Personality
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Eight random facts
Subadei tagged me with the eight random facts meme a couple of days ago. With no further ado, here are the eight.
- All dogs, no matter what temperament or breed, like me, at least a little. I can’t recall a single dog that has been at all hostile to me.
- I am immune to fleas and mosquitoes. They simply don’t bite me.
- When I was 20 I fought in a toughman contest and got knocked out in the first round by a tough redneck about 25 pounds heavier than me. For the record, I was up by eight but the ref declined to let me continue. It taught me two important things, namely that while I can take a punch, I can’t take eight punches, and to be very careful about making promises in front of women you’re trying to impress (namely that I would fight in a toughman contest.)
- I earned the permanent enmity of a boss of mine with an artful quip. He once remarked “I’m pushing forty” to which I replied “yeah, from the North.” I found out later he was 54.
- While my speaking voice is abnormally low and quiet, my singing voice is abnormally loud. I present a challenge to the sound guy. Luckily for them my guitar style is loud too.
- I think Thomas Sowell’s theory of the constrained vs. the unconstrained view of human nature does more to explain Western intellectual history than anything else.
- I think “Bonaparte’s Retreat” is pound for pound the best song ever written. While the original Irish version is seldom played, the melody is simply more suited to acoustic instruments than anything else in the traditional catalog. The version on the first Doc Watson family album shines in it’s harsh minimalism, while his later more fleshed out renditions work almost as well. Norman Blake and John Hartford have good versions too. Doc’s version of “Lone Pilgrim” still has the most primal impact on me though, I’m not sure why.
- The life and writings of Eric Hoffer are a source of endless fascination to me. Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken are close seconds. All three of them managed to unload their thoughts onto paper with a minimum of distortion. All three were also solitary and dispassionate observers of human nature.
I now tag Dan Tdaxp, CodePoet, Purple Slog, and Dave Henson.
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Affirmation
Yesterday I went to the lovely and prestigious offices of Green Media Works and got a lovely jolt of purpose and enthusiasm.
Working at home there’s no good way to tell if you’re a heroic entrepreneur writing your name upon history or some loser typing frantically in a messy office. To go out and mingle like minded people in a tremendous psychic push for the former.
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Wellput from Julian Sanchez
In this post about full brains
Efficient brains need to know what they can afford to forget—probably quite a bit, now that it’s so easy to outsource our recollections to rapidly-searched digital media. The interesting question for me is: When almost anything you might need to recall can be offloaded in this way, what’s worth keeping in wetware memory? My first instinct is that you need to remember exactly enough to (1) make interesting connections, and (2) actually find the full information from the signpost you’ve remembered.
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Scientific recognition of my personality
Psychology Today has a Field Guide to the Loner, though not me specifically.
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RIP Milton Friedman
Instapundit has a good collection of links on his life and legacy. He was the first to think of many, many things in economics that seem blindingly obvious now but were heretical at the time. One of the larger intellectual giants of the past 100 years, on a purely technical level, outside of the politics (which I agree with).
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The decaffeinated Steve
So, after more than two weeks of a low-caffeine lifestyle I conclude that the net results are positive.
The good:
- I’m not as moody or edgy
- Apparently I’ve stopped fidgeting in the evenings
- I’m not sleeping any more or less
The bad
- I’m a much heavier sleeper than I used to be (which elevates it to near coma)
- My sleep schedule is more erratic than it used to be
- I’m back to having periodic insomnia, though it’s not that bad.
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Circle of friends
I often read the surveys filled out by the happy wanderers of MySpace. One of the recurring questions is “Are your friends mostly male or female?”.
Were one to put a timer on the amount of time I spend talking/hanging out with people, I imagine I would spend a slight majority of my time with my male friends, but in absolute numbers, I would imagine that two thirds of my friends are female.
Interestingly, while my conversations with my male friends tend to be general purpose, conversations with the female friends tend to be more specialized. Some I talk to just talk to about work, some about art, some about music, some about family, and one I talk to almost exclusively about health and emotions. It’s odd when you think about it.
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Anniversaries of no consequence
- I recently went three and a half weeks without rebooting my workstation, which is possibly an all time record for me. (I usually average two weeks).
- It has been 12 years since I’ve seen a doctor. Three more years and I’m a common-law Christian Scientist!
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Day two of my low caffeine life
The goal is to cut the caffeine intake by two thirds, which I’m doing. So far, the results have been interesting.
I’m not quite as moody as I have been, rather I still have the same moods, just not as extreme. I went to sleep a bit earlier than usual last night and woke up a little earlier as well. There seems to be marginal improvement on my attention span too.
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Yet another good one from Jane Galt
It’s about conflict between working and stay at home moms. It goes into it in ways I’ve never thought of before.