Hell, let's make it a trilogy: an article on several different approaches to "scientific" matchmaking, which is just sort of interesting to read.

And as long as we're reading dubious articles about love and sex, how about this one claiming that women really just aren't as interested in sex as men. I think it really fundamentally just isn't that true, but I think she does say some true things, for example about the way that we've developed an idea of the "empowered sexual woman" that may have more to do with men's porn than women's reality.

I'm not sure what I think about this column arguing that women should be more willing to settle for pretty-good men, but it was an interesting read.

RW sent me this interview with a guy who spent a year following every rule in the bible (and here's the book). It's insane, but also pretty interesting. I especially found his comment about wearing white interesting, that the way you look and behave affects the way you think. I in particular like to think of myself as purely self-driven and rational, and systematically underestimate the effect on me of external emotional factors (e.g. seattle weather, or having a good haircut). But I really liked what he says about the bible giving him structure; I'm one who often has a lot of ideas floating around but can slip into a sort of structureless mess. I can see where putting some rules and rigidity around things not makes it easier to not slack off, but makes you feel better about doing the things you want to do but are too lazy to organize.

and now there follows a long IM discussion with E about rational choice, precommitment, the paradox of choice, and structuring parts of your life so that your future less-rational self can't undo your decisions. and how that relates to things like buying ice cream at the store and going to the gym when you don't feel like it. which I won't reproduce here because it gets kind of personal. but hey, interesting stuff.

The thing is, there are all sorts of things (things, experiences, sensations, relationships -- all sorts of things) in life that I desire. But here is the dilemma:
- attaining these things rarely provides anything but the most transitory satisfaction
- not attaining them causes a feeling of dissatisfaction out of all proportion
- trying to remove them from my perception so I don't even think to desire them seems to leave life seeming pale and dull

so, what the heck do I do? your thoughts please.

I've been thinking about "flow" a lot lately. It started with David Rakoff's essay "Martha, My Dear" in Don't Get Too Comfortable. He's talking about his hobby of "making stuff" and says, "During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of self and a loss of time. ...I almost never get this feeling any other way. I once spent sixteen hours making 150 wedding invitations by hand and was not for one instant of that time tempted to eat or look at my watch." He later uses the word "flow" and cites Csikszentmihalyi.
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I hereby declare that spring is with us. We've had a few days of gorgeous weather, I've started going out without a jacket, but tonight I participated in a real ritual of impending summer: walking around eating an ice cream cone. S and I went out for dinner (to Chun, the sushi place near u. village where Thai Dusit used to be; it was good, though fairly basic in its menu, no Mashiko-style adventure). Afterward we went to u.village, got ice cream at ben & jerry's, and walked around gauging the degree of u. village's Xtreme yuppiness. For one thing, they've got a crate & barrel, a williams-sonoma, a pottery barn, and a restoration hardware. what mall needs all that? for another, I think they're up to 4 starbuckses. and this is not a large mall. I remember when u.village was a seedy little place. One day I went there to get some nails and the actual hardware store that used to be there (remember ernst?) was gone, but a restoration hardware had appeared. restoration hardware, despite its name, does not have nails. and back then everything cost a nickel.

we're over-fastidious about the word "perfect". To often we save it for, you know, big perfections, when there are so many little ones. There are several pop songs that, every time I hear them, I think "that song is a perfect what-it-is"; it may not be a perfect, or even a great, song, but it's perfectly what it is. whatever that means. anyway, today was a perfect day. I had a great day of high performance driving school, where for 8-9 hours I didn't think about anything but cars and turn-in points and throttle control and trying not to get too wet... and not one thought about all the various stresses and excitements (good and bad) that usually make a hubbub in my head.

oddly enough, the point when I said to myself "today was perfect" wasn't a during or at the end of driving school but when, once I was home, I decided I would get a pizza from my favorite pizza place. I can't convey exactly why racing + relaxing with a movie and pizza makes for a little perfect day, but maybe you understand.

yes, it's xmas, and while most of you are doing your, you know, xmas things, the jew is cooking and catching up on his LJ

Note to self: don't bring a knife to a gunfight.

Well I woke up at 4:00 for some reason and lay in bed unable to sleep, my head buzzing with depression (if that's not too oxymoronic a phrase). but there's little depression that can't be forgotten at least for a little while in a good book, and I can forget about the alarming rate at which people seem to be departing my life lately for a bit. I don't look forward to trying to sleep again, but I don't really look forward to spending the day tired either.

From a slate article on the effects of gender bias on women's ambition:

"Another study examined how stereotype threat affected Asian-American women's performance on math tasks. When subjects were asked questions related to Asian identity before taking the test (prompting the stereotype that Asians are good at math), their performance went up. When asked questions related to gender (prompting the stereotype that women are bad at math), their performance went down."

Fortunately, these bias effects can seemingly be mitigated:

"many of these studies suggest that bias' effects on performance and self-perception are, like a stain, fairly responsive to spot treatment. In Schmader's word-memorization study, a third group was told that exposure to stereotypes might lead women to underperform. In this group, the women and men scored equally well, suggesting that awareness of bias may mitigate its effect."

There are a lot more interesting bits of data in the article.

Today:
- Our regular Monday morning one-hour meeting only took two hours
- I saw a cyclist wait at a red light even when no cars were coming
- My doctor's office did an audit, determined I had been overbilled, and sent me money

What should I be doing with my last three hours and fourteen minutes of being in my early 30s? not posting to my LJ, I'm thinking.

Glen Whitman ruminates on the economics of commitment. Specifically, he views looking for a mate as a search problem like many others (shopping for a house, looking for a job) and notes what the optimal strategy should be and what form standard mistakes take. I don't have much to add to his comments, but I sure see some things I do repeatedly reflected in some of the mistakes he mentions.

Illegal state of car fixed. tank filled and car washed. frayed shoelaces on favorite shoes replaced. full load of laundry done. long-overdue Talk had and issues, if not resolved, at least aired and under consideration. I feel ready to face at least another day.

I don't usually have much truck with christian aphorisms, but I saw this tonight on a church signboard and thought it was a good thing: "Salvation is not a reward for the righteous, but a gift to the sinner."

I've been flattered to have several people tell me over the last few months that they miss my posts about all kinds of this and that. There are few things more gratifying than to know that people care what you think, and I appreciate it. What sucks is I've got half-written entries floating around in my head all the time, but for some reason lately very few of them make it into print. It's probably related to a more general problem lately, where I have lots of half-finished projects lying around, and far too many days and evenings are spent doing who-knows-what instead of working on any of them. It's a form of that sort of mild depression that I (and many people I know) slip in and out of, a sort of listlessness toward creative effort brought on (or at least aggravated) by the unavoidable rhythm of sleep-eat-work (-tv-internet). so anyway, yeah.

For no particular reason, I was sitting around thinking about who my heroes are. Without further ado:

Alan Turing has been one of my heroes for a long time. He was pretty much everything an intellectual should be. He was one of a handful of people to all but invent artificial intelligence, cryptanalysis, and computer science. And not just because he was incredibly smart, but because he was creative. While everyone (including him) was still doing the math, he was already thinking about the turing test. But he wasn't just a brilliant academic; he also applied what he knew to the war effort, helping to crack the Nazi enigma code and keep intelligence flowing to allied commanders. and yet he was persecuted for his homosexuality and (probably) killed himself after being convicted of indecency and forced to undergo a "cure". I can only imagine what else he might have done had he lived.


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Guy on elevator: What would we do without elevators?
Me: A lot more walking.
Guy on elevator: A lot more walking all right.