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Why legislate a solution when you can educate the solution?

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Money in politics

Government policy, although influenced by outside interests, comes from legislators, after all is said and done. The legislators are the creators.

And legislators come from candidates, and candidates come from the Democrat or Republican parties (almost exclusively).

If we want government policy to change, voting outside these two parties is one powerful variable we can change to accomplish this. Let’s start simple before we go to complex solutions like campaign finance reform, which diminishes the decision-making and civic awareness of the voter and emboldens an already entrenched Two Party Monopoly.

We can see how effective campaign finance reform has been, or, how ineffective. But the power of our vote in electing who we want is almost unstoppable.
The only thing that could stop it?
Our own ignorance.

Using campaign finance reform to legislate voter intelligence and awareness is almost impossible.

But educating awareness?
That’s highly doable.

Educate, before you legislate.

You’re an ice princess, I said to her. She was like Spock, but with breasts.

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spock

It was my fault that I had mistook her sexual interest in me. It was casual for her, but not for me. Her lack of emotion about it surprised me, then it hurt me, so I looked at her blond hair, pale skin, and tall elegant frame, and said, “You’re like an ice princess.”

It was infuriating to me. I’m great, she should like me, everyone should like me. I waited for some lament, some regret, but she was calm and unbothered. Her heart and mind were separate on this issue. Like Spock’s mind versus Captain Kirk’s heart driven passions…passions that drove Kirk to leave his ship in the command of others because he thought he was the only one who could lead the away team. What a narcissist, right?

Leonard Nimoy passing away today has led me to think about all the unemotional people that have been in my life. They were usually unexcitable, usually unflustered, and different, at least from me. But the other side will always teach you a lesson, if you’re listening, of what you’re missing. If you’re politically right, the left is a lesson to temper your stance, because, after all, half the population can’t be crazy. And if you’re a strict vegan, then the other side, the animal eaters, are a lesson in how life is change, and people follow habits, because even vegans at some point in their lives didn’t care about animals, and ate them, right?

Point being, whether you’re heart driven or mind driven, it’s important to use both levers in cultivating your values, because our heart is what drives us, but our mind keeps us on the road. With my heart, I thought I had a relationship and I was making plans in my head, because I was hoping, without thinking of what was happening: Some chance encounters with someone who was sexually unrestricted. If I had been thinking, I would’ve seen, mindfully, and more clearly, that she was no more an ice princess than I was an immature fool. We simply make choices, and those choices don’t make us who we are, but they show us what we value, at a certain time.

Spock and Kirk worked together to accomplish all sorts of missions, despite their differences, and in fact, they were able to learn from each other’s differences. And that is what life is about. Getting the experience which makes you better rounded, so that your next adventure is that much more fulfilling, less reckless, and more open-hearted.

Good luck on your next adventure, Leonard. Good luck to us all.

I had shaved it all off, all because of her.

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back

The cold came and went. The frigid single digits and then a week later it was 50. I was shaved, my face bare and smooth and comfortable. And then I saw another temperature drop on the horizon. The next week would be polar, wind chills making the temperature feel like negative degrees. So cold that the thermometer couldn’t keep a positive scale. Ridiculous!

So I started in, with the growing. I followed my mistress, my girl, because she was always right, in this realm. And it wasn’t an effort anyway, as if I need to reroute supplies to send to my face follicles, or recruit legions to begin growing my hair. Quite the opposite. I was going to simply stop shaving, but what many of the non-bearded don’t know, because they don’t have the experience, is that the end of the first week of an infant beard was like the terrible two’s of human infancy.

The young beard is exploring its home, and it is antsy. It provokes, and pokes you. It’s an itchy period of time. And after we’ve committed several days to this, tolerating all our little ones settling in and learning how to play nice together on the world of our jaw, there’s an annoyance when you soon find that the days are warm, without a cold wind to sting your face.

And so after growing it in over a week for the cold, I shaved it because of the warmth, to feel the wonderful warm on my face. And now the temperatures have plummeted… again.

I am annoyed with my woman. But I tolerate her whims. Because that’s what a man does. Our power comes from resilience. And our power comes from respecting her power: The earth shattering forces of the storms and the sea and the earth quaking, and the roller coaster of warmth and then cold and then warmth of her changing moods.

That’s the price of admission to ride. And I want to ride.

The top 3 ways to prevent illness

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snot

I was wondering how long it would take for me to get sick.

The office was a zoo of sniffing and snuffling. There were so many “Bless You’s” being called out after all the sneezing that I think the whole lot of us here were destined to go to heaven, despite those who didn’t believe. We’d all be swept up, the concentration of divine wishes too much for God to ignore and because He/She/It would take a pity on us, in one of His/Her/Its moments of irrational emotion, and He/She/It would say, “The sick bastards, just let them enter, they don’t know what they’re doing. Look at them clumped together, they know they’re sick, and they come to that place, sit in that one room all day, pumping out their toxins for everyone to face.”

I wasn’t so empathetic. I listened as the viruses and bacteria ran unchecked through their hosts. My colleagues’ immune systems were geared up, waging war, and these mindless fools had brought the battle front into the office! I sat in their midst, hunkered down in my faded peach colored cubicle bunker.

I ached to get out, to run out into the cold air. I craved the pure stuff of an open landscape. So what if it was pavement and cars and trucks and sculpted lawns and young trees in a commercial park?  It was an open system of circulating air!

I was happy to flee the petri dish that evening, but when I awoke the next morning I felt IT. I stood up in a daze. A malaise after eight hours of sleep? No way. I walked uncertainly around my bedroom. There should be no hangover, there should be no late bedtime grogginess. I had the flu. I knew it. So what did I do? Why, I went into work!

What are the top 3 ways to prevent illness? Get ill. That’s it. The other two ways? Forget about them. The nugget here is: Don’t stay too clean. The obstacle is the way, says Ryan Holiday. In fact, I say you should get infected, not too often, but on a regular basis. Why? Because your immune system works by being challenged. It develops antibodies by taking on viruses and bacteria, and these antibodies target the invaders next time. They’re prepped. The immune system has been through the practice drills already. Bring it, is what a challenged immune system says. That’s how vaccinations work. That’s how flu shots work. In fact, there is a term for being infected by another person and developing an immunity: Active immunization. And a bonus lesson extending from this: Challenge yourself in all the areas of your life. Staying the same makes you fragile, so says Nassim Taleb.

In conclusion: Get sick early. Get sick often. Before you get old and frail and too weak to fend off the bugs.

Thank you, colleagues, for making me stronger. I will be well soon enough, and healthier than ever.

Stay dirty, my friends.

Disclaimer: This is not medical advice. This is a blog.

Would you rather go to outer space, or inner space?

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Where is our future? It may not be in the macro, outer space, but in the the micro. Through technology, the new frontier is living in virtual worlds that transcend space and time. We will meet the other sentient beings of the universe, but it won’t be through travelling to their planets. Where will it be? Have a listen to Jason Silva in this video.
This is where I imagine the AI (Artificial Intelligence) of Her ended up by the end of the movie.

Everyone’s a loser before they win, even Kurt Vonnegut

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Vonnegut

After mailing the magazine three samples of his work, he received the following letter of rejection from editor Edward Weeks, which now hangs, framed, in Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis.

Dear Mr. Vonnegut,

We have been carrying out our usual summer house-cleaning of the manuscripts on our anxious bench and in the file, and among them I find the three papers which you have shown me as samples of your work. I am sincerely sorry that no one of them seems to us well adapted for our purpose. Both the account of the bombing of Dresden and your article, “What’s a Fair Price for Golden Eggs?” have drawn commendation although neither one is quite compelling enough for final acceptance.

Our staff continues fully manned so I cannot hold out the hope of an editorial assignment, but I shall be glad to know that you have found a promising opening elsewhere.

Faithfully yours,
Edward Weeks

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/famous-authors-harshest-rejection-letters/248705/#slide4

Everything special becomes ordinary

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Julie and mermaid
Photo by Joakim Hjelm. More spectacular prints sold at: http://joakimhjelmphotography.instaproofs.com/store/

Ever been out on the ocean? It’s overwhelming at first, but after a few days, months, years, it’s just a huge bathtub of water you’re on. Life is like an ocean. You can stay close to shore, in the bay, where it’s calm, where you can see the bottom, and you know exactly what you’re going to get, you know what to expect. Or you can venture out into the deceptively unremarkable, rolling expanse of blue.

The ocean is vast like life, and if you live it conservatively, on the surface, skimming along half in the water, and half out, you miss all the beauty and interaction below.Every moment of your walking around, there’s a veneer of the everyday stuff, the ordinary. But under that surface of ordinary blue, gently repeating waves of life, beyond the traffic of endless cars, streams of people walking by, the stores opening and closing, there’s a special experience, if you just punch through the surface, strip off the coat, go a little deeper, and explore. How to get there? Ask how someone is doing. Genuinely. Then ask them what they’re doing. And really listen to them. It’s simple, but that’s the point.

Everything extraordinary is simple. And everything simple is extraordinary.

Here’s the proof: Everything that is special becomes ordinary.

Your new car, the latest and greatest cell phone, even your partner can become unappreciated…so couldn’t a good argument be made that everything ordinary is special, if you’d just look at it differently? If you’d push back on that daily trek around your little world and get out of your flight path. Instead, extend your boundary beyond the shallows of your ocean, the place you’ve acclimated to, and made your home, where everything is visible, calm, and repetitively risk-free.

Life is going to end, our chartered boat is rented and it’s going to be reclaimed by the earth, whether we like it or not. It would be a shame if we didn’t take her out there into that wide beautiful expanse of blue world, throw an anchor down every so often, and dive into the currents. Exploring, underneath it all, beyond the traffic of endless cars, the streams of people walking by, the stores opening and closing. On the surface, all this is ordinary, until you get past it, and see what supports it all: The people, the relationships, the connections, decisions, hopes, desires, and frustrations of humanity. All the ordinary stuff that’s extraordinary once you’re swimming in it, too.

Everything special becomes ordinary, so everything ordinary can be special.
Don’t ignore the ordinary.

The single best exercise in the gym

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ronburgundy

I recall all the time I spent in the gym as a youngin. Two hours easily gone, almost every day. And the exercises weren’t even for fitness as much as appearances. We’re so busy today, time devoted to the gym is a super valuable commodity. Ron Burgundy was so pressed for time that he was forced to sculpt his guns at the office! I’m still trying to find that uvulus muscle of his…

Also, my title is a lie. I don’t have a single best exercise for the gym. What exercise you need depends on what you want. Big arms? Try a mix of testosterone-inducing squats and deadlifts mixed with bicep curls and tricep extensions and rows, all on the standard 3-sets per exercise with a minute or two rest between them. General fitness? Circuit-training: moving between exercises without rest, hitting all the major muscle groups, Men’s Health has some greats ones, see the Spartacus workout for a good example. Pure cardio, for a healthy heart? Interval sprints mixed with steady state running or ellipticalling or whatever interesting leg-gyrating machine your gym has these days (Except for the stationary bike, those are useless. A joke..but it would be my last choice of all the upright machines.)

But what if the gym is more than just exercise?

My time in the gym was back in the days before everyone had earbuds and their own personal radio station going in their head. When I was in the gym, we talked. There was a communion of sorts. Today, the gym is still a great source of connecting with like-minded individuals. You just have a slight barrier of rubber and plastic buffering you from hearing most everyone else. The trend though, is having a shared experience. We are shifting to Crossfit, and yoga, and even hot yoga (because yoga was just too easy, right?!)

But we’ve each got a life. Some of us want to get into the gym, do our business, and get back to our life. I’m definitely in that camp, now that I have so much more I want to accomplish than I did in my twenties. So what do I lose if I plug into my mobile and put a blinder to my surroundings?

We miss everything. Not only does sound get blocked, but what little residual attention we have goes to listening to our podcast, or music, or audio book. And for me, the gym is often the place I catch-up on that podcast or a few chapters of a book. The question is how much time am I actually spending in front of the screen or plugged into my earbuds?

To get this, we sacrifice that. And that could be something we didn’t even know we lost, because we just aren’t paying attention. An interesting conversation, a business opportunity, a romantic opportunity, or simply getting too distracted from what’s in your ear so that you can’t put 100% in your workout…whatever it is.  It’s gone.

Can we take care of both body and mind? Surely.

Just stay aware..and leave an earbud out and let a little life in.

“We change, but always at a cost: to win this you lose that.”

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manwithblinders cartoon

Nick eats eight meals a day. He has little containers of food that he brings to work. He goes to Sam’s Club to buy the big bags of broccoli and diapers.

Kevin takes long bike rides with a group. They stop at a buffet after their rides.

Rick has 2 dogs which he misses every day when he comes to work.

So my story is… these people. Their stories become part of my story. The story of our lives is the background in our lives. The stuff that gets blurred out as we acclimate to the noise or don’t bother to ask.

As we get more focused on getting from point A to point B…apartment to house, house to bigger house, less pay to more pay, this partner to that partner, single to married, searching for the cool place to go and hang…we miss all the infinite points between. Those points are the people, places, and opportunities. They form the canvas of our life. When they’re connected, they become our life drawing.

That’s why when our actions are made without context, without others, without a why, without looking around first, then those actions become indefinite, their borders hazy, and after years of this, our life ceases to be meaningful.

The aim is not make a straight line. The point is not to hit each point, each milestone, checking the box, then seeking the next one. The point is to expand over our canvas, not stay isolated in our office, career, home, or family. The intent is to learn, and absorption doesn’t work unless you’re listening and putting yourself out there.

We do need goals. But what are the goals? Career, personal life, family life…how much effort to spend in each bucket? The tangibles can be met fairly easily, especially here in the US, but what happens when you realize that you’ve lost years of experience, potential friends, lovers, and new places, because your goals became your life, and living the moments fell off the list?

“We change, but always at a cost: to win this you lose that.”
– Geoffrey Wolff

Choose carefully, but just make sure you choose. The tangibles are easy to measure. The intangibles are not. Thing is, we’re here for the intangibles.