long walk

Today found me on another long walk, trotting randomly through the streets of downtown Shizuoka. The heat is finally giving us a reprieve and I can't help but stretch my legs and go roaming. I live and work in the same small room, in my apartment in Shimizu. The back of my chair inches from my bed. Some days I never even set foot outside. But when the claustraphobia hits I just have to set out. Breath real air.

I've explored nearly every street around my apartment for miles. And I don't like walking down the same street twice. So my walk starts with a trip to the local small shuttle train, and a quick hop downtown to start from there. The clouds are dark gray and swirling ominously, threatening a downpour. I welcome it. Rain envigorates me when I'm walking. But it is a false threat. The wind is cool and strong, and the concrete road never ending. I set out from the busy station and head towards the nearby hills. In a direction I've never been. The shops and homes flow by and I'm quickly out the city, weaving my way through small back streets where the interesting things are. I break out into a large open flood plain. The wash from Mt. Fuji comes through here. And there is a raised walking path that takes me along the wide flowing river. This takes me behind many houses. I see a son and father throwing baseball in the alley. Each silent and somewhat serious. Men and women walking their dogs keep me company on the long path. But I soon break out and head for the wilderness. For some reason, I prefer the empty streets. The ones with bamboo on either side touching tips far overhead. But there is no road into the nearby hills. And I skirt the base for a long time before feeling like I'm very far from home, and better turn back.

Boys are girls are out of school now. And they race past me in their crumpled starched uniorms, peddaling their large metal bikes and looking very bored. Clusters of girls wear navy blue skirts and white shirts, chatting constantly. Some eye me curiously, most ignore studiously. That is definitely a required skill; the art of ingoring studiously. It's not long before I'm back downtown and mixing with the crowds of fashionably suited men and women making their way home. The train ride home is packed. And I give my seat up to stand by the railing. I prefer to stand anyway. I'm sweaty and I know I don't smell great. The train rocks as it hurtles down the rails and I peer out the window at the city flying by. So many homes. So many people. It's not long, and my stop comes, Sakurabashi. Bridge of cherry blossoms. But there are none. Just rows of tightly packed bikes patiently awaiting their masters just outside the stop. I exit with the flow of rushers home, and silently make my way to my own.

oblivious oblivion

"Happiness is a warm gun" according to the Beatles. And many more serious sources seem to agree: happiness comes in the afterlife. It is unachievable in the material world. Monks seek enlightenment through detachment. And momentary nirvana is fleeting possible with practice. But detachment never lingers long, nor it's peace, under the rain of daily tiny assaults on a thin imaginary roof of isolation. For it's only in impossible isolation that you could hope to divest yourself from emotional attachments. Surrendering to the inevitability of a web of moral and social connections, how then is a sane person expected to realistically achieve some sense of peace? Can peace be found in the connections? In the worries and responsibilities.

For some this is not a rhetorical question. But quite serious. The quest for some sense of inner peace can drive people down long and twisted roads with no guarantee for end. It can drive you to spend to achieve: "I will be happy when I can buy..". It doesn't even need finishing. Any sentence beginning with "I will be happy if.." seems doomed to failure. The conditions for happiness are not conditional. And not in the future.

From my own limited experience, it happens when you surrender to the now. When you can embrace the wonderful experience that is drawing a clean breath into a healthy body. And from there let your awareness discover the beautiful intricacies of the mundane world as they exist before you at this moment. Pause to relish the connections. Do not separate yourself. It's so easy be impatient. To see only what you have seen before. Do not categorize. Do not impose yourself on it. Challenge yourself to look with new, childlike eyes, and not look away until you have groked the water before you. Consider it's existence. The rushing passage of time. The flow of energy and pressure that have molded its birth, life, and eventual momentary presentation to your awareness. Waiting for you to see it. And it will always wait. For it is at peace. An oblivious oblivion. But connected to you, as you are to it. And all things. Let it's peace fill you. And surrender to your connection.

evolution of learning

Learning another language is a great way to gain insight into your own mind. I've been using the Rosetta Stone language learning software to wire my brain to process Japanese. I can feel the necessary connections building when my body feels a deep sense of fatigue and I can no longer continue listening and clicking. The system mimics what it must be like to be a child. You hear snippets of language and different images. You are rewarded when you click on the right one. There is never any translation. There is no need. No one translates 'car' into baby-speak to teach a baby what a 'car' is. They see it - or experience it - and create and association with a sequence of audio and muscular emanations that is stored in the brain as 'language'. I've often been intrigued by this process, why it takes so much more energy than other tasks, what affects the rate of learning.

One of the things I seek to explain to myself is what man has been doing for so many millions of years. How does it put us where we are now? And where do we go from here? In some sense - I speculate we will reach some threshold where it takes so much schooling to reach the forefront of science that we will be limited by our lifetime. And therefore could not hope to advance new thought because it would take so much time to learn what is 'known' previously. I now think this is false. And this video helps explain why. And it also helps explain why it took so long for man to evolve the systems we build on today - language - society - technology. And how they are evolving. In addition to aquiring new data that advances our tiny needs for the moment, we are stumbling on the tools for constructing new thought. Some times, like paper and the printing press, the connection is clear and the tools shape the advance of tochnology and therefore - more importantly - our ability to build mental relationships that did not previously exist. That's what learning is; creating structure in our brains - electro chemical connections - that lead to new abilities to make more novel structures. The ubiquity of information washes us in more forms of novel input. And the resursive cycle, our internal explorations of this input and exfoliation of thought, feeds on itself and drives us all.

Going back to my fatigue observation, I think diet and energy level affects how much effort is available to make these connections. Perhaps that's why it gets harder to learn as we get older. We just dont have the metabolic capacity to process sugars effeciently any more. Our protien folding gets more and more messy. And we lose the ability to make connections. Another factor is the willigness to try something new. The mind travels down the same paths daily - the same snippets of sentences we reuse in conversations - the builtin response to surprise - the reflex to categorize more and more of what we see as something we have all ready seen. Perhaps the evolution of learning will be recognizing and controlling these environmental, social, diet, and stimulation of new experiences. Maybe we will rediscover the importance of sleep.

vigor of youth

If you are an engineer, or even if you aren't, you might find this inspiring. This 17 yr old has combined bits of information, no small amount of gumption, and a heroic consumption of stimulating beverages in order to bend the will of two large corporations - Apple and Att. His blog says it best. But I can't help echo. He documented and performed the first complete hardware unlock of the iPhone so that is can be used with any SIM on any network globally. It was entertaining, as an computer scientist and amateur hacker myself, to go over his steps and marvel at the hours of time it took to complete this task with no certain end. Admittedly, he was not alone. But no one put the pieces together before he did.

I remember well cracking open my own Playstation case with soldering iron in hand. At least I had a 15x15 glossy diagram showing me what to solder. But 8 molten globs of solder later I was the proud owner of a cracked machine that could play any game from any country. Which in no way compares to his monumental achievement. But I can identify with the glee of subverting the corporate will of protectionism.

In similar news of dissolution of corporate angst, Sony is releasing the walkman to DRM free music and evaporating the Sony music service. I'm not sure why one had to lead to the other. But I'm hopeful for the example this may serve. And also hopeful this puts Sony back in the black. I'm fearful their BluRay bid will be spoiled by their greed. This gives me hope that the pain of isolationism will infect other areas of the company thinking. Perhaps what they need is more of the unafraid vigor of youth.

crazy quaff

What is that growing on his head? Oh, that's just my latest attempt to make something for myself in Second Life. Boring hair, begone. So if you haven't heard, Second Life (SL) is a boom town. And the exciting bit is... you can make real money. This has a lot of people rushing to stake their claim and make a quick buck. SL is an online world with about 30,000 people on average playing simultaneously. With about 9 Million accounts they see 1 Mil US dollars spent there every 24 hours. Wow. I won't bore you with crazy stats, they are all up on their web site www.secondlife.com . So the cool twist is anyone can make anything and then they own it, set a price, and can sell it. The details get more complicated, but the mechanism is simple and everyone gets it. You can make dough online. And man does that put dollar signs in people's eyes. Even mine.

So I'm considering ideas about what kind of store to open myself. Ideas anyone? So far I'm thinking.. hair shop ( don't laugh too hard ), maybe sunglasses or hats, or maybe an all asian atire kimono shop. There is not a lot that hasn't all ready been done. So I'm trying to think of something original for which there will be demand. Anyway, it's just fun to make stuff..

Did I say that this was my idea too? I was working on technology 4 years ago to do this same kind of thing.. (big online world where people can make and share stuff). Maybe I should finish that instead of making hair. :P

take a trip

There may be a flying car in your future, if big business doesn't shoot it down. Moller International is slowly but surely nearing operational tests that will enable it to pass FAA regulations and enable users to take off and land at any airport. This amazing achievement is made possible in no small part by it's 8 Wankel rotary engines delivering 1700hp. Conceived in 1924, the rotatary design was used by Mazda but has yet to achieve wide spread use. It has fewer moving parts, lower vibration, and higher fuel effiency than conventional piston designs. Maybe my son will have one. There's a 500 acre plot in Canada I was eying for my futuristic utopian experiment in living. This would be the perfect vehicle for my tech savy inhabitants. Now I just need that billion dollar idea to fund it all...

in another life

Do you have another life? I do. It's where I do all the things I tell myself I should do - but lack the will to do - now. The wonderfully magnanimous, civilization improving, selfless acts that ignore such trivialities as personal pain or hardship in the interest of future humanity. 10 years ago, when filled with much more of this youthful elixir, I imagined a career in particle physics - particularly the lines of research that would lead to practical, clean, sustainable nuclear fusion. In my gut, I know it would change everything about the world now. I followed the work of scientists on the Tokamok and I was disheartened to see the UCSD program cancelled in 1998 from lack of progress. I know other international bodies continue to pursue this dream. But until I saw this video, I thought it very far away. Seeing this raises my conspirational hackles and I try hard not to look cynically at the forces which work to keep this dream a reality. It's a huge step, that this secret work of 11 years is now seeing the light of day in a scientific forum. I hope it's not like many other discoveries, that lay dormant for centuries before adventurous souls discover the hidden gem. And I wonder what I could do to help push this effort forward in some minuscule way?