neal stephenson - white-collar-ising blue-collar-istics

for gumption and recharge, see Illuminated Thread

fear and greed are the twin engines that drive masses of humanity
if necessity is the mother of invention, laziness must be it's father, or atleast the milkman, or a travelling salesman ...


plants are the only guys who manage to live OFF the land - i mean, on JUST water and CO2 !!
that's a super-power, seriously !!

rediscovering Kathy Sierra's lectures. It began with a talk titled 'how to kick ass' on itconversations.com, cooupled with a blog post on moserware.com titled 'how to become a grandmaster' - both touched on similiar themes and had good information ,the second one more technically so, but h2ka stayed on in the mind because, well , I really care about kicking ass.
That was and is Kathy's argument - talk to the brain, not the mind - http://i.imgur.com/3iZ0k.png (in case the link doesnt work, this is a side by side comparison of brain sizes - fish/amphibian/reptile/mammal (ps: does a fish have NO VOLUNTARY actions at all ?)) - this picture might help - the large brain thinggy you see is the mammalian brain - the neocortex is a small peanut sitting on top of this. the neocortex is reponsible for 'logic' and 'reason', but the LARGE mammalian brain is responsible for keeping you clicking away on reddit.
Agreed, the we need to submit to the peanut one day, but the big one is what will drive us there, nor not at all.

recently watched a video on youtube - kathy sierra - keynote - 2009 nmc conference. Pretty impressive. then later realized her material is all there on her blog - headrush.typepad.com

reddit paid off with this link today -
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kin8p/iama_person_who_beat_my_depression_by_moving_7000/
while you notice this is in the pattern of campbell's 'hero's journey', the 'hero's journey' is probably not so exotic -we see it in everyday events ...
this passage from the link proved very very enlightening -
==
[–]DDme 19 points20 points21 points 13 hours ago

Honestly, people like to get all psychologist on you about this and say "oh but it'll come back yaddayadda."

We need to acknowledge that we have evolved inside a more intense lifestyle. We were made for tribalism, competition, interaction, challenge, and a life span of up to 40 years. Our chemical biology isn't going to be all that content with 12 hours of reddit every day and menial office work. We have to deal with irrelevant crap inside fractured and unsteady social groups, where our peers are seemingly everybody and nobody.

Clinical depression isn't such a clear thing. Some people spiral into depression just because things are too easy, and they need more challenge and purpose, they may not realise it yet; but for gods sake this doesn't call for medication. Depression to me is waking up in the morning and staring into space, everything I want to fight for is removed from my reach, I have no legitimate identity and no feeling of authenticity. 20 press-ups later and hey presto I am back, it's time for action.

I think you will be fine if you keep your future full of challenges and people who are positive about you, and above all, people that you respect.

==
note - ".. a more intense lifestyle. We were made for tribalism, competition, interaction, challenge, a .. "

http://www.gwern.net/The%20Melancholy%20of%20Subculture%20Society
this guy talks about how and why we fragment into subcultures in order to find meaning..

fight club keeps talking about how the current generation american's greatest depression is their lives -
yep , it all makes sense

from 'art of manliness'

“Recovering the self must, as a sine qua non, include the recovery of the ability to have and to cognize these inner signals, to know what and whom one likes and dislikes, what is enjoyable and what is not, when to eat and when not to, when to sleep, when to urinate, when to rest. The experientially empty person, lacking these directive from within, these voices of the real self, must turn to outer cues for guidance, for instance eating when the clock tells him to, rather than obeying his appetite…He guides himself by clocks, rules, calendars, schedules, agendas, and by hints and cues from other people.”
- Maslow

also, shining your shoes is a kind of meditation, they say


==
purposeless on purpose, the paradoxical way to win

==
a lot of life's neuroses arise from putting analysis of the event before the event has happened
==
reading asimov's Foundation. it's not so much science fiction as political history ...

surfing alone
this too
robot nation
double morton - stupidity

megadeth has a song about the disintegrators. It goes something like "The slayer's arrived On a black horse of steel Trouble is coming Hell on two wheels Hide in... " bla bla bla
and all that. However, it's the integrators we should've been worried about . If only someone'd listen to toffler.