Happy Birthday

Look who is 15. He's a little old man.

We love you little man.

thinking up new things

I have to think stuff up.  I have to think it up when I don't feel like it and it's almost always on other's schedules.  Which is probably good because you just tell yourself, I need to do this now.

A lot of this has changed for me over time and in coming up with volumes of ideas I've become more curious about how much effort should be spent defining the problem and how much is for  generating solutions to the defined problem.  Sometimes it's good to ignore parts of the definition you've been given.  Or ignore it entirely.  

Finding a third way no one had considered can come out of working hard instead of just thinking so much at the beginning.  Do something.

I used to be much more about defining the problem and now I'm not because often it's wide ranging solutions that lead to new ideas.  So I sort of define it a little and then start working.

Then you define it some more and work some more.  It's really hard to invent things and I think defining problems too narrowly never gets you to fresh inventions.

Just sayin'.

ample, lucky, old

I like how pictures change with words on them.  It's up to you to decide what they mean.  If they mean anything at all. 

facts, belief, knowing

I hate the phrase 'information overload'.  I don't know if there is such a thing because basically, I think people just shut it all off long before they get overloaded.  So I divide the information into a few categories those are my categories so they work for me and they are:  

1. information I might need and can look up later (mental note).  

2. information I can't be bothered with.  

3. stories I might pay attention to that change a belief.

Number one is easy and a person simply inherits the ability to either store lots of this kind of thing or they don't.  You remember where to look or you don't. I think we inherit a level of ability to memorize and categorize and then some things get in the way to diminish it so you can't remember where you put things.  Being distracted, emotional preoccupations, or the use of drugs and alcohol will eventually make a person not function at a very high level.  But I think you start out with a certain capacity and then life happens and you can either learn to learn or you sort of get dumb by accident, bad habits or laziness. Being able to solve problems means you can go in and recall things and then reorganize these ordinary facts in a way no one had considered before.  Kind of a big deal.  I think it's strange no one talks much about this, I think most people don't like to compare how well they function in this area because the educational system gives you your fill of it.  Except for "Are you smarter than a 5th grader" of course.  You know you can play it online now.

I'd say number two ranges from advanced physics to how to cook food I don't like and wouldn't eat and probably 97 percent of what I unknowingly encounter or simply don't understand in a day fits here, it beads up like water droplets that run off.  Might be willful stupidity on my part.  Apparently older people are less able to tune stuff out, they take in more information actually than younger people.   This is often mistaken for the inability to multitask.  The more you take in the more patterns you can see.  The more patterns you see, the better decisions you make.

Number one includes some big stuff.  Like fables, parables, stories, things alluded to in poems and my favorite: good advertising.  Well think about it.  You tell an associative story that uses everyday experiences to change someone's belief about a product or service.  How different is that than any other way we're sold a belief?

I mean there are some ads that give me reasons why I ought to think something is better and then there are the sorts of things politicians say to scare me into behaving a certain way and I just don't want to be argued into things.  You can't argue someone into believing something and beliefs are more powerful than facts.

So if you want a thing believed, start with a story a person can relate to that either applies directly to it or is around it.  Might just be pictures.  Or a film with no sound.  Or two lines of poetry that say something true.

Like Shakespeare: My salad days,  When I was green in judgement.

go.

I never said it would be a cold day in hell before I started a blog, but as it happens, it is cold and it's a kind of hell out there.  And so here we go.  I've got no plans to set out a 'brief' for this thing, I'm going to write about what I'm seeing and thinking partly because I have this sense that we're in uncharted territory or as that Rick Warren guy said in his invocation (more on this later I'm sure) we're at a 'hinge point' in history. 

So it makes sense to try to write about it.

I finally feel like the government isn't out to do me ill these days but I still have the sense that things got so bad so quickly that it isn't something solvable.  Especially by the government. Does this matter to just some guy like me?  Well, I think the election proved that it does.

The President posted a weekly address, this time by podcast on www.whitehouse.gov  and I'm so impressed to be able to watch it on my iPhone anywhere.  This moment in history in the palm of my hand.  Makes you kind of need to take a breath.  I mean, Rihanna on my phone is one thing, but the leader of the free world is pretty special.

It's such a time.  Tens of thousands getting laid off and then this thing on my iPhone.  It's hard to take in so you just mutely observe and hope you can hold some part of it in your head for later.  You have to love paradox to get up in the morning.

And I do.

I'm sick of filth and tired of sub zero temperatures