. I think.

I was startled when my 18 year old cousin told me to “email” him on MySpace. I asked, “No, what is your email address? So, I can actually send you an email.” Email = MySpace? Since I’m not a user of MySpace’s closed garden, basic old-fashioned open-protocol email is how I get in touch with people. He had a Hotmail account, but couldn’t remember it. I was really surprised that he contacts his friends solely via MySpace and the cellphone. But, my guess is a lot of other people his age are the same way. After all, on MySpace only your friends can message you, right?

It just seems like a strange way to do things. I have a feeling a lot of kids these days are comfortable using the Internet, but that maybe they find aspects of it a little complicated so MySpace and Facebook have a natural appeal. It’s easy. No need to manage multiple accounts for blogging, photos, messaging, etc. Just sign up for whichever social network is hot and go crazy.

I take it for granted that not everyone enjoys the challenges that come with some stuff on the Internet. So, I get it now. I think. Social networks make the Internet easy by keeping everything all in one place. It’s like AOL, but not old-skool AOL, which is for old people. Is that it?

General — 3 comments
07
Nov 07

Wacom drawing: green alien thing

I have this tendency to draw weird looking creatures. More alien than monster, but nonetheless. I guess it’s more difficult to draw real people. More difficult and maybe more boring.

General — Comments Off
05
Nov 07

From rock n’ roll icon to Pez dispenser

Recently I’ve started seeing Elvis Presley everywhere. In just one week, I spotted him on a car window shade in the CVS parking lot and on a trio of limited edition Pez dispensers at Wal-mart. I knew that his estate sold his likeness and merchandising rights a few years ago and I guess this is the fruit of the deal. I’m no big Elvis fan, but there is something morbid and distasteful about the use of dead celebrities to sell stupid crap like candy and sunshades. You are not buying memorabilia, you’re just buying a piece of plastic shaped to look like a guy who died on the toilet. In our lazy consumer culture, buying junk to stick on our car is the closest we come to an expression of reverence.

On a side note, in researching the merchandising deal, I saw that Elvis’ estate sold the rights to his likeness and merchandising rights for $100 million back in 2004. These rights brought in $49 million this year alone, so it looks like the Presley family sold too low. It might have been a better move to lease the rights.

General — Comments Off
02
Nov 07

Scamming stupid people to defraud the government

Why is financial literacy missing from a standard public education? I started thinking about this because I recently heard about this down-payment “gift” program targeted at low-income home buyers run by a biblical-sounding “non-profit” organization known as the “Nehemiah Corporation of America“. As far as I understand it, this is how it works:

Let’s assume I’m a single mother making $15 an hour and I want to purchase a home. I might be able to swing a mortgage payment, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to save up the 10% or so down payment that is usually required to secure affordable financing for a home. I go to the Nehemiah Corporation, they talk to their friends who are looking to sell some overpriced houses with higher interest loans to borrowers with poor credit in areas without a lot of buyers. Nehemiah gets the seller to give up 2-3% on the purchase price (which they probably would have done anyway during real negotiations) and they use this to fund the down payment, which is provided by Nehemiah until the sale is complete. After the deal is closed, Nehemiah receives its money back in addition to a $500 processing fee that is built into the buyer’s loan. Basically, in this situation the buyer is financing the 2-3% down payment in a very short-term manner for a $500 fee. If I’m buying a home for $150,000 the 2-3% FHA required down payment is $3000-$4500. As I only need the loan long enough to close the deal in a week or two, my effective interest rate based on the $500 fee to Nehemiah is 11% to 16.7%. That’s not horrible except that your effective loan term is zero.

So, what’s wrong with all this? The problem is that these down payment “gift” programs allow people to buy homes who should not be buying homes. People who lack the financial discipline or income to put together even the most modest down payment. They also allow sellers to take advantage of federal housing laws and federally guaranteed loans in order to unload over-valued properties to unsophisticated (stupid) borrowers. This is not even taking into account the collusion with appraisers to manipulate appraisal values. With the borrowers putting none of their own money down, they are more likely to enter risky arrangements and to eventually default on these taxpayer-funded loans.

Basically, these so-called non-profits (whose management no doubt make incredible salaries) are masquerading as quasi-religious charities, which end up misleading buyers and defrauding the government when properties enter foreclosure. If you scratched the surface, I would expect to find ghetto real-estate speculators and groups like the Nehemiah Corporation in bed together. This is no surprise here in Dallas where religion and business go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

Nonprofits fight ban on home loan `gifts’: HUD sued in attempt to overturn decision to halt seller-financed down-payment help:

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development granted AmeriDream Inc. and Nehemiah Corporation of America temporary extensions. The organizations are the nation’s largest nonprofits working to arrange down payments for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration. They are suing HUD over the rule change.

The law forbids sellers from paying down payments for buyers who secure loans through the FHA. Down payments show that borrowers have savings. They also give buyers equity or a stake in the house.

For years, however, sellers have been able to get around the law by forwarding down-payment money through special nonprofits.

The Observer has found a high rate of foreclosure in FHA-backed loans in the Charlotte area, especially when those loans involved an arranged gift from a charity to cover a borrower’s down payment.

The Observer reported in September that FHA loans accounted for almost a quarter of recent foreclosures in Mecklenburg County.

“Loans are twice as likely to go into foreclosure” with seller-financed down-payment assistance programs, said Bill Glavin, special assistant to the Federal Housing Administration commissioner. “People’s lives are at stake.”

He told the Observer that high numbers of foreclosures in FHA-insured loans threaten to bankrupt the system.

“The default rate on those loans was so bad that if they continued, starting this fiscal year, we’d finally start to pay out more than we’d take in,” he said.

HUD Defeated on Down-Payment Assistance:

The decision was heartening, said Scott Syphax, Nehemiah chief executive. “That is not to say that we don’t believe that there are issues that need to be addressed and standards that need to be raised,” he said.

The nonprofit group supports some tougher standards for the programs, such as homeownership education and a requirement that appraisals be done at arm’s length to prevent manipulation, he said. “We continue to hope that a sensible common ground can be achieved.”

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