February 25, 2003
Introverts, unite!
Caring for Your Introvert
The habits and needs of a little-understood group
by Jonathan Rauch
I wish I'd read this about thirty years ago. Introverts understand extroverts, but extroverts don't understand introverts.
While I've become much more social as I age, I'm with Jonathan, still squarely in the introvert camp. He points out that there's nothing wrong with introverts; there's nothing that needs to be corrected. It just seems that way because the extroverts are doing most of the talking. (Give me a break.) The I's have it, about 25% of it, and are said to be "a minority in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population."
Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours. "Introverts," writes a perceptive fellow named Thomas P. Crouser, in an online review of a recent book called Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money? (I'm not making that up, either), "are driven to distraction by the semi-internal dialogue extroverts tend to conduct. Introverts don't outwardly complain, instead roll their eyes and silently curse the darkness." Just so.
Hey, extroverts. Read this:
How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice?
First, recognize that it's not a choice. It's not a lifestyle. It's an orientation.
Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don't say "What's the matter?" or "Are you all right?"
Third, don't say anything else, either.
February 24, 2003
Got time?
SXSW Website Competition Finalists
A place to explore if you have a lot of time on your hands. Some inspiring work here.
The Devil's Dictionary. Compare the experience to this one, which is how I tried to read Bierce's screed.
February 20, 2003
Imagination is more important than intelligence
"Many engineering deadlocks have been broken by people who are not engineers at all. This is simply because perspective is more important than IQ." (Nicholas Negroponte)
*Never set a goal.* "An English historian once observed, 'He goes farthest who knows not whence he goes.' There's much truth in this. If you have a goal, you're constrained by the goal. Organizations must have a coherent philosophy, a clear direction, and the strategies to make the journey successful." (John Sperling)
February 18, 2003
Playing with Time
A site and exhibit designed for kids but fascinating for grownups, too. Check these time-lapse sequences:
Evolution of San Francisco Bay
Interesting links on time topics:
The Bale House
This afternoon I visited my friend Nan.
Nan and her husband Eugene live in a straw bale house. Bale house? It's a house made of haybales covered with stucco. The walls are 16" thick. It's quiet as a tomb. It's insulated from the elements. It's very pretty.
Eugene built the bale house in the backyard of their former house. Surprisingly,
theirs is the only urban bale house in the nation, if not the world.
The Straw Bale House book says, "Imagine building a house with superior seismic stability, fire resistance, and thermal insulation, using an annually renewable resource, for half the cost of a comparable conventional home."
February 17, 2003
Upgrade
Just upgraded to Moveable Type version 2.61.
The textism plugin I just installed. Textism? It enables you to do the formatting shown on the next page.
Block Formatting
For each new paragraph, you may begin the paragraph with one of the following markers:
- hn. A lowercase ‘h’, followed by the number 1-6, followed with a period (.) and a space begins a heading tag. The tag will be numbered after the number you specify. The entire block will be enclosed in the header tag.
- bq. A lowercase ‘bq.’ and a space will define a blockquote block.
- p. A lowercase ‘p.’ and a space will define a paragraph tag. This is the default if no other marker is specified.
- # A block beginning with ’#’ and a space will start a numbered list. Each additional new line beginning with a ’#’ and a space will become a new numbered item.
- * A block beginning with ’’ and a space will start a bulleted list. Each additional new line beginning with a ’’ and a space will become a new bulleted item.
- == A block beginning with ’==’ will cause Textile to turn off its formatting rules until it reaches the ending ’==’ (which may be at the end of the current paragraph or some later paragraph).
- Wiki Tables You can use Wiki-style syntax to build simple tables.
All these markers must be at the beginning of the new paragraph, without any leading spaces. If line breaks exist within the block, they will be translated into <br /> tags automatically. And optionally, you may add a CSS class name in parenthesis preceding the period of the heading, blockquote or paragraph markers. If a CSS class name is given in this way, it will be assigned to the block tag.
You may also use regular block formatting HTML tags if you prefer.
Inline Formatting
Within each block, the following inline formatting shortcuts are provided:
- _emphasis_: Text surrounded underscores will be formatted using the <em> tag.
- *strong* Text surrounded by asterisks will be formatted using the <strong> tag.
- ??citation?? Text surrounded by a pair of question marks, it will be formatted using the <cite> tag.
- -
deleted text- Text surrouned by a single dash will be formatted using the <del> tag. - +inserted text+ Text surrounded by plus signs will be formatted using the <ins> tag.
- ^superscript^ Text surrounded by caret characters will be formatted using the <sup> tag.
- ~subscript~ Text surrounded by tilde characters will be formatted using the <sub> tag.
- linktexturl Text within quotes followed with a colon and a URL (fully qualified or relative) will be formatted into a hyperlink. You can also add a title for the <a> like this:
linktexturl. A URL (fully qualified or relative) within exclamation characters will be formatted into an <img> tag. Other options available:
- ‘alt’ text:
- CSS class:
- Width, height (positional):
!image_url widthxheight! - Width, height:
!image_url widthw heighth! - Width, height (percentage):
Percentages only work with local files, where the actual width and height can be determined. The “Image::Size” Perl package must be present for this. This sets both the width and height to 50% of it’s normal value. - Width, height (percentage):
This sets the width to be 20% of it’s original value, and the height to be 30% of it’s original value.
- ‘alt’ text:
- ABC Uppercase alpha-numeric characters followedby text in parenthesis will be formatted into an <acronym> tag (using the parenthetic text for the ‘title’ attribute).
A series of two or more uppercase alpha-numeric characters will be wrapped with a <span> tag and assigned the ‘caps’ class.
You can also use regular HTML tags when composing your entries. Also, special
characters within your entry text such as <, >, &, international and symbol characters will automatically be escaped into equivalent HTML entities.
If you use a <pre> tag, it isn’t necessary to escape special characters within it— they will be automatically escaped, until the closing </pre> tag is reached.
Character Formatting
- ™ translates to ™
- © translates to ©
- ® translates to ®
- nxn When letter ‘x’ is surrounded with digits, it is translated to the × character.
Additionally, the raw symbols for ™, © and ® will be escaped to HTML entities. Most international characters and symbols will also be escaped to HTML entities.
Unescaped & characters within tag attributes will be escaped automatically.
If you have the Smarty Pants Movable Type plugin installed, it will automatically be used to ‘educate’ your quotes, ellipsis and dashes to their typographic counterparts.
Credits
The MT-Textile text formatting code for Movable Type was written by me, Brad Choate. The Textile formatting syntax was developed by Dean Allen. Many thanks to Dean for his permission to adapt Textile for use in Movable Type.
February 16, 2003
Twenty Lame Jokes
A Priest and a Rabbi are walking down the street when they see a 10
year old boy.
The Priest says "Want to screw him?"
The Rabbi says "Out of what?"
A priest, a rabbi and an elephant walk into a bar, and the bartender says
"What is this, a joke?"
Two Germans go into a bar in France, just wanting a drink.
Knowing that the French don't really like Germans, they decided
to pretend to be American. The one who spoke better English
ordered, "Two martinis, please."
The bartender asked, "Martinis dry?"
The startled German responded, "Nein! Zwei!"
[If you're easily offended, better stop here.]
A man went into a shop in Chinatown, and spies on the top
shelf a small, brass rat. He asks the proprietor how much for the
brass rat. The owner replies "For the brass rat, twenty dollars. For
the *story* of the brass rat, two *thousand* dollars!" The man says I
don't want the story, gives him twenty bucks, puts the rat in his
pocket and heads down Columbus Avenue.
As he walks along, he hears a scurrying sound behind him. He looks
back and sees rats coming out of the sewers and following him. He
walks faster, and more rats come out. He breaks into a trot, and the
rats begin galloping after him. In terror he runs down the street
until he gets to the wharf, takes the rat out of his pocket and throws
it into the bay, whereupon all of the rats following him jump into the
water and drown.
He marches back up the hill to the little shop and throws upon the
door. "Aha," says the shopkeeper. "*Now* you want the story of the
brass rat!" "No," says the man "I want to know if you have any brass
*lawyers*!"
A man was feeling very depressed and walked into a bar and ordered a
triple Scotch.
As the bartender poured him the drink he remarked, "That's quite a heavy
drink. What's wrong?"
After quickly downing his drink, the man replied, "I got home and found
my wife having sex with my best friend."
Wow," exclaimed the bartender, as he poured the man a second triple
scotch. "No wonder you needed a stiff drink. The second triple is on the
house."
As the man downed his second triple Scotch, the bartender asked him,
"What did you do?" "I walked over to my wife," the man replied, "looked
her straight in the eye and told her that we were through and to pack
her stuff and to get the hell out."
"That makes sense," said the bartender, "but what about your friend?"
The man replied, "I walked over to him, looked him right in the eye
and said, 'BAD DOG!'"
A grasshopper walks into a bar and orders a beer.
Bartender: You know we have a drink named after you.
Grasshopper: Why would you have a drink named "Bob"?
In Tennnessee, a guy sees a sign in front of a house:
"Talking Dog for Sale."
He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the
backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a black
mutt just sitting there.
"You talk?" he asks.
"Yep," the mutt replies.
"So, what's your story?"
The mutt looks up and says, "Well, I discovered my gift of
talking pretty young and I wanted to help the government,
so I told the CIA about my gift, and in no time they had me
jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies
and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be
eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies for
eight years running. The jetting around really tired me out,
and I knew I wasn't getting any younger and I wanted to settle
down. So I signed up for a job at the airport to do some
undercover security work, mostly wandering near suspicious
characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible
dealings there and was awarded a batch of medals. Had a wife,
a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."
The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what
he wants for the dog.
The owner says, "Ten bucks."
The guy says, "This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you
selling him so cheap?"
The owner replies, "Aw, he's just a big liar. He didn't do
any of that shit."
Travelling salesman rings a doorbell. Door is opened by a boy, eight years
old, wearing a top hat and a tutu. He has a large martini in one hand, a
cigar in the other.
"Young man, are your parents at home?" asks the travelling salesman.
Replies the boy, "What the fuck do _you_ think?"
The Boston Symphony Orchestra was performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In
the piece, there's a long passage, about 20 minutes, during which the bass
violinists have nothing to do. Rather than sit around that whole time
looking stupid, some bassists decided to sneak offstage and go to the tavern
next door for a drink. After slamming several beers in quick succession, one
of them looked at his watch. "Hey! We need to get back!" he cried. "No need
to panic," said a fellow bassist. "I thought we might need some extra time,
so I tied the last few pages of the conductor's score together with string.
It'll take him a few minutes to get it untangled." A few moments later, the
drunk musicians staggered back into the concert hall and took their places
in the orchestra. About this time, a member of the audience noticed the
conductor seemed a bit edgy. She pointed this out to her date. "Well, of
course," said her companion. "Don't you see? It's the bottom of the Ninth,
the score is tied, and the bassists are loaded."
Jesse Jackson, Maria Conchito Alonzo, and a tiny crab walk into a bar. The
tiny crab orders a Hennesey and Coke, a banana daquiri and a bowl of draft
beer.
The bartender comes back with the drinks and says "Let me guess who gets
what," and the crab says, "They're all for me."
The bartender does a double take, and says, "All three are for YOU?"
And the tiny crab says, "I'm a little shellfish."
An Australian guy goes into a bar in the Greek Islands. Jill, the Australian
barmaid, takes his order and notices his Australian accent. Over the
course of the night they talk quite a bit. At the end of the night he asks
her if she wants to have sex with him. Although she is attracted to him
she says no.
He then offers to pay her $200 for the deed. Jill is traveling the world
and because she is short of funds she agrees. The next night the guy turns
up again and after showing her plenty of attention throughout the night he
asks if she will sleep with him again for $200. She figures in for a penny
in for a pound - and it was fantastic the night before - so she agrees.
This goes on for 5 nights. On the sixth night the guy comes into the bar,
but this night he orders a beer and just goes and sits in the corner. Jill
is disappointed and thinks that maybe she should pay him more attention.
She goes over and sits next to him. She asks him where he is from and he
tells her Melbourne. "So am I" she says.
"What suburb in Melbourne." "Glen Iris" he says.
"That's amazing" she says, "so am I - what street?"
"Cameo street" he says."
"This is unbelievable" she says, "what number?"
He says "Number 20" and she is astonished.
"You are not going to believe this," she says, "I'm from number 22 and my
parents still live there!"
"I know," he says, "your father gave me $1,000 to give you!"
A blonde finds herself in need of money, so
she decides to kidnap a kid from the private school around
the corner. So, when school's letting out, she grabs a
boy and hustles him away. She writes a ransom note saying,
"I've kidnapped your son. Leave $10,000 in a brown paper
bag under the slide at the playground tomorrow or you'll never
see him again! Signed, a Desperate Blonde". She pins the note
to the boy's jacket and sends him home.
The next day she goes to the playground and finds a brown
paper bag with $10,000 under the slide, and a note: "How
could you do this to a fellow blonde!".
>hr>
Henny Youngman: "Why do Jewish men die before their wives?"
"They want to."
If your wife is yelling at you to open the front door, and your dog is
barking at the back door, who do you let in first?
The dog, because you know that he'll shut up.
Two robins were sitting in a tree. "I'm really hungry,"
said the first one. "Me too," said the second. "Let's fly
down and find some lunch."
They flew to the ground and found a nice plot of grassy
ground full of worms. They ate and ate and ate and ate
'til they could eat no more.
"I'm so full I don't think I can fly back to the tree,"
said the first one. "Me neither. Let's just lay here and
bask in the warm sun," said the second. "O.K." said the
first.
They plopped down, basking in the sun.
No sooner than they had fallen asleep, a big fat tom cat
snuck up and gobbled them up.
As he sat washing his face after his meal, he thought,
"I love baskin' robins."
A man asked his wife what she'd like for her birthday. "I'd love to
be six again," she replied.
On the morning of her birthday, he got her up bright and early and
off they went to a local theme park. What a day! He put her on every
ride in the park: the Death Slide, the Screaming Loop, the Wall of
Fear - everything there was! Wow! Five hours later she staggered
out of the theme park, her head reeling and her stomach upside down.
Right to a McDonald's they went, where her husband ordered her a Big
Mac along with extra fries and a refreshing chocolate shake. Then it
was off to a movie - the latest Star Wars epic, and hot dogs,
popcorn, Pepsi Cola and M&Ms. What a fabulous adventure!
Finally she wobbled home with her husband and collapsed into bed. He
leaned over and lovingly asked, "Well, dear, what was it like being
six again?"
One eye opened. "You dummy, I meant my dress size."
The moral of this story: Even when the man is listening, he's still
gonna get it wrong.
Husband: Want a quickie?
Wife: As opposed to what?
First guy: "My wife's an angel!"
Second guy: "You're lucky, mine's still alive."
HOW TO SHOWER LIKE A WOMAN:
1. Take off clothing and place it in sectioned laundry hamper according
to lights and darks.
2. Walk to bathroom wearing long dressing gown. If you see your husband
along the way, cover up any exposed areas.
3. Look at your womanly physique in the mirror, make mental note-must do
more sit-ups.
4. Get in the shower. Use face cloth, arm cloth, leg cloth, long loofah,
wide loofah and pumice stone.
5. Wash your hair once with Cucumber and Sage shampoo with 43 added
vitamins.
6. Wash your hair again to make sure it's clean.
7. Condition your hair with Grapefruit Mint conditioner enhanced with
natural avocado oil. Leave on hair for fifteen minutes.
8. Wash your face with Crushed Apricot Facial Scrub for 10 minutes until
red.
9. Wash rest of entire body with Ginger Nut and Jaffa cake body wash.
10. Rinse conditioner off hair, you must make sure that it has all
rinsed out.
11. Shave armpits and legs. Consider shaving bikini area but decide to
get it waxed instead.
12. Scream loudly when your husband flushes the toilet and you lose the
water pressure.
13. Turn off shower.
14. Squeegee off all wet surfaces in shower. Spray mold spots with
Tilex.
15. Get out of shower. Dry with a towel the size of a small country.
Wrap hair in super absorbent second towel.
16. Check entire body for the remotest sign of a zit, then tweeze stray
hairs.
17. Return to bedroom wearing long dressing gown and towel on head.
18. If you see your husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas
and then sashay to the bedroom to spend an hour and a
half getting dressed.
HOW TO SHOWER LIKE A MAN:
1. Take off clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leave them
in a pile.
2. Walk naked to the bathroom. If you see your wife along the way shake
wiener at her making the "woo-woo" sound.
3. Look at your manly physique in the mirror and suck in your gut to see
if you have pecs (no). Admire the size of your wiener in the mirror
and
scratch your ass.
4. Get in the shower.
5. Don't bother to look for a washcloth (you don't use one).
6. Wash your face.
7. Wash your armpits.
8. Blow your nose in your hands, then let the water just rinse it off.
9. Crack up at how loud your fart sounds in the shower.
10. The majority of time is spent washing your privates and the
surrounding area.
11. Wash your butt, leaving those coarse butt hairs on the soap bar.
12. Shampoo your hair (do not use conditioner).
13. Make a shampoo Mohawk.
14. Peek out of shower curtain to look at yourself in the mirror again.
15. Pee (in the shower).
16. Rinse off and get out of the shower. Fail to notice water on the
floor because you left the curtain hanging out of the tub the whole
time.
17. Partially dry off.
18. Look at yourself in the mirror, flex muscles. Admire wiener size
again.
19. Leave shower curtain open and wet bath mat on the floor.
20. Leave bathroom fan and light on.
21. Return to the bedroom with towel around your waist. If you pass your
wife, pull off the towel, shake wiener at her, and make the "woo-woo"
sound again.
22. Throw wet towel on the bed. Take 2 minutes to get dressed.
Four brewery presidents walk into a bar. The guy from Corona sits down and
says, "Hey, Senor, I would like the world's best beer, a Corona." The
bartender gives it to him.
The guy from Budweiser says, "I'd like the best beer in the world. "Give me
'The King of Beers,' a Budweiser." The bartender gives him one.
The guy from Coors says, "I'd like the only beer made with Rocky Mountain
spring water. Give me a Coors." He gets it.
The guy from Guinness sits down and says, "Give me a Coke." The bartender is
a little taken aback, but gives him what he ordered.
The other brewery presidents look over at him and ask, "Why aren't you
drinking Guinness?"
The Guinness president replies, "Well, I figured if you guys aren't drinking
beer, neither would I."
A group of very attractive young female city employees
discovered they could nicely supplement their income by
moonlighting as call girls.
One of the girls discovered she was more successful as a
blonde after having her hair bleached. She convinced the
others that the old saying, "Blondes have more fun," is true.
The ladies became so popular that they were able to
charge exorbitant rates. They even charged their taxi fares
to the Johns they served.
When hard times hit and the market got soft, they needed
a bigger come-on. Some of them understood the economic law of
supply and demand, so decided to lower their rates. They
decided not to include taxi fares in the
fees they charged their customers.
They have since become known as:
The taxi-free municipal blondes
February 15, 2003
ClearType
The characters on my LCD monitor just cleared up!
- I'm using 1600x1200 LCDs and just turned ClearType back on and it made a big difference. It's under display-properties/appearance/effects. I didn't realize how much of a difference it made since I'd been using it so long but wasn't using large LCD displays when I started. When I got the displays the setting was just there so I didn't see how the system looked without ClearType. It's not the default so I suspect that few people even know about the setting on XP.
Thank you, Bob F.
Geez, I just realized this tip comes from Bob Frankston, the co-creator of VisiCalc. Remember that? Before Excel and Lotus 1-2-3, the spreadsheet that launched the business PC revolution was VisiCalc. Apple IIs began to appear in executive offices, often acquired with Purchase Orders for "executive furniture."
Opera
No, not that kind of opera. I'm a real low-brow; the singing puts me to sleep.
I mean the Opera 7.01 browser. (Be careful! Version 7.0 has some security holes.)
Why Opera? It's faster than Internet Explorer. It's more flexible. It feels slicker. Most important to me, you can zoom in on images and text.
Worse than the Blue Screen of Death
My PC froze. Totally. Ctrl-Alt-Delete did nothing. Cutting the power off and back on brought on the same condition. The screen looked like this:
Oh my God. I have not backed up in some time. My hard drive contains stories, research, databases, drawings, emails, business records, and other can't-live-without-it stuff. Lord, dear Lord, please make my hard drive reappear. I'll never forget to back up my work again. Promise.
I put the WinXP CD in the drive and rebooted. Entered a couple of commands. Re-entered the three-fingered salute. Everything's fine again. Didn't lose a byte. Of course, I haven't had time to back everything up quite yet. I'm an atheist. Promises to God don't mean that much to me.
February 12, 2003
Truth is stranger than fiction department
NASA has developed a snapshot of the universe when it was a baby.
- In a nutshell, the universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus one percent; a recent previous estimate had a margin of error three times as much. By weight it is 4 percent atoms, 23 percent dark matter ? presumably undiscovered elementary particles left over from the Big Bang ? and 73 percent dark energy. And it is geometrically "flat," meaning that parallel lines will not meet over cosmic scales.
Well, THAT sure clears things up. The universe is 4% atoms and 96% "dark matter." Sciences have no clue as to what dark matter is. From now on, when my plans don't work out, I'm going to lay the blame on dark matter. It sounds much more scientific than "The devil made me do it" or "Shit happens."
When I was in France in the 60s and 70s, I smoked so many Gaulois that the second joints of my index and middle fingers turned brown with dark matter -- tar. Everyone smoked. Another report from today's New York Times:
French Move Toward Curbs on Smoking by Minors
- A "mini-revolution" is how the daily tabloid Le Parisien characterized the move today. In an effort to curb smoking among minors, the French Senate today approved a bill to ban cigarette sales to children under 16.
If passed, it would impose a $4,000 fine against vendors found selling tobacco to minors. Repeat offenders would pay double.
It would also ban the distribution of free cigarettes to minors as part of promotional campaigns and require high schools to educate students on the perils of smoking.
The average age that young people here start smoking is 14.
Young people who lie about their age to buy cigarettes would not be penalized.
Walking in the Hills
(Click the thumbnails for larger photos.)
In 1911, San Francisco lawyer Charles Boynton commissioned architects Bernard Maybeck and A. Randolph Monroe to design a house in Berkeley on a hillside with a beautiful view across the Bay to the City. Charles Boynton and his wife Florence built a replica of a Greco-Roman temple consisting of 34 concrete Corinthian columns -- no walls. When it rained, the Boyntons lowered canvas curtains to create rooms. Most of the time they lived in the open air.
Charles commuted to and from the City by ferry. Once home, he would change into a toga. The entire family dressed and ate as if they were patricians living in Rome two thousand years ago. (And you thought John Belushi invented toga parties, didn't you?) Florence, a childhood friend of Isadora Duncan, instructed girls in classical dance at the temple.
The Boyntons were hardly the only free thinkers in town. Their architect, Bernard Maybeck, created a unique style of architecture, a convergence of his family heritage (Swiss woodcutter), training (classical architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts), and local influence (his patron Charles Keeler embraced nature, arts & crafts, and the spirit of Berkeley as the "Athens of the West.") Alas, the great fire of 1923 burnt dozens of Maybeck's houses to the ground, including the Boyntons' temple, which was built anew in 1924.
It was beautiful today in Berkeley, lower sixties and slightly overcast, so I decided to walk home from lunch.
| We'd eaten at an Indian restaurant just below the campus, "Hurry 'n Curry." A fast food place, Hurry 'n Curry just moved into a former Burger King on University Avenue. The only apparent changes by the new (Delhi) owners were slapping a sign over Burger King's and putting in a tandoor oven and hot table. It feels incongruous to eat okra stew, lentils and yoghurt, matar paneer, and naan while seated in Burger King seats. My house is an hour's walk uphill from the campus. Today's walk took me past the late David Brower's house, the birthplace of Pete Seeger, and the home of a Nobel laureate, but that's not the meaningful part of my walk. I went by the Boynton's! But that's not the really cool part either. What added the ecstasy to my jaunt was walking by the houses Bernard Maybeck designed after the fire. These include his studio, the house he built for his children, and the house where he and his wife Annie lived and died (in the mid-fifties.) Nestled along Buena Vista Way are some of the most charming houses imaginable. There's no other spot like this on earth. I had my camera in my pocket. Let me show you what I saw. Most of these were built in the thirties and forties. I had a wonderful time. The first Maybeck house I came to sits where Buena Vista Way dead-ends at Euclid Avenue. Maybeck designed the large room in front as a recital room for the house's piano-playing owner; that's what's behind those blue curtains. Some Maybeck trademarks: the broken pediment of the roof. (This reminds me of the roofs of cabins made of Lincoln Logs, with the roof clearly something apart from the rest of the building, sort of laid on top as an afterthought. It emphasizes the building.) Look at the detail shot of the carvings on the balcony. Actually, they're castings. After the devastation of the fire, Maybeck constructed many things from fireproof concrete. This house is truly one-of-a-kind; the pieces seem familiar but the package is unique. |
A few blocks up, someone has built a Tuscan castle with views from south of Oakland to north of the Bay. I don't know about you, but my mind is always jumping around. When I take time to reflect on something, I learn. When I take photos, their afterimages leave impressions. Patterns emerge. The Boyntons and today's bohemians, both flaunting convention and sleeping in the elements. The shift in Maybeck?s work following the fire. The echoes of Bernard Maybeck in more recent houses and landscapes all around me. My affection for the unconventional and neighbors who build castles, domes, bale houses, and shingled cottages. And I invariably see things I'd never noticed before. |
February 11, 2003
What should I do with my life? (2)
This strikes me as sound career advice. Don't just plan. Act.
Nine Unconventional Strategies For Reinventing Your Career
HBSWK Publish Date: Feb 10, 2003
The turbulent business market has caused many people to rethink their careers?sometimes without choice. Here are some tips for reinventing your career from Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career, published by Harvard Business School Press.
Here are nine unconventional strategies for reinventing your career: act, then reflect; flirt with your selves; live the contradictions; make big change in small steps; experiment with new roles; find people who are what you want to be; don't wait for a catalyst; step back periodically but not for too long; and seize windows of opportunity.
Just do it. Act your way into a new way of thinking and being. You cannot discover yourself by introspection.
Resist the temptation to start by making a big decision that will change everything in one fell swoop. Use a strategy of small wins, in which incremental gains lead you to more profound changes in the basic assumptions that define your work and life. Accept the crooked path.
Don't just focus on the work. Find people who are what you want to be and who can provide support for the transition. But don't expect to find them in your same old social circles.
Break out of your established network. Branch out. Look for role models?people who give you glimpses of what you might become and who are living examples of different ways of working and living. Most of us seek to change not only what we do; we also aspire to work with people we like and respect and with whom we enjoy spending our precious time.
February 10, 2003
Another lefty
Like Michelangelo and me, Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed. In fact, Leonardo is left-handedness's poster child. Michelangelo and I are known only for our work, not the hand we favor for creating it. The catalog of Met's new exhibit, Leonardo, Master Draftsman, highlights his extreme leftness.
- In his day, Leonardo was known as a mancino ("lefty" and "southpaw" are modern-day equivalents), with all the social, cultural, and psychological connotations—not all positive—that the word implied in the Renaissance and does even into our own time. He may be the most universally recognized left-handed artist of all time.
Scientific research—old and new—seems to suggest that for "lefties" mirror writing may come more easily with practice than conventional left-to-right script, as the hand moves with less effort and, staying ahead of the writing, does not smear the ink. Moreover, the fluent, expository manner of Leonardo's writings, their elegantly structured reasoning, their copious quantity, and the attractive calligraphic styles of some of his early notes in particular scarcely indicate a person suffering from dyslexia, as is often asserted concerning Leonardo in popular journalistic writings.
Leonardo blogged, I mean wrote his journals, for himself. It's tough to read backward writing without a mirror (or a lot of practice). When his maps included lettering, he wrote normal, left-to-right characters. His letters use conventional characters, too, but they may have been written by scribes.
- In his entire oeuvre, only the minuscule number of drawings and notes that were intended to be read by another—whether patron, collaborator, or friend—seem to be written in conventional left-to-right script.
Codex Leichester
and in the mirror.
Left is right
Being a lefty is part of my essence. The left hand's connected to the right brain, and the right brain is where I live.
Uta's German parents were horrified to discover she was marrying a left-hander. When our son was born, they immediately wanted to know which hand he favored. It was as if my side of the family's genes were propogating hemophilia or congenital schizophrenia.
Me, I don't see it as a handicap to be in the company of such lefties as Ramses II, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Charlemagne, Queen Victoria, Fidel Castro, Henry Ford, David Rockefeller, Dave Berry, Edward R. Murrow, Lenny Bruce, Clarence Darrow, Marshall McLuhan, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Kurt Cobain, The Everly Brothers (both), Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Cole Porter, Johnny ROtten, Paul Simon, Dürer, Escher, Klee, Raphael, Carol Burnett, Sid Caesar, Tom Cruise (and Nicole Kidman), George Burns, Goldie Hawn, Jim Henson (and Kermit the Frog), Diane Keaton, Cloris Leachman, Hal Linden, Shirley MaxLaine, Steve McQueen, Howie Mandel, Marcel Marceau, Harpo Marx, Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, Jerry Seinfeld, Dick Smothers, Rod Steiger, Emma Thompson, Oprah, Pelé, Phil Esposito, James "Gentleman Jim" Corbett, Gayle Sayers, Kenny Stabler, Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Babe Ruth, Casey Stengel, Darryl Strawberry, Greta Garbo, Cary Grant, Peter Graves, Tippi Hedren, Robert DeNiro, Peter Fonda, and W.C. Fields.
February 08, 2003
Authentic Happiness
What percentage of the time do you feel happy? _____%
What percentage do you feel unhappy? _____%
And what percentage do you feel neutral? ____%
On a scale of 0 to 10, how happy or unhappy do you usually feel?
10 = extremely happy
5 = neutral
0 = extremely unhappy
Go ahead. Jot down your answers before peaking to see how a sample of 3,050 American adults answered the questions.
"At last, psychology gets serious about glee, fun and happiness. Martin Seligman has given us a gift--a practical map for the perennial quest for a flourishing life," writes Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence.
If you're not truly happy, read this book. Martin Seligman invented Positive Psychology, a branch of science that looks at healthy people rather than sick people.
Even if you don't read the book, you must visit the website.
While this book may help you -- it has helped me -- don't think of it as a self-help book. Authentic Happiness is chock full of practice advice and intellectual rigor, but it's not a feel-good book of the "pump-yourself-up" variety. "I do not believe that you should devote overly much effort to correcting your weaknesses," Seligman writes. "Rather, I believe that the highest success in living and the ddepest emotional satisfaction comes from building and using your signature strengths."
Here's Seligman's synopsis of the book:
- There are several routes to authentic happiness, each very different. You can raise your level of positive emotion. There are three importanly different kinds of positive emtion (past, present, and future), and it is entirely possible to cultivate any one of these separately from the others. Positive emtoins about the past (contentment, for example) can be increased by gratitude, forgiveness, and freeing yourself of imprisoning deterministic ideology. Positive emotion about the fturue (optimism, for example) can be increased by learning to recognize and dispute automatic pessimistic thoughts.
Positive emotion about the present divides into two very different things--pleasures and gratifications--and this is the best example of radically different routes to happiness. The pleasures are momentary, and they are defined by felt emotion. They can be increased by defeating the numbing effect of habituation, by savoring, and by mindfulness. The please life successfully pursues positive emotions about the present, past, and future.
The gratifications are more abiding. They are characterised by absorption, engagement, and flow. Importantly, the absence --not the presence--of any felt positive emotion (or any self-consciousness at all) defined the gratifications. The grratifications come about through the exercise of your strenths and virtues.
The good life consists in using your signature strengths as frequently as possible in work, life, and parenting to obtain authentic happiness and abundant gratication.
The meaningful life has one additional feature: using your signature strengths in the service of something larger than you are.
I was so taken with Authentic Happiness that I'm going to make it a point to meet Marty Seligment.
Percentage of time
- Happy = 54%
Unhappy = 20%
Neutral = 26%
On a 0 to 10 scale, most Americans rate themselves 7, Milldly happy (feeling fairly good and somewhat cheerful).
February 05, 2003
Famous Dachshunds
Famous People and Their Dachshunds 
 Juliette Greco |
 Carole Lombard |
 Wilkes Bashford |
 E.B. White |
 Anna Kornikova |
 |
 Una, Lady Troubridge |
 Pablo Picasso |
 Andy Warhol |
 John Wayne |
 Christian Slater |
 Brigitte Bardot |
 Joan Crawford |
 Suzanne Pleshette |
 Her Majesty the Queen |
 David Hockney |
 Brooke Astor |
 Marlon Brando |
 Naturaliste |
 Greg Larson |
 Greg Larson |
A humorous doxie history
Other dachshund notables: Loni Anderson, Brooke Astor, Napoleon, Marlon Brando, Bear Bryant, Tracy Chapman, Claire Chennault, Dick Clark, Jacques Cousteau, Joan Crawford, George Cukor, Marion Davies, Doris Day, James Dean, Patty Duke, Errol Flynn, Wayne Gretzky, Angie Harmon, David Hasselhoff, Rita Hayworth, William Randolph Hearst, David Hockney, John Houseman, Henry James, Winona Judd, Dennis Miller, Madonna, Mary Tyler Moore, Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, Rosemunde Pilcher, William Powell, Priscilla Presley, Vincent Price, Erwin Rommel, Isabella Rossellini, Liz Smith, Adlai Stevenson, Liv Ullman, Queen Victoria, Maria von Trapp, Kaiser Wilhelm II, P. G. Wodehouse, James Woods, Fay Wray.
Please link any dachshund celebrity photos in a Comment below. Thanks!
February 04, 2003
February 03, 2003
All blog, all the time?
My life as a blog?
I'm weighing the pros and cons of managing InternetTime.com and jaycross.com as blogs. WIIFM? Easy to update. Syndicated/CMS. Most of important of all, the content would be fresh.
Now I could do that with static pages if I liked. Hmmm... I need to think this through a bit more.
How far would this go? Title pages only? What's index and what's in the repository?
Yesterday's Neighborhood Walk in Pictures (Click 'em)
Closed captions for the imagery-impaired:
Yesterday's Neighborhood Walk in Pictures (Click 'em)
Neighbor's artichokes, Golden Gate from Cragmont Park, Berkeley chalet, top of Oaks theatre, flag, grass, life among the redwoods, Rothko grass, movie ("The Recruit" -- don't bother), Berkeley marquee, , San Francisco Bay, and a jet (one day after the Challenger tragedy).