reading review - eureka street

Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson (January 2018)

Eureka Street was the seventh and final book I reread back (way, way back) in December (1). I chose it with an eye on considering its candidacy as my potential ‘favorite book’ and, although I’m still not exactly sure myself, I think Eureka Street is in the top spot, though it does remain close with that damn Maniac Magee...

One up: Robert McLiam Wilson’s main point comes through pretty clearly in a short passage at the end of the novel: there is a difference between poisonous politics and beating up a twelve-year old (2). Kind-hearted reader, you may not find this a particularly compelling or insightful or even worthwhile message, not after reading over one hundred thousand words, but sometimes that’s what you get from a book.

Frankly, I don’t think the lesson was a waste of time at all. Pop on over to CNN or MSNBC or Fox News if you don’t agree, reader, and think about the idea while a bunch of rich folks in suits enthusiastically yell at each other between commercial breaks. All the big talk about unity or acceptance or working together is a non-starter among people who insist on giving talk the same weight as action.

One down: I likely mentioned this before but I simply cannot recall how I found out this book existed. This is highly unusual – for most of the books I read (or bands I listen to) I can usually recount a detailed origin story. Perhaps the mystery of how I came across this work added to how much I’ve enjoyed it (3).

Just saying: At one point late on in Eureka Street, protagonist Jake Jackson runs into an old acquaintance. Now, I have reason to believe this person is a character from another of Wilson’s novels. It would certainly be a delight if there were overlapping scenes in this author's various novels, don't you think, reader?

Footnotes / a sigh

0. Is this book really about anything?

One thought I dug into when I reviewed this book last year was about the mysterious graffiti that follows the characters around. Since the letters have no official meaning, they could really mean anything. And I think that's something to consider here for the book - Eureka Street can be whatever the reader wants it to be.

1. This one is for you, astute reader!

Eagled-eyed readers will note that I actually finished this book in January. Sue me, honestly. In my defense, I started reading in December. Or to be more exact, I started on my birthday, December 28.

2. What? This ain't what you said about this book last year...

Here is a link to that somewhat lengthier review.

3. Of course, what does this mean, right?

In the day and age of the toll-free Information Superhighway, what this really means is that I probably idly Googled ‘Irish novels’ or something like that and the search engine spit out Eureka Street. Oh, the magic of it all! I tip my cap to the part of my brain that erased this event from my memory – I prefer the illusion of having magically stumbled across this book, maybe as it lay forgotten in some gutter on a Cambridge side street.

leftovers: the plausibility of the alternative fact

Medicine has undergone this kind of change over the years decades centuries as well. For the most part, people know what the healthiest behaviors are... and yet... there are always those who have a different approach. It just comes down to the same thing - one side has the facts but doesn't explain well enough while the other side has no facts but remains completely plausible.

I suppose doctors today deal with the 'challenge' of informed patients in a way their peers from the past would be unable to relate to. If I feel sick or hurt, I don't stumble down to the doctor's office for a consult - I go straight to the internet and lookup my symptoms. Here’s something I couldn’t have said to a doctor in 1995:

Hey doc, ‘ow ah ya? My foot hurt and I either sprained it or have chronic depression. Oh, and can we run a blood test on it, just in case I have metacarpal cancer? Say what? Oh, right, metatarsal, sure, but can we check that, ya know, since my friend on the internet said...

It’s a stunner WebMD doesn’t give out referrals, honestly.

I suspect doctors are not too thrilled about patients coming in after self-diagnosing themselves with three terminal illnesses after misreading the symptoms of a shellfish allergy. But it might just be the growing pains needed to achieve a healthier future. A lot of debilitating conditions are chronic and their effects can be better controlled if caught early on in life. A population able to convince itself of the need to go see the doctor – even if it is based on a false self-diagnosis at whoknowswhat.com – is probably going to be healthier than one where people are used to saying... ah... this weird bumpy thing... it’s probably nothing… a pint of red wine should take care of it...

leftovers #1... now, it’s interesting because, I mean, like, you know… right? (other ways to control a pause)

When it comes to being able to ‘control a pause’, I think my skills are just about average. I can think of plenty of times when I’ve been fully in control of silence while making a complex point. However, I’ve been cutoff plenty of times mid-word as well, sometimes during words that I really should finish – Japanese, astronomy, tiger…

As I’ve started paying more attention to this skill, I’ve noticed all the different ways people without full mastery of this ability get by without it. The most direct way is to simply ask for command because most people will not interrupt if the speaker asks them. However, I sometimes suspect this results in the listener simply waiting (and therefore not listening) until it becomes appropriate to interrupt. This isn’t the ideal set of conditions for careful listening – how can a listener pay attention while also thinking about a way to interrupt (1)?

A less direct but more formal way is to use structure to prevent or discourage interruptions. There are countless examples of structured exchanges where interruption is almost impossible – ceremonies, speeches, presentations, and so on. The hallmark of these structured exchanges is a built-in moment when it is possible (and perhaps even superficially encouraged) to interrupt. However, anyone present usually understands it is considered rude or even taboo to do so.

Footnotes / how can there be a footnote for a two hundred word post?

1. Wait, say this again?

It’s also possible that an interruption is necessary for understanding the rest of the discussion (a point often lost on someone who asks for no interruptions). If listeners cannot interrupt to get a point of confusion clarified, the result is an illusion of engagement within conversations.

tales of two cities, vol 9: jan '17 - mar '17

01/13/2017
Linear Park - Mass. Ave. at Cameron Ave. (5:25 pm)
Porter Square Station (5:35 pm)

It's a new calendar year. I'm optimistic yet wary. Each of the past three years started with a promising month or two before events conspired to send a clear message: sorry boss, but this year isn't going to be any good, either.

I cut today's ride on Friday the 13th short because the cold weather makes my fingers go numb. I suppose this could be taken as a sign that, once more, the new year will only serve to refresh rather than replace last year's problems. And that Friday the 13th thing...

But I'll take responsibility before superstition takes root. This one is all on me. If I want to attack winter boredom by cruising around Cambridge, I'll need to buy better gloves.

02/05/2017
Danehy Park (10:18 am)
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (10:35 am)

I start a day many will remember for the Patriots' comeback victory in the Super Bowl twelve hours later by completing my first early morning shift at the hospice. Sunday mornings at eight AM are quiet, peaceful, and unhurried. The description applies both to the hospice shift and the bike ride leading up to it.

The new shift was a long time coming. For about eight months, I regularly checked the monthly calendar for a Sunday morning shift to open up. My thought was a Sunday shift would be easier to maintain once I resumed full-time work. I suppose I've been expecting to return to work for a long time.

The ride home takes me through Inman Square. The main intersection is another example of what's changed in eight months. No longer are left turns from Hampshire onto Cambridge permitted. It's hard to know if this is a response to the death of a cyclist in June. On one hand, perhaps the accident revealed an otherwise unknown safety issue with the left-turn. But on the other hand, the change came into effect four months after the memorial service ended. I suppose I just have unreasonable expectations when it comes to how fast things will change.

03/01/2017
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (8:27 pm)
Central Square at Mass Ave / Essex St (8:33 pm)

One late February evening, I notice a Hubway member key on the sidewalk in front of the H Mart. I pick it up, bring it home, and initiate a somewhat lengthy back-and-forth with customer service to determine who the key belongs to and what I can do to return it.

Eventually, I get put directly in touch with the owner. We agree to meet at the library on this night. It turns out he is significantly involved in various cycling projects and committees around town. Our conversation moves in fits and starts - I estimate he understands no more (and no less) than eighty percent of everything I say. The same applies for me - despite asking at least twice, I cannot figure out why he has a Hubway membership despite clearly owning at least one bicycle of his own.

the plausibility of the alternative fact

Older nonfiction has a problem newer such books might not need to worry about: explaining facts.

I first thought about this last summer. A number of times, I was reading only for the flow to suddenly halt because the author went into a detailed explanation of what happened, when it happened, and who was prominently involved. After a bit of explanation, the piece would resume – so to speak – and the author’s ideas, opinions, or insights would once again take center stage. These books, I noticed, were all written ages ago. One example is Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, and another was The Ethics of Ambiguity, first released in 1947 (1). Books published more recently do not seem intent on including long factual explanations.

I wonder if this is a pattern or just a coincidence. My guess is the former. Granted, a book does need to assume the reader has a certain level of knowledge or else every book would be five thousand pages long. But as Tim Harford points out in Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy, any child with Wi-Fi access has more information at his or her fingertips than any librarian ever did prior to 1990 (2). Everyone who has grown up with The Internet is used to looking things up right away - it is no wonder that modern writers assume their readers will not suffer for a lack of long, factual explanations.

I guess the important question is... then what?

At the extremes, the consequences are obvious. It could be that as writing continues to free itself from the burden of informing, it will move even faster into previously unexplored territories. Nonfiction might, in a strange way, become more creative. This seems like something worth looking forward to.

But isn't it just as likely that writers will base pieces or even entire books on misinformation? If writing has less need to inform, then writers will have less need to be informed. This will surely lower the bar over time for what constitutes well-informed writing. Someday, the kind of sloppy writing that editors might have once flagged for having a shaky grasp of the facts will be allowed to occupy space on YOUR bookshelf (or kindle) without so much as a second revision (3). I suppose this invites its own version of creativity, albeit the kind I’m not particularly excited about.

Maybe the right question is to ask how much a writer should assume in an age when readers have more information available than ever before. My advice - whatever your gut tells you, assume less. Although it seems like assuming a reader will just know is a decent thought, I don't think it is a good habit for a writer.

The problem with a writer who assumes others will just know is that these writers eventually become writers who don't explain things. A writer who doesn't bother to explain might resonate with readers who already agree - for these readers, an omitted explanation is time saved. For those who don't already agree, the writing will come down to plausibility. To put it another way, a piece of writing that doesn't really explain its own point is assessed on a standard of plausibility. This isn't a great predicament for a writer to get into because writing - like many competitive fields - is one where it's much easier for the unskilled to fake plausibility than it is to fake being skilled.

This must be why, despite living in a time when we have more information available than ever before, we are still struggling to agree on some of the basic facts about the world around us. The only surprising thing about 'alternative facts' becoming a phenomenon in 2017 was that it didn't happen sooner. In hindsight, it seems inevitable that as we all became used to having the facts at our fingertips, the very idea of good writing became more about plausibility than explanation. Why waste time explaining what's already on The Internet when it's possible to craft a plausible explanation out of it all?

It's not like the slide into plausibility is a completely new idea related solely to writing. I don't know about you, reader, but I've talked to a salesman or two in my life. I know from those experiences that a poor salesman who has all the facts straight about a superior product shouldn't get dragged into a plausibility contest with a slick salesman with no knowledge and a shoddy product. If a car has a perfect safety record, for example, a basic pie chart (with no slices) is the only information needed. But if everyone at the dealership is convinced that factors like outward confidence of the salesman matter more than being able to explain the product's superiority, then those who understand what's really going on are going to lose to those who understand what it means to be plausible.

The most surprising thing I've noticed in the context of this problem is how writers who simply assume everyone knows certain facts start writing in ways similar to those they often criticize for making things up. They'll say, for example, that the sky is blue and ridicule those who say the sky is purple. Instead of presenting sources or detailing explanations, they just take for granted that everyone knows what the heck they are talking about. Facts are facts... right? The sky is blue... right? I think sometimes these writers lose the plot and present their well-known facts in the exact same way others present 'alternative facts' - like bullies, with intellect and with the primary muscle groups.

Unfortunately, when the facts are presented in the same way, when one source says the sky is blue and the other says the sky is purple, the expectation each side sets is the same - the color of the sky is already well-understood. If these sources know the audience won't look up at the sky for themselves, then it doesn't matter which side is 'right', it just matters which side is more plausible. Most importantly, no matter what the outcome, we've all lost at a much more important game.

In the past, I would conclude that this is what happens when a writer becomes too good to explain things. The sky is sometimes purple, like at sunset, but a writer who is just too good to explain this won't bother to make room for this caveat, they'll just criticize anyone who doesn't agree that the sky is blue. A writer who takes this approach better be very sure the audience will accept the claim because if the audience doesn't, a counter-argument that comes off as more plausible is going to win.

I’m not here to predict the future. Longtime readers know I’m not even all that good at predicting when my own posts will go up. But it is obvious to me that the role of the writer will change as the general reader’s level of knowledge changes. Although I do not claim to have any special knowledge into how this might happen, I suspect it will be counter-intuitive: the writer will need to become better at explaining the facts. I think some of what we’ve dealt with over the past few years represent the growing pains of this transition - writing seems to be reaching new mountaintops yet doing so in ways that leaves readers behind to figure out their own way up the slope.

Will the future of writing look a lot like TOA? I don’t think so, or maybe I just hope not, but I’m certain writing will bear little resemblance to what it was in years past. All I know for sure is that the worst thing to become in this day and age is someone who cannot explain simple things. I can dress it all up in different ways to catch your attention, reader - too good to explain things, too aloof to answer easy questions, too cool for school, whatever you want - but it all comes back to a far simpler point: right now, the trend is shifting away from explanation. It seems that people prefer to describe rather than explain.

I think this preference is based on a positive thing - more information - but the process must be handled carefully. It doesn't matter how well-informed you are or how much work you've put in to justify having an opinion - if you don't have the skills needed to explain, you are going to lose against someone who has the skills needed to be plausible. That would be a real shame, I think, because every time the plausible wins out over an explanation, we all lose.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

0. Hi, I’m Tim, and I’m a PhD candidate at Internet University…

This transformation surely applies to medicine. Just consider how much better informed the average patient is compared to a peer from a decade ago. And all those new specialties! But somehow, I get the feeling that we are all collectively less healthy than we were at some point in the past. More on this thought in a future post, I think.

1. Humblebrag?

This isn't a humblebrag. I read better books than you and we all know it!

Speaking of these books - a book doesn’t automatically become bad if it explains events. But I think from the types of books I read, the style of writing I enjoy most gives the reader credit for either knowing what’s going on or having the ability to access the needed information through his or her own outside efforts. This allows the author to focus on whatever happens to be his or her thoughts on the topic.

This point of view is also almost a direct contradiction of the post. Sigh. Who knows what I think anymore?

2. Humble... brag?

At the time of writing, I actually did not, so no, not all of us have Wi-Fi. But still!

3. When you say someday, does that include yesterday?

I'm sure the cynical reader will be delighted to point out how there is plenty of crap already on bookshelves. Good point, I say - the idea here isn't that there will be more crap, it's that what we called crap yesterday will be hailed as 'good literature' tomorrow.

leftovers: tales of two cities, special edition - superbowl preview

I often joke about how my bike riding strategy reflects my politics. Ideally, I would be as far right as possible; reality requires I go to the left. I may have already made this joke here, reader, and if this is the case please accept my apologies.

While I'm apologizing, I'll take a minute to clarify something - this post notwithstanding, there is no relationship between bike riding and NFL football.

Wait, actually, there is one more thing - both activities benefit from wearing a helmet. So, uh, do that, please.

reading review - the argonauts

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (December 2017)

Nelson explores sexuality, gender, marriage, and a host of other really easy topics to write about in this 2015 memoir. It was among the books I reread this past December (and worth every previously encountered syllable).

As is often the case for the very good books I read, I’m not enthused by the idea of a classic TOA-style reading review. I also didn’t think this book was written in a way my limited writing abilities could make much sense of.

So, I figured I’d dust off the proper admin concept instead. As they say, when the going gets tough, bury it in admin…

If anything, the scattershot nature of my own critically acclaimed half-baked organizing concept will evoke associations with Nelson’s award-winning, best-selling, and genre-blurring memoir.

Thanks for reading all those hyphenated words.

Tim

What’s an Argonaut?

The title is a reference to a ship, the Argo, whose parts change over time yet retains its name all the while…

Sounds like a metaphor –

Doesn’t it?

So what are The Argonauts?

Beats me. A band?

Are you about to make a joke about how a band’s members –

No, I was not.

Introducing: The Insofar Index (page thirteen…)

Anytime I come across ‘insofar’ in my reading, I find my eyes roll just a tiny little bit. It’s an involuntary reaction, but still. It happened last year as I read The Origins of Totalitarianism and it happened again when I worked through The Ethics of Ambiguity.

I’m not entirely sure why I react to this word like a petulant second-grader being told to do more math homework. It might be because I see this word as a little too academic or a little too pompous or a little too old-fashioned. It might be for any combination of those reasons.

But whatever the case is, the reality is that I see the word and I sigh. What to do, what to do? Go to page fourteen, I guess.

What to do? Well, growing up would certainly be an overreaction…

Maybe I should just write down each instance of the word and start building an ‘insofar index’, a collection of books where I’ve seen the word appear. If anything, it’ll give me something else to do. And if I keep at it long enough, I might accidentally compile a list of great writing. This is because, you see reader, no matter what I think of ‘insofar’, it only seems to come up in the midst of a great work.

A trick for writers...?

Nelson makes a reference in one passage to the difficulty of avoiding pronouns. Her advice is to develop a habit of using names and, more generally, to start leaning on plurality.

It reminds me of how I’ve gotten around certain challenging sentences in my own writing. Instead of using a clunky expression like ‘his or her’ or relying on the ever-tempting ‘one’, I’ve found it far simpler to use a plural construction.

Singular: a good writer never allows his or her…
Plural: good writers never allow their…

Good lord…

The Argonauts brings in a number of quotes from outside sources. One of the better guest appearances is from Audre Lorde, my summary of her contribution as follows:

The cultural obsession with optimism distracts us from the importance of producing real food and breathing clean air on a planet with a sustainable future.

One of the ‘to-do’ items I created after finishing The Argonauts was to do a fuller exploration of Lorde’s work. So far, I’ve only read Sister Outsider, a collection of Lorde's essays and speeches from 1976 to 1984. MY next read will be The Cancer Journals and we'll see where I go from there.

It is occurring to me as I write that I perhaps originally picked up Sister Outsider after making ‘explore Audre Lorde’s writing’ resolution in the wake of first reading The Argonauts back in March 2016. It’s funny how, at some level, we are all programmed insofar as how we’ll always respond in the same way to the same stimulus.

The Insofar Index - A Prequel

The Insofar Index – outlined in my smarmy note above – is a descendant from ‘ The Marshmallow Index’, a failed concept from early on in my reading life (which means, like, late 2010 through about mid-2012). In those heady days, I came across references to academic studies fairly often in the microeconomics and pop-psychology books I tended to read.

The most common study I ran into was ‘The Marshmallow Test’, a deplorable experiment that demonstrated how willing academics are to torture children in the name of a null hypothesis. The test was constructed as follows:

First, the academic would ask a child to resist eating a marshmallow for as long as possible in order to earn a reward. Then, after around fifteen minutes or so, the reward would be given, assuming the child did not eat the first marshmallow, of course, because a gluttonous child deserves no reward, only public mockery decades later in some silly bestseller, but if the child did resist then the reward would be given, this reward of course being another marshmallow, because, well, because resisting the urge to eat one marshmallow to get another marshmallow proves willpower, because… I forget.

The academics, incredibly, linked these results to future performance on things like standardized tests, because, you know, the whole marshmallow thing, what it proves beyond a reasonable doubt is, that, umm, which… oh, whatever. Short version of the last three paragraphs: I thought this test was nonsense.

Anyway, my proposed index would have been a list of books with a note about the first appearance of the study in the book. It was like clockwork, the way this study appeared in these books, and I always sensed its arrival like a cow sniffing out a spring storm - here comes that marshmallow test...

Looking back, I kind of wish I’d done it, honestly, mostly because there is no chance I’d do it now – I’ve learned that the 'reward' for reading a book prominently featuring ‘The Marshmallow Test’ is, fittingly, usually getting to read another book prominently featuring ‘The Marshmallow Test’ and, well, by now, if it isn't obvious, I don't really think reading books that feature this test is a great use of my time...

These days, if I see a marshmallow, I eat it, and I don’t care about what some academic says this means for my weekend. And if I ever have kids, I'm going to teach them to eat their damn marshmallows, ASAP, because life is short and the ice cream melts quickly. I don’t know if this says anything about my willpower or not.

And what does this RANT have to do with The Argonauts?

People change.

This reminds me of something I’ve written before…

For some reason, people feel it is acceptable to say anything as long as it is based on some kind of association. This might explain some of the hurtful things otherwise kind and decent people say to one another. As Sheryl Sandberg points out in Option B, when someone gets a case of lemons, let’s not talk about our cousin who died of lemons, even if we did like that cousin quite a bit and have nothing else to say as it regards the topic of lemons.

We all slip up at some point…

Upon discovering that the child she carries is going to be male, Nelson takes a moment to mourn the lost fantasy of a feminist daughter. So far, so good... I support sharing feelings and self-expression and all that.

However, she goes on to lament the inability to braid a son’s hair. Line crossed! Come look at my head, please! I braid my hair every night, whether I need to or not, and do so despite the obstacle of my you-know-what.

And, you know, short male hair is another example of... ah, never mind.

Doesn’t Nelson advise against making a fetish of the unsaid?

Well, the thing about that, you see, is, umm, well…

The Insofar Index - A Sequel

This book mentions hospice volunteers. I didn’t note the page. If I were to start tracking when 'hospice volunteering' appeared in the books I read, I think this book would be first on the list. Maybe I’ll have to write the second.

So, did you leave the apartment at all?

I did, actually. I left as soon as I read the section about how some people are willing to take a leap only if they receive a guarantee against bad consequences. Emboldened, I bundled up, went outside into the snow, and almost immediately slipped on the ice.

Anything else?

I liked the idea that dismissing nuance is a way to bring completeness to the unfinished. To the spirit of that thought as well as some others – including that willfully erasing obstacles does not lead to mastery – I think I need to do a couple more posts for this book. So, look for those in the coming weeks.

And as always, thanks for reading.

leftovers: dubliners

Sometimes I read stories about authors using pen names to submit classic works to major magazines. When they get rejected, an article is written about the great scandal, something along the lines of "Oh, look at this, The New Yorker just turned down 'The Lottery'!"

Goodness. This strikes me as a preposterous way to spend time. The history of Dubliners gives us all the fodder we need - Joyce submitted his collection eighteen different times to fifteen different publishers before the book was finally printed. Eighteen! Fifteen! Actually, wait, why did he submit it to some publishers an extra time? Ah, never mind...

Many great works have a rejection history like Dubliners. So, what is the point of running an experiment like the one I cite above? To prove rejection is a thing?

Perhaps the point is to prove The New Yorker (and other remarkably similar publications such as True On Average) will always have more qualified applicants than available slots. This makes sense to me. If it were otherwise, these publications would skip issues or release shorter editions every once in a while. I've yet to hear of this happening. Plus, the visual evidence seems to agree with my thought - whenever I see The New Yorker sitting around on some coffee table these days, it's always the same size as the last one.

if you like this post, you can text me, or...

I think the ease of texting is a barrier to meaningful communication. I first thought of this when my mom died. A lot of people got in touch with texts and I appreciated each and every one of those messages.

But two years after the fact, I don't remember a single word from those messages. It's like those thoughts, sentiments, and condolences all disappeared (maybe my mom brought them with her into The Wherever).

Interestingly, I do remember what the people who called or spoke to me in person said (1). Those words, for whatever reason, I've managed to keep for myself. I don't have much to go on here as an explanation except that, maybe, the medium of communication is important in some way for how I store words away for later.

It played out again when I lost my job. Again, many got in touch with texts. Almost two years later have passed, though, and I don't remember any of them. I do remember the one person who did call, what we talked about, and how much the conversation meant to me.

These realizations don't lead me to any additional insights. I'm not here to run out a list of cliches about how we communicate with our voices, our body language, our presence, or whatever. Those are just the things that happened to me and maybe there is no connection between what was said and what I remember.

Still... it is interesting, isn't it? The internet has been around for twenty years or so and most folks are perfectly comfortable with it by now. We use it to make agreements, buy things, or send condolences. And yet, I still think most prefer face-to-face communication whenever possible. When I wander about town, I still see salespeople who make face-to-face deals for a living. I thought the internet had won... so why isn't the game over?

Again, I could speculate, but not today. Instead, I'll leave you with my rule of thumb. If a text takes more than a minute to write, toss it. It's probably a good indicator that a call, email, or just waiting to chat until the next time you see the person is a better approach.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. Let's clarify: I just wanted to use the example to point out how my recollection of the time seems to align with the form of communication used...

I should make it clear how I'm not saying people should stop texting during a difficult time. Texting is great and often is the best way to get in touch. In the case of a death, the opportunity to go to a funeral or memorial service makes the idea of communicating 'meaningfully' beforehand more or less irrelevant. And in other situations, texting is the best way to set plans, align schedules, or gather information. Don't overthink things - it is better to communicate by text than to not communicate at all. The meaningful communication can always come later.

leftovers #2: march was made of yarn

The one thing a tsunami has in common with a nuclear strike is that each is an example of a national tragedy that could befall Japan with as little as fifteen minutes warning. The loss of life isn't as easily comparable - analysts estimate that if North Korea nuked Tokyo, a million people would die.

I'm not sure about the exact numbers there ('a million' is a really convenient round number) but the basic formula of 'nuclear attack = incalculable loss of life' is good enough to get us all on the same page. In fact, let's make this idea look a little more official:

TOA Official Policy: let's not have any nuclear strikes on Tokyo, Kyoto, Katsumoto, Hello Moto, or anywhere else, really.

With this in mind, I present a fact that sometimes surprises my American readers - Trump's foreign policy is viewed a little differently abroad than it is here. I'm not saying it's viewed more (or less) favorably, I'm not saying all Japanese have one unified point of view, I'm just saying that what you'll get in Japan as it pertains to public opinion about Trump's foreign policy is different than it is here.

I don't think the explanation for why the Japanese will view the US differently than Americans view the US is very complicated. Just crunch those numbers again, reader, and consider how these might influence the concerns of the average Japanese. I don’t think it’s very complicated – Tokyo is one time zone east of Pyongyang while The Very, Very White House remains a full twelve time zones away. Forget a planned attack - North Korea is close enough to accidentally hit Japan with a nuke. Such proximity makes merely dismissing the antics of world leaders - North Korea’s or otherwise - a very different proposition in Osaka than it is in, say, those cities serviced by the Acela route.

leftovers #3: i gotta pokemon go

I made a reference in this post to 'meta-gaming' and described it as 'using information outside the game to play the game'. It's not a great definition and probably not very clear to someone inexperienced with video games.

One way to think of it is to make an analogy to a board game. Using information about the game itself (such as the rules, the turn order, and so on) to make decisions is all just part of the game. But using information about your opponents (like a Monopoly player saying "I know Joe likes the Green properties so I'll trade for them before he gets them") is playing a meta-game.

The rest of the post was broadly exploring creativity in the context of gaming. Again, the meta-game concept comes into play. I think those being creative within the game structure are limited by the imagination of the game designer. Someone who comes up with sensational adverbs in Mad-Libs is undoubtedly creative but the potential for creativity is still limited in some form by the game. On the other hand, I think those creative in the meta-game are expressing themselves in a truer sense of the word 'creative' because the associations and ingenuity required to do so are not bound by any limits imposed in the design of the game.

leftovers #2: mythical man month --some more thoughts on growing a system or team

The complexity of modern software is driven by three factors – almost all parts are unique (if they share properties, they generally become subroutines), it is often asked to conform to existing institutions, and it is often forced to change by new users or hardware. Considered as a group, these factors suggest no two software projects will be the same. To meet such unpredictable challenges over and over again, a manager must lead with some basic principles in mind.

First is to design the team’s work process in a way to encourage rather than inhibit creativity. A sure approach is to encourage growing a system one component at a time rather than trying to build a complex system in one major push. The key is to always have working code that the team can add to and build on.

A modular approach helps teams grow systems and products. If each section exists independently, the team can isolate maintenance issues so long as they work within the specifications ensuring the front and back end of each module fits into the neighboring pieces of the larger system.

Teams that become used to solving problems will develop an element of hustle. They will chase after lost causes and not be afraid of trying new things. A hustling team moves a little faster than necessary and creates the cushions needed to handle unforeseen events in their work process. When work is defined in small chunks that lead to frequent success, teams will become accustomed to victories and work a little harder in pursuit of the next win.

the business bro presents - my first promotion

It occurred to me one day while in New York's Chinatown that 'naturally progressing' into a managerial role was a lot like becoming an older brother.

In the beginning, I came aboard at the bottom of the organization. I did what I was told for a couple of years. When I required help, people were friendly and responsive. I screwed up a lot but was generally forgiven and allowed to grow.

As things progressed, it seemed like all was going well. I was getting new assignments, meeting new people, and generally less reliant on those above me in the hierarchy.

Then, one day, BOOM! Surprise, a new person shows up. This person looked a lot like me in some ways but lacked my polish in the environment. He often needed help, much like I once did, but despite knowing what to do I was often unable to be of use. Still, the decision-makers made it clear how I was expected to share my experiences and exemplify desired behavior. In return, I would get nothing - in fact, I might even get less since the bosses now had to divide their finite attention in order to take care of the new guy.

Clearly, I was now above the bottom rung. But this was no signal of new responsibility. Although I was now higher up than before, I was no closer to holding any actual decision making authority. When things went wrong, I was often blamed even though it was the new guy's fault. Sometimes, the new guy would blame me and I would have to take the fall thanks to my superior 'experience'. Did it matter if I pointed out that these problems never happened when it was just me? Of course not. I often found my own progress stunted by the limits imposed on me from the level below.

What's the key for a budding business (or older) bro in this situation? The answer is simple: see equally. The usual frustrations of managers and older siblings share a common link: an underlying sense of superiority.

A manager who feels superior will struggle to complete the essential tasks of training and delegating. The Superior Manager will think - how could these idiots with no experience do the very difficult tasks I always do successfully? When something goes wrong, The Superior Manager will not see fault with the training approach - instead, The Superior Manager will see that the failure he or she expected all along has finally come to pass.

A manager who cannot train and delegate without an ego getting in the way will never increase the organization's capacity to get good work done. And if the organization does not improve, the manager is not doing a good job. Thus, the mentality contributing to stunted organizational improvement must be discarded immediately.

A manager who feels superior to colleagues lower in the hierarchy is a lot like the older brother who is frustrated by a younger sibling. By determining worth based on external constructs, the capacity to recognize growth and change is diminished. In sibling relationships, such an attitude is harmful enough but we can at least look back and see how we grew out of it (editor's note: the younger brother can also become taller, better looking, make more money, etc, as may or may not have happened in this case). In an organization with a much shorter time horizon, it is the surest way to overlook potential and the fastest route to stagnation.

leftovers #2 - life changing books: sql for dummies

A couple of years after I learned to program in SQL, I reapplied my entry-level philosophy of ‘learning the skill most valued by those outside the organization’ and began the process of learning how to manage a team (1). The first big challenge I faced in this process was learning how to properly delegate my responsibilities to others in the team.

As I looked over my work and considered possible tasks to delegate, I realized that I was nowhere near ready. The main reason was that most of my work process was tailored to my strengths. This meant I was very good at doing my own job in my own way. However, it was not a given that someone with a different background than mine would be able to use these same techniques. I was like the local who uses only back roads – I could get from A to Z faster than anyone but had no ability to give an out-of-towner a simple set of directions on the main streets. If I was going to delegate my work, I first needed to re-engineer my process so that I was doing my own work in a more teachable and replicable way.

So, instead of relying on mental math, keyboard shortcuts, or accumulated experience to intuitively accelerate my work, I became more methodical. I created simple formulas and macros to do calculations, trained new hires on how to use the keyboard instead of the mouse, and wrote up process documents or FAQs to help transmit my institutional knowledge to others in the team. I started creating simple checklists to guide my work instead of relying on my memory to keep track of the steps.

Without making these adjustments, I think I would have quickly hit a (very low) ceiling as a leader. I would have spent so much time training people to do things exactly as I did that there would be no time for anything else. Also, the initial learning curve would be so long that it would take months before I could delegate anything to anyone. Finally, since the work process would be extremely detailed and unnecessarily complex, my efforts to monitor performance would surely have veered into the unappealing territories of meddling and micromanagement.

I, like most successful entry-level employees, had taken great pride in how well I did my work. However, merely achieving results wasn’t good enough for me – I wanted to do things my way by using the unique set of skills I had. This meant I exercised my limited autonomy to tailor the work process to fit my abilities. I did not consider the future of the team and come up with ways that someone with different abilities would be able to replicate. Instead, I structured the work so that I felt valuable any time I did something well.

Leadership is a different beast. Good leaders simply get the most of out of the team. It just does not matter how it gets done. If having someone else take over my favorite project meant the team benefited, then my job as a leader was to delegate it. When I realized this would eventually apply to every single task I ever had to do, I understood the importance of simplifying my own work so that it could be replicated by anyone else I might bring into the team in the future.

Footnotes / an origin story

1. Or, the birth of…The Business Bro?

Part of the reason I turned to management was that I thought I’d reached a natural maximum in terms of my SQL programming opportunities. I was by no means a finished product in terms of programming but my analyst role did not include feasible ways to grow into the next phases of a developer’s progression (database administration or front-end software deployment) without first delegating away all of my original role (which meant I would need to become a manager, anyway).

leftovers: goodbye to all that

I got stuck writing this post because I somehow got an idea that the post should be a comprehensive account of a day that started in the morning, ran through the afternoon, and concluded at night. Once I realized I was operating under an entirely self-imposed restriction, I took a closer look at the post and figured out where the real ending was.

Unfortunately, this meant I needed to toss aside some clever insights that took place later in the evening. My favorite was a realization that becoming a manager at my first job was a lot like becoming a big brother when I was two - after a couple of years, the decision makers decided (without first consulting me) to bring in a new person at my old level. This 'insight', if you will, came in the late afternoon while I walked through Chinatown (though I have no idea why this neighborhood proved the inspiration for my thought).

leftovers: mythical man month - some thoughts on scheduling

No matter what precautions, safeguards, or techniques a manager uses to put together a project schedule, slips and errors are inevitable. A good rule of thumb to use for building the appropriate slack into the overall schedule is to devote the least amount of time to the most easily estimated parts of the project. (In software projects, coding time is easier to estimate than debugging time, for example.)

Schedules that slip a few minutes at a time tempt managers to drop everything and make up the schedule slip right away. A good manager will leave these little ‘catch-up’ exercises to the team, however, because the overall impact on the schedule is negligible if a schedule disaster strikes in the meantime that affects the timeline by hours or even days. The manager's job isn't to make up for lost time, the manager's job is to use foresight to prevent time from being lost in the first place.

One method to prevent against surprise schedule setbacks is to implement a strict quality control system. Without proper quality measures, projects may move forward with defective components. If these turn out to disrupt the efforts of subsequent project steps, it may require the redoing of several portions of the project. Poor quality could also cause especially large projects to bog down during the debugging step because larger projects tend to involve more test users and the number of bugs tends to correlate to the number of users.

It is vital to ensure enough time is scheduled for testing. Any delays at this stage are particularly costly because the project is likely fully staffed at this point yet there is little defined work for each member to complete. The temptation in such situations to skip quality control steps (like rerunning test cases) must be avoided, however, because failures at the testing step are handed directly to the consumer and this will turn out to be far more costly than a delayed release.

goodbye to all that

My final day in New York starts like so many of the others - a breakfast bagel. Since I really don't eat breakfast anymore unless I'm in New York, it crosses my mind that this could be my last breakfast ever. Highly unlikely, I admit, but still worth a passing thought.

After breakfast, our group of five splinters for reasons including Easter and birthdays. After exchanging goodbyes, a friend and I start down toward Union Square to kill some time before his bus back to Boston.

We reach our first stop, The Strand Bookstore, in Union Square. I've been looking forward to going here for some time. Plus, given that I know about it, this place must be a famous bookstore - I'm not the sort who knows about the hidden gems around here, after all.

I walk in and I'm immediately impressed. The Strand has the look of a cool bookstore (though I've yet to take the time to define exactly what constitutes a 'cool' bookstore, I know it when I see it). More importantly, it is also literally a cool bookstore, which I appreciate, as the mercury is climbing quickly toward an unseasonable ninety degrees outside. We split up and walk through the store separately.

Perhaps it's my heavy backpack, the effects of a long Saturday out catching up to me, or just my approaching old age - I'll be almost thirty in a few weeks - but for whatever reason, I'm tiring quickly. I walk slowly from section to section, scanning the shelves up and down, but nothing captures my interest. These days, nothing does. I eventually find myself downstairs in the business section.

My favorite aspect of the business section is always the cheap morale boost. Whenever I look at some of what's been published, I convince myself that I, too, might someday get a book or two onto a shelf buried a three minute's walk from the entrance of a famous bookstore. Today, I browse the shelves and think up names for these unborn books - Master Of None Of Your Business, maybe, could be today's winner. And does anyone know if the title Too Underpaid To Fire has been claimed yet?

The business book formula appears simple enough - come up with a sort of counter intuitive idea, have a good anecdote or two ready to go, and don't try to prove anything. The last step is the most important. The genre reminds me a lot of Chinese fast food in one way - from my outside perspective the bar appears pretty low. All that ever seems to be on offer are quick-hitting morsels of filler rather than any longer-term food for thought...

My friend interrupts my thoughts about synergies and crab rangoons and future book titles. We extract ourselves from the basement and return to the now officially 'hot' New York afternoon. The next stop is a few blocks away, a record store. We again split up. The size of the record store is about the same as a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, though, so 'splitting up' still keeps us in each other's view. This place could also be famous but I wouldn't know - I've never been one to keep records.

Records, however - unlike books - do capture my interest. Browsing this store brings to mind a borrowed thought I read long-ago: if books were invented after computers, would they be regarded as an incredible technological advance? After all, wouldn't a book solve all the problems of the e-reader? I wonder if record players are part of this same category - an unrecognized solution to every streaming problem.

By the time we decide to leave the record store, it's approaching time to start heading over toward the bus stop. Since the bus stop is a couple of blocks over from my favorite pizza place, NY Pizza Suprema, we decide to stop there for a slice before parting ways.

Along the way, we get distracted by a street festival of some kind. It's a perfect diversion for two overheated tourists. We pool our knowledge of the city - in our case, 'pooling knowledge' means quickly recalling details from as many syndicated Seinfeld reruns as possible. The best we can do is the Puerto Rican Day parade, a satisfying but obviously incorrect guess. The giveaway is the stationary aspect of the festival - though I'm sure many other clues went unnoticed past my sun-baked eyes.

In fact, the sole downside of marching through the mystery festival is its position directly underneath the searing mid-April sun. We are exposed to its full heat thanks to our decision to walk down the center of the blocked-off street - though to be fair, this is the only walking space available. We make a left turn and pick out the side of the street with shade cover.

This reminds me of a trip last summer to Providence, an August day with a similar temperature situation. As I strolled those streets with a couple of friends, we cooked up the idea of 'the shade app' - a GPS-type tool that plans a walking path for you using the shadiest possible route. We dismissed it that day - finding the shade is only a matter of noticing - but given how many New Yorkers are bustling past in the full blast of the sun, it occurs to me that perhaps there is a market for my idea. Everyone is already looking into their phones, after all, so 'a matter of noticing' in Providence is perhaps a business opportunity in New York.

We finally arrive at our destination - and it is closed! No NY Pizza Suprema today. There is no sign on the door, just a padlock and an empty store. This implies Easter is the sole reason for the closure (though I suppose nothing explicitly rules birthdays out). We are dazed, briefly, due either to this setback or a possible case of heatstroke. Somehow, we collect our wits and make it across the street to another pizza place. I'm amazed another pizza place exists so close by - I guess business opportunities are a matter of not noticing, sometimes.

I walk over to the bus with my friend after we eat our barely tolerable consolation slices. He has work tomorrow so he needs to get going. 'Work tomorrow' is one of those peculiar expressions if you think about it - in some ways, work tomorrow isn't very different from having work right now since it only ever impacts decisions made about today. I don't have work tomorrow which means I don't have work right now. Lacking anything better to do, I stay. You don't need a reason to stay around here, I suppose. The only thing you need is a reason to leave.

My friend boards the bus and I resume wandering. I notice a walking path of some kind, winding in a gradual, promising arc out towards the water before turning back toward where I started, midtown. I join the crowds and walk down the path into this new idea. I'm reminded again of a borrowed thought from an old read - a hawk finds its way out of a canyon by following the strongest wind current. A walk through the big city with a similar approach in mind should lead to good results, I think - just find the biggest crowd, let its current take over, and go with the flow. The challenge is to find the right current, I suppose.

The walkway, which I soon learn is known as the High Line, is a mile and a half long walking park built along a former elevated train line. There is all kinds of stuff going on here, the type of thing I only see in this city. The path is lined with little sections of bleacher seats that are full or empty depending on their exposure to the sun. As I walk past a person selling 'I love NY' trinkets from a blanket, I come upon a man in the midst of a small crowd. He maintains a steady rhythm on a couple of drums while chatting with anyone who passes by.

'Come on, man,' the street drummer says, pointing his chin at an idly watching spectator. 'Join me - if you are African, you can drum!' His chin swivels in my direction. I can't drum, a fact obvious to those who subscribe to the drummer's theory. It's a good enough reason. People laugh as I move on.

I enjoy the walk despite fighting the crowds moving in the opposite direction. No one seems to mind the heat on the High Line. The park, which started at 34th Street, soars above Chelsea and winds its way south toward its eventual destination in the Meatpacking District. This is all new to me - everything I know is east of here, toward Chinatown, toward Brooklyn, and beyond.

It's slow going but I maintain my relative position in the crowd. Everyone here is my speed and the ambition to pass has been left behind on the street-level. The traffic is definitely two-way, another contrast to the paved grid below. Maybe my hawk analogy wasn't so appropriate. If the strongest currents oppose each other, where does one start and the other end? What is everyone on my side hoping to see that these people walking past me have given up on? What is the point of going out just to come back, or going up just to eventually come back down?

The walkway leads into a covered area and the shade provides a respite from the heat. There are tables to my right and all the seats are filled. To my left is a row of vendors selling drinks and snacks. Everyone belongs here. This must mean someone looking at me would think I also belong here, which means surely some of these people do not belong here. How many of these people are simply on break from wandering aimlessly? It can't be just me but it's hard to see how I would find the answer here.

I continue walking forward, toward the end. The path eventually ends in a space only marginally wider than the main walkway. Some folks are relaxing against the railings and others are seated on benches arranged alongside the stairs. A couple people seem to have given up completely and are using the stairs as benches. What kind of life that is, I don't know. I go down to the street and point myself in the direction I suspect is Chinatown.

The sidewalk ahead of me is crowded. When I take a closer look, I realize it isn't a crowd, it's just a queue. It takes me a moment to identify the stationary line among the many moving pedestrians but it's obvious once I've seen it. This is a slow current, no doubt, but maybe the right way for me to get off the street for a short while.

The sign above the line announces the Ample Hills Creamery. There is the smell of cooking food but it seems like ice cream is the main attraction. I look around. The line is long and waiting might take up some of my valuable remaining time. But what else is there to do? When I'm at home, I never wait in line. I use the information I've worked hard to acquire to know just when to arrive before things get crowded. I'm not home, though, at the moment. Home is a place to go when there is nowhere else to be. And what better sign is there of having nowhere else to go than waiting?

I take a place at the back of the line. Perception can change so quickly - once I stop moving, I realize how a line coming out of a building is suddenly a line going in. Hopefully, a good thing comes from all this waiting. Ice cream is usually a safe bet, even if it might melt first. After that, it'll be time to go home.

reading review - bring the noise

Bring The Noise by Raphael Honigstein (March 2018)

Bring The Noise is a highly enjoyable look into current Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp’s career. In the English-speaking portion of the football world, Klopp is associated with gegenpressing, a high-energy, high-pressure style of play that uses all eleven players on the field to chase, harass, and pursue opponents wherever or whenever the ball is most likely to be won. However, the key to his success is not entirely down to tactics – his biggest strength is his ability to use his understanding of players to get the most out of their natural ability.

His success comes down to a very simple thing – Klopp always remembers how he wanted to be treated when he was a player. I think many do not value their own experiences in this way and become the type of leader they disliked when they were younger. Klopp never seems to lose this knowledge and it informs his understanding of how players will respond to his management.

He knows, for example, that as a blunt personality he must always temper his comments with lightness and self-deprecation. He understands that players always respond better to suggestions for improvement rather than to specific reasons for not being put on the field. He never forgets that talented players generally do not believe they will benefit from further coaching. These aren’t insights he gleaned from study or from a coaching mentor – these are basic conclusions he reached as a player that he is making use of now in his role leading players.

He also varies his approach with players based on their career level. With a young team, he is less patient than he is with an older team. This approach contrasts with the common belief that younger players require more patience but Klopp recognizes that older teams have more playing experience and thus take a longer time to adapt to new operating styles and eliminating old habits. However, he does take great care to protect a young team because their ability to recover from setbacks is not as developed as that of an experienced unit.

The most important thing about Klopp is how he supports his players. The general cliché about managers is that the best ones love their players – Klopp exemplifies the very concept. He genuinely wants to see his players do well and is the happiest person in the stadium when they succeed. But he also wants to see them succeed off the pitch. To borrow a thought from the book, if Klopp’s best player came to him one day and said – you know, boss, I think I’m going to retire and become a florist – Klopp would probably be disappointed (and likely very confused) but he would also be the first in line to buy a bouquet the next day.

One up: I should note that though Klopp boasts significant man-management skills, tactics do matter in the job and Klopp is more than capable in this aspect of his role. His tactics are based on a simple idea – since it is easier to create chaos than it is to retain calm, a team that is comfortable in chaos should have the edge on an opponent that prefers to play in peaceful conditions.

Thus, Klopp trains his team to generate disorder and teaches them how to make the same good decisions in wild conditions that other teams make in comfortable settings. One way Klopp does this is by using practice to simulate the constant movement and changes of pace that a real game features. The goal of his training sessions is to make important movements, patterns, and rhythms automatic without ever allowing the players to know what is coming next.

At a higher level, what Klopp understands is that long-term excellence bases itself in regular successes that are explainable results of repeated behavior. If his teams train the same way all the time, it is far easier for him to link their victories back to the simplest behaviors they make every day on the training ground.

One down: No matter how many books are written on the importance of asking the right questions, most people have a hard time figuring out how to expose their ignorance. This prevents them from reaching out when in need and those who could help are unable to do so. If a person is completely unable to express a need for help, the only way this handicap can be overcome is through excessive study and preparation for the first job. It also helps to have a confidant to use as a sounding board for navigating through any unusual situations.

It was also a shame to read about the various ways success can bring harm. The most widely observed way is how people stop saying ‘yes’ to every little thing once they start to achieve real success. With real success comes an honest self-confidence, of course, and those who once accepted every invitation because of their insecurity may be justified in a new approach. However, the value of being open to new experiences cannot be overstated and even the most successful people would do well to remind themselves of this every once in a while.

Just saying: Klopp is one of those people whose total disregard for the superficial opinions of others endears him immediately to everyone around him. He isn’t the sort who will sweep the driveway until a neighbor looks out and says – ah, good man! If the driveway doesn’t require sweeping, Klopp will probably just stand there and smoke cigarettes instead.

i read sputnik sweetheart so you don't have to

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami (December 2017)

Sputnik Sweetheart was among the books I reread this past December. As it turned out, the process of rereading revealed (editor’s note: surprise!) that this book was not one I recalled very well from my first reading experience.

It contained a lot of what I’ve described on TOA as The Murakami Hallmarks – a lonely male protagonist in his mid-thirties, some scenes involving one or more characters and their unusual amount of jazz knowledge, some out-of-this-world elements yet not enough to label the book as ‘fantasy’. But the book was a little different in key ways from his typical fare.

Sputnik Sweetheart wasn’t as long or meandering as some of Murakami’s other novels – around two hundred pages or so. He didn’t rely on the mysterious to hold the reader’s attention. It just made its point, often bluntly, and I found this style moved me more so than some of his other novels.

I don’t want to get bogged down by trying to avoid spoilers as I review. So, I’ve taken the ten notes I took down as I read and arranged them below. My least favorite idea is at the top and my favorite thought rounds out the list. It’s a lazy form of review, no doubt, but perhaps this blunt approach is appropriate for a book I found often drew its force from its most direct passages.

10) A basic agreement with reality is to accept things as they are and to leave them that way.

9) What’s nurtured slowly grows well.

8) At a certain point, people stop telling us all the fascinating and wonderful stories of childhood.

7) Getting old means knowing you are going nowhere yet keeping the wheels spinning.

6) Untold stories become the prisoners inside us.

5) One book is often insufficient to explain anything. If the logic ties it all up in a neat bow, look out for a trap.

4) The tool to keep what we know and what we don’t know in harmony is thinking.

3) Loss is hard because there are no feelings available to immediately take their place.

2) There are some doors within us that we are too weak to open. In these cases, all we can do is wait.

1) Those used to being strong or who always solve problems by becoming stronger have a difficult time relating to the weak, the sick, or less fortunate.

leftovers: essays in idleness

Five additional thoughts I took from reading Kenko's classic.

*A man who imitates a criminal is a criminal. A man who imitates a lunatic and screams in the streets is a lunatic. Thus a man who studies wisdom, even if merely in imitation, must be called wise.

*The man who thinks of the night in the morning and of the morning in the night is unaware of the danger in the laziness of mind which arises in a moment. If the present moment was all, the difficulty in doing many things would be imperceptible.

*A pitiful ruler allows his people to become cold or hungry. To then punish those who steal in order to alleviate their own suffering proves the ruler's incompetence.

*If we learned of current drinking customs as if it were the behavior of a distant and newly discovered society, surely we would find the behavior most peculiar.

*The boor speaks with authority on all subjects. Better to wait until questioned before speaking on a matter, even if the topic is an area of personal expertise.

now, it’s interesting because, i mean, like, you know… right?

I recently chatted with a friend about a phenomenon (‘phenomenon’) we’ve noticed – some people seem to get interrupted far more often than others. My friend described this ability as being able to ‘control a pause’. I thought it was a great expression. Those who are really good at ‘controlling a pause’ can essentially come to a complete stop while speaking, daring a listener to jump in all the while, before resuming speaking after an indefinite silence. On the other hand, those who lack this ability can’t seem to string together three hastily blurted syllables without being cut off by a listener.

The varying degrees to which people have this skill mean there are a lot of tricks out there for those who need a little help ‘controlling a pause’. The most frequent way I see amateurs ‘control a pause’ is by using any of the expressions I’ve included in the title of this post. Strung together, they almost form a coherent sentence!

These little words and expressions seem to serve several important functions. First, they communicate to the listener that if there were no need for an interruption the speaker would really prefer to barrel on to the next point uninterrupted. Second, they act as a disclaimer of sorts by flagging a particular thought or comment as ‘in progress’ or ‘under construction’. Most importantly, these words help strike the right balance in a conversation. They acknowledge the problem of the interruption while grudgingly admitting its necessity by making it possible for someone to interrupt if they absolutely must. A sentence littered with filler like (!) 'I mean' or 'you know' allows a speaker who is not quite able to command a pause the opportunity to articulate a complex point while simultaneously allowing someone who isn’t comfortable interrupting the opportunity to ask for clarification or make a counter-point.

It’s strange to me that these ‘verbal tics’ are sometimes dismissed – I think these little expressions are among the most valuable words in our language. What other words simultaneously empower speakers to fully articulate themselves while also engaging listeners as active participants in a conversation… right?

marcus smart, rebounding champion

In irrelevant major recent news, the Supreme Court ‘legalized’ sports gambling on May 14 by essentially announcing the matter was now a state decision. I’m eagerly awaiting Massachusetts’s inevitably delayed rollout!

Now, around a year or so ago a similar change legalized marijuana. I was asked at the time if I would try it. I said I no. I guess the way I thought about smoking weed was independent of the legality – I just never saw the appeal. However, this is most definitively NOT my stance as it regards borrowing against my 401K to bet on free throws. When it comes to sports gambling, the legality definitely plays a major role.

A good preview of my degenerate future came on May 18. I got together with some friends to watch Game 3 of the Celtics-Cavaliers series. We prepared for the game by looking up possible wagers (for my friends) to bet on and finally settled on Marcus Smart at over 8 rebounds for around +1500. There was some good logic – Smart rebounds well for a guard, had 9 rebounds in the season opener at Cleveland, and played well in Game 3 from the Sixers series.

We My friend went to punch in the bet… and… it didn’t work! We He tried all kinds of ways to get the wager in but eventually gave up. We left for the bar convinced that (a) Smart would have twelve rebounds and (b) we would be talking about this for the next fifty years. Alas, Marcus Smart grabbed exactly ZERO rebounds. My future is going to include a divorce, I think.

By the way, good bit of delegation there by the Supreme Court, I’d say, by having the states handle the admin of sports gambling. I sometimes wonder why any government does things to give itself more work to do but I suppose the opposite could be true – maybe in some cases they just make decisions so they don’t have to do any more work. It's not something I'd bet on, one way or the other, but that’s neither here nor there.

zen and the art of writing incessantly about your own running routine on your blog that no one reads

I think my recent running sabbatical has created some confusion about my current workout pattern. Here’s a quick rundown of how I’m currently organizing my routine.

1) I’m now stretching just once per day (at night).

I stopped the morning stretch because I thought I was no longer benefiting. I also thought stretching in the morning was a poor use of my most valuable writing time. As long as I feel good with just one stretch per day, I’ll keep this pattern up for as long as possible.

2) I’ve started doing strength workouts around three times a week.

These happen on days when I don’t plan to run for more than three miles, don’t have a basketball game that night, or didn’t do a strength workout the prior day.

3) I’m definitely taking an annual running sabbatical starting this winter.

The other option is to pace myself better throughout the year but I think after thirty years the evidence is pretty clear – I cannot be trusted to pace myself. Since the prime running time in this area is from mid-April through mid-November, I would aim to take a break in the off months. For now, I’m thinking the break would start with a ‘swerve lane’ period of a month or so starting in mid-November when I slowly scale down the running while I bike more often. Then, I would swim hard for a couple of months in the winter. In the spring, I would do the 'swerve lane' in reverse by slowly ramping up the biking in preparation for a transition into running as the spring arrived.

So, where does all this leave me now in terms of running?

The key is to make sure no running decision violates the above framework – the logic is a little like ‘eat your vegetables before having dessert’. As long as I’m stretching daily, doing three strength workouts per week, and committing to the sabbatical, I should be OK to simply run as much as desired the rest of the time.

The approach strikes me as a great example of how a supportive framework should function. The key is to clearly define the criteria and make sure not to violate them for any reason. As long as I keep up those three specific behaviors, I should be able to simply roll out of bed, put on my sneakers, and run around until I’m tired and decide to go home.

Or to put it another way, this framework allows me to do what I need to do until I no longer need to do it. That’s always been my preferred way, whether I’m running or not, and I think the more I can apply that approach to the other things I do the better off I’ll be.

june - sunset month

In my opinion, June is the best month to watch a sunset in Boston. The place to do it is from the banks of the Charles River. It isn’t a hugely popular thing to do – no crowds of people staring at the sun or anything like that – but I’d still suggest getting there around thirty minutes or so before sunset if you are the sort who likes having a seat.

There are many little reasons why June is a little better than the other months for these sunsets. It’s warmer, it seems to last a little longer, and so on. The optics are probably the best of the trivial reasons. The position of the sun in June works out really well for the folks like me who are sitting around on the Boston side of the river. Unlike in the winter – when the sun seems to set in a hurry over the Cambridge Side Galleria Mall – the summer sunset takes place a little further up the river. This gives us viewers a much larger evening sky to work with and extends the length of the overall sunset experience.

The most important reason, however, is timing. The sunset on June 1 is at 8:14 PM and slowly moves later and later in the day as the month progresses. By June 22, the longest day of the year, the sunset is at 8:24 PM. This feels about right to me. A sunset earlier in the evening is simply too early. I like how it happens in June. When sunsets take place well past the eight o’clock hour, I can get out to my spot around eight, enjoy the buildup to the big moment, and still have a little light on my walk home.

I tried to think about why I feel the timing is so important. My conclusion was fairly straightforward – a good sunset is bittersweet. When the beauty of the transitioning sky completes its shift to night, the uplifting emotion of sunset slowly gives way to a lingering sadness. There isn’t much point to carrying such a feeling around with me through a long night. The sunset after eight finds the right balance – early enough to make it an enjoyable event yet late enough for me to go to bed without letting myself get sucked into the expanding darkness of the night.

i read adultery and other choices so you don't have to

Adultery and Other Choices by Andre Dubus (February 2018)

I came to this work because I liked Dubus’s Broken Vessels, an essay collection filled with various simple but profound insights into the challenges of daily living. I enjoyed similar types of observations throughout Adultery and Other Choices, his second short story collection.

Dubus seems to have little patience for conversations about other people’s bodies. In one story, he notes that talking about another person’s appearance reveals much about the speaker’s character. It’s a true enough comment, I suppose, and one that underscores fiction’s advantage over the essay – a story is always better able to generalize about a ubiquitous and widely accepted behavior than any nonfiction piece.

A thought from his title story resonated with me – when people are betrayed, their actions are separated from how they lived before the betrayal. Again, a similar insight to the above in how its importance comes not from its universal applicability but rather in how knowing this may sometimes apply. In meeting the challenge of relating to and understanding others, knowing this kind of information strikes me as invaluable.

A final thought I liked revealed a hard-won understanding about routines – when a routine is described with reverence, it is certain to prepare a person for the day or task ahead. Like I suspect is the case for any writer, Dubus probably relied on a strict routine to energize himself for the day of work ahead. When such a routine is described in hallowed tones, a listener can immediately understand the energy it creates. On the other hand, the routine completed with a sense of obligation or duty cannot be described in such a way. Over time, this kind of routine is sure to slowly drain away all natural energy.

Footnotes / recommended…

0. After I finished…

I chose to reread ‘The Bully’, ‘The Fat Girl’, and ‘Andromache’. Of these, I would definitely recommend those first two – for some reason, the latter didn’t quite have the same resonance with me on the second reading.

the toa newsletter - june 2018

Hi all,

Welcome to the TOA June Newsletter! With summer fast approaching, I know time is at a premium for you, hurried reader – let’s just jump right into it.

Writing Rules of Thumb update

I recently wrote about eliminating ‘verb to verb’ constructions in my writing. This isn’t the first time I’ve commented here about the points of emphasis I use to guide my writing or proofreading. However, since I tend to scatter these thoughts sporadically throughout multiple posts, I thought I would gather these ROTs together for you, curious reader, and assemble them in one place for easy reference.

Here are the current ROTs I keep in mind as I write:

*When stuck, just write down the most important idea
*NO outlines – sketch instead
*When an ending appears, grab it
*Verb ‘to’ verb is no good...
*Express shock and rage and grief through meticulously detailed observation

Running sabbatical update

The running joke (!) around these parts is that it takes so long for me to post something that by the time it goes up the content is no longer relevant. I disagree slightly – I don’t think the content I put up is ever relevant – but, being keenly insecure about these petty criticisms, I try to get certain posts up in a timely fashion.

Alas, I came close with my recent thoughts on running… but in the end, no cigar (which is probably a good thing, at least in the context of my running, what with cigars being not so good for you and all). For those keeping score at home, I sat out from running for around four weeks, most of those being in April (despite still posting in May about how I was ‘sitting out’... anyway, my bad…)

Breaking: Hubway blue itself...

After several years as ‘Hubway’, a new sponsorship agreement with Blue Cross Blue Shield resulted in the entire bike share system I use almost every day being renamed ‘Blue Bikes’. This change also came with a fleet of new bikes, a topic I will post about in a year and a half as soon as possible in an upcoming ‘Tales of Two Cities’.

The Official TOA World Cup Preview

Germany.

Finally, the T does something right…

The MBTA announced a new program for the summer – for ten bucks, you can get a pass for unlimited trips on the commuter rail for that weekend. I love the idea. The MBTA runs a really simple business – they sell the ability to get from one place to another. Any idea they have that creates more trips is consistent with the point of their business. Unfortunately, those ideas seem to be few and far between these days. More of this, please!

UPDATE – TOA Book of the Year

You know, reader, I think we are going to skip this again... oh well. There's always July...

Maybe we’ll just skip the award this year. If the Nobel Prize is allowed to skip, surely the TOA Book of the Year award can take a year off?

More links…

June is a good time for little reminders about the importance of being happy with simply being yourself. It might be a stretch to say the following link exemplifies this idea in full, I suppose, but I'm a little light on recommendations this month so we'll just have to give it a go.

This is a review I read a few months ago about Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing. This isn't a standard review of an essay collection because the review in question is written by Jennifer Boylan, a subject of one of Kreider's essays.

It may be true that we learn nothing over the lifetime we are given on this little planet of ours. If that is the case, however, then it must mean that I knew all along the value of being happy with the way I am.

… and fake links…

AKA - if I wrote for The Onion…

Headline: Trump demands North Korea pay for US-Mexico Border Wall as condition for starting nuclear talks.

… and descriptions of links…

I know there is a TED Talk out there that describes a highly successful Vanguard investor. This investor basically outperformed 99% of the portfolios on the website. After controlling for all the variables, it became clear that this investor possessed one quality that differentiated him or her from the others – this investor was dead, and had been for a long time.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t dig up the link, so we’ll just have to settle for my summary here, reader – to invest well, (1) buy an index fund and (2) DO NOT TOUCH!

… and links that explain previous items from this post...

Not that the joke should require explaining, of course, but let’s be thorough today, rushed reader, so that we all have time to watch the new season of Arrested Development in peace...

OK, we are running out of steam here… and is that really it for the World Cup preview?

Look, when it comes to tournaments, anything can happen. Throw in the caveat that the national teams rarely play together so no one really knows how good the teams are… who could really preview such a tournament? Plus, longtime readers will know I don’t help anyone when I preview major soccer tournaments.

I suppose if you were trying to get clever you might bet on France, Croatia, or Columbia. Teams that play with great energy and intensity are in vogue right now so maybe it’s worth having a look at... but yeah, turns out such information isn't easy to find, so let's guess... Iran is probably good at running (editor's note: this might actually be true, and Iran is stingy in defense, so...)?

Whatever, let’s all just enjoy Japan’s three group stages losses before jumping on an underdog's bandwagon, shall we? Plus, as the Men In Blazers once joked, this is only the men’s World Cup. The real World Cup is next summer.

So, did you leave the apartment at all?

I did, in fact. On one sunny May afternoon, my group at work took a break for ice cream. This prompted me to ask some of my colleagues what their ‘flavorite’ was.

Anything else?

I don’t have a ton going on this summer – no trips planned, no vacations, no weddings to attend. Such a light calendar means I have a few extra bucks kicking around. One way I’m pissing away the surplus intelligently allocating those resources is through concert tickets.

Currently, I have four shows lined up – U2, Lake Street Dive, Chvrches, and Courtney Barnett. Of the four, I’m easily looking forward to U2 the most. The other shows will be a good time but going to see the old dudes play just down the street from my apartment will definitely have a little extra meaning for me.

I still remember very clearly the exact moment I decided I wanted to go to this concert. It was on July 12, 2015, the same day my mom died. Everyone understood how my mom was doing and various friends and family were visiting throughout the day. I was sitting out back at the hospice house when I got into a conversation about the U2 show a couple of these visitors had gone to the previous night. As they were describing how much they’d enjoyed the show, I realized how disconnected I’d become that year from the rest of my life. I thought going to concerts might be one way to get myself back on track – though I’d always liked music, I’d never gone to a concert before. I’ve been patiently waiting for U2 to play in Boston again ever since.

The wait finally ends in late June. The early returns on this tour’s set list are mixed – I think I would say I’m very much in favor of eleven or twelve of the songs whereas the average U2 show from their last two tours clocked in at closer to fourteen or fifteen. Still, eleven or twelve ain’t bad. Those numbers are higher than I’ll get at any of the other shows I’ll attend this year.

More importantly, it leaves plenty of room for improvement when I go to see U2 during their seven farewell tours.

Thanks for reading this past month.

See you in June!

In the next month of... True On Average...

1. Is there an alternative to the plausible fact?

2. We go back to the pause button.

3. Introducing… The Marshmallow Index