There’s a surge of updates, so here’s my piece.

I just came back from Louisiana-and-surroundings to try to help, where I went with Flame and two friends from work. Including the drive, we had six days to lend our services however we could, and they were pleasantly full of frustratingly senseless running around. We filled out all the right forms, and contacted a dozen other organizations besides, but all our leads fell through. The morning after flopping ourselves into a motel at the end of the 18-hour drive, we discovered the Louisiana BP crisis command center in Houma, LA, and slid into a training at the last moment. For the next four days, we peddled our training to dozens of contractors, broke into two or three “bases”, almost got hired to pick up oil, almost got to volunteer at a wildlife rescue group, and ultimately were unable to help in a single way. Almost everyone seemed excited to have volunteers, and then told us to contact the same three numbers to actually get started. We’re going to write up something more thorough in the next week about what we learned.

The day I went back to work, I gave my two weeks’ notice, narrowly dodging a promotion to project manager. Apparently it’s a good time to go, because every possible organizational change is currently being made. I’m relieved to have my imminent departure known, and my pile of work seems lighter now. Flame and I are going to have a joint Going-Away, Tag-Sale, Flame’s-Half-Birthday party in a couple weeks, do some frantic packing and re-painting, and head to California on the 23rd. We’ll be in wine country, with my family, for the weekend, San Francisco for a day, Seattle for two days, and Vancouver for three. Flame’s father feels guilty for not bringing her on a trip to see the world cup (he got tickets for giving a talk), so he’s bankrolling movers for us when we get back.

Workman Publishing Company
Attn: Editorial Department
225 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014-4381

To whom it may concern:

I was thrilled when I recently encountered the book How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Successful Dog Trainers, by Karen Salmansohn, and published by Workman Publishing. I am interested in producing a sister self-help book, to help men use modern dog training techniques on the women in their lives. As both a professional dog trainer with over ten years experience and a blogger on relationship issues with thousands of devoted readers, I believe I am uniquely qualified to produce this work.

I worry that many men, hoping to help their own women learn to behave, have purchased Ms. Salmansohn’s book, only to realize that her approach does not apply equally well to women. While women are like dogs in many unexpected ways, the techniques used for dogs must be translated differently. Mistranslating those techniques can result in adverse reactions and ill-mannered or absent women. Done correctly and with the most modern, sophisticated dog-training secrets, even beginners can produce obedient and dutiful women in 21 days or less! I am happy to say that I have used these techniques personally and helped many others use them to stop their women from misbehaving, talking-back, or running away.

Below is a tenable chapter listing for this sister volume:

Introduction: Biology and learning to see your lovers as a dog
1. Purebreds and Mutts: The two breeds of women and how to judge them
2. Going to the Pound: Finding women whose history and habits make her easy to train
3. Basic Housebreaking: Woman-proofing your house, locks, cages, and learned helplessness
4. Punishments and Rewards: The “outbursts and forgiveness” approach to bad behavior
5. Learning to Beg: The joys of submissiveness and showing her who is the “big dog”
6. Sit and Shake: Training your woman to please you in bed
7. Roll Over and Play Dead: Using conditioned women for your financial success
8. How to Put Her Down: Techniques when you are ready for a new pet
9. The Joy of Kennels: How to keep several women in your home

If you would like, I can produce a sample chapter or the introduction, but I am prepared to enter a contract and begin the book immediately. I believe that I can complete this work in approximately six months, and my financial needs are flexible.

I look forward to working with you soon!

Sincerely,
[]

(Here’s the scanned letter, for the post when they reply!)

I visited Boston last weekend and attended (amongst other events) a small reunion of the Experimental Study Group, my old haunt at school. I had the same conversation with nearly everyone: “What’s your PhD program going to be in?” followed by, “So, what’s Sustainable Development?”

I usually said that sustainable development was like international development, but done sustainably. In other words, it was about identify the problems of poor, developing countries, and helping them improve both themselves and their environment. The vision goes much deeper than that, but our words for talking about it are broken.

A few weeks ago, the Economist had an article about Antoine van Agtmael, the guy who coined the term “emerging markets” (Schumpeter, “An emerging challenge”). The first paragraph suggested that it wanted to question Mr. van Agtmael’s understanding of the developing world. The last sentence revisited that criticism, and everything in between was a somewhat fawning discussion of the coining of terms for the developing world. “The third world” connoted people wallowing in soviet mud; “the developing world” suggests the heavy role of government and policy-making by developed countries, which is always distasteful to economists. And so, “the emerging market” was born.

The article missed the most important problem with these phrases. Terms like “emerging” and “developing” suggest that other countries are like unformed clay, which a benevolent hand of state or capital can help form into a new people. We need to recognize that the clay has been cast, as people with bent backs, disrespected traditions, and savaged land. These are the worlds that Colonialism has wrought, through war and manipulation. Our words for describing poor countries entirely shy away from the actual problems of these countries: their people are poor, their societies are unjust, and their environment is in ruin.

I am not going into sustainable development. I am learning International Revitalization. Revitalization is more than a set of tactics. It’s a worldview that includes major changes in both rich and poor countries. It calls for a world where international cooperation is pervasive, diversity is cherished, and our decisions are based on long-term and eco-centric goals. International Revitalization is about taking the modest steps needed to eliminate world hunger, protect habitats, and secure family planning. We have the answers; now we can all be revitalists to make this a world we can be proud of.

I need to write about my weekends camping at Monongahela and running around Boston, but for now, check out this slick comic I found:

Make your own preferential voting races! Use them to make decisions in groups, to keep track of personal priorities, to decide where to go to dinner with friends! Try it out!

Preferential voting allows you to rank all possible candidates, and then applies an “instant run-off” scheme to get the final winner. As a result, you can vote your actual preference, even if you don’t think the candidate has a good chance of winning. Candidates are eliminated from the bottom, and when just two are left, the voting results accurately reflect how much each candidate would get in our normal “two party” voting system.

Vote on How I should improve the site next and See the results.

It will record your vote, based on your IP address, so you can go back and change it later.

This month’s Scientific American has an article on a new process for rejuvenating cells (“Your Inner Healers” by Konnad Hochedlinger). Technically, a simple cocktail of genes has been discovered that can reprogram an adult cell to have the pluripotency of embryonic cells. These cells have a healing ability unknown to the adult body, like “a Fountain of Youth to escape the consequences of aging and disease.”

It seems likely that within our lifetime, we (or at least those who can pay) will have full access to this power of rejuvenation. Which brings me to my question. Suppose by a simple process you could reverse aging, as much as you want. Your new stem cells would find the most worn-out of your adult cells, and replace them with shiny new ones. As a consequence, however, you would lose an equal part of the experience stored throughout your body, in a kind of fading away. You could become 20 years old again, but you would not be a sixty-year-old in a 20-year-old body. You would be a twenty-year-old, emotionally and intellectually, with vague remembrances of the 20th century.

Would you do it? How many years, and how many times? Would you live forever, eternally young and eternally forgetful?

Also, Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel (author of Dykes to Watch Out For) is phenomenal. Intertwining threads of family and sexuality, lost in a forest of literary exploration, return again and again on ever deeper levels. Alison’s history unfolds in a gorgeous water-color, multimedia, cinematic way that only sequential art is capable of. I want to be every character in that book.

This gem is from the Baha’i writings, from Shoghi Effendi to a believer as a method of finding a solution to problems using prayer.

Step 1. Pray and meditate about it. Use the prayers of the Manifestations as they have the greatest power. Then remain in the silence of contemplation for a few minutes.

Many pray, but do not remain for the last half of the first step. Some who meditate arrive at a decision but fail to hold it. Few have the determination to carry the decision through, still fewer have the confidence that the right thing will come to their need. But how many remember to act as though it had all been answered? How true are these words– “Greater than the prayer is the spirit in which it is uttered” and greater than the way it is uttered is the spirit in which it is carried out.

I’m going to New York!

Granted, I was going before, but now I have a place to go! Columbia provides housing at a discounted rate, if you’re willing to take whatever they give you. Fortunately, Flame and I count as partners, since we have a lease and a joint bank account. So we’re eligible for couple’s housing. And we got it.

‘It’ is a bizarrely-shaped *one bedroom* apartment on the Upper West Side, for only slightly more than we’re paying now for our *studio*. Take a look:

It’s right on the edge of Columbia’s blocks, a block from a park, a few blocks to the trains, and generally perfect.

I move in the first week of August, when our “Math Camp” starts (a mandatory month of morning classes). Who can come to a housewarming?

I’m clearing out the books for which I feel no connection (which is about 2% of my library, of which I’ve only ready about 1/3)! The following are Science Fiction books that you can have for the cost of shipping them to you. Except where noted, all are in decent condition, with one thing missing: the front cover.

• Ray Bradbury: The Toynbee Convector
• Robert Daley: Year of the Dragon
• John Dalmas: The Yngling and The Circle of Power — has front cover
• Gordon R. Dickson: Beyond the Dar Al-Harb
• Gordon R. Dickson: The Far Call
• Paul Dickson: The Future File
• Harry Harrison: Winter in Eden
• Robert E. Howard: Heroes of Bear Creek
• Ira Levin: This Perfect Day — no back or front cover
• Dick Lochte: Sleeping Dog
• Anne McCaffrey: Dinosaur Planet Survivors
• Pat Murphy: The City Not Long After
• Andre Norton: The Gate of the Cat
• Steve Perry: The 97th Step
• Frederik Pohl: Narabedla, Ltd.
• Kim Stanley Robinson: The Gold Coast
• Mike Shupp: With Fate Conspire
• Norman Spinrad: Bug Jack Barron

[Edit: I’ll BookMooch these with anyone, if you’d rather not pay the postage.]

When I first became a vegetarian, I couldn’t imagine being truly satisfied with just vegetable dishes. Now days, I’m fast approaching a purely whole foods diet. My groceries for the past two weeks have been have been 90% fruits and vegetables, about half of them organic. I think the most processed thing I bought was a tube of polenta.

Flame and I cook almost every night (I love living with an almost-professional cook), and bring our leftovers to work for lunch almost every day. If we don’t have enough leftovers, our go-to supplement is Sweet Greens (a yupplification of a salad bar with a big local section). Except Friday, when we get delicious burritos.

The other developers eat out or take out every day, drink copious soda, eat meat– my life is so divorced from that. Now if I can just get Flame to stop force-feeding my sweets…