Stay of Execution

Buick Contest Winner

Well, as you can see from the responses, the big winner of the Buick story contest was B, which handily trounced E and D as runner ups.  Congratulations to the Happy Feminist, author of answer B.  I asked whether she had any kind of blog related wish that might serve as a prize.  It turns out she does.  Here's her wish:

My new blog  desperately needs a descriptive tagline, something to go just below the blog title, something pithy and lighthearted.  I blog (or intend to blog) about life as a lawyer, feminist issues, travel, and the role of religion in American society and political life, as well as other random stuff.  Could you invite your readers to submit any proposals they have to me at veryhappyfeminist@yahoo.com? If I get enough submissions, I will post all the options and ask for votes, and then I in turn will offer a bloggish prize to the winner.

Wish granted.  Let's go help her concoct a good tagline.

Runner up, author of scenario E, was Isaac Laquedem.  The actual, true, reality-based scenario?  That was answer D, with the water pump and the overheating car.  Thanks, Eleanor, for thinking the language sounded like me.  To Anonymous at 6:24, let me just note that I do enjoy a 'wild party' from time to time, but almost never use that descriptive term. 

Thanks to everyone who played.  I thought this was a fun game.  Did you?  Should we do it, or something like it, again? 

Question For Flossers

I have decided to turn over a new leaf in gum care, and am back to being vigilant about flossing.  This morning I was talking to Housemate about it on our walk (in a wet, wet, windy tempest), and she told me that her dentist suggested that some gum recession on one of her teeth was due to "over-aggressive flossing."  Now I'm doubly paranoid.  Please advise. 

Legal Training

On Friday night there was a dinner for PopTech speakers and organizers.  I asked one of them to give me a thumbnail sketch of his talk and almost immediately started challenging him.  We had a friendly but fairly probing back-and-forth.  It took the form of me questioning him, and him answering me, and me finding fault with his answers, and asking him to try again.  It was a bit like a professor grilling a law student with the Socratic method.  I liked what he had to say, and agreed with it at core, but thought he was being imprecise with his language, and wanted to push around to find the edges of his philosophy.  The topic was property, and I was trying to get him to drill down into the rights and obligations he thought were appropriate, and those he wanted to reject.  You can't just dismiss the concept of "property," after all.  It's a bundle of rights, and all that.   He was gracious about my challenges, assuring me he enjoyed being pushed, and although the subject matter was fairly abstract, the tone was warm and friendly. 

There was a small group involved in the conversation, although the primary back and forth was the two of us.  One of the fellows in the circle was a first-year law student, listening with big ears.  (Another was my friend S, who pulled me aside afterwards and said, "I love your mind.  I just love to watch you think."   That compliment, along with the conversation itself, was one of the highlights of my weekend.  I haven't gotten to think, where other people could watch and join in, for a long time.  I enjoy it.)  Partway through the conversation I began to wonder if I was being a legalistic ass.  Still, I didn't want to let go of my questions.  I didn't think his answers were clear.  I also began to notice that I found him very attractive.  I realized the attraction was distracting me, and I couldn't be sure whether I really liked his ideas or just his eyes.  I had to concentrate on what we were saying, while fighting the urge to reach out and touch his arm. 

Reminder

If you are new to this weblog, you may have missed this bit of advice, about wearing only one sock to bed at night.  I have begun implementing it for the chilly season and am very pleased find that I still think it is a masterful innovation. 

Buick Contest

Once upon a time, I found myself driving a Buick along the New Jersey Turnpike, wearing nothing but a watch and sandals.  Your job is to guess which of the following answers is the true answer.  One of them is real.  The others were submitted by readers.  The reader who fools the most people with his or her submitted story will get to pick some kind of fun blog-related reward that I haven't dreamed up yet.  Those of you who guess correctly get to bask in a warm sense of achievement and personal well-being.  (Submissions have been edited a bit,  but still vary widely in writing style and amount of detail.)  Vote for the winner in the comments.

Sunday Afternoon

I woke up this morning at 7:15, after going to bed at 3 AM.  The final party was a big one, and I spent most of it torn between the desire to pour myself another glass of wine and jump onto the dance floor or find a ride home and read my book.  I did neither, really, and instead lost my jacket and spent a long time looking for it, went outside and had a somewhat strange conversation with my friend the ukelele player (who told me I'd been in an R-rated dream he'd had the night before) and an exuberant and drunken Serbian man who'd played an instrumental role in toppling Miloslovic.  I wandered upstairs and watched people dancing from the balcony; I wandered downstairs and ended up in a long conversation about depression with someone who's struggling with it. 

I headed out of town pretty early, because I was supposed to coach some of my sailors at a regatta down in Portland.  But it was too windy to sail, so instead I wound up scrubbing the keel of a Yngling for an upcoming frostbite series I'll be sailing in.  It was tedious work, wet and cold and repetitive, getting rid of the barnacle footings, fingers gripping a 3M scrubby pad and gently but firmly scouring back and forth on the surface of the keel.  Removing hard-stuck growth on a boat is a lot like scrubbing a pan that you've burned food into.  It felt good: the wind on my cheeks, my feet on the ground, my cold fingers on the wet foamy film on the keel, feeling the rough pattern of barnacle footings and hard dried growth as I worked to scrub it out.  All this brain time makes me appreciate the clear immediacy of a physical task like that. 

I'm skipping book group right now.  I only bought Monica Ali's Brick Lane on Friday afternoon, and it was absurd to think I'd read the whole thing while at PopTech.  It's unfinished, in my suitcase.  The dogs are snoring, one on the white dogbed and one on the green one.  There's a chicken carcass and some vegetables simmering in a pot on the stove, for chicken soup.  It's nice to be home. 

PopTech: Faith

Good presentation by Sam Harris, a compelling speaker, and a book out called The End of Faith.  I can't decide what I think about his message, which is utterly dismissive of religion.  I think his basic message is that the idea of "tolerance" has effectively made it taboo to challenge people's religious beliefs, or to discuss the idea that some religions are better (in terms of the health and welfare of their believers, their impact on human life, etc.) than others.  He argues that this is nonsense, and that we can and must challenge religion.  He says that belief not rooted in reason has no place in our society. 

What's hard for me is that I buy what he's saying, and yet I yearn for faith and I don't want that yearning to be stupid.  I don't have faith; I haven't found an organization that resonates.  But I find ritual and reverence and mystery beautiful and moving in a way that reason and logic aren't.  I admire people who make a regular, social, public commitment to make time to think about magic and mystery and how to be a better human being, what lasts when we're gone.  Isn't that what religion is?  I know it's been warped and there are a lot of lousy manifestations.  I haven't found a faith that makes sense to me.  The practices of Buddhism come the closest.  Yet I admire people who believe, who have found homes in religion, who have people they come together with to meditate, to find sacred, to examine the way they live, and to make a renewed vow to do better.  I envy them.  Is there room in Sam Harris's world for this kind of beauty, for the yearning in my heart to find balance, peace, kindness, majesty, reverence?  I'll have to read the book.  (Well, first, I'll talk to him at dinner.)

PS.  My dad, seated beside me, is photographing the conference at a great clip, and uploading his pics to www.flickr.com and to his blog, if you want some images of what's happening.  Official conference photos are here.

PopTech: To Read

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta
The Selfish Gene -- Richard Dawkins
The End of Faith -- Sam Harris
Shadow Cities -- Rob Neuwirth
Emergence -- Stephen Johnson (also Everything Bad is Good for You)

That's all for now, but I suspect there are more that this conference has/will put on my list

PopTech: Remarkable

Cameron Sinclair's work is extraordinary.  It makes me want to go change the world.  And yesterday in a short conversation he mentioned he'd be in Portland tomorrow night on a layover for his flight out, and I offered to have dinner with him.  I didn't know who he was at the time.  Serendipity. 

It meshes with Rob Neuwirth's earlier presentation, Suketu Mehta's talk, Peter Diamandis' philosophy (although turned on its head, a bit), and Yochai Benkler's point about social production, distributed creativity, and shared projects.  My head is hurting because I need to let some of this sink in.  But, wow.  There are some great people changing the world with really good ideas.  Why aren't I one of them?

P.S. You've got to listen to some of these presentations.  Streaming audio at IT Conversations; podcasts to be available in a week or two. 

PopTech: Crush

Every year at PopTech I find myself smitten with someone.  Sometimes a few people.  I meet people at a conference and they're surrounded by a swirl of excitement and energy and interest.  I'm learning and thinking and I see everyone as someone who can teach me a lot, who is ready to have a big conversation.  And we're in this quaint and picturesque little village, blue sky and yellow leaves drifting down onto the green town square.  I feel smitten just being here.  The only question each year is who will personify that for me.  Last year it was Howard Fishman's onstage confidence and offstage thoughtfulness that made the biggest impression on me.  I sought him out. 

This year's crush is very smart, but that doesn't distinguish him from most folks here.  He had my attention immediately, though, and I started trying to figure out why.  The answer is boring.  He looks like an old flame, and like a strong crush I had before that.  Something about eyes, head shape, hair, work with a subconscious crush trigger I have.  I guess we can't help these things.  Still, I'd like to believe I were more discerning and enlightened than that.  Apparently not.