It's been a long, long, long....

Today I find myself back in the throes of academic procrastination. I also, again, have faced up to the looming ogre of my potential. It's almost as though I'm having the deja vu, all over again. Walking down the stair to my humble cave, the play of the light and the smell of the fresh air through the door shifted me back at least 10-15 years (and it is a sign of my senescence that I can say that; a sign of my youth that it feels like an incredibly long time) to the time when I was only at this house on weekends; yet I have lived here pretty much full time for at least four, maybe five years. It troubles me that I can't grasp the exact time. Nonetheless, I drifted down the stairs to face my room, a-clutter with the detritus of my last few years of mental wandering, and I was a bit shocked. The differences between now and then were stark and immediately apparent; piles of cds, a tile floor where once lay a psychedelic carpet; a desk with multiple computers; mounds of clothing and books, vaguely packed but generally disarrayed. I suddenly thought, "nostalgia dies here".

Which is actually curious, because my uncle, for the majority of my youth, lived in this very room, whiling away hours between his college courses (taken in his forties) playing intense role-playing games on the early IBM clones, of which I still have the monstrous ram boards (what an art project yet to happen!!! I am going to make a family out of old ram chips...). But my space seems different; more vital, filled with newer, more used things; less feeling of moldy rot or decay (found on the bottom of computer desks of the era).

And so this brings me back to the notion of potential. The possibility for activity filling time is to me an incredibly valuable asset to have and to exploit. Yet I often find myself drifting through the time, stretching minute (in the sense of small) activities over hours of potentially useful time. Yet thinking back to those days, it is not just my lot to have spent hours doing nothing with a mind that could be doing so many things; my parents, my uncle, and who knows what other members of my genealogical tree have seen hours of their lives fly by with no added value remaining. Today I glanced at the posting on Google's Jobs site, particularly this post for Research Lead/Manager. Some friends had spotted it and actually thought of me as a good fit for such a role. Now, they don't have my resume in front of them, and they may have realized I haven't had the 7-10 years of management experience (though I did play the managerial role in high school, professionally, for money, for reals), but it is still really intriguing to me that I seemed a worthwhile candidate for these folks. While they aren't Brins and Pages, these folks are no dummies - one is a 23 year old entrepreneur and the other an MD/PhD student - so it makes me wonder, is that the potential I appear to have? The Google job sounds bloody cool - managing a research team while having the opportunity to "roll up [my] sleeves and get [my] hands dirty". Organizing a team, budgeting, interacting, evangelizing, for pete's sake...I wish I had it together enough to be the one for this job.

Yet, here I sit, on my throne, degreeless though not jobless, agonizing over a research summary that should take not more than 5 hours of solid work to complete. And I realize, the time is filled with potential - but I must be the mathematical plug and chug machine, the pac-monster of productivity, chomping on the bits of potential and spitting out the formed husk of product. Sounds easy, and I bet when I'm done, it will have been so (I cannot form that tense in any language properly, other than English...but I love it...). So anyway, until I figure out how to properly make temporal-hyperlinked text (half of what I wrote above was added post-hoc, and I'd love to be able to show it), I think for now I will turn my slowing burgeoning attentional resources towards the modest task of summarizing the state of research into resilience. A lovely, bouncy word, no?

NYC World Class

A fact that did not surprise me: the "urban agglomeration" that is constituted by New York City, Newark, and the surrounding suburbs constitutes the largest (by population) such unit in the United States. That neato list shows that in 2005, according to the U.N., the NYC-Newark urban agglomeration held 18 million 718 living breathing peoples. That beats the Los Angeles-some beach-some other beach combo by around 6 million. But what did surprise me: Mumbai, the largest such agglomeration in India, slacks back by around 600k. Now, figuring that was only in 2005, Mumbai grows at about 1% faster rate than does New York, it will probably flip soon; the UN says that by 2010 Mumbai will be way ahead. And besides, no one can pack 'em in ,like the Nipponese - Tokyo rocks 35 mil plus! Domo arigato!

The full summary on mega-cities (pdf) is telling, but there are of course many factors I'm presently to tired to look at. New York does drop over time though, and I am kind of uncertain as to my acceptance of Newark in the "agglomeration". Then again, I work there with two other New Yorkers. Hmm.

fuckintosh!!

as i let copernic index my tablet, i thought "why not see if there is anything more out there about fuckintosh?"

And guess what?

there ain't.

This is a shame - this twisted mash up madness is sometimes sublime.

The name alone - Fuckintosh (aka Codek's Fa Ventilato) - was enough to draw me in, and the photocopied covers added to the mystique. When I saw "Kraftwerk vs. the Beatles", and for $9.99, I knew I was in for something...

Currently, I have said album streaming forth...and it is just ridiculous. I can barely place some of the tones, but they usually flow together just beautifully - the machine-melody rhythms of Kraftwerk are laid under unnervingly fun chops of Beatles riffs, snippets of a lyric, or perhaps even just a sound. And sometimes I simply can't tell what is from who, or if he's actually got both going on or not...but it barely matters. Track 7 (none of the black disc's tracks bear titles) is a repetition of a gently strummed guitar and bass line, with some tom and snare patches - and a grating hvac sound coming in and out, beautifully punctuating the smoothness of the beatles clip. it's like floating through a chaotic parking lot in a glowing translucent marshmallow cocoon..until the robotic tendrils tear your soft little coffin apart at the very end and make you part and parcel a piece of the machine. Stunning. and then into a repeating "ju-ju" from the beginning of "come together".

Found it at other music and returned this week for "Criminal Edits" - also quite good, but only got one or two listens before the office monster swallowed it whole and spat it out into a permanent memory hole somewhere under my desk. Bastard.

But now it's "Blackbird" distorted over a smoothly shiny driving beat...track 10, possibly my favorite of this disc.

Recommended if you can find it - he has a a list of stores on his label's site - Killing Music At Home

Israel-Syria "Understanding"

BREAKING NEWS! NICE!
This looks like something which - if carried through to its purported ends - could have tremendous implications for the state of the Middle East (and hence the world):

In-Depth Haaretz coverage

Hopefully, the fact that it is being covered in a major news outlet is a sign that the parties are carrying on to the next level and making it official, and it will not collapse as a result of the exposure. The last few paragraphs are not entirely encouraging - it seems that Israel is not yet willing to officially acknowledge any talks, and Syria is still in a "demand" mode. The nature of the Golan transfer is also somewhat suspect - would Israel be willing to transfer this flashpoint area for water control and "parkland"? According to the disputed Wikipedia page, there are more Jewish settlers than indigenous Druze residents. However, the Syrian concessions - withdrawal of support from Hezbollah and Hamas, along with distancing from Iran - are remarkable and even hard to believe. If this were not coming from Israel's paper of record, I would have some trouble accepting its veracity.

Interestingly, originally saw this on Newsvine here, which is an AP report. No American or British outlets seem to be reporting it as of 1:50 AM EST.

Also - what is going to be the upshot of Rice being in the region?

The Nano Shuffle

In a brilliant display of its "shuffle" feature (I'll call it pseudo-random pattern detector, aka "iThink"), my nano treated me to, in succession, The Shangri-Las with "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" followed by The New York Dolls' "Looking for a Kiss". Both open with the line, "When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love, L-U-V". A fave topic of caricature dorks like Levy (who writes a fine piece) and blogs galore. My thought is, consistent with Apple's tendency to paternalize, the iPhone will also have predictive random features, such as automated calling based on frequency, auto-iTunes shop purchases, and pre-crime prevention alert software. Yippee.