Culture

Last week, I wrote a biography for Dan Gable. Because the sport at which Gable excelled was wrestling, most have not heard of him, but within the sport he is a legend. That’s him over there on the right, pictured with his Gold Medal from the 1972 Olympics (in which he went undefeated and, indeed, didn’t give up a single point – much to the dismay of the Soviets, who had vowed to “scour the country” looking for someone to defeat Gable). His story is an interesting one, but one thing I’m not so sure I captured in my piece was just how obsessed with wrestling he was. He lived, ate, and drank wrestling. When asked what interests he has besides wrestling, the first thing he says is “Recovery” (of course, he has to be completely exhausted to partake in that activity). How he managed to start a family, I will never know (perhaps he wasn’t quite as obsessed as I thought). It made me wonder if being that good at something was worth it…

There is an old saying “Jack of all trades, Master of none.” This is indeed true, though with the demands of modern life, we are all expected to live in a constant state of partial attention and must resort to drastic measures like Self-Censorship or information filtering to deal with it all. This leads to an interesting corollary for the Master of a trade: They don’t know how to do anything else!

I’m reminded of a story told by Isaac Asimov, in his essay Thinking about Thinking (which can be found in the Magic collection):

On a certain Sunday, something went wrong with my car and I was helpless. Fortunately, my younger brother, Stan, lived nearby and since he is notoriously goodhearted, I called him. He came at once, absorbed the situation, and began to use the Yellow Pages by the telephone to try to reach a service station, while I stood by with my lower jaw hanging loose. Finally, after a period of strenuous futility, Stan said to me with just a touch of annoyance, “With all your intelligence, Isaac, how is it you lack the brains to join the AAA?” Whereupon, I said, “Oh, I belong to the AAA,” and produced the card. He gave me a long strange look and called the AAA. I was on my wheels in half an hour.

He tells this story as part of a discussion on the nature of intelligence and how one is judged to be intelligent. Which brings up an interesting point, how does one even know they are master of a trade? Nowadays, there are few who know one trade so well that all others suffer; we’re mostly jacks, to some degree. There are some who are special, who can focus all of their energy into a single pursuit with great success. These people are extraordinarily rare, and somewhat scary in that they can be so brilliant in one sphere, but so clueless in another, more prosaic, department. But that does not help us in diagnosing mastery of a trade.

When you really start to get into it, of course, the metaphor breaks down. Personally, I wouldn’t consider myself a master of any trades, but neither would I judge myself a jack. There are several subjects at which I excell, but I can’t seem to focus on any one of them – mostly because I like them all so much and I cannot bring myself to narrowly focus my efforts on a single subject. I have my moments of absent-mindedness too, though none quite so drastic as Asimov’s amusing tale. But even if I did focus my efforts, how would I know when I’ve reached the point of mastery?

In the end, I don’t think you can tell. Mastery is a worthwhile goal, even if you must sacrifice some of your favorite trades, but because we cannot tell when we’ve mastered a subject, the term really doesn’t have much meaning. As Asimov implies in his aformentioned essay, the only really useful term is “different.” It is this difference which is truly important, because what some of us cannot do, others can. This is the basis of society and civilization, and the reason we as humans have prospered as individuals.

And Just for fun, an Asimov Quote:

“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those

of us who do.” -Isaac Asimov

Damn straight.

Update 2.15.04: John Weidner suggests “that when the time comes that we re-open diplomatic relations with Iran, Dan Gable should be our ambassador.” He makes a note of how Iranians have previously greeted “The Great Satans’ wrasslin’ team” with enthusiasm (and a cool Neal Stephenson book).

I’ve noticed a trend in my writing, or, rather, the lack thereof. There are generally four venues in which I write, three of which are on the internet, and one of which is for my job. In the three internet venues, my production has started relatively high, and steadily decreased as time went on. (I suppose I should draw a distinction between writing and simple conversation. Email, for example, is not included as that does not represent the type of writing I’m talking about, though I do write a lot of email and email could possibly become a venue in the future.)

My job sometimes entails the writing of technical specifications for web applications, and this, at least, does not suffer from the same problem. It can be challenging at times, especially if I need to tailor them towards both a technical and non-technical audience, but for the most part it is a straightforward affair (it helps that they pay me too). Once I have all the information, resources, and approvals I need, the writing comes easy (well, I’m simplifying for the sake of discussion here, but you get the point).

This is in part because technical writing doesn’t need to be compelling, which is where I stumble. It’s also because collecting information and resources for this sort of thing is simpler and the information is easier to organize. I’m not especially articulate when it comes to expressing my thoughts and ideas. If I ever do it’s only because I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time polishing the text (and if I don’t, I’m in trouble, because I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time polishing the text). Hell, I tried to be organized and wrote a bit of an outline for this post, but I had trouble doing even that.

And, of course, I notice that I’m not following my outline either. But I digress.

The other three venues are my weblog (natch), Everything2, and various discussion forums.

This weblog has come a long way over the three and a half years since I started it, and at this point, it barely resembles what it used to be. I started out somewhat slowly, just to get an understanding of what this blogging thing was and how to work it (remember, this was almost four years ago and blogs weren’t nearly as common as they are now), but I eventually worked up into posting about once a day, on average. At that time, a post consisted mainly of a link and maybe a summary or some short commentary. Then a funny thing happened, I noticed that my blog was identical to any number of other blogs, and thus wasn’t very compelling. So I got serious about it, and started really seeking out new and unusual things. I tried to shift focus away from the beaten path and started to make more substantial contributions. I think I did well at this, but it couldn’t really last. It was difficult to find the offbeat stuff, even as I poured through massive quantities of blogs, articles and other information (which caused problems of it’s own). I slowed down, eventually falling into an extremely irregular posting schedule on the order of once a month, which I have since attempted to correct, with, I hope, some success. I recently noticed that I have been slumping somewhat, though I’m still technically keeping to my schedule.

During the period in which I wasn’t posting much on the weblog, I was “noding” (as they call it) over at Everything2, which is a collaborative database project. There too, I started strong and have since petered out. However, similar to what happened in the weblog, the quality improved even as the quantity decreased. This is no coincidence. It takes longer to write a good node, so it makes sense that the quantity would be inversely proportional to the quality.

Of the three internet venues, discussion forums are the simplest as they are informal and require the least amount of vigor (and in that respect, they resemble email, but there is a small difference which we will come to in a bit). Even then, though, in certain forums I have noticed my production fall as well. These are predominantly debating forums where I was making some form of argument. What I found was that, as time went on, I tended to take the debates more seriously and thus I spent more time and effort on making sure my arguments were logically consistent and persuasive. And again, my posting at these forums has slowed considerably.

One other note about these three: it seems that at any given time, I am only significantly contributing to one of these three. When the blog posting slowed, I moved to E2, for example, and when that slowed down, I focused on the forums. Now that I’ve come back to the blog, the others have suffered. There are all sorts of reasons why writing slows that have nothing to do with the process of writing or choosing what to write, but I do think those things contribute as well.

In effect, this represents a form of self-censorship. I’m constantly evaluating ideas for inclusion in the weblog. Johnathon wrote about this a few weeks ago, and he put it well:

…having a weblog turns information overload into a two-way process: first you suck all this stuff into your head for processing; and then you regurgitate it as weblog posts. And, while this process isn’t all that different from the ways in which we manipulate information in our jobs, it’s something that we’ve chosen to do in addition to our jobs, something that detaches us even further from “real life”. I suspect that the problem is compounded by the fact that weblog entries are—overwhelmingly—expressions of opinion and, to make it worse, many of the opinions are opinions about opinions on issues concerning which the opinionators have little, if any, firsthand knowledge or experience. Me included.

As time goes on, my evaluation of what is blog-worthy has gotten more and more discriminating (as always, there are exceptions) and the quality has gone up. But, of course, the quantity has gone down.

Why? Why do I keep doing this? It is tempting to write it off as laziness, and that is no doubt part of it. It’s not like it takes me a week to write a post or a node. At most, it takes a combined few hours.

Part of the problem is finding a few uninterrupted hours with which to compose something. In all of my writing endeavors, I’ve set the bar high enough that it requires too much time to do at once. When I didn’t expect much out of myself on the blog or on E2, I could produce a lot more because the time required to do so was small enough that I could do so quickly and effectively. Back in the day, I could blog during my lunch break. I haven’t been able to do that lately (as in, the past few years).

The natural solution to that is to split up writing sessions, and that is what I often do, but there are difficulties with that. First, it breaks concentration. Each writing session needs to start with several minutes of re-familiarizing with the subject. So even the sessions need to be reasonably large chunks of time. In addition, if these chunks are spread out too far, you run the risk of losing interest and motivation (and it takes longer to re-familiarize yourself too).

Motivation can be difficult to sustain, especially over long periods of time, which might also be the reason why I seem to rotate between the three internet venues.

There is an engineering proverb that says Fast, Good, Cheap – Pick two. The idea is that when you’re tackling a project, you can’t have all three. If you favor making a quality product in a short period of time, it is going to cost you. Similarly, if you need to do it on the cheap and also in a short period of time, you’re not going to end up with a quality product. I think there might be some sort of corollary at work here, Quality, Quantity, Time – Pick Two. Meaning that if I want to write a high quality post in a relatively short period of time, the quantity will suffer. If I want a high quantity of posts that are also of a high quality, then it will take up a lot of my time. And so on…

This post was prompted by something Dave Rogers wrote a while back:

I find I have less to say about things these days. Often I feel the familiar urge to say something, but now I’m as likely to keep quiet as I am to speak up. This bothers me a little, because I’ve always felt it was important to speak up when you felt strongly about something. Now I’m not so sure about that.

Sometimes the urge to speak up is the result of habituated thinking, a conditioned response. Someone writes something that triggers an emotional response, certain automatic behaviors kick in, and before I know it I’m writing some kind of negative response. I can’t think of a case where it did any particular good. I get to feel a bit of an adrenaline rush from the experience, and maybe a couple of people agree with me and I get a little validation; but most of the time, the target of my ire and indignation is unaffected. There is no change of opinion, no reevaluation of position. It’s all energy expended to no good end, other than perhaps to stimulate the already persuaded and generate a little titillation for the folks who like to watch. I also can’t recall a case when, finding myself on the receiving end, I’ve altered my point of view; especially if it was something I cared enough about to have an opinion that was likely to provoke that kind of response.

I suppose this is a kind of self-censorship, but I think it’s a good thing. One person’s self-censorship is another person’s self-discipline perhaps. Just as I’ve learned to pay attention to what’s going on inside my own mind when I’m behind the wheel, becoming a calmer and safer driver in the process, I’m learning to pay attention not just to what I write, but why I want to write it.

Despite all that I’ve said so far, I actually have been writing here for quite some time. Sure, I swap venues or slow down sometimes, but I have kept a relatively steady pace among them in the past few years. Dave’s post made me wonder about why I want to write and what kept me writing. There are plenty of reasons, but one of the most important is that I am usually writing about things I don’t know very well… and I learn from the experience. Blogging originally taught me to seek out and find things off the beaten path, Everything2 gave me an excuse to research various subjects and write about them (most of what I write there are called “factuals” – sort of like writing an encyclopedia entry), and the forums forced me to form an opinion and let it stand up to critical testing. I’m not exactly sure what it is I’m learning right now, but I’m enjoying myself.

Jonathon Delacour asks a poignant question:

who else feels overwhelmed by the volume of information we expect ourselves to absorb and process every day? And how do you manage to deal with it?

Judging from the comments, his post has obviously struck a chord with his readers, myself included. I am once again reminded of Neal Stephenson’s original minimalist homepage in which he speaks of his ongoing struggle against what Linda Stone termed as “continuous partial attention,” for that is the way in which modern life must be for a great deal of us.

I am often overwhelmed by a desire to consume various things – books, movies, music, etc… The subject of such things is also varied and, as such, often don’t mix very well. That said, the only thing I have really found that works is to align those subjects that do mix in such a way that they overlap. This is perhaps the only reason blogging has stayed on my plate for so long: since the medium is so free-form and since I have absolute control over what I write here and when I write it, it is easy to align my interests in such a way that they overlap with my blog (i.e. I write about what interests me at the time). I have been doing so for almost three and a half years, more or less, and the blog as it now exists barely resembles what it once did. This is, in part, because my interests have shifted during that time. There was a period of about a year in which blogging was very sparse indeed, but before I tackle that, I wish to backtrack a bit.

As I mentioned, this subject has struck a chord with a great deal of people, and the most common suggestion for how to deal with such a quandry is a form of information filtering. Usually this takes the form of a rather extreme and harsh filtering system – namely removing one source of information entirely. Delacour speaks of a friend who only recently bought a television and vcr, and even then he only did so so that his daughters could watch videos a few times a week. The complete removal of one source of information seems awfully drastic to me, though I suppose I’ve done so from time to time. For about a year, I had not bought or sought out any new music, only recently emerging from this out of boredom. It was a conscious decision to remove music from my sphere of learning, though I continued to listen to and very much enjoy music. I simply didn’t understand music the way I understood film or literature (inasmuch as I understand either of those) and didn’t want to burden myself overinterpreting yet another medium. Even as it stands now, I’m not too concerned over what I’m listening too, as long as it keeps my attention during a rather long commute.

Some time ago, I used to blog a lot more often than I do now. And more than that, I used to read a great deal of blogs, especially new blogs (or at least blogs that were new to me). Eventually this had the effect of inducing a sort of ADD in me. I consumed way too many things way too quickly and I became very judgemental and dismissive. There were so many blogs that I scanned (I couldn’t actually read them, that would take too long for marginal gain) that this ADD began to spread across my life. I could no longer sit down and just read a book, even a novel.

Eventually, I recognized this, took a bit of a break from blogging, and attempted to correct, with some success. I have since returned to blogging, albeit at a slower pace, and have taken measures against falling into that same trap, though only with limited success. I have come to the conclusion that I can only do one major internet endeavor at a time. During the period of slow blogging, I turned my attention towards Everything 2 (a sort of online collaborative encyclopedia), but I have found that as I returned to blogging, I could not find time for E2, unless they somehow overlapped (as they do, from time to time). Likewise, I cannot devote much time to discussion of various subjects at various forums if I am blogging or noding (as posting at E2 is called). Delacour’s description of his own quandry is somewhat accurate in my case as well:

Self-employment, a constant Internet connection, a weblog, and a mildly addictive personality turn out to be a killer combination-even for someone who no longer feels compelled to post regularly, let alone every day.

So the short answer to Delacour’s question of how do people deal with information overload is of course filtering. It is the manner and degree to which we filter that is important. And of course it must be said that any filtering system which you set up must be dynamic – it must change as you change and the world changes. It is a challenge to find the right balance, and it is also a challenge to keep that balance.

***

An interesting post-script to this is that I ran across Delacour’s post several weeks ago, and am only coming to post about it today. Make of that what you will.

In any case, I’d like to turn my attention to another of Delacour’s posts, titled I’ll link to whoever he’s linking to, in which he talks a lot about what drives people to link other blogs on their blog. It is an exceptional analysis and well worth reading in it’s entirety. At one point, he points to “six principles of persuasion” (as defined by a Psychology professor in the context of cult recruitment) and applies those principles to weblogs and blogrolls with some success. This has prompted some thought on my part, and I have decided to update the blogroll. As you might guess, a number of the six principles of persuasion are at work in my blogroll, but I would note that the most accurate in my case are “liking” (as in, the reason all of those links are there is because I like them and read them regularly – indeed, it is almost there out of a pragmatic want of having the most common sites I visit linked from one place) and “Commitment and Consistency.” By far the least important is the “Social Proof” principle which states that “In a given situation, our view of whether a particular behavior is correct or not is directly proportional to the number of other people we see performing that behaviour” or, applied to blogs, “If all those other people have X on their blogrolls, then he definitely should be on my blogroll.”

In fact, I had updated the blogroll somewhat recently already. One of the blogs I added then was the Belmont Club, which has enjoyed a certain amount of noteriety lately, thanks in part to Steven Den Beste (who, interestingly enough, had promted Delacour’s post about linking in the first place). So Belmont Club went from a relatively obscure excellent blog to a blog that is well known and now highly linked to. Believe it or not, this has weighed unfavorably upon my decision to keep Belmont Club on the blogroll. I have opted to do so for now because my “liking” that blog far outweighs my distaste for “social proof.” In any case, the blogroll will be updated shortly, with but a few new blogs…

I find both of these subjects (information overload and linking) to be interesting, so I may spend some time later this week hashing out a little more about both subjects… or perhaps not – perhaps some other interest will gain favor in my court. We shall see, I suppose.

Last night I dined on fresh Sushi and washed it down with a generous portion of Hennepin (a fine beer, that). I was thinking of today’s inevitable gorging and I had a brilliant idea.

Turkey Sushi.

If I had any photoshopping skillz, I’d have a really funny picture of a piece of sushi with a cartoon turkey head sticking out of it.

Anyway, the only thing I can’t figure out is the seaweed. I’m not sure how that would go with this. Then again, throw in a sliver of gelatinous cranberry sauce with the cold turkey and you have an even better turkey roll. This is a huge market we’re missing out on here! I’ll be a millionaire in no time. Happy Thanksgiving all!

Fritz Schranck relates a story of a mathematically challenged fast-food cashier whose register was broken and couldn’t figure out how to make change (the customer had given the cashier $10 for a bill of $8.95). He goes on to say that he’s heard these sorts of stories before, but he’d never seen it for himself untl then…

But I think I’ve got him beat. A few years ago, I happened to be perusing some titles at the ‘tique, when someone asked the sales clerk what time it was. He picked up a watch, and a confused frown spread across his face. He then grinned, and grabbed a calculater from under the counter and began punching in numbers. At this point he responded to the customer’s quizzical look by explaining “The watch is on military time.” It was 1400 hours (aka 2:00 p.m.)

Cruises really are wonderful vacations. I just returned from one, so, in an effort to induce massive jealosy in my readers, I figured I’d give a rundown of all the glorious events which occurred during the past week. I went on a cruise to Bermuda on the Celebrity line a few years back, so I’ll be using that as a comparison. This time, I went to the Southern Caribbean on the Royal Caribbean line.

Getting There: The ship sails out of San Juan on Sunday, so you’ll need to arrange a flight (uh, unless you’re Puerto Rican, I guess), with all the shiny happy security details that implies in the post 9/11 airline world (it also jacks up the price of the overall vacation a little – my cruise to Bermuda left out of New York and so I didn’t need to fly). We decided to go early and spend Saturday in San Juan. Given that we were staying at the Ritz-Carlton, this was a most pleasant experience and an excellent start to the vacation. I would highly recommend looking into this option as it was surprisingly inexpensive, and it really is a top notch resort with a fantastic private beach, a huge pool (which was great way to wash off sand), a nice little spa (which I didn’t use, but looked great) and some good dining options (I had some Sushi, and was much pleased).

The Ship: Our ship was called the Adventure of the Seas and it was truly awesome (in every sense of that word). All the standard cruise-ship amenities are there: shuffleboard, food and drinks around every corner, pools, showrooms etc… but there are also quite a few uncruise-like activities such as a roller blading track, miniature golf course, ice skating rink, and rock climbing wall. There is this thing called the Royal Promenade, which is a sort of main-street of the ship, with a bunch of shops, bars and cafes (some of which are thankfully open all night). There’s a Johnny Rocket’s on board as well, just in case you were in the mood for a retro burger joint.

Food: The food was excellent. The main dining room was modeled after the Titanic’s dining room, with extravagent settings and twisty staircases. For those who have never been on a cruise its difficult to explain just how great the dinners are. There is a different menu every night (each one has a healthy choice and a vegetarian choice as well, in case you were worried:P) and if you are ever torn between ordering two appetizers or entrees or deserts, they’ll gladly bring them both out for you. Generally, we only ate dinner there (though I did manage a few lunches, which were surprisingly good), breakfast and lunch were had at the Windjammer Cafe and Caribbean Grill, a buffet that is usually open and provides a low-key alternative to the formality of the main dining room (I never did that though, as I enjoyed the main dining room). Celebrity is known for its superb dining, and Royal Caribbean did a good job but came up just a little bit short (still excellent though).

Entertainment: There is always something to do on a cruise ship. Always. Every day, you get an itinerary of all the things that are going on that day, and you’ve usually got a lot of options. Every night there is a show in the theater (some nights, there is an Ice Show, which is especially interesting when the ship is moving). Generally, though, I found myself in the Duck and the Dog British pub, doing stuff like this (for the uninitiated, that thing we’re drinking is what’s known as an Irish Carbomb). There was a guy playing guitar there every night, and he was awesome (his name was Mark O’Bitz, I can’t find anything about him on the net though…). He played all week, and pretty much the same people came every night, so by the end of the week we were all having a blast. A couple of the passengers even got up and sang a song or two. The song that ended up being the cruise’s theme was Come Sail Away – one of the passengers always got up and sang it, and he was absolutely marvelous. The whole bar got into it. It was great!

Ports: We docked at 5 ports during the week:

• St. Thomas: Nice island, good beaches, and cheap booze. It was raining a little bit on this day, but it was still a good time.
• St. Martin: One of the supposed great things about a cruise is shopping. Generally, you can get certain items down there much cheaper than you could back home, and St. Martin is apparently known for great shopping. The big items that everyone seemed to be looking for were cameras and watches, both of which were “cheap” (I guess it would be better to say severely discounted, as a $600 Movado watch that normally sells for $1400 is a great deal, but still way too much for a watch imho). Nice beaches too (as if that’s a surprise).
• Antigua: Another staple of Caribbean islands is the amount of harassment you encounter just walking around town. You can’t walk two inches without being asked if you need a cab (this was the same in St. Martin as well, but it was worse in Antigua). We ended up getting one good driver, who was funny as hell. He had these custom horns on his car, so when he was driving along he would press them and it would say “MOVE OVER!” really loud. Pedestrians would turn and look quizzically, and some even moved out of the way. It was funny. At the beach, some guy with aloe plants started harassing a lady friend of ours and some random cab driver tried to act like he worked for the beach and charged us for chairs (which were free). We also did a snorkeling thing here, which was nice… I met an Air-Force guy who had just gotten back from Iraq there, and I promised to buy him a drink later. He was very grateful and he said I was one of many who had offered. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Antigua, and it really was a great island, but I think we just hit a bit of bad luck with the locals…
• St. Lucia: It was raining a lot when we got there, so I ended up not doing a lot. A few friends took a bus tour, and they said it was a beautiful island, but they really need to build some tunnels and straight roads. Apparently, they filmed one of the Superman movies here, though I couldn’t figure out which one or what scenes…
• Barbados: This ended up being our favorite of the islands. Its a beautiful island, and the locals weren’t nearly as annoying as they were in other places. We went to Malibu (a beach where they make the infamous rum) which was awesome (despite a run in with the Barbadon Coast Guard), and we also went on the Jolly Roger Pirate Cruise. The Jolly Roger excursion is what is called a “booze cruise” as they immediately start serving rum punch, and by the end, I was feeling pretty darn good. The Jolly Roger is a fairly common excursion, as it was on several of the islands we visited. If that’s your bag, I recommend it (it seemed to be a lot more crowded on Antigua, but I liked that our ship wasn’t bursting with drunk people)

Again, Barbados was almost everyone’s favorite island, but they were all a lot of fun. The only bad thing about the ports was that we were only at each one for one day; there is so much to do down there, but you had to be back on the boat by 5 pm. The Bermuda cruise was nice because you stayed at port for at least a day and a half, so you could get off the boat at night or even see the sunset at the beach (rather than at sea, which is still beautiful).

BINGO and Degenerate Gambling: Another cruise staple: BINGO! Alas, despite playing several sessions of BINGO, I did not win. I did, however, win a raffle! I got my choice of 6 paintings. I ended up choosing a painting by Anatole Krasnyansky. Its called Venice Yellow Sunset.

I like to gamble, and I finished almost every night on the cruise at the Casino. I ended up doing surprisingly well, though I think I might be developing a problem (just kidding, I was shocked at my restraint during the week. Whenever I was up by a certain amount, I walked, which is only way you can win at gambling in a Casino). I played a lot of blackjack, but my game of choice ended up being Roulette, which I had never played before. It was a lot of fun, but it is way too easy to drop lots of money…

Returning Home: Not much to say about the return, other than the airport security in Puerto Rico was very impressive. They were quick, efficient, and thourough (I even had to run my shoes through the x-ray machine with my carry-on).

So there you have it. I could probably go on and on and on about other things I loved about this cruise, but I’m not that cruel. If you have a vacation coming up, check out the cruise option (unless you get sea-sick).

Update 11.23.03 – Added a link to the painting. Also check out the comments for the profound effect Mark O’Bitz has had on many people’s lives!