Kitten in rat trap. It's almost Zen.

Been reading Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman, and in my head Feynman started to sound like Carl Sagan, it's that explainer thing they've both got going on. So went on Youtube to do justice to the great man, and it turns out Feynman had a slight Brooklyn accent, which is a great contrast.

Found the vid that triggered the Insane Clown Posse flap, it's wonderful. I've read stuff about the fundamental forces, I understand it a little bit, but I'm not Richard freakin' Feynman, Nobel prizewinner. There's classes and textbooks on this stuff for anyone who wants to advance to the higher levels, but to just close your mind go "Fucking magnets, how do they work?" is enshrining barbarian dimwittery and pretending it's a sense of wonder.

In Nick Bantock's The Museum at Purgatory, various afterlife dystopias are intended to be beneficial for the souls sent there, by "forcibly discouraging indulgence and foppery." In one of John Le Carre's Smiley novels, operating under "Moscow rules" means working under the strictest level of discipline, as a Western spy going undercover there obviously had to be very careful.

This strikes me as a good thing, and a good story. Boot camp drill seargeants, or Zen monk training. And I do love bildungsromans. What would be the word for it? Eudystopia? A setting that by its nature made you harder, faster, stronger, smarter, better. Doesn't have to be threatening or fatal.

reaching for honesty, authenticity. sometimes it's hard to keep track of who you're ultimately responsible to, when you're bound by the tyranny of small thinking, of the half-assed, pulled-punch effort.

all of life counts. you could never understand that. the way you do the little things show how you handle the big things. we are our algorithms, values, integrity.

i'm posting a bit on the neil gaiman board to warm up, getting back into the habit of thinking in sentences and paragraphs.

Familyradio.com seems to be down. If anyone over there were clever, they should put up an "Error 404, file not found- presumed Raptured."

Going through newsfeeds a while back, I came across a teaser headline about how Facebook makes you stupid. As usual, there's a lot more to it further in. A small college volunteer sample group was tested, and heavy Facebook use correlated with low NFC, Need For Cognition.

And that's the main takeaway for me, shrinks have tests to measure NFC. I looked at one test where you agree or disagree with statements, some of which could be problematic: "I would prefer a task that is intellectual, difficult, and important to one that is somewhat important but does not require much thought"

Well, that depends. We need to distinguish intellectual laziness from cognitive efficiency. For instance the common nerd contempt for clothing and fashion is a net win. Likewise the typical disdain for social conventions of politeness, euphemisms, considering feelings etc. So considering wardrobe and smalltalk at a fancy dress company dinner might be mentally effortful, but it's awful, to be avoided, and shrivels the soul.

Ubuntu Natty Narwhal tinkering

The day 11.4 was officially released, I tried the download and it was impossibly slow, but then it came through all right the day after. ISO, boot flashdrive, test drive on my desktop and it set up ok, but no wifi. :( I think Ubuntu might not have the drivers for my wifi card. Haven't tried it on the Asus netbook yet, but that'll probably work fine, Maverick Meerkat was great on my old Acer.