RelentlesslyOptimistic

This Is Why You're A Temp

Lifted whole from Joe. My. God. (even the title)

"I'm sorry but her voicemail isn't working and I'm really too busy to write down your phone number."

Thinking and Paper

A thread at "Ask Edward Tufte" led to this quote from a review by Malcolm Gladwell of "The Myth of the Paperless Office" originally published in the New Yorker :

"The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven't yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head. Kidd writes that many of the people she talked to use the papers on their desks as contextual cues to "recover a complex set of threads without difficulty and delay"

Anyone who knows me understands why I like that. Still, I often describe my work as "surfing the chaos," so the complexity and uncertainty certainly fit with the quote. I wonder (hopefully) if my problem with traditional organizing models haven't worked for me because they were heirarchical rather than spatial? I'll have to think about that one, and see if I can find or devise a more spatially-based organizing system. Anyone have suggestions?

Secrets and Dreams: "I HAVE THROWN 47 BOTTLES INTO A LAKE"

"Dreaming, he remembers. Awake, he writes the question on his palm. Dreaming, he reads the answer he holds. Awake, you discover his recreated hand. Dreaming, you find the quest he grasps. Awake... you forget."

FOUND: Hand in Bottle
I have found several corked bottles floating in Clopper Lake. Each one contains an image of a hand suspended by a thread.

A picture of three bottles was included, with "a picture I took of one of the bottles before I went to the boat house, rented a boat and retrieved it." From Craig's List.

Mysterious bottles found in Clopper Lake

"No one is sure why, but bottles with photographic images of hands have been drifting onto the shores of Clopper Lake in Seneca Creek State Park this summer..."
"Seneca Creek State Park....was also the filming site for part of the "Blair Witch Project," the 1999 fake documentary about three student filmmakers who disappeared in the woods...while shooting a film." From The Gazette in Gaithersburg, MD.

"Over 3000 visitors to a Washington DC arts festival picked up [blank] postcards...inviting them to share a secret anonymously."

PostSecret is now a blog, where a new postcard is shared weekly.

Via Ze's Blog

"The information was correct, but the interpretations were not"

A timely quote from Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the former Iraqi Information Minister, from welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com. (OK, it's from June of last year, but it's timely for me in that I just found it)

the opposite of talking is waiting to talk

This NY Times article touches briefly on the subject in the headline, which is that  callers to tech support are monitored while on hold. It's mostly about the growing business of tracking customer service and tech support workers to measure their ability to interact with customers, defuse aggression, etc. The line below, sadly, shows a great deal of insight into our culture, which may be why more of these jobs monitoring others are also being outsourced to other countries.

To do the job, Ms. Rea and her colleagues need an aptitude for listening, a rare commodity in a culture where the opposite of talking is waiting to talk.

 

They hate us for our Freedom Food

In Passing....

"When he said he wouldn't recommend French wine out of protest I was like, fine, and I'll have a side of freedom fries to go with that. But then when he said that real mulled wine had pineapple and maraschino cherries in it I was like, dude, go on hating the French. Because they all hate you for what you've done to vin chaud."
--A girl talking to another girl at Andronico's.

and

Octopus cannon targets McDonalds in southern France
SETE, France (AFP) - Armed with a high-pressure hose and a bucket of octopi, hundreds of protestors in this Mediterranean town pelted a McDonalds restaurant due to open this week with the slimy seafood. (Via jwz)

I SO wish there were photos of the octopus cannon!

Missouri Legislator: Poll Tax good, Liberals=Terrorists, and that's from an urban district

Makes  You Proud To Be From Missouri, Doesn't It?

Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis, as quoted in the New York Times.

"It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go. I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go."

..

..
From her campaign web site:

"Over 1 million Missourians are now on Medicaid - that's more than the number of kids in our public schools"

"Even with the expansion of Medicaid, one out of six Missourians are without any insurance"

From a St. Louis Today election listing for Davis

"The state could go a long way to help poor people by putting a limit on how much people can collect from a malpractice lawsuit"

"The only way to have a fair tax is to have a flat tax or a  poll tax"

Her district, #19, is from St. Charles County, a fairly wealthy county outside of St. Louis.

Via Talking Points Memo

Rumsfeld Quotes Again

Rumsfeld on soldier who asked about armor:

Bush, Rumsfeld Try to Soothe Angry U.S. Troops.

Rumsfeld said on Thursday Wilson would be contacted.

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing."

Via Fanatical Apathy

Last chance to leave Iraq: "Insurgencies, like octopi, are invertebrate."

Last Exit Before Gas - by William S. Lind.
William Lind makes a case that the Bush Administration has a chance to withdraw from Iraq after the January elections, but the likliehood is that the neocons and "the Tea Lady, Miss Rice," will prevent it. He observes that the arguments to attack Iran have begun, although he sees any attack coming from Israel as our proxy. Iran has promised to hold the U.S. accountable if this happens, like we held the Taliban responsible for Osama Bin Laden's 9-11 attack, back when we were still fighting terrorism.

Lind's great quote: "[An] American general...claimed Fallujah had "broken the   back" of the insurgency. Insurgencies, like octopi, are invertebrate."

New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim Damaged Senses

The New York Times > Science > New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim Damaged Senses.

Amazing, incredible, etc. Researchers are using electronics to re-map the brain's processing of signals. Balance was recovered by one person's daily use of a device that provided signals to her tongue to inform her brain of movement and position. It has applications in vision, touch, and hearing, at a minimum. And since it can be used to enhance video games and by pilots and divers, it'll be developed commercially fairly quickly. It reminds me of some of the "body suit" technology in the science fiction of Melissa Scott.
A couple of great quotes:

Dr. Yuri Danilov, a neuroscientist and engineer...said the research team had thought of dozens of applications for the BrainPort, which he called a "USB port to the brain."

Dr. Raj said the tongue unit had already been tried out in a game that involved shooting villains. "In two minutes you stop feeling the buzz on your tongue and get a visual representation of the bad guy," he said. "You feel like you have X-ray vision. Unfortunately it makes the game boring."