Tab Dump

As always, interesting articles and posts that i've read but haven't had the time to intelligently comment on.

• Yogasm? Really? For women only, alas.
• How to best deal with the inevitable fact that we're going to die someday? Denial! Or, more specifically Courageous Denial:
  "If all our character is a lie, created to keep us from recognizing the circumstances of our existence, then we can choose our own course.  We can choose to love, live, work, and play because those things matter to us.  We need not be bound to scorn, or to roll the Sisyphean rock at all.  We can altogether forget about the absurdity and live happy, well-adjusted lives.  And what’s more courageous than that?"
• Why it's important to log out of facebook, and clear your cookies, to avoid the social media monster tracking your movements elsewhere on the web.
• I, too, dig female voices with my indie rock. And Metric kicks it for me every time.
• The first step towards "reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories"
• Is love an Art? Yes, methinks.
• Amanda Alinehan points us to the Joy of Desire. Money quote:
• "If you’ve ever been in a power struggle with a 5 year old, you know the lengths that kids will go to in order to get what they want.  Children are much more closely connected with their desires than adults are, and have no shame in trying to fulfill them.
  What if you could connect with your desires that way?  To know what you wanted and to have no shame in wanting to fulfill it.  That would make you a powerful force in the world – for yourself and for others."
• An overview of the Transcendental Meditation resurgence, as led by the David Lynch Foundation. Yes, that David Lynch. Never tried it myself, but i'm intrigued.

Last but not least, we visit the tired "9/11 changed everything" department, where we find John Freeman pronouncing the death of the "'Systems Novel' - a novel [that] bulges and hums with a theory of how the world is run: the market economy and the economy of language - the twin broadcast networks of global power." He writes that these types of books from Gaddis, Pynchon, DeLillo and DFW "create what Fredric Jameson described as ''the spectacle of a world from which nature as such has been eliminated, a world saturated with messages and information, whose intricate commodity network may be seen as the very prototype of a system of signs.'' Freeman claims that "In one hour, Osama bin Laden proved that a spectacle could be more powerful than any narrative, especially in a world in which signs and symbols traveled much faster than words and stories."

It's an interesting claim, I guess, and might explain why there's been a dearth of "big novels" recently, but I do need to point out that DeLillo himself explicitly made this same point in Mao II where he claims that the novelist is being supplanted by the terrorist. To me, this type of hair splitting is meaningless: people will always continue to write in order to make sense of the world, terrorists or not. Whether or not people read them or not is another matter. People may for the moment be paying attention to the terrorist, but i'd be shocked if narrative didn't make a mainstream comeback in the future.

Writing Around

I've been reading a lot recently bemoaning the lack of culture out there, people sinking down to the fainting couch and fretting about the kids who spend too much time narcissisticly writing about themselves on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
What they miss in all of this is the fact that the new media and other web tools (blogs!) have completely transformed how people entertain themselves. Whereas 10 years ago, people may have been just sitting there, passively watching TV, these people are now probably actively engaged in the television show, texting their friends about plot points, mentally composing their reactions for a Facebook or blog post, etc. And they’re doing all of this through writing!
This increase in writing can only be a good thing. As Anne Trubek sez:

I would hazard that, with more than 200m people on Facebook and even more with home internet access, we are all writing more than we would have ten years ago. Those who would never write letters (too slow and anachronistic) or postcards (too twee) now send missives with abandon, from long thoughtful memos to brief and clever quips about evening plans. And if we subscribe to the theory that the most effective way to improve one’s writing is by practicing—by writing more, and ideally for an audience—then our writing skills must be getting better.

For someone who writes for a living, I welcome the use of more and more text to communicate. Regardless of what people are writing about, writing itself helps one organize one’s thoughts and helps them shape the meaning of their world rather than accepting whatever rationals happen to come down the pipe. Sometimes a little self-absorption in the form of writing about oneself is a good thing if it means that people are able to better express themselves.

I Love it when Old Ladies Tweet

The great Margaret Atwood on the Twittersphere:

So what’s it all about, this Twitter? Is it signaling, like telegraphs? Is it Zen poetry? Is it jokes scribbled on the washroom wall? Is it John Hearts Mary carved on a tree? Let’s just say it’s communication, and communication is something human beings like to do.

Pondering the "site that shall not be named"

My new Facebook account was the source of a heated debate that Kelly and I have been having a debate recently about social networking. In short, she she bemoans the loss of face-to-face interaction that social media engenders, and I can't entirely blame her. My time on the phone with people has definably diminished recently, and while I feel in touch with people more then before, I see much less of everyone than I used to.

Kate has many of these same reservations, but notes that "I don't think it's Twitter [or other social media] that's the problem, it's that there are some people in general that don't know how to keep a balance [between social media and face-to-face interaction]", which is probably the most accurate summation of the issue. For example, I know people who will literally not pick up the phone when you call them, preferring to SMS you after they get your voice mail to ask "what's up?" It's another layer of protection, which can, at times, be necessary in this media-saturated age, but also insulates you from the uncertainties and challenges inherit in face-to-face conversation.

However, I recognize that times change and the younger generations will be growing up their entire lives with these tools for staying in touch. I personally try and look at social media as a way to enhance my in-person interactions rather than a replacement for them (although there are some people with whom I would rather keep all of my interactions online...) FB has been essential for keeping in touch and networking with people that I wouldn't be doing so otherwise, so at least that site is worth my time. LinkedIn is another site that has proven to be extremely useful in my job searching.

But I'm just not a whole-hearted convert yet. As a parent that wants to spend a lot of time with his son, I just don't have the time to keep up with everything. Plus, I hate being tied down to my computer, nor do I have it on all of the time. I value my unplugged time and actually look forward to those times when I don't need to worry about being in touch.

I'll continue to post on this because it's a subject I find fascinating. And i'm not the only one: the Boston Globe published an article by Neil Swidey that lightly lectures one about the values of not being connected all of the time under the dramatic title of "The End of Alone"