Ophelia and Wishful Thinking

Ophelia
I hope all will be well. We must be patient, but I cannot choose but to weep to think they would lay him i' the cold ground. My brother shall know of it. And so I think you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night. [exit]

In this snippet from Hamlet, Ophelia is desperately trying to deal with the death of her father. Say what you want about Polonius, his intentions were good. He delved into what was wrong with Hamlet much better than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He had a theory albeit hamstrung by his own experience and understanding (who isn't?). Did he deserve to die? Probably. He was meddler and spy, he jumped to wrong conclusions and screamed like a little girl when Gertrude thought herself to be under attack. But I digress.

Ophelia missed him terribly and couldn't make sense of the world without her friend and lover Hamlet, her brother's support or her father's advice and meddling. Somehow she knows that if she can hang on long enough, "all will be well". "Time heals all wounds."

But given enough time, isn't everything well? Is Rick from Casablanca completely wrong when he says, "If that plane leaves the ground, and your not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

Are we (humans) so short-sighted that we live in any situation that randomness puts us in?

But I know about regret. I look back over the earlier parts of my life, when I was floundering to "find myself" in the 70's and 80's, and I wonder how I could have wasted so much time. I was right in front of myself.

Thesis statement from "The Myth of the Rational Market"

Without estimating what could go wrong (and, if possible, insuring against it), one cannot begin to make the long-term investments that undergird economic growth. Without quantification of risk, modern capitalism would be unimaginable. Quantifying risk in financial markets, though, is far more fraught than estimating the likelihood of fire or burglary or death. Financial market are not natural phenomena. They are man-made - made by men and women whose business is gazing into an uncertain, risky future. The act of managing risk in such an environment alters that environment, creating a never-stable feedback loop. The crash of 1987 was the first alarming demonstrating of the inherent instability of mathematical risk-management models in finance. It was not to be the last.

Justin Fox

Available at Amazon.com

If you want to understand how we got here, this is one excellent book to read.

Letters and Numbers

Jessica writes in an e-mail from MySpace, "Hi i am Jessica 35 single with no kids and never been married before,I am5"7ft 135lbs with black hair and skin with blue eyes,You seems to sound very nice and I like what you said, by the way I think you Handsome and cute also and I will like to get know more about you...I hope am not asking too much, I can see we have some difference in our age apart but I do not mind either of that. I think age is number."

Dear Jessica,
What you don't know about me is that I'm a numbers guy. I teach math in high school and I know numbers. You are absolutely correct - age is a number. But I think what you intended to say was that you are not interested in numbers if it keeps two loving, romantic and sexually active people apart.

I might agree to such a proposition if a) I believed that numbers don't mean much and b) I didn't have some numbers that have importance in my life. For example,

1 is the number of wives I currently have. I'm happy with this number and it seems to suit me and society well. Increasing or decreasing that number would be difficult at best, heart-breaking at least.

1 is the number of houses I live in. I live there with my wife. It was built about 100 years ago and is a fine house. It's got problems, but at 100 years old, we all have problems.

6 is the number of years I've been married. 2 is the number of marriages I'm on right now.

"Numbers don't matter" is said only by people who don't like numbers. But it's not true. Sometimes numbers are suddenly very important.
For example, if the doctor should say that you have only 3 months to live. See? That became important.

Pretend you're at a bar and a fight breaks out. If you're hit once in the face, that would be bad. If you're hit 20 times in the face. Ouch! Suddenly the 19 in years difference between us crazy kids becomes the difference between walking away and a visit to the hospital. Same thing with bullets. One shot from a .22 is different from a .38 or a .45. People can survive after a single shot from a twenty-two - usually not from a forty-five.

And consider the difference in lifestyle from someone making $22,000 and $45,000.

Shakespeare said it best, "To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand."

attention and labor-saving devices

I was walking by the neighbors new fence. They got a really nice fake wood painted white plastic with plastic posts and crossbeams. I thought of all the time they save having removed the old wood.

Remembering the time and attention that Tom Sawyer was avoiding by having his friends pay him for the "enjoyment" of painting the fence, I wondered what my neighbor was doing with those hours not painting. What was he giving his new additional time and attention to?

But he's not alone. When we use appliances, do we realize we've saved time and attention? Do we take a moment to realize that we've gained moments? Where do we pay attention and where do we take our time?

Watch where you put your time and there your heart lies.

Saturday 27 June 2009

"Part of what you're responding to is those instantaneous, quick, e-mails and twitter posts. The reward is for being clever. The reward isn't for being earnest."
Emily Bazelon; Slate Gabfest 6/25/09 18:05

Tyler Durden: Oh I get it, it's very clever.
Narrator: Thank you.
Tyler Durden: How's that working out for you?
Narrator: What?
Tyler Durden: Being clever.
Narrator: Great.
Tyler Durden: Keep it up then...
Fight Club

Leo Laporte, the podcaster and radio host went on and on a few weeks ago with out the news business is changing. The Iranian people who felt betrayed by the "free and fair" election were not allowed to express their outrage in the media. They took to the streets, twitter and facebook. Laporte and more than a few others saw this as the first instance of the new citizen journalism.

Jason Jones from "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central visited the New York Times and in an "interview" with Rick Berke, assistant managing editor pointed to the paper and asked, "Give me one thing in there that happened today?" Of course, the paper being what it is, he had no real answer. His answer should have been that there are quite a few developing or ongoing stories, and "For the latest news, go to nytimes.com"

Why is faster news better? Why do we have distain for last week's news or the last minute's news? As the speed of news increases, the importance of analysis is lost.

What is happening to our collective memory? Do we forget everything after Time, Newsweek and Meet the Press? I have a problem with "news cycles" and just how quickly Americans forget things that happened last month or last year. For example, President Obama's recent speech trying to get more regulation in the banking sector. He had to remind reporters just how close this country came to a complete financial meltdown. Had they / we forgotten? Does anyone remember that speech?

Can we at least try and remember the issues that are important to us? Can we remember human rights? Can we remember North Korea? Iraq? Tibet? Gun control? I remember Myanmar and the protests by the Tibetian Monks. There is so much work to be done. Can one of the left-leaning organizations stay on one issue and follow through? I don't care which or what but they're all running around like chickens for funding and constituents. If you build it, they will come. I gotta go.