Relevant History

On the expert mind

I've been reading some pretty cynical stuff about expertise recently, so to cleanse the palate I checked out this Scientific American article on "The Expert Mind:"

[Florida State professor K. Anders] Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but "effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, appears to contribute less than such study to a player's progress; the main training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study....

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance--for instance, keeping up with one's golf buddies or passing a driver's exam--most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind's box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields....

Thus, motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise. It is no accident that in music, chess and sports--all domains in which expertise is defined by competitive performance rather than academic credentialing--professionalism has been emerging at ever younger ages, under the ministrations of increasingly dedicated parents and even extended families.

Bill Gates on learning from success

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose. (Bill Gates)

[Via Caroline Simard]

My daughter

My daughter is in Bear Valley this weekend, cross-country skiing with her Girl Scout troop. She was in the car, waiting to leave, when I took a last picture.

flickr

Yet another piece of punditry admiring Philip Tetlock's work

Very interesting how a 2005 book can become an overnight sensation. Philip Tetlock, whose work I've written about before, keeps getting cited in high places. Nicholas Kristof's latest op-ed on "Learning How to Think" is all about Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment (now extended by pundits to cover financial expertise, too), and how the media enables and rewards bad thinking:

Talent bookers for television shows and reporters tended to call up experts who provided strong, coherent points of view, who saw things in blacks and whites. People who shouted — like, yes, Jim Cramer!

The marketplace of ideas for now doesn’t clear out bad pundits and bad ideas partly because there’s no accountability. We trumpet our successes and ignore failures — or else attempt to explain that the failure doesn’t count because the situation changed or that we were basically right but the timing was off.

Ironically, I checked the book out of the library yesterday. It's pretty serious stuff-- lots of Q coefficients and graphs-- but still is surprisingly readable.

And as soon as I've finished the article I'm working on, I'm going to write a short piece using Tetlock, Robert Burton, and Nassim Taleb, titled "The Evil Futurist's Guide to Being Famous, Successful, and Completely Wrong." Watch this space.

Welcome to the Mad Hatters

Alice at the Mad Hatters

Mad Hatters Tea Party

On modeling

The Guardian has a very interesting essay by figure modeller Yvonne Eller about her work:

But what kind of person becomes a figure model? Must there be some underlying exhibitionism in desperate need of expression? Ian Leake is a fine art photographer, who uses an increasingly rare process of platinum printing to create simple nude compositions that "celebrate beauty". He believes there are three main reasons to become a figure model: "For some models it's a rite of passage into adulthood and control of their lives; others do it for the money; and a few do it because they love creating art."

Often, and certainly in my case, it is all three. Working with passionate, creative artists can be very exciting. [Figure model Ivory] Flame agrees: "There is one photographer I know who is so ardent about every line, cove and crevice in the body. The way he compares them to things is hilarious … he will get so enthusiastic about the light hitting my big toe. He's really fun. And an artist I worked with recently was so inspired by the light and textures captured on my skin. It is so energizing to be part of that vision that is created. It's such a joy working with people like that."...

So what do artists look for in a life model? The ability to hold a pose, clearly. Flexibility, perhaps. But there is far, far more to the role. Photographer Allan Jenkins says: "It's not about size zero, that's for sure. It's about shapes, angles, light, shadows, style and movement. It's the model's ability to create a rapport with the photographer - to be able to take direction well, the ability to feel comfortable in front of the lens, act like a muse ... be inspired and inspire."

Modelling is a collaborative process. It's not about being a blank canvas for an artist to manipulate into art; it's not passive. It's about bringing something to the table. The Figure Model's Guild declares modelling to be "an art form in itself".

I tease [artist Robbie] Wraith by occasionally asking, "Does it look like me yet?" a few minutes into a new sketch or painting. It inevitably does - to an astonishing degree and in a matter of seconds - but Wraith wouldn't say so. He once told me that he wasn't really painting me at all. He was painting his reaction to me - a mixture of himself and myself.

Kids and their crazy Google Earth hacks

Ah, youth:

Teenager Rory McInnes painted a giant phallus on the roof of his parents' West Berkshire mansion, apparently after watching a programme about Google Earth....

It is not the first time the stunt has been tried. In 2006 the Sun reported that "pranksters drew a willy on the roof of a top school" in Teesside that went ­unnoticed until it appeared on Google Earth.

Similarly for the benefit of Google Earth, pupils drew a 6m penis in weedkiller on school playing fields in Southampton in 2007.

Dad's reply when contacted by a newspaper: "It's an April Fool's joke, right? There's no way there's a 60ft phallus on top of my house."

First picture with the new camera

My camera died over the weekend-- I think I took too many pictures of my son feeding chickens, and I was using it in the rain. (The one before it died when I took the kids to the beach and dropped it in the ocean. I really should quit taking pictures of the kids.) So when I got back home, one of the first things I did was figure out what new camera to get.

The old camera, a Canon SD630, lasted about two and a half years, which for me is pretty impressive, because I took it everywhere and banged the heck out of it (and had it repaired once).

I went with another Canon, an SD880. It's got a wide-angle lens that I think I'll quite like. And I won't skip a beat irritating my kids with countless pictures of them.

Weekend at Hidden Villa

This weekend my son and I spent two night at Hidden Villa. It was a trip organized by the parent of a classmate of my son's, and it was us and about half a dozen other families. Hidden Villa was founded by the same people who started Peninsula School (the Duvenecks were amazingly entrepreneurial-- they also were involved in the creation of the Pacific Arts League, and they've immortalized by having a Palo Alto neighborhood named after them), so it has something of a special resonance with Peninsula families.

Hidden Villa is still a working farm, and there are a couple farm stands just to the left of the entrance. There's a pretty large organic garden, chickens (the eggs are excellent, I'm told), and a number of cows, goats and sheep.

via flickr

While the kids were all excited about going camping at Hidden Villa-- they'd all been there on field trips at least once-- we were actually staying at the hostel, which consists of several heated cabins near a terrific lodge. (Basically, any time you get ready for a weekend by going to Costco rather than REI, you can tell it's not going to be real camping.) The lodge is a wonderful building, large and spacious, not particularly luxurious, but incredibly comfortable to be in.

via flickr

And it's one of those spaces that, because of where it's situated, manages to feel wonderfully luxurious. I especially liked the screened-in porch, which for some ancient reason I'm drawn to.

via flickr

We did a potluck dinner the first night, then various of us took charge of the remaining meals. We didn't have a complicated schedule for cleanup, but somehow it all worked out: I think when you're a group of parents of small kids, cleaning up is kind of automatic. The idea of either leaving the dishes for tomorrow, or not doing anything while other people were working, were both kind of unthinkable.

Besides, the lodge has a fabulous kitchen. Propane rather than gas for the stove, which means it heats up more slowly than normal, but otherwise it was a fantastic workspace.

via flickr

Saturday morning we went for a hike, which led (after a refreshing uphill climb) to a stream that the kids found very diverting. It also reminded me that for kids, the most important thing you can bring to keep them happy and uncomplaining isn't lots of water, or good shoes, but other kids. If you're with your parents, everything quickly becomes a drag; if you're with classmates, it's all cool.

via flickr

After the hike and lunch, we went on a tour of the farm. Needless to say, the kids loved the chance to interact with the animals-- pet the goats and sheep, feed the chickens, that sort of thing.

via flickr

I realized at a certain point that, in addition to the obvious appeal of a beautiful natural location, there were two things I really liked about the weekend, and it got me thinking.

The first was the very unforced combination of quiet and company. I was with a dozen other adults and a lot of kids, but I never had the feeling that it was a strain: everyone got along very well, but things were unstructured enough-- and there were always enough parents around who could keep an eye on the kids, who paid us essentially no mind whatsoever and formed their own self-regulating tribe-- to allow you to wander off on your own. I enjoyed spending time with them because they're really nice people, but also because I didn't have the sense that anyone had to be entertained.

The kids were also really easy to deal with. They're generally a very well-behaved bunch, but you put them together, and they essentially seal themselves off from adults, lose any real interest in any of us adults, and take care of themselves until dinner. In the evening, they'd play games, or cluster around whatever parents were reading (everyone, and I mean every single child, brought a couple Bone books, so it was a virtual Bone-reading marathon all weekend). Very different from how things can be at home: my kids are pretty independent, but I felt like I spent less time interacting with ten kids there than I do with my own at home.

It was an interesting experience, and it made me wonder: why in the world don't we do this all the time? If kids are easier to deal with in larger numbers (a counterintuitive proposition, but maybe not that inaccurate), why do we insist on (or default to) taking care of them ourselves? Maybe the cohousing movement is onto something....

via flickr

The second thing that made me really think was the realization that part of what I liked about the weekend was that it offered some of the same rewards of traveling: it offered a chance to strip away life to a few essentials, and to live with a degree of thoughtfulness and enforced simplicity-- but without the frantic, focused edge than I have to maintain when I'm on the road. At one point, when I was sitting in the lodge and playing Go (the parents include a number of really serious Go players, and I got my ass kicked all weekend), it struck me that for these two days at least, I had effectively traded dealing with stuff for interacting with people. It was a good deal.

A few months ago I went through a phase of throwing out old stuff, and as I've lost weight I've been shedding clothes that are too large for me. But I now wonder: could I get rid of another 95% of what I own, keep a core of essential stuff, and have a better life? Do I need all those books from graduate school? Am I really any more likely to finish Barbara Stafford's Body Criticism than I am to get through the rest of Normal Cantor's the Civilization of the Middle Ages? Of course not. So why am I keeping them? Things like travel and this past weekend suggest that it would be possible for me to radically reduce the number of objects I have in my life, and not really miss them.

via flickr

I'm not about to renounce all worldly goods, and I don't want to sound like a cross between Thoreau and Wigan Ludgate (the hacker-turned-recluse in William Gibson's Count Zero). But would I be happier with a much smaller, thoughtfully designed, and ruthlessly efficient personal infrastructure?

Could one live like that all the time? Out of the equivalent of a couple, say, a couple large suitcases? At what point does owning less make you richer? Can you, in essence, trade things for more friends? I'm not sure, but it's worth trying to figure out. Like I said, a monastic renunciation of worldly goods isn't in my future; but maybe a lighter life would be more worth living.

New banner

I've changed the banner on the blog. I really liked the Budapest picture, but I no longer look like the person walking down the street, looking for the e-mail with directions to Kitchen Budapest.

The new banner, in contrast, is from a picture taken this weekend at Hidden Villa. I was camping with my son (though obviously not roughing it too much); the trip was really wonderful, I wanted to commemorate it, and I was bothered by the increasing obsolescence of the old banner. So....

Cat and oranges

In some countries that would be the beginning of a recipe. I suspect soy sauce and either oregano or catnip would also appear.

Quote of the day

From Kung Fu Monkey:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Maybe it was good for me that I was never able to get into either when I was fourteen (I got through The Hobbit, barely, and couldn't get past page 50 of Fellowship of the Ring). Heinlein and Asimov were more to my taste at the time.

[via Balloon Juice]

Today's Peninsula picture

My daughter on her way to the library this morning.

I'm taking the weekend off and going camping with my son. There's no cell phone reception where we'll be, so I'll be completely unwired. More removed from my digital self than I am when I go to London or Singapore. A weird idea. I've packed clothes, food, sleeping gear, and Fagels' translation of the Iliad for myself and several Bone graphic novels for my son.

Back on Sunday.

I'm not the only one who has trouble talking to today's youth

A very funny exchange among Wonkette writers over using the term "Bonus Army" to tag a post about AIG:

The five-minute silence after the joke is what makes it COMEDY GOLD.

Great literal moments in music video

My friend Jess made this "Great Moments in Literal Video," but will probably be too modest to talk it up (even though she's The Onion Girl and one of the geniuses behind Sad Guys on Trading Floors).

I'm especially gratified to see lots of bands that I recognize from my youth-- Tears for Fears, Billy Idol, a-ha. It warms my heart.

Though I have to confess it was only with the end of the Creed video, and the line "I need Bruce Willis" that I began to suspect it was a joke. Once we got to the Beatles I was clear, but it just goes to show how little I've listened to rock on the radio in the last, oh, fifteen or so years.

Keep Calm and Carry On redux

After yesterday's excitement it was fitting to see this piece in the Guardian about one of my favorite posters:

[I]n the spring of 1939, it was an anonymous civil servant who was entrusted with finding the slogan for a propaganda poster intended to comfort and inspire the populace should, heaven forbid, the massed armies of Nazi Germany ever cross the Channel....

The first [poster], designed to stiffen public resolve ahead of likely gas attacks and bombing raids, was printed in a run of more than a million and read: Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory. The second, identically styled, stated: Freedom Is In Peril....The third... was for the real crisis: invasion. A few may have made their way on to select officials' walls, but the vast majority of the British public never got to see it. This poster enjoined: Keep Calm And Carry On.

And suddenly these days, it's everywhere, from homes to pubs to government offices. The Lord Chamberlain's Office at Buckingham Palace, the prime minister's strategy unit at No 10, the Serious Fraud Office, the US embassy in Belgium, the vice chancellor of Cambridge University, the Emergency Planning Office at Nottingham council and the officers' mess in Basra have all ordered posters. Even David Beckham has the T-shirt, we are told.

It really is a terrific piece of work. Whoever came up with the slogan was (at least for five seconds of his or her life) a genius.

via Keep Calm Gallery

Break-in

There's been a small epidemic of break-ins in our usually safe neighborhood-- robberies when people are away at work. Yesterday it was our turn.

I got home with the kids about 5:30, and as I was pulling up to the house, saw the front door open. I left the kids outside, went in, and pretty quickly it was obvious that we'd been hit sometime during the day. Of course, I called the police immediately, they came and did a report, then I spent 45 minutes on hold with Allstate, waiting to file a report.

The thieves were very selective. Lots of little electronics (games, the Wii, a couple iPods and DS Lites), some silver, and a significant portion of my wife's jewelry, most of which (like 99.9% of the jewelry in the world) has a much higher sentimental than financial value. But lots of little things add up to a non-trivial chunk of change.

I lost a couple things-- in particular some nice headphones a Danish think-tank gave me a couple years ago-- but the stuff I cared about was untouched, mainly because the burglars didn't care to take books (which are all inscribed) or DVDs (for whatever reason), and I don't know enough about jewelry to have any. Later I realized that most of the highly portable and valuable things I care about are in my garage office, or in my pockets or about my person. If I were mugged I'd lose my entire personal data infrastructure.

But this was like the twister that leaves one trailer untouched and carries its neighbor to the next county (or nearest pawn shop).

An odd piece of karma. Or like a flu that hits everyone, but leaves one parent well enough to take care of the rest of the family.

The experience makes me want programmable RFID tags, so I could more easily mark small, expensive things that don't necessarily have unique serial numbers. And better locks on the windows. At least the latter I can get at Home Depot.

Grrr.

More on Facebook portraits

Kazys Varnelis comments on Facebook portraits:

The Facebook self-portrait makes everyone a superstar, famous for no particular reason, but notable for their embrace of fame. So it is that on Facebook, I see friends who I never thought of as self-conscious take photographs of remarkable humor, intelligence, and wry self-deprecation. The Facebook self-portrait insists upon mastery over one's self-image and the instant feedback of digital photography allows us this. Not happy? Well, try again.

Long ago, when I was in high school, I read a book on the Bloomsbury group. I remember that the caption underneath a group photograph in the book (whose title now escapes me) pointed out that even in this über-hip clique, only one member was relaxed, only one understood that the right pose for the camera was a calculated non-pose. Our idea of the self can be read through such images: from the stiff formality of the painted portrait to the relaxed pose of the photograph to the calculated self-consciousness of the Facebook digital image. Each time, the self becomes a more cunning manipulator of the media. Each time, the self becomes more conscious of being defined outside itself, in a flow of impulses rather than a notion of inner essence.

So it was that in reading the first article, I felt that the author missed his friend Caroline's point when she told him "You can never be too cool for your past." As your images catch up to you in network culture, you have to become the consummate manipulator of your image, imagery from the past being less an indictment of present flaws and more an indicator of your ability to remake yourself.

Yet more fencing class

Getting in some swinging before class

Finishing up

Still haven't left. But we're closer to the ground...

Not making much progress yet

The quest to leave begins

On drawing

"You cannot draw a face that doesn't have an expression." (Douglass Carmichael)

Digital irony

The other day at child care, someone asked my daughter a question. She answered, in a singsong voice, "For more information, go to double-you double-you double-you dot Seth is standing right there why don't you ask him dot com!"

If she'd added a TinyURL it would have taken her to the psychologist immediately. As it was, I thought it was just amusing.

Douglas Adams on repairs

From the late Douglas Adams (whose birthday would have been today):

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

[via tingilinde]

China, land of different collective tacit knowledge, here I come

I'm on the Caltrain from San Francisco to Palo Alto. I spent the day here getting a visa to go to China at the end of the month. I'm planning to be there for about a week, mainly in Beijing.

The Chinese consulate is located on the edge of Japantown. Today it had police barricades and several fairly bored-looking cops, and a couple Falun Gong demonstrators. I don't know if this is normal (I suspect the demonstrators kind of come with the place), or whether the police are here because of the Tibetan anniversary; however, the only excitement was inside, and caused by a few irate people yelling about their service. I got there at about 10:45, and joined a long line of people; initially I was seriously worried about whether I'd be able to get a visa today, but quickly realized that the line was moving relatively quickly.

Once inside I was struck by something else: that while my first impression was that it was pretty chaotic-- lots of people, several very long lines, a certain number of raised voices, an intercom that didn't work THAT well-- after a few minutes I could see that it was, in its way, pretty speedy. There were hundreds of people there, and all things considered, everything moved rather fast. Whatever social cues I follow that tell me that things are going well or poorly didn't quite apply here.

It put me in mind of Harry Collins' description of tacit knowledge. As he explains it, there's contingent tacit knowledge, which is stuff we don't talk about for various reasons but could. Somatic tacit knowledge, in contrast, is physical: putting on clothes is a good example (if you watch young children, they're figuring out how to interpret various kinds of resistance, and figure out that THIS means the sleeve is turned inside-out, THAT means the collar is just to the left, etc.). Finally, there's collective tacit knowledge, which you can only get by immersing yourself in a society. Riding a bike requires somatic tacit knowledge; riding a bike in traffic requires collective tacit knowledge; riding a bike in Copenhagen, Davis CA, and Mumbai requires the same somatic knowledge, but verrry different collective knowledge.

There are social signs we learn that tell us whether a place or situation is safe or unsafe, chaotic or orderly, quiet or tense: how people stand, how they speak, how frustrated or angry they act, whether there are kids or old people present, how friendly the guards or soldiers are, etc. etc. ad infinitum. The ability to read those signs is one thing that distinguishes insiders from outsiders, because they vary from culture to culture. (Not knowing them is one of the things that can get you into trouble in a strange place; and their comforting presence is one of the things that you pay for when you stay in places like business hotels.) Making sense of the consulate, I realized, required a slightly different body of collective knowledge than I apply when I'm in downtown Palo Alto. Once I got that, I was able to see that it was actually a smoother operation than I'd first realized, the presence of loudly angry aged Chinese women aside.

And indeed, I got in right under the wire: I was the last visa applicant they took before breaking for lunch. The whole process took about 45 seconds: I handed in my paperwork, picture, and passport, had a brief discussion about whether I wanted rush service (I did), and was told to come back in a few hours. Sure enough, that afternoon (after lunch in Japantown, which seems now to largely consist of Korean restaurants, and some work at Cafe Murano, a very cool little place on Steiner) they had it ready.

The visa takes up a full page in my passport, for some reason. Whenever I got to the EU, I'm lucky to get stamped; Singapore and Malaysia have nice-looking entry and exit stamps; but China and South Africa take up whole pages in my passport. There's probably some contingent social knowledge that explains why this is.

A headline from any time in the last 20 years

Today's New York Times: "Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times."

Hmmm.

Good study habits start early!

But the DVDs of Ikiru, 2001, and The Kingdom are mine. So are the Duran Duran CDs

Bob Geldof on the metaphor of the "dark continent"

Via my friend Gregg, this bit by Bob Geldof:

Africa is not the Dark Continent as so often described by writers from the gloomy northern skies of Europe. Not the Dark Continent at all. It is the Luminous Continent. Drenched in sun, pounded by heat and shimmering in its blinding glare. And within this immense continent, deserts with rolling seas of sand, tropics shrouded with jungles, equators dense with rainforest and coasts with more animals and fish than seems possible. There are more people, languages and cultures here than anywhere else on our planet. Africa is quite simply the most extraordinary, beautiful and luminous place on earth.

Most of us continue to see Africa as an object, a single, blighted place burning in the relentless, glaring heat, for others it occupies a romantic space in the imagination of child-like primitives and wild, beautiful creatures. For yet more of us it’s the dark side of our minds, the impenetrable place, the unknowable mind. And, yes, all of this is partially true too much of the time. But there are other Africas.

Astronaut and Red Carpet Massacre

Tonight at our local public library, while the kids were busy with their errands-- my daughter needed books on sea turtles, and my son is obsessed with the Bone graphic novels-- I wandered over to the grown-up music and movie section. The idea of being able to rent-- I mean, check out-- DVDs and CDs for free is kind of mind-boggling, and as someone who can spend hours trawling the Internet Archive for multiple versions of "Little Wing" or comparing the 87 Grateful Dead performances of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," it could be kind of a dangerous thing.

I started with two recent Duran Duran CDs, Astronaut and Red Carpet Massacre, largely on the principle that I would never, ever buy a Duran Duran CD, but recognize that mixed in with the glossy but pointless pop songs is the occasional masterpiece ("Skin Trade" still works as a 4-minute landscape of athletic decadence, and the aching, soaring "Ordinary World" blows me away every time I hear it).

Neither CD is brilliant, but each has its moments. Astronaut's production is smoother (it sounds to me like an entire CD meant to be played during the opening credits of a James Bond movie-- who says the concept album is dead?), and "Reach Up for the Sunrise" and "Point of No Return" are quite good; "Bedroom Toys" is also pleasantly naughty. "Falling Down" on Red Carpet Massacre is pleasantly upbeat.

It'll be interesting exploring this. Learning about three decent songs on two CDs, for free, is a pretty good deal.

Among her people

My daughter has to do a report on sea turtles. I found it striking, and encouraging, that she wanted to go to the library rather than just Google.

Leaving Peninsula

"The second failure of academia"

Having spent so much time thinking about young Ph.D.s developing postacademic lives, it never really occurred to me that there would be similar problems of professional marginality at the end of one's career. But Siris makes an argument that the failure of philosophy-- which, one imagines, would be second only to history as a scholarly activity in which age is a virtue rather than a disadvantage-- to find a place for emeritus scholars in the profession represents "the second failure of academia:"

[E]veryone assumes that retirement is and must be the end of the road: that the only reason you'd retire is because you've become dead wood. And no one has recognized that this is a symptom of a profound failure on our part, one almost as profound as the failure to prevent 'adjunctification'.

It is utterly absurd that we have no standard options after retirement for senior philosophers who still want to be actively involved in philosophy. If anything, retirement should standardly be the next stage after tenure, not an exit from the field but another kind of removal of constraints.

Perhaps we get something vaguely like this in how some departments treat emeritus professors; but only vaguely, and only like. We are failing people at the end as we are at the beginning.

But what gets me is that everyone takes it for granted: suggest retirement and it is assumed you are suggesting uselessness -- and, given the way the system's set up, that's a not unreasonable assumption. But it needs to be brought to consciousness that this is a failure that needs to be overcome, not a reasonable feature of the landscape.

How many fields are like this? Most of them, I'll bet. And it reflects our somewhat schizophrenic attitudes towards age, experience, and work: we alternately talk about experience and skill being the most valuable things an organization can have, but at the same time sometimes imagine real innovation only coming from twentysomethings who sleep under their desks. Even in academia, some fields-- mathematics and theoretical physics, for example-- assume that the really brilliant work is done by the young, and if you don't have a major discovery by the time you're 30, you never will.

This idea struck a chord for personal reasons. My father just retired from his professorship at the Colorado School of Mines, to take advantage of some new professional opportunities, and to give himself more time to work on writing projects. His impulse to see retirement not as a chance to kick back, but to do the work he really wants, is hardly unusual. And I expect if I ever get to that age, I'll approach retirement the same way. Assuming retirement, or something like it, still exists.

Actually, Theodore Roszak makes a really good point in his book The Longevity Revolution (who I visited a few years ago, and whose work I talk about) that the concept of retirement as a period of time that you could do something with is a very modern invention. It used to be that you were likely to die within a few years of retirement (assuming you made it that far), and for part of that time were likely to be an invalid. In contrast, now people regularly face years or decades of life in retirement, and fewer and fewer of them are content with the idea of just running out the clock in Florida (and more and more can't afford it anyway). So if academia is behind the curve in recognizing post-retirement as a productive time, that's probably not a surprise-- though anything that wastes talent is always a shame.

[Via Sympoze, which itself looks like an interesting data-point.]

Maybe my new favorite picture of my son

He lost at tooth at REI today, and had to show it to me. He was pretty proud of it!

via flickr

Me and my son out biking

This is from last weekend, but I just got the pictures downloaded off my camera. And we were biking today, too.

via flickr

Cats in the tent

They're outdoor cats now. But not very outdoor...

Back to fencing

Once again with feeling!

At the Foto Nova 19 opening

A friend is exhibiting at this show. Interesting time!

You how how people say "There are no dumb questions?"

Don't believe them.

Jess IMed me this link.

I have no idea what Bigger Than Cheeses is. And I should know by now that talking to Jess gets me into trouble.

Why Michael Lewis is one of my favorite writers

From his Vanity Fair piece on Iceland after the (financial) meltdown:

[W]e arrive at the 101 Hotel, owned by the wife of one of Iceland’s most famous failed bankers. It’s cryptically named (101 is the city’s richest postal code), but instantly recognizable: hip Manhattan hotel. Staff dressed in black, incomprehensible art on the walls, unread books about fashion on unused coffee tables—everything to heighten the social anxiety of a rube from the sticks but the latest edition of The New York Observer. It’s the sort of place bankers stay because they think it’s where the artists stay.

Extraordinary what can happen when people realize they can still be Vikings, only now with banks instead of ships.

There's also this smart observation:

One of the hidden causes of the current global financial crisis is that the people who saw it coming had more to gain from it by taking short positions than they did by trying to publicize the problem.

The whole piece is well worth reading.

More proof of Dahlia Lithwick's brilliance

Her identification of the condundrum in Caperton v. A.T. Massey:

No judge in the world believes herself to be biased. But no judge in the world wants a Justice Brent Benjamin sitting anywhere near her case, either. Ultimately, the high court is going to have to decide whether Caperton is about us or them. Or, more precisely, whether they want to continue to believe in their own irrefutable divinity or create some structures to shore up our belief in their divinity.

For those who didn't hear Nina Totenberg talk about the case this morning, Lithwick provides a crisp summary (below the fold).

"We can hike to the curb from here"

?????

At Cafe Barrone. We'll go home soon!

After the library, we stopped at Keplers to get Elizabeth some bookmarks (it's a long story, but the sad thing is, she earned them), then to Cafe Barrone for a late dessert.

There were LOTS of people there, so we ended up at a table in the very far corner. But it worked out.

Out late with the kids at Keplers

I had to explain to my son the difference between a bookstore and a library. Fortunately he now seems like both, and the idea of being able to check out LOTS and LOTS of books is just as cool as buying a few.

Recent musical discoveries

Three music-related things that I've meant to blog about, and will just wrap up together.

More on Charlotte Martin. A couple weeks ago I discovered something I had downloaded from the Internet Archive but never listened to: a cover of "Wild Horses" by Charlotte Martin. Actually listening to it, and appreciating her amazing solo performance-- it takes guts to sing a song that well-known just with your piano, and to sing a good part of it a capella-- led me, in short order, to download a bunch of her other concerts, and finally two of her CDs, Stromata and On Your Shore.

She has a lot of great songs, but I keep coming back to three (in addition to "Wild Horses"). One is "Four Walls," which you can check out through the Internet Archive. The second is "Limits of Our Love." Everyone has influences, and it's clear that Martin's biggest is Kate Bush. What fascinates me about "Limits" is that opens with a rhythm track that's audaciously similar to the beginning of "Running Up That Hill." (In fact, she performs a version of "Limits" that segues into "Running.") If it takes one kind of guts to make "Wild Horses" your own, it takes another kind to write a song that so clearly references your hero's most famous song-- but then heads in a very different direction.

Finally there's "Just Before Dawn," ethereal and eerie song that sounds like something by Henryk Gorecki. it's a reminder that yes, Martin studied opera in college.

Steve Ross. A friend who chants with him (she's very Southern California) recommended Ross' work to me. I know nothing about this kind of music, but I find it surprisingly accessible: Ross is a studio musician of some note (he played with all four of the Beatles, as well as Fleetwood Mac and other household names) before turning to yoga and chanting. I expected something like Ravi Shankar, but this is more like a cross between chant and Christopher Cross-- in a good way. The live version of "Bolo Bolo" is especially outstanding.

Economist on music and evolution. The Economist has a long essay on the current thinking on evolution and music.

What appetite drives the proliferation of music to the point where the average American teenager spends 1½-2½ hours a day—an eighth of his waking life—listening to it?... The Shakespearean theory, that music is at least one of the foods of love, has a strong claim to be true. The more mellifluous the singer, the more dexterous the harpist, the more mates he attracts.

A second idea that is widely touted is that music binds groups of people together. The resulting solidarity, its supporters suggest, might have helped bands of early humans to thrive at the expense of those that were less musical.

Both of these ideas argue that musical ability evolved specifically—that it is, if you like, a virtual organ as precisely crafted to its purpose as the heart or the spleen. The third hypothesis, however, is that music is a cross between an accident and an invention. It is an accident because it is the consequence of abilities that evolved for other purposes. And it is an invention because, having thus come into existence, people have bent it to their will and made something they like from it.

Sunday morning workplace

Finishing an essay for Vodafone on tinkering while Heather and the kids are in Golden Gate Park and the California Academy of Sciences. Thought a different place might be usefully stimulating.