Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world’s a sage.

Marshall McLuhan

the medium is the MASSAGE

Also: Earlids!  As in you can’t shut out the sound, humans don’t have earlids.  I adore it =3

Show me a guy whos afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.

— Lou Brock

Being clumsy I can easily identify with this sentiment, although I’m not sure who I’m beating in this regard.

Initially he just wanted to know the time and an idea of how much longer it was til arrival.  The topic changed to introductions and what our business was in Albany.  Discussion of my profession inevitably turns to endless reminsicing on games and shows from chilldhood with the right audience, and it did with a slight twist.  I was offered this confession:

“Before I die, I want Morgan Freeman to read to me.  Something innocent and sweet… like, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears.’  I just want to hear something nice and soothing, so I won’t mind dying.”

Things like this make riding the bus worth it.  I learned that there’s a least one man that just wants to be read a bedtime story in a soothing voice before he’s put to eternal rest.

Imagine being a scientist post WWII – it’s a conservative time, but also a time of possibility.  Vannevar Bush posed the question, “How do we make the world a better place with science?”  with frightening prescience.  His guesses about the future of digital imaging and availability of information and much more often in frightening detail.  In one section (mind you this is 1945) he gives a detailed description of what was to become the POS system and credit cards in modern stores:

Take the prosaic problem of the great department store. Every time a charge sale is made, there are a number of things to be done. The inventory needs to be revised, the salesman needs to be given credit for the sale, the general accounts need an entry, and, most important, the customer needs to be charged. A central records device has been developed in which much of this work is done conveniently. The salesman places on a stand the customer’s identification card, his own card, and the card taken from the article sold—all punched cards. When he pulls a lever, contacts are made through the holes, machinery at a central point makes the necessary computations and entries, and the proper receipt is printed for the salesman to pass to the customer.

As We May Think, July 1945 The Atlantic Vannevar Bush

He also described the basic process that fax machines, the internet (which he termed the “memex”), and wikipedia operate.  Unfortunately he didn’t realize any of these inventions himself, but the mind that could imagine such things in such a time is truly extraordinary.

This work was also an inspiration to the inventor of the mouse and a significant force in the shaping of personal computing today, Douglas Engelbart.  These guys are freakin’ sweet =3

Video

If I Could Open My Arms
And Span The Length Of The Isle Of Manhattan
I’d Bring It To Where You Are
Making A Lake Of The East River And Hudson

If I Could Open My Mouth
Wide Enough For A Marching Band To March Out
They Would Make Your Name Sing
And Bend Through Alleys And Bounce Off all the Buildings

I Wish We Could Open Our Eyes
To See In All Directions At The Same Time
Oh, What A Beautiful View
If You Were Never Aware Of What Was Around You

And It Is True What You Say
That I Live Like A Hermit In My Own Head
But When The Sun Shines Again
I’ll Pull The Curtains And Blinds To Let The Light In

Sorrow Drips Into Your Heart|
Through A Pinhole|
Just Like A Faucet That Leaks |

And There Is Comfort In The Sound | X4
But While You Debate |
Half Empty Or Half Full |
It Slowly Rises Your Love Is Gonna Drown |

Your Love Is Gonna Drown (x4)
Your Love Is Gonna

So the Social Games Lab at NYU Poly has a purple wall now.  Dark paint is hard to get good coverage one because it’s almost all pigment and actually not very opaque.

Watch this page for updates when I add a Blik: i am 8-bit wall decal pack to the mix.

There’s an old joke email that circulates about living in the south, in it:
“If you run into the ditch, do not panic. Three men in a pickup truck will be along shortly with a chain. Do not try to help. They live for this.”

In a thread about “Selfless Acts of Kindness” I’d like to think this kind of behavior, besides be “selfless” is about being useful.  It’s so easy to own your own set of tools for every situation, I take particular pleasure in maintaining a certain set of hardware and having good friends to share with and borrow of their own collections.  The humanity and connection of working together goes far beyond making up for the “inconvenience” of having to borrow it and honestly makes sure that I get the job done.

That said you’ll always need your own screwdriver – but I’m not going to keep an arc welder around on the rare occasion I need to fuse two pieces of metal.

And always remember…anyone who never has a doubt about whether or not they are doing the right thing with a horse is probably a complete asshole. Every good trainer that you will ever talk to will admit to moments where they realize they could have handled a behavior better, reacted differently, or tried something else.

I have a running dialog about evaluating the options in my head nearly 24/7.  In grade school I always got a problem or two wrong on multiple choice tests because I had a not insignificant reason to question the answers.

The easy critique is that one is over thinking the situation, but as long as you actually make the choice in the end what’s the real harm in feeling out the situation?  At the end of the day I think it’s about keeping the consequences of this apparent “indecision” in perspective.  Then again isn’t it pretty hard to judge the consequences if you’re always questioning?
There it goes again.