Category: Uncategorized

So, last night, post training, which wasn’t especially useful, I wanted to go to a party in the city, that one of the other medics was throwing. My first choice in rides canceled, nobody else at the training wanted to go, except for Russell, who said “come with me to the Bear’s Lair (UC Berkeley on campus bar), we’ll only be there a few minutes, then we’ll go.” If by “few minutes” he meant “two hours” and by “go” he meant “not go”, then he was completely correct. More likely he was just being his ego-centric self, and wanted me along for the attention I could be milked for. Then I later remembered ‘s and ‘s housewarming was last night too. Conveniently bart-able if I’m not mistaken. Bleh.

It occurred to me as I was pinching my fat, pre-shower, that I probably am in better shape than most. And that I likely have as much muscle as I have ever had. I did weigh more during my days on the swim team (by no more than 10 pounds), but I do wonder how much of that was fat (going to an all you can eat place and stuffing yourself until you’re choking back reflexive gagging will do that to you). I didn’t have a six pack then, either, but I didn’t really care about that nearly as much then. I was concerned with my body mostly in terms of what it meant I was able to do in the pool, and later, in the dojo.

Maybe I wasn’t thinking aesthetically, because I never took the notion that someone might think me attractive seriously. At least, not a guy. Now I find myself thinking of my body most often as a visual lure for attracting men, and of its apparent (to me) flaws in this regard.

This is a terrible state of affairs.

Biking helps somewhat with this. As does the occasional trip to the gym. Also want to get back into wall-climbing and get the wheels, axles, bearings, & brakes on my skates replaced (not that they’d be doing me alot of good in the rainy season. Hmmmm.) Not because they produce major changes in my body, but because they give me other criteria to judge myself by, and other goals to shoot for.

I guess what I meant by ‘social technology’ was ‘non-materially based technology’. Language, for instance, is a communicational tool, something that can be adopted by basically anyone (at a very significant time and effort cost of the adopting party). It is commonly spread, upgrades, blah, blah, blah. If you don’t like my terminology, offer something better.

Going online in search of human connection is like becoming an archbishop to meet girls.

Another online quiz that has me dead to rights.

my sexual appeal

So, I managed to arrange to do something with and Ro this evening. We went to the gaming night at the Endgame in Oakland. Games were played, fun was had. I appear to have a knack for transportation network games. Transamerica and streetcar I won both on my first playing. Hmmmm…. When I win settlers (which is happening with decreasing frequency), I generally have longest road.

Another funky game which was another tile placing game, but very different, I lost, but not by so huge a margin as I expected. Basically, by picking the layout of forest, plains, rivers, etc, you have to get maximal fish, deer, aurochs, mammoths, mushrooms, whatever, for your tribe of hunter gatherers. (I was very amused by that. =)

I did notice and appreciate the eye candy there as well. I think I may have been hit on while I was browsing the used role playing game books (they have earthdawn 2nd ed. I didn’t know that even existed. $15. Neat). Really attractive guy, only other person in store portion of establishment. Walks over, browsing with me for a moment, makes some comment about one of the games that I just checked out. Brief friendly conversation ensues. I hope he was hitting on me, but I have insufficient evidence to say either way. Not sure what to do/say. Shy nerd syndrome kicks in. I wander off to people playing games. Want guidebook for such circumstances. Also want an am-I-being-hit-on-o-meter. Then there were the 2 or 3 cute guys (out of about 20 people assembled, not including the gentlemen I came with)

Have convinced Rohan to give LJ a try. We shall see what comes of it. Soon, soon, I shall hook him up with an account.

In yet another of these metaphysical discussions with Aaron, Simon and others (Ryan, Andrew, and Patrick, in this case), another point that caught my attention was raised. Agriculture, monarchy, communism, corporations, what have you. I regard these concepts as a social technology, while Aaron was arguing that these are emergent properties of a system. That is, under a certain set of circumstances, people will organize themselves in democracies, monarchies, or oligarchies.

That there isn’t so much a choice that is made between capitalism, socialism, or feudalism, but that these things just happen as a natural consequence of the circumstances. Further, that any individual’s action or understanding is irrelevant over the long run (say, a couple of centuries). That, fundamentally, the individual cannot make lasting change in the world.

I don’t see a contradiction between his ideas and mine, and I do admit to finding his fatalistic view both repellent and appealing.

hmmmm.

So, Rohan took me to the YMCA for a workout this evening. He’s offering to shoulder half the cost of a membership, should I be interested. (Have I mentioned that Ro’s really cool? Worthy of note). I did some whirlwind lifting (shoulders, biceps, quads, triceps, pecs, traps), followed by twenty minutes of drippy aerobic goodness. Well, I wasn’t dripping for the entire 20, but I made up for it later. It was lower intensity than I usually go for in a workout of this form, but I was surprised to find out that I was exceeding my recommended max heart rate for a cardio zone by about 10%. I still wanted a cold shower afterwards, but not quite so much as usual.

First time in a gym since before I moved to the bay area. It felt goooood. I need more income.

Saturday evening (which rapidly became sunday morning), Rohan, Josh and I sat around discussing. Eventually, Aaron, and finally Simon, became entangled in the conversation.

We spanned several topics including homelessness, intentional living, inequality, and military intervention in Iraq. But one especially vigorous topic was the quality of life in hunter/gatherer societies. The debate continued in a post in Josh’s livejournal.

There are some interesting points here, so I thought I’d bring it back here. Josh apparently thinks that Rohan and I believe h/g’s to be living in utopia, despite our protestations to the contrary. We each claimed that there were many desireable elements of h/g society in contrast to modern society. Neither of us argued that the converse was not also true. (I’ve certainly benefited from modern medicine, directly and indirectly, as the most trivial example).

We did claim that modern Americans had lots of bad stuff going on. Isolation from our fellow human being perhaps the most significant of these problems. I would also cite the host of diet and habit related diseases related to excessive, inappropriate consumption, as well as inadequate physical activity. These particular problems are not present in the conditions under which homo sapiens have spent the most time evolving, hunter-gatherer society.

Bone and dental records indicate that agricultural societies tended to have significantly worse nutrition than hunter-gatherer societies. What made agricultural societies work was the ability to mass produce humans, and stick them in a more compact than ideal setup. Hard to move to the next hunting ground if the women are constantly pregnant. There are also suspicions that that is when the gender equity gap really took off, for related reasons.

For references regarding the dietary consequences inherent in the switch to agriculture, I point you towards:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~cfford/342WorstMistake.htm
http://anthro.fullerton.edu/sjohnson/anth315/Lecture%205%20Outline.htm
as well as Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

So, great, it rocks to be a hunter gatherer*, so what?. Do I want to become a hunter-gatherer? Not really. I’m pretty used to living here and now. I could probably adapt to living in such a society, given a few years. Primarily I use it to provide hope and ideas regarding the problems facing me as a less than fully satisfied member of modern American society. My perspective on that factor in another post.

* at least, until you’re overrun by a more populous civilization with better tools, which wants your hunting grounds for farmland, factories, or mini-malls.

For those who worry (or get exhasperated), I’d like to say that often I put the negative foo of my life here to work it out and examine it. This does not mean that because I put 5 icky entries in a row that’s all there is to my life. It serves a constructive purpose.

That having been said…