Letter Never Sent

General — Comments Off
18
Jan 05

Jean Paul quotations

I came across a brief mention of something in reading yesterday. Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, also known simply as Jean Paul, was a “German poet and writer best known for the novel Siebenkas (1796), which introduced the conept of the doppelganger or alter ego.” There is a strange overlap in the things I have been reading especially as relates to duality, etc.

Jean Paul is credited with some beautiful quotations:

Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.
Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it charm.
There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know.
Nothing is more beautiful than cheerfulness in an old face.

Here is something related that you might find interesting:

Kant’s “Noumenal Self” and Doppelganger in P.K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly

Personal — 3 comments
18
Jan 05

The price of honesty

Is it possible to be completely honest with anyone? Family, friends, loved ones? There are so many things you want to confess, but you know your words will be lost in a rush of hurt or judgment or misunderstanding. It is better to confess some things silently to yourself alone. I will be as honest as I dare, although it is just the smallest piece of the whole I keep to myself.

This is one of those things I write that each person will receive differently. Be mindful of that.

Psychology / Religion/philosophy — Comments Off
18
Jan 05

More O.W.

I’m keep coming across good passages from Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character. Bear with me:

On the self and others, individualism and universalism:

It is easy to give proofs. Only brutalised criminals and insane persons take absolutely no interest in their fellow men; they live as if they were alone in the world, and the presence of strangers has no effect on them. But for him who possesses a self there is a self in his neighbour, and only the man who has lost the logical and ethical centre of his being behaves to a second man as if the latter were not a man and had no personality of his own. “I” and “thou” are complementary terms. A man soonest gains consciousness of himself when he is with other men. This is why a man is prouder in the presence of other men than when he is alone, whilst it is in his hours of solitude that his self-confidence is damped. Lastly, he who destroys himself destroys at the same time the whole universe, and he who murders another commits the greatest crime because he murders himself in his victim. Absolute selfishness is, in practice, a horror, which should rather be called nihilism; if there is no “thou,” there is certainly no “I”, and that would mean there is nothing.

There is in the psychological disposition of the man of genius that which makes it impossible to use other men as a means to an end. And this is it: he who feels his own personality, feels it also in others. For him the Tat-tvam-asi is no beautiful hypothesis, but a reality. The highest individualism is the highest universalism.

Science — Comments Off
17
Jan 05

Lions vs. Hyenas

Apropos the previous post on sex differences, a friend at work sent me a link to a video (right-click to save) depicting a violent clash between a pack of lions and a pack of hyenas over a wildebeest carcass the females of the pride had killed. During the course of the video the hyenas in larger numbers manage to steal the kill from the pride. Later in the video the dominant male lion kills the hyena matriarch and her successor. This clip is edited down from documentary footage.

You might be surprised to know that hyenas and lions differ greatly in social structure and biological morphology. Hyena society is female dominant. Physically, hyena females are larger than male hyenas (females in Kruuk’s East African clans averaged 120 pounds in body weight versus 107 pounds for males) and possess similar sex organs including a “peniform clitoris” and “false scrotum”. Detailed explanation here with illustrations. Lions on the other hand, possess a similar structure to other predatory pack mammals with an alpha male and lesser males and females.

General — 2 comments
17
Jan 05

Weininger on duality

O.W. expresses the necessity of duality:

The schemer will readily recognise his fellow; an impassioned player easily reads the same power in another person; whilst those with no special powers will observe nothing. Art discerns itself best, as Wagner said. In the case of complex personalities the matter stands thus: one of these can understand other men better than they can understand themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation and comprehension; if we inquire from psychology what is the most necessary condition for becoming conscious of a thing, for grasping it, we shall find the answer in “contrast.” If everything were a uniform grey we should have no idea of colour; absolute unison of sound would soon produce sleep in all mankind; duality, the power which can differentiate, is the origin of the alert consciousness. Thus it happens that no one can understand himself were he to think of nothing else all his life, but he can understand another to whom he is partly alike, and from whom he is also partly quite different. Such a distribution of qualities is the condition most favourable for understanding. In short, to understand a man means to have equal parts of himself and of his opposite in one.

That things must be present in pairs of contrasts if we are to be conscious of one member of the pair is shown by the facts of our colour-vision. Colour-blindness always extends to the complementary colours. Those who are red blind are also green blind; those who are blind to blue have no consciousness of yellow. This law holds good for all mental phenomena; it is a fundamental condition of consciousness. The most high-spirited people understand and experience depression much more than those who are of level disposition. Any one with so keen a sense of delicacy and subtilty as Shakespeare must also be capable of extreme grossness.

Psychology / Society — 1 comment
17
Jan 05

Otto Weininger… in english

Martin Dudaniec and Kevin Solway’s translation of Otto Weininger: Collected Aphorisms, Notebook and Letters to a Friend is now available for free from their website. A while back I had to pay five dollars or so to download it, so I’m glad to see the authors have now switched to accepting donations. If you feel particularly appreciative you can donate here. They are also now offering a translation of Weininger’s Sex and Character as a PDF. The writing is lively and provocative and you will have much to agree or disagree with. For example, here are a few selections:

Continue reading →

Software / Internet — 15 comments
13
Jan 05

Time for an eBay revolt?

People are up in arms about eBay’s latest move to increase its fees. Many people who don’t use eBay don’t realize how much the fees amount to for the privilege of using eBay’s auction listing service. I got a nice little email detailing the increase, but the reality doesn’t hit you until you break it down into real numbers.

See, eBay expects a taste at every part of the process. For example, let’s say you’re just a regular joe who wants to sell a Bruce Springsteen CD on eBay. You start the auction at $.01 for seven days. Right off the bat, you’re hit with a $.30 insertion fee (this is the first of many “insertions” you will enjoy from eBay) , which you’ll pay if you sell the item or not. If you want to add a photo or two you now owe them $.55. You leave the auction up there and someone wins the auction with a final bid of $4.00. This is probably about right for our hypothetical Springsteen CD. So, now you’re thinking, “Okay, cool I have $4.00 and I owe $.55 to eBay. So they get a 14% cut.” Wrong.

When the auction’s over the real pain begins. Now after all this, on top of all the up-front fees, which can amount to anywhere from $.30 to $90.55, it’s time to pay the piper in the form of the dreaded Final Value fee. The Final Value fee hurts. Of that $4.00 auction, eBay now wants an additional 5.25% or $.21. Not bad, but now instead of making $4.00 you’ve made $3.24. eBay made a nice little 19% off your sale. If you’re item sells for $25.01 you now owe them an 8% Final Value fee for a total of $2.55 in fees. Not a bad little business model, but you say, “Okay, I can live with that. eBay and I are now even.” Wrong again.

See, a few years ago eBay took over Paypal, the most popular payment gateway for online auctions, when their own payment system failed to overcome Paypal’s growth. Buying out Paypal gave them away to tax eBayers again. How so?

Here’s how: the overwhelming majority of eBay users do most of their business via Paypal, so if the buyer pays you for that CD via Paypal you get hit with yet another fee. The great part about this fee is that it applies to any incoming funds paid to you for any reason. Not just eBay auction payments. Smart move on their part. In our example, after we pay eBay all the fees from the auction we now have $3.24. When the buyer sends the payment via Paypal you get docked 2.9% PLUS $.30 leaving you with $2.85 of the original $4.00. eBay ends up getting a staggering 29% of your money and it can end up being a lot more.

eBay’s sellers are outraged, especially the “power sellers” whose livelihoods depend on their eBay auctions. One seller I spoke with predicted a change from $7 per $100 in sales to $13. A change of nearly double in total fees. This is a tax all users will find hard to swallow. With no new services proposed nor a timetable or committment not to raise fees again any time soon, many are looking for new alternatives to the de-facto eBay monopoly. One such is Wagglepop, which promises much lower fees than eBay.

There needs to be a real alternative to eBay. The increased fees do not just affect sellers. In the end, everyone will bear the cost of the fees. Buyers will be penalized by increased reserve fees and shipping costs. To adjust to the new fees, many sellers will just increase the shipping costs since eBay does not level the Final Value fee against income received as shipping charges. Thus, much of the cost will be passed to buyers.

We need someone new who wants our business, a company who realizes the essential value of its users and who knows that the company profit comes only through the value they bring.

Without the buyers and sellers, eBay is nothing.

Psychology — 2 comments
12
Jan 05

Self-control comes in limited quantities

I’ve been collecting information today. One thing I discovered today is that deleting dead people from your AIM buddy list feels creepy. Here is an interesting yet unrelated article, Self-control comes in limited quantities, must be replenished:

Self-control, whether used to pass up the office cookie plate or to struggle against temptations like alcohol and tobacco, operates like a renewable energy source rather than a learned skill or an analytical thought process, according to new research.

Individuals had less physical stamina and impulse control and increased difficulty with problem-solving activities after completing a variety of tasks that required some measure of self-control, according to Roy F. Baumeister, Ph.D., of Florida State University.

The finding may be helpful in treating a number of behavioral health problems, from gambling disorders to alcoholism.

“Learning more about how to maintain, increase and replenish this resource may hold one promising key to helping people avoid addiction,” says Baumeister.

The study appears in the February 2003 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Personal — Comments Off
11
Jan 05

My newfound respect for quiet

I have a tendency to distract my mind with an array of sensory stimuli. For as long as I can remember, I have not liked the dark, silence, or stillness of any kind. I habitually listen to music or talk radio while I drive or work. I like sleeping with the lights on. I feel it necessary to talk even when I have little to say. I fidget and make small movements constantly. It’s almost like I have trouble just being unstimulated or quiet. Yet, the constant stimulation and tumult exhausts me in every way. My eyes get tired and I squint from constant roving concentration. I am usually tired. One day blends into the next.

Lately, I’ve realized that I need quiet and stillness just to replenish my essential stores of energy. For the last few days I have tried driving with classical music playing quietly and it has made quite a difference. I find myself thinking about things more and remembering stuff. It’s probably obvious to most people, but it was something I had to see consciously. It is still work, but I’m trying to enjoy quiet, darkness, and stillness.

the old stuff