Knowledge is Dead

My buddy Andrew, one of the many bright young minds attending Claremont McKenna College, poses a fantastic question in his comment to my previous post. Among other things, he writes that,

"Most blogs talk about current events or future events. I haven't seen many blogs on the history of French republics or blogs on the Fed. Papers. It seems history might be hard to chase down in the blogging world."

So the question is, can and will you learn the relevant history of a particular subject just from reading a blog on it? Or, must you take a class in order to read a wide range of information on the subject and have a teacher evaluate your knowledge?

My response would be that blogs once again will trump traditional methods of learning here. While traditional learning tells you to read up so that you can have general knowledge that may or may not be helpful in the future (and so you can get a good grade, ugh), reading up on current happenings demands that you be literate in past events so that you can understand what is going on now.

The difference is one of incentives. Classroom learning posits a long-range reward of understanding French history with the rationale that eventually it will be useful. The current events that you read about in blogs, on the other hand, give you immediate incentive to search for an article about the Marshall Plan on Wikipedia to understand how our foreign intervention policies have morphed into what is going on in Iraq. There's no grading system that rewards cramming online, just your desire to understand the world around you.

In a world where information is so liquid with Google Scholar and Wikipedia at each of our fingertips, and Amazon able to drop any book on your doorstep within two days, I would expect that mass stores of prior knowledge would be even less helpful.

Nevertheless, I'm not about to drop out of Vassar next semester and I intend to finish my stay here, for two main reasons:

a) The social scene, including but not limited to being around a bunch of smart and funny guys on the basketball team, is incredible and probably couldn't be replicated anywhere else.

b) There's little economic incentive to blog and read blogs, because our mainstream society is nowhere near to accepting this form of knowledge. If I want recognition for my studies, which isn't necessary but undoubtedly provides a sense of security, I must grind out the process and receive a formal degree.

Models of Learning

OK, this is an incredibly subjective question, but I'm going to pose it anyway.

What would make you more intelligent, attending the classes of a rigorous four-year college for a semester or reading some of the top influential blogs on a daily basis and blogging your responses for four months? I think that many in the "real world" (ie, people who probably definitely wouldn't read this blog anyway), would knee-jerkily respond that college is the obvious choice here.

But hear me out here. Reading many of the top economics, science, and political blogs over the past four to five months has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Freakonomics and Marginal Revolution have taught me a love for data. Cognitive Daily and Mind Hacks help to reaffirm my belief in the importance of raw, experimental science. And reading David Brooks and Kevin Drum have kept me far more informed on the political scene than I ever was when I used to drone through CNN and the occasional Daily Show. All the while I'm actively learning, and reinforcing this learning by writing about these subjects on my own time.

Compare this experience with college. While Vassar is probably one of the most challenging schools in the country and I have had to engage in each of my classes to keep up, most of the talk among my fellow students is not about the issues, but instead about "beating the system." Respect in many cases comes not through understanding the material the best, but by getting the best grade while doing the least possible amount of work.

I'm sure that this sounds plenty pretentious, and rather rantish, by this point. But it's not meant to be. The point is, I succumb to this groupthink on a daily basis as well. It'd be remarkably difficult not to.

I'm usually not this forthright about the utility of blogging, and perhaps it is the stress of all of the work that is piling up on my shoulders that is forcing me into it. But the next time you fellow bloggers look down upon your writing as merely a hobby, consider the possibility that your supposed hobby might not be as trite as you assume.

Mixing art and science

I was reading this recent article in Nature, which talks about how science could use the aesthetic process and take more risks in order to produce faster results. But I think the article could take it one step further.

What if a new wave of artists in this next century didn't work in oil or pastels but instead in genetic engineering? The next Picasso could engineer new plants that are blue and grow sideways, and display them at the MOMA in New York or San Francisco. Now that would be art that I could really appreciate, instead of this postmodern stuff that I could make in Microsoft Paint in 20 minutes on a whim.

Note to Self

Writer's block doesn't mean you don't have anything to say, it just means that you have too many individual ideas, and when compared to the whole they seem useless. Now, that's not simply to say that the first step is the hardest, in fact it probably isn't because you'll choose the easiest path, the most intuitive topic for your first step. What I'm saying is that writer's block can be a good thing. How else would you form all of your nascent ideas but to let them simmer and heat up in your brain?

So, blog readers, there is no reason to shun a break in the action now and then. As long you aren't a paid writer, taking a week or two off from writing could be quite helpful. It's like Obi-Wan in the first Star Wars. Strike me down now, Darth, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

What I'm Reading

Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl -- I can't imagine how you wouldn't be moved by the description Frankl presents of his time in concentration camps during WWII. He manages to make a multitude of pointed and thoughtful remarks on human nature along the way. One of the few books (as far as I can tell) that is easy to read and interesting, yet still highly regarded as a work of science.

Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior by Phil Jackson and some other guy that co-wrote it but is shirked to the side most of the time and nowhere to be found on amazon (Hugh Delehanty) -- A fun one, especially for somebody who plays basketball, and especially for a basketball player that is especially interested in the Zen and Native American traditions that the book discusses. The thoughts on finding a way for one competitor to win while respecting the humanity of both sides was particularly poignant. Also gets points for funny lines such as, "If you meet Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball."

The Firm by John Grishman -- Thrilling ride that centers on a young lawyer that joins a firm that pays well but is very small. Something seems to be wrong, and when the FBI gets involved, it hits the fan. An excellent travel book. Perhaps the scariest part the novel was that a part of me didn't want him to find out anything about his firm, I just wanted him to keep making money and driving his BMW and spending quality time with his apparently beautiful wife.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway -- I can see why some people might like this book, including the intricate detail it provides over a three day period, but it just wasn't for me. I spent much of the summer toiling over this book, stuck around page 350. While I eventually finished it, I need to accept that sometimes the right call is just putting the book down. Hemingway was a giant, but read this one at your own peril.

Quick thoughts and updates

1) "What kind of classes are you taking?" is a 500 times better class than "what classes are you taking?" Nobody cares about what actual classes people are in unless they are very close and are likely to forget anyway. My parents asked me 189203 times this summer what classes I was taking, and I'm sure they still don't know. Not only that, but most students hate to answer this question because they get asked all the time. I would say it'd be better just to find out generally what type of stuff they're interested in, if anything.

2) I couldn't be more excited for this upcoming year.

3) By the end of last year, I had stopped saying "hella." When I realized this, I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror for three days, I was so ashamed. When you don't say hella, you let the whole bay area down. I pledge to continue saying hella all year this time, and hopefully my whole life. It could be cool to try to work it into writing too. Any thoughts on this? Is it too colloquial?

Book Review: Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

Tim Ferriss does a lot of things right in his first serious foray into the writing world. He crammed his book full of very useful life-hacking tips, including actual websites where these ideas could be followed up on. He included tons of interesting tidbits about his life and how he has seen angles that others haven't been able to. And perhaps most importantly, he emphasizes that each of us can be just as successful if we put our mind to it and maintain the right attitude. This book doesn't lack details, which separates it from many of the other self-help books I have read and is probably one of the key reasons that it has been so high-grossing.

Nevertheless, his book wasn't flawless. One of the main gripes I had with Ferriss's style was his attitude that the world should be working for you. He suggests that everything be outsourced, from checking your mail to researching column topics, so that you can pursue the things that you ought to care about. This is a cute idea, but there are two problems it doesn't account for:

a) You can't take an order or check a pulse while you're halfway around the world. Doing your business mobile works for some industries, but certainly not all of them.

b) It totally disregards the notion that your occupation is at least partially about doing some good in the world. If you want to be an activist, Ferriss encourages you to streamline your main occupation and commit yourself to volunteering. But what about organizations that provide valuable services or perform research critical to solving novel diseases? Maybe I'm young and idealistic, but I think that some professions might be worth not quitting.

Ferriss writes funny, quick, and interesting. You have to respect the way he has reinvented his own life. But keep in mind that while forging your own path in life is admirable, the way he specifically did it may not be for everybody.

J.K. Rowling's Last Metaphor

One of the reasons that the Harry Potter series has been so successful is Rowling's ability to illuminate problems with her society by portraying slightly altered versions of the same issues in the her fantastical wizarding world. For example, wizards who are not direct descendants of other wizards are considered "half-bloods" if one of their parents is a Muggle (the wizard term for a non-wizard) or, worse yet, "mudbloods" if both their parents were Muggles. This problem is absurd to the reader, which is partly Rowling's point because such name calling is shockingly similar to much of the racism that occurs in our real world. Countless other such metaphors are found in the series, exploring the issues that she finds important in her life through the fictional lives of Harry and friends.

While most of these metaphors make a lot of sense, the one thing that I have never understood is the reason why many in the wizarding world are unwilling to call Voldemort, the main "bad guy," by his real name. They prefer to call him "You-Know-Who," or if they are very serious about the whole thing, "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." Harry never believed in this taboo about Voldermort's name, prefering instead to follow Dumbledore's advice that "fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself." Rowling obviously included this phenomenon for a reason, for yet another social commentary, but I had up until now not been able to figure out why.

It took the death of an old classmate of mine about two weeks ago to enlighten me. While pondering how sad it is that he died, I've reflected upon how we as a society don't really discuss death until it affects us immediately. I've been lucky in that I haven't had to experience much death in my young life, but this classmate was one of the first people my age who I had known for a long time, whose house I had been over to, and who had made an impact upon my life. I think there are many reasons why death is such a hushed topic, one of which must be a fear that it will lead to unnecessary melancholy.

Through this reflection I believe I understand Rowling's last metaphor, the most convoluted yet one of the most powerful points in her series. Fear of a "name," or fear of talking about something, will only increase fear of the thing itself. The less we talk about death publicly, the more we will fear it privately. Do you agree?

No regrets

It's easy to say no regrets when everything is going good, but when you turn down a chance to go to the Giants game where Barry Bonds hits his 756th home run, suddenly it's not so easy.

I was even going to write a line here about my excuse for why I didn't go to the game, but I don't even care. No excuses, no regrets. (Just a blog post.)

The Stress/Creativity Model

I used to think that I couldn't accomplish anything productive unless I was stressed because naturally, stress forces one into action. But not I'm thinking that it's really more that I'm unable to accomplish anything creative, original, or worthwhile without annoying my friends about how much work I have. I think most people will agree with me that it's not hard to do something menial like math homework, but if you have to compose a piece or write an essay, it's hard to do anything good unless you're really stressed out while you're doing it. Here's the model that sums up this phenomenon (if the text is blurry blame Microsoft paint for being so bootleg--click on the image to enlarge): My original game plan was to try to ignore this relationship and do my assignments and such early. It was a great idea, but unfortunately only worked zero times. So I needed something new.

Then I heard about Dostoesvky, famous Russian author, who you if you don't know, you should probably find out. I've read some of his stuff and let me tell you that on the whole the hype is for real. Anyway, the story about him is that after he would have money from the relative success of one of his former books, he would go to the casino and gamble it all away until he was broke again, apparently because he thought that unless he was hungry, he wouldn't be able to write.

My first thought upon hearing this story were that it is pretty legit to gamble away all of your money and not even pretend to try to win. But then his ideas got me thinking, and I realized that he had totally the same problem that I have, only 150 years ago. However, instead of trying the ignore strategy, which legitimately doesn't work at all, he embraced his problems head on and went about finding ways to make himself more stressed. Well, why don't I do that too? My initial thoughts of ways to make myself more stressed, and thus give a much needed early boost to the creative process, are to e-mail my teacher beforehand and tell him that my paper is really nice, thus enhancing the pressure on me to write a really nice paper, or have somebody make me drink lot of hot sauce if they don't like what I've done.

But those ideas are kind of boring. Does anybody have any others? My gpa and coolness are in the hands of you, the loyal reader. Don't let me down.

Failed Blog Post Series, Part II

Failed Blog Post -- "Having a "calling" in life." I was going to write about how I think having a calling in life is a entirely ridiculous and patently absurd concept, but then I decided that just because I don't have one doesn't mean that I can't let others have their fun. I'll just stand and mock from a comfortable distance.

Failed Blog Post -- "The Platform Phenomenon." This was an idea I had while following the upcoming election a little bit and stumbled across some criticism of Barack Obama for his lack of a distinct platform. I would argue that being an effective leader is more about reacting to what's happening around you and working with others more than having good ideas yourself. Part of people's fallacy in overrating the importance of the head in any organization is that the people below him would be making a lot of the decisions. Obviously ideas are important, but a platform is an oversimplification of ideas so that it can be marketed. This post failed because it has blatant contradictions all over it and it's only effective selling point is the alliteration in the title.

Failed Blog Post -- "The Switch." This post was talking about how I was considering changing my name when I introduce myself from Andy to Andrew. It was mainly in response to everybody questioning "Eddy?" after I say Andy, ostensibly because they have issues with their ears. Andrew would reduce this confusion. I'm still definitely throwing this idea around, but somehow I feel like I would be selling out if I did so, and as you guys know, I am 100% about keeping it real around here.

Failed Blog Post -- "The Sports/Life Analogy." I wrote this one in the thick of basketball season when people were beginning to explain to me how sports were so similar to life. I am reticent to agree, because I think in many situations sports value things that might not always be valued outside of sports. Arrogance often trumps all in sports, as can a form of mindlessness, what is sometimes termed in basketball as a player who "has no conscience." But I think that we would all agree that, especially in our evolving ever-neoteric society, these qualities are not exactly fresh to death. Indeed, there are lots of reasons why making blanket statements about sport teaching lessons for life may be misguided. But ultimately, I realized that the better my post and the more well worded my explanations, the more of my own nose I would be cutting off to spite my face.

Editor's Note: These got way too long. Part III will attempt to keep them shorter. You're probably thinking, "What's that you say, there's going to be a part three? Awesome!!" Well, yes, but don't get your hopes up for soon. I've got to come up with some more post ideas and then fail at them. Wish me bad luck!

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

This post may contain spoilers, but to be honest if you haven't finished reading the book you probably shouldn't even be on the internet anyway.

I'm really too mentally exhausted to write anything beyond a few simple sentences about J.K. Rowling's last installment, but I felt an obligation to my fans to give a couple of remarks about the finish to probably the greatest book series ever.

The book is very ambitious in it explorations of death, examining what may happen after you die, the way people react to the death of others, and the apparent honor in overcoming one's fear of death. It uses a lot of the surreal elements that her world allows to allow for some pretty creative angles. It works because she's built up each of these characters so much throughout the series and because we care so much when each of the characters dies. But as a stand-alone book I don't think it would be that effective, because it didn't have any of the fun side-plot like the Triwizard tournament or Harry's various love affairs that the other books had to help advance the plot. Reading the last 200 pages is a draining process; an absolute emotional roller coaster ride.

That said, I loved it, and (serious spoiler alert!) I'm really happy that she didn't kill off Harry at the end. There was a moment there when you had to be pretty sure that he was going to die, but then Rowling pulled off a cool effect where everyone thought he was dead and he sort of got to visit his own funeral, which I think is sort of a weird dream that lots of people have. That and the stuff about Dumbledore imperfect character were the strongest parts of the book. I also liked the epilogue if only because it effectively prevented anybody from making a sequel. All in all a strong finish, and I don't have to recommend the book to anybody, because if you're not a dweeb you'll read it anyway.

The Failed Blog Post Series, Part I

Failed blog posts are like mistakes that you sort of regret the next day. You aren't exactly happy about it, and you tell yourself you wouldn't do it again, but you don't tell anyone about them, and subconsciously save them for a future lazy Sunday afternoon when you can't think of anything else to write about.

Of course, you forget that your Sundays are generally pretty busy after all, and before you know it you have tons and tons of old blog posts that you have no use for. So that's where this series is coming in: I'm going to briefly list the general scheme of these posts for your viewing pleasure, and them delete them from my drafts folder so I never have to see them again.

Failed Blog Post: "I Hate Political Parties." This was an old idea I had that mixes up a serving size of unrealistic idealism with a helping of ignorance, tossed with some sprinkles of teen angst. Then again, I still don't like the idea of political parties, I just don't see how not voting is going to help anything.

Failed Blog Post: "Scientific Articles Aren't Really as Complicated as they Appear." I thought this could be an awesome post until I realized that it was just a thinly veiled attempt to brag about something that really wasn't worth boasting about in the first place. It's been in my draft folder for over 6 months now.

Failed Blog Post: "In Defense of Normal People." This was supposed to be a post wondering aloud why the weird was valued so much more highly than the normal in our society. Then I remembered that this didn't apply in our society at all, just in the bubble that is Vassar. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

Failed Blog Post: "Never Question Enthusiasm." This post was inspired by how annoying it is when somebody is really into something and then somebody else is like, "dude, why do you care so much?," and the first person just feels stupid. I decided not to post it because I thought it might hit too close to home.

Well, that's it for now! Part II will probably be coming up soon though, because this feels like spring cleaning all over again, only with ideas instead of dust, and a keyboard instead of Windex.

Palindromaholics Anonymous

Do you ever find yourself looking for palindromes on the digital clock on your DVD player more often than you actually watch the movie? Do you make a wish whenever you see a palindrome like 12:21 or 6:46 on your computer? Do you certainly not condone, but can see why a cult would agree to a mass suicide on a day, and at a time, that is a palindrome? Do you think that today is hands down the most legit day of the year?

If so, then palindromaholics anonymous is the place for you. Welcome, you're one of us now.