| "Not your grandfather's ice tray" | 2 0 0 9 |
Jan 12 |
So awesome! First Fred product I stumble on but do check out them out, they are one cool, pun-obsessed manufacturer of novelty items that while gimmicky still manage to be classy.
Fun
112 posts under this tag.
| Couple more interesting kanjis | 2 0 0 8 |
Nov 15 |
大人 = big people = adults
�人 = little people = kids (this and above like in toki pona)
写真 = reality copy = photography
売買= sell buy = trade
�下 = shoes under = socks
�訶= pedestal talk = speech
赤�ゃん= little red (one) = baby
西日 = west sun = setting sun
姉妹 = older sister, younger sister = sisters (older/younger sister are basic concepts!)
| Some interesting basic kanjis | 2 0 0 8 |
Nov 14 |
One of the coolest things about an idea-sign language, which motley Japanese at times is, is that it encourages making new words by combining simpler ones. It does this as a necessity (there are only so many signs you can remember), by making of words stable roots (idea-signs tend to be more stable than letter bundles—for one thing they don’t reflect pronunciation changes), and by not allowing for sound loan words (“Bon weekend!”), where meaning is lost in grafting a word from one meaning net into another.
Here a couple of interesting, basic examples:ç?«å±± = fire mountain = volcano
下女 = down woman = maid
電話 = electricity talk = telephone
出�　= out mouth = exit
入� = in mouth = entrance
| Bling a development phase | 2 0 0 8 |
Oct 18 |
Virginia Postrel back to writing with a vengeance. Here my favorite of her latest essays. Most liked the comparison between simple economic hypotheses, cleverly verifiable, and the “unfalsifiable tautologies about differing tastes” all around us. (Such straightforward, plain-language hypotheses pretty much the only subset of economics that feels real to me.)
| If ever on a desert island... | 2 0 0 8 |
Oct 05 |
...with only a broom stick, a wire hanger, and a roll of toilet paper—fear not!
(MAKErs are a bunch of 1st-world pampered playing at 3rd-world make-do ;)
| Why is there something rather than nothing? | 2 0 0 8 |
Sep 30 |
Life Results from the Non-Random Survival of Randomly Varying Replicators.
Richard Dawkins, Revolutionary Evolutionist
My answer to life, the universe, and everything:
Randomness begets persistenceFor among things that vary a lot,
and vary varyingly (= non-independently = causally),
what varies little remains (duh!)
Persistence begets replicationand vary varyingly (= non-independently = causally),
what varies little remains (duh!)
For among things that persist,
what copies itself is an outbreak
Replication begets complexitywhat copies itself is an outbreak
For among the ways to copy oneself,
the more successful ones are among the more complex
(for there are many, many more complex ways than simpler ones)
the more successful ones are among the more complex
(for there are many, many more complex ways than simpler ones)
| Itinerary | 2 0 0 8 |
Sep 23 |
In what is to date the biggest purchase of my life (my obscene former desktop was a gift), I just purchased the bulk of my travel for the next year or so. Check out my itinerary and start planning on visiting or bumping with me!
27 October 2008Mexico City MEX to Tokyo NRT (via London) for 4 months, 22 days of Japan!
20 March 2009
Tokyo NRT to London LHR for 4 months, 29 days of Europe!
17 August 2009
London LHR to Toronto YYZ for a month of Canada! (ticket back to Mexico to be purchased)
All the flights are with British Airways. All for $1,852, which still amazes me—BA is a great airline, flights are incredibly main-airport and nonstop (can’t stop in the US). It’s all beautifully simple, better than I dared hope. Past week has been a Kayak and travel agency blur but it was worth it.
So, so exciting!| Around the world for ~$2k | 2 0 0 8 |
Sep 18 |
Been playing with travel sites all day, (Kayak FTW!) and I discovered several interesting anomalies with which I plan to tour the world for some $2k in air travel. Flight arbitrage, if you will.
Guadalajara ↔ Toronto ↔ London ↔ Tokyo (at least!)
- Travel within Europe is really, really cheap. As in
€30£5 London – Madrid round trip. So Europe can be thought of as one point: London, by far the cheapest hub. - Round trips are a considerably better deal than one-ways. I understand they are the industry’s version of wholesaling but a 40% difference seems too much (a one-way can be 140% the price of either round trip leg)%.
- Travel order is everything. Mexico-Tokyo, one way is some $900. Tokyo-Mexico, one-way too, no less than $2,000! That’s right, the exact same distance can cost you over twice as much depending on where you start!
All this for some $2k!
It’s a tad complicated and wasteful, and I need to plan far ahead, but the price’s pretty good, right?Can you think of something else?
Know any other anomalies? Youth discounts? Passes?
Got any tips?
I haven’t bought yet but I think I will soon!
| Round circles | 2 0 0 8 |
Sep 13 |
There are more concepts than words. Hence the phrase.
Almost didn’t read this slow starting quote. The 1st paragraph seemed just vague philosopher fluff (philo-fluff-y?) but then at the 2nd a fascinating example is hinted, by the 3rd I was swooning. How Borgesian, fantastic and ultimately impossible a language Trobriander is!
Jorge Wagensberg
The Trobrianders are concerned with being, and being alone. Change and becoming are foreign to their thinking. An object or event is grasped and evaluated in terms of itself alone; that is, irrespective of other beings. The Trobriander can describe being for the benefit of the ethnographer; otherwise he usually refers to it by a word, one word only. All being, to be significant, must be Trobriand being, and therefore experienced at the appropriate time as a matter of course by the members of each Trobriand community; to describe it would be redundant. Being is never defined, in our sense of the word. Definition presents an object in terms of what it is like and what it is unlike; that is, in term of its distinguishing characteristics. The Trobriander is interested only in what it is. And each event or being is grasped timelessly; in our terms it contains past, present, and future, but these distinctions are non-existent for the Trobriander. There is, however, one sense in which being is not self-contained. To be, it must be part of an ordained pattern; this aspect will be elaborated below.
Being is discrete and self-contained; it has no attributes outside of itself. Its qualities are identical with it, and without them it is not itself. It has no predicate; it is itself. To say a word representing an object or act is to imply the existence of this, and all the qualities it incorporates. If I were to go with a Trobriander to a garden where the taytu, a species of yam, had just been harvested, I would come back and tell you: “There are good taytu there; just the right degree of ripeness, large and perfectly shaped; not a blight to be seen, not one rotten spot; nicely rounded at the tips, with no spiky points; all first-run harvesting, no second gleanings.” The Trobriander would come back and say “Taytu”; and he would have said all that I did and more. Even the phrase “There are taytu” would represent a tautology, since existence is implied in being; is, in fact, an ingredient of being to the Trobriander. And all the attributes, even if he could find words for them at hand in his own language, would have been tautological, since the concept of taytu contains them all. In fact, if one of these were absent, the object would not have been a taytu.
Such a tuber, if it is not at the proper harvesting ripeness is not a taytu. If it is unripe, it is a bwanawa; if overripe, spent, it is not a spent taytu but something else, a yowana. If it is blighted it is a nukunokuna. If it has a rotten patch, it is a taboula; if misshapen, it is a usasu; if perfect in shape but small, it is a yagogu. If the tuber, whatever its shape or condition, is a postharvest gleaning, it is an ulumadala. When the spent tuber, the yowana, sends its shoots underground, as we would put it, it is not a yowana with shoots, but a silisata. When new tubers have formed on these shoots, it is not a silisata but a gadena. An object cannot change an attribute and retain its identity. Some range of growth or modification within being is probably allowed, otherwise speech would be impossible; but I doubt whether they are conscious of it. As soon as such change, if we may introduce one of our concepts here, is officially recognized, the object ceases to be itself.
Dorothy Lee, Being and Value in Primitive Culture
| The Plan: Have Laptop, Will Travel | 2 0 0 8 |
Sep 11 |
The plan is to travel, to go places for a year or so, to live for some 2-3 months each time, in Tokyo, Barcelona/Madrid, London, and Toronto (in that order). Both Spain and Canada beckon with legal, short paths to free agency. The goal shall be to find out which city I like better as my fulcrum for the decade, but mostly to learn, to start projects, and to swallow the world.
I didn’t expect to like working remotely so much, as I’ve been doing this last couple of weeks, but I’ve loved the freedom, the flexibility, and the discipline it imposes. Most important of all, it allows for freedom of place and having been kicked out of the U.S. I might as well look around. So I’m looking for some sort of remote job, failing that savings and odd jobs would have to do, but having an unhinged fixed job would accelerate and catalyze everything.There is, still, the possibility that there will be no place for me like Silicon Valley. If that’s so, then I’ll try to get a tourist visa again within a year and give de facto (ilegal) free agency another shot. I doubt, though, that they’ll grant me a visa, but there are many other, safe, if somewhat expensive means, to get inside. And once inside de facto free agency is not far fetched at all. I’m heartened by the sanctuary San Francisco itself always was for me (as opposed to the dastard federal gov’t).
But that’s just one possibility. Just having done that scenario planning comforts me and sets me free. The world beckons and Japan has always been, after America, the country I’m hungriest for. I’ve always wanted to try the sink or swim approach to learning a language! It’ll take me a month or two to get there, but just you wait Tokyo!