LanceWillett.com

Sometimes the words to a song can fill up my heart. Beauty of the Days Gone By by Van Morrison does just that every time:

    When I recall just how it felt
    When I went walking down by the take
    My soul was free, my heart awake
    When I walked down into the town
    The mountain air was fresh and clear
    The sun was up behind the hill
    It felt so good to be alive
    On that morning in spring

    I want to sing this song for you
    I want to lift your spirits high
    And in my soul I want to feel
    The beauty of the days gone by
    The beauty of the days gone by
    It brings a longing to my soul
    To contemplate my own true self
    And keep me young as I grow old

    The beauty of the days gone by
    The music that we used to play
    So lift your glass and raise it high
    To the beauty of the days gone by
    I'll sing it from the mountain top
    Down to the valley down below
    Because my cup doth overflow
    With the beauty of the days gone by
    The mountain glen
    Where we used to roam

    The gardens there
    By the railroad track
    Oh my memory it does not lie
    Of the beauty of the days gone by
    The beauty of the days gone by
    It brings a longing to my soul
    To contemplate my own true self

    And keep me young as I grow old

Listen to this song on Amazon (go to “Listen to Samples” #10).

It’s been quiet around here. I’ve been way too busy for anything! Work, work, and more work. The silence is almost over—I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Oh, and I am living in an RV now.

I do want to say that I finally finished the last book in the Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson’s master work. The last book, System of the World was my favorite. It took me a few months to complete, mainly because I don’t have much time to read. It was well worth it, though. By the way, it’s not considered a trilogy even though it’s published in three volumes.

“Why Baroque? Because it is set in the Baroque, and it is baroque. Why Cycle? Because I am trying to avoid the T-word (“trilogy”). In my mind this work is something like 7 or 8 connected novels. These have been lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint, but they could just as well have been put all together in a single immense volume or separated into 7 or 8 separate volumes. So to slap the word “trilogy” on it would be to saddle it with a designation that is essentially bogus. Having said that, I know everyone’s going to call it a trilogy anyway.” — Neal Stephenson

If you were frustrated by either of the first two books in the series, press on and read the last book. It’s a gem. It brings all the loose ends together, and even provides strange and crazy ties to Neal’s wonderful book Cryptonomicon. If you are wondering whether it’s worth it, I would say yes enthusiastically.

I’m actually kind of sorry I finished it, since now I have to look for a new masterpiece to read. Oh well.

I posted a short entry about God’s Debris in mid-December. My intention was to read the book and then share my impressions here. The reason it’s be such a long delay is that I decided to read the book again. I felt it was necessary to pay better attention to the various themes in the book in order to explain my reactions and thoughts.

The book is interesting in that it has different levels within the story. The gist of the story is a conversation between a very old man and a young man that arrives at his door. Their conversation makes up most of the book and creates situations that the author intended to make us think about ourselves and our world.

The superficial level in the book is the main characters’ experience as they interact. It is fantastical, yet believable, and weaves the other two levels together. The book wouldn’t quite work without the story line; but it would also be worthless without the thought experiment held within.

The second level involves practical advice for living. The young man gets solid counseling from the old man regarding love, relationships, friendships, luck, and success in life. This level is interesting, engaging, and useful for anyone that reads it. It is still not the main focus of the dialog, however.

Finally, the deepest of the three levels or themes is driven by the old man’s teaching of how the world works. Throughout the book the story line jumps between levels one and two but often gets injected with number three. This third and most important theme is a philosophical commentary about faulty, human-centric world views. The old man covers science, religion, culture, and many other issues within this commentary.

After the second reading of the book, I started to separate these streams into their own sub-books and ideas. This helped me to take away the good ideas and leave behind what I thought wasn’t as valuable.

The best part of the book, in my opinion, is that third and most profound level. It’s an analysis into our cultural framework that mirrors the thinking and reading that have guided my spiritual, mental, and emotional journey in the last four to five years. This thought experiment really caught me off-guard with how much it related to my own development.

For that reason alone I would recommend this book to anyone. Be prepared to see through the story and the practical advice, though, in order to seize the grains of cultural analysis that lie below. Adams’ purpose in writing the book is to cause the reader to think, and it did just that for me.

Read God’s Debris (free PDF download).

“TROUBLEMAKERS” by Malcolm Gladwell is an interesting read. If you’ve enjoyed Blink or The Tipping Point, then go read this New Yorker article. It delves into human psychology much like those two best-sellers do.

The tagline for Gladwell’s piece is “What pit bulls can teach us about profiling.” Dogs, pit bulls in this case, often get a very bad reputation through no fault of their own. In most cases it’s the negligence or purposeful intent of the owners that causes the dogs’ bad behavior.

The article explores the reasons behind aggressive dog behavior and why it has led to large-scale generalization and profiling of certain dog breeds. This in turn provides a great example of how we come to profile any manner of object, person, or animal.

Like I said, it’s a good read; it will make you think. I’ve already started to look at dogs in a different way.

Visit site.

[Tip: if you go to the Printable version of the article, it really helps with its readability.]

Never heard classic English Literature quite like this!

Howard Shepherd, one of the Word Nerds, recently made my day by doing a rap version of the famous literary work, Beowulf. Howard did the piece as a demonstration of rhythm and meaning in English as part of one of the Word Nerds’ podcasts.

As a high school English teacher, he one day had the realization that Beowulf and modern American gangster rap (hip-hop) music had the same rhythm. The meter of both the poem and the music were trochaic tetrameter—go figure!

Listen to the podcast, and in minute 25 or so you’ll hear for yourself.

This topic first came up about two years ago, while I was working at an outdoor shop in Tucson, Arizona. One of my colleagues was living with a sports addict. Her boyfriend was a classic case, watching ESPN all day. If no major sports were on, such as hockey, football, baseball, basketball, or soccer – he would simply watch whatever happened to be showing: cricket, billiards, ping-pong, and such.

My colleague complained that her boyfriend would also listen non-stop to sports radio. Many times these activities would interrupt their conversations and time spent together. She wasn’t able to watch anything on TV that wasn’t sports! I listened to her stories, and decided to share my own experience with sports addiction. I explained that her boyfriend wasn’t a lone case.

Everything Sports

It was fresh in my mind since I had just started my “recovery” from sports addiction a few months earlier. Luckily, ESPN’s cable TV programming wasn’t part of my routine, but everything else sports-related was fair game. I listened to ESPN radio religiously; I don’t say this jokingly – it was obsessive worship. Any time sports were on local TV, I was glued. I followed sports web sites to see scores, highlights, pictures, and read commentary.

Fantasy leagues were common in my life also – I did football, baseball, and basketball every year. Last but not least, I would open up any newspaper, skip the front couple sections, and go right for the sports page. Often that was the only part of the paper I consumed.

During spring and summer I listened to every Major League Baseball game that was broadcast from our local radio station. Exasperated, my wife asked me how I could possibly plan my day and week around a game on TV or radio, and I didn’t know how to explain it. It was then I realized she was living with a sports addict.

Stop the Bleeding

My decision to stop the bleeding came during one of the goal sessions that I share with my wife. We sit down at least once a year to discuss the year past and the year ahead. We share our thoughts, goals, and dreams. I mentioned that I wanted to make a change. About the same time, I purchased a new computer and considered starting a web design business. It worked out well since the web design learning and projects took lots of time – time I could no longer commit to sports.

Why did I do it? My relationship with my wife, job, and other hobbies were suffering. That’s it, plain and simple. Like some things in life, however, I couldn’t just quit sports by weaning myself slowly off. It had to be a clean break.

I deleted my fantasy sports league subscriptions and declined further invitations to join. I stopped watching and listening to sports and related programming. If I saw a newspaper, I would read the Business and Culture sections instead. It worked well! These days I do occasionally catch a game or two – but I certainly am not as involved emotionally, mentally, and financially as before.

Sports as Religion

There are many correlations between sports and religion, especially in terms of adoration of stars and spending a full Saturday or Sunday worshiping. Spending the day enthralled in worship and adoration could be said of both fervent parishioners and sports fans. The ardor involved in passionately following a team or sport fulfills one’s need for something bigger to root for – a larger cause. For many it has ties to religion, patriotism, family, and geographic identity. The feeling of involvement in something larger than life is a very strong motivation.

There is also the reflection of a “warlike” mentality. In this mentality there is always a clear winner and loser, which reminds me of good versus evil; you are either for us or against us. If you are on the winning side, you are justified in your fanaticism and belief. This reinforces the adoration and worship all over again.

For myself it was all these things and more. Sports involved a strong geographic identity: I had bonds to the Buffalo Bills, Arizona Diamondbacks, University of Arizona college athletics, and soccer teams from France and Mexico. It was a means of connecting with friends, family, and millions of other souls across the world. As in religion, the more I invested in it, the more I got out of it.

Interested But Not Addicted

Don’t get me wrong, I think that it is fine to be interested in sports, even to be a dedicated fan… but it was very consuming for me in particular. It ate up a lot of time, energy, and a good amount of money too. As with wine, good food, and outdoor adventure, a balanced diet of sports is the key to not letting it get the best of you.

If you are running Windows, especially XP, you should check your computer to see if it is vulnerable to the infamous Windows MetaFile vulnerability.

Steve Gibson, of grc.com has created an small tool to check your computer quickly and easily. Download it here.

If you are not vulnerable, it means you have either installed one of the previous patches or else you’ve used Windows Update to get the official patch (make sure you are using Internet Explorer for the MS Update page).

If the tool tells you that you are vulnerable, make sure to follow its instructions on getting the correct patch.

I just ran the MetaFix tool from Steve this morning, and am now good to go.

*[UPDATE: Changed link for Steve’s tool – it also changed names to MouseTrap.]*

From AJ, I found out about a book by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. The book is called God’s Debris, and is 132 pages long. Even though the hardback version is available in stores, Scott has made a free PDF version available online.

This is not anything like Scott’s other work, which as far as I know, are all cartoons. This alone really led me to download the PDF and start into it. I had no idea what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised. The book is a mind-bender in the tradition of books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Ishmael , without the depth or length of either of those two. Adams introduces the book as a “thought experiment”, and it certainly is that.

If you haven’t read it yet, go get it! If you have, then stay tuned for my thoughts on the book (coming soon…).

You might be wondering why you are here at LanceWillett.com when you tried to go to NealFanPage.com.

I decided that one less blog would be good for me, plus there just wasn’t enough content to put up on just Neal and his work (great as it is!).

So, all my old posts (and the one that Aaron did) are here on this site now, under the category “sci-fi”. This will allow me to still include my thoughts on Neal from time to time and link to interesting web content that deals with his work.

That said, make sure to change any links or bookmarks accordingly.

Thanks (and goodbye for now to NealFanPage blog).

I came across an interesting blog post on John Maeda “Thoughts On Simplicity” blog that speaks to teaching. The question is this: do you give a student all the answers they need verbatim, or do you send them to figure out the answers on their own?

I’ve learned in many different ways myself and recently I’ve found that the less I am taught, the better I learn. This is John’s perspective as well. He gives the example of a class he took where the instructor basically spoon-fed the answers to him. Then another course he took was the opposite: the teacher would answer questions with something like “go look it up, the answer is in the book!”.

In my own experience, I find that my first instinct is to ask someone to help me solve a problem (while I am hoping they will pretty much just show me the way step by step). In a few cases, like with my pal Aaron, I’ve learned more when he didn’t actually show me right away but waited for me to find the answer myself. So, like John Maeda’s view, I realized that the less I was taught, the more I learned.

It still seems like the opposite should be true, though…