False Spring 1

Too close to my end

You awoke feelings long dead

Best we never met

False Spring 2

A single branch

blooms amidst the frost

Then, freezes

Recently, I’ve been reading An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (Silver Anniversary Edition). It’s a fascinating book, with insights on almost every page. Here’s the author’s thoughts on the problems of interpreting observations:

Whenever we observe a state that is both conspicuous and improbable, we are faced with a quandary. Do we believe our observation or do we invoke some special hypothesis?
…
Conservatism is introduced into the scientific investigation by the very assumption that observations must be consistent with present theories. An observation is more likely to be discarded as “erroneous” if it is out of consonance with theory. … The complete substitution of theory for observation is, of course, not scientific. Even worse is going through the motions of observing, but discarding as “spurious” every observation that does not fit theory.
…
This, then, is the problem. Raw, detailed observation of the world is just too rich a diet for science. No two situations are exactly alike unless we make them so. Every license plate we see is a miracle
…
“A statue is a situation which can be recognized if it occurs again.” But no state will ever occur again if we don’t lump many states into one “state.” Thus, in order to learn at all, we must forego some potential discrimination of states, some possibility of learning everything.
…
Science does not, and cannot, deal with miracles. Science deals only with repetitive events. Each science has to have characteristic ways of lumping the states of the systems it observes, in order to generate repetition. How does it lump? Not in arbitrary ways, but in ways determined by its past experience — ways that “work” for that science. Gradually, as the science matures, the “brain” is traded for the “eye,” until it becomes almost impossible to break a scientific paradigm (a traditional way of lumping) with mere empirical observations.

Now, if the issues outlined in the above quote are a problem for the hard sciences, they are a disaster in fuzzier disciplines like history, economics, and politics. They also have implications for business. Most of the time, you will find, that there is no widespread agreement among your co-workers on the state you are facing. And, if you all do agree, it’s probably just that your viewpoints are not really independent, not that you are all correct.

Well, the FTC has just laid down a new policy requiring bloggers to reveal any payment (or free stuff) they receive to blog about any subject. For details, check out this post from Larry. So, here’s my disclosure. I’m ashamed to have to admit that I am so lacking in influence that nobody has ever given me anything, or paid me, to endorse anything. Too bad I’m not Mager.

Today was an extremely irritating day. Here’s a short list of all the things that irritated me today:

• Pervasive smell of popcorn at work. I hate the smell of popcorn, and when somebody makes it at work it’s impossible to avoid. Plus, burning popcorn is the number one cause of false fire alarms at work. Popcorn should be banned!
• Guy in men’s room talking on his phone at urinal throughout his entire “visit.” I have no idea what the guy on the other end of the call thought was going on. To cap it off, cell phone guy didn’t wash his hands on the way out. And, he needed to wash them. The phone was tucked under his shoulder; not held in hand.
• Women on train burbling into her cell phone and giving some poor victim an extended review of the wine tasting she went to last night. Ever since I worked in a wine store in college, I have hated having to listen to idiots go on about “blackberry undertones” and “woody elements.”
• Insane Russian woman in next seat who used the excuse of asking if the train stopped at Palo Alto to launch into a 45 minute monologue on the unfairness of asking her to take an AIDs test before she came to America.
• Old guy sitting next to me who was not only a serial cougher who never covered his mouth, but was also apparently a student of the Larry Craig wide stance school of sitting.
• Lastly, myself, for being too stupid to think of changing out of my work shoes prior to cleaning up fifty pounds of rotting apples from my garden.
• In addition, an honorable mention goes to Mager for tweeting about how pleasant his train ride was during my train ride from hell.

In any event, tomorrow can only get better.

I saw the movie The Wrestler the other day, and I was blown away by the quality of Mickey Rourke’s acting. Here’s a clip of some wrestlers talking about the movie:

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. Definitive account of the Nazi economy.

Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II (Blue Jacket Bks). Convincingly argues that Stalin was planning an offensive against Germany timed for late 1941.

Chamberlain and the Lost Peace. About as good a case as can be made defending Chamberlain’s foreign policy.

Hitler and Appeasement: The British Attempt to Prevent the Second World War. Good assessment of the politics of appeasement in the 1930s.

The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana. Overly nostalgic, but biting attack on what new labor has wrought.

Hitler’s Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted. Argues that Hitler could have won the war in the East by concentrating on Moscow. Neglects logistics and ultimately unconvincing.

There’s actually a thread that connects all these, and I’ll write a longer post on the subject later.

By popular demand, here’s my recipe for Quince-pear tart:

1. Mix 8 cups of water, 1 cup of sugar, some sliced ginger, and a pinch of cinnamon. Bring them to a boil. Peel, core and slice up two large quinces. Throw them in the boiling water, and simmer for fifteen minutes.

2. While the quinces are simmering, peel, core, and slice up four pears. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat the pie crust with butter, slit, and put the pan lined with pie crust in the oven to bake for 10 minutes.

3. Mix the quinces, pears, a half cup of brown sugar, a half stick of melted butter, and enough of the sugar water you boiled the quinces in to make a filling with a nice consistency.

4. Fill the pie crust with filling, and bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Question: What does this sign really say?

Answer: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please don’t send any work to be translated” – Read More.

Here’s an email I just received from Google Adsense:

Dear Publisher,

We understand that the recent economic turmoil has created a lot of uncertainty in the lives of AdSense publishers. During these difficult times, we’re continuing to invest in innovations that improve publisher monetization and advertiser value in the content network.

We’re focusing on further developing our product offerings and boosting ad performance for publishers. We recently announced advancements in AdSense for search and experiments to make ads more effective. We’re bringing DoubleClick technologies to AdSense publishers, and we’ll continue to launch new products and features. We’re also continuing to improve our offerings for AdWords advertisers, making it easier for them to target the Google content network. Features for advertisers, such as the new display ad builder, are designed to improve ad performance on AdSense publisher sites.

We’ll keep driving technological progress, but our best asset will always be our publisher partners. The strength of AdSense lies in the value of the content you bring to users and the quality of the sites you bring to advertisers. Our success is tied to yours. We look forward to partnering with you for the long term, and remain dedicated to helping you succeed.

Sincerely,

Kim Scott
Director AdSense Online Sales & Operations

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

If they really want to reassure me, they should just tell me what the split is on my ad clicks.

UPDATE: If I was a real blogger here’s the kind of post I would have written about this email.

I used to have a blog on WordPress.com called Slantwise. I finally moved all the posts from there over to this blog. Here’s my favorite post from Slantwise: On The Web, You Can’t Escape Your Past.