"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Another World is Possible

I have a long bet on the internet, but let's be clear: it's not a world-saving wager. I have faith that we'll (eventually) muddle our way out of the Great Recession, but into what kind of future? Seriously, how does a world of seven billion work?

My macro-level spider-sense is tingling, and it's hard to see where global change can come from, what deus ex machina could conceivably save us. Time to do a little digging.

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Radio Silence

Hey yeah so I'm sorry I haven't blogged in eight weeks. It's been a pretty busy summer! I've been heads-down working on Pantheon, trudging through the wintery-summer that is San Francisco in July and August. We had a pretty killer party at my house, and I did a very "early 30s" kind of getaway weekend with some friends up the Mendo coast, but other than that I've just been grinding, reading books, and trying to get the future laid down.

More soon on all that.

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Funding the General Wellfare

According to press accounts, President Obama is pondering a strategy to make substantial cuts in both Social Security and Medicare funding. A friend asked on The Twitter why I thought this was a huge fail, and I can't really explain in 140 characters. So, the first substantively political blog post in a while.

I won't spend much time explaining why I think Social Security and Medicare are worth funding or what is motivating there is a clamor to fundamentally dismantle them. I just want to present some important and often overlooked information about the economic underpinnings of these arguments.

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The Challenge / "I'm Long On The Internet"

I don't doubt that the Earth, the miracle of life, and probably even the human species have a long future, but our particular mode of living seems not long for the world. When you stop and think about the challenges that we're actually facing, and then you take a look at what we collectively invest our time and energy in, it's hard not to feel discouraged. This is what I'm referring to when I say there's an "undercurrent of doom" out there. I preach a dark future, etc.

Except really I don't. Apocalyptic thinking is contagious but ultimately not very insightful, and dispair has the downside of being both depressing and ineffective. Knowing is half the battle, so one place to start is thinking about the challenge.

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"Hedonism Is So Distracting"

I had a dream the other morning, in the fitful and usually dreamless hour between my ambitious/idealistic first alarm clock and when I actually get out of bed. I don't recall all the details, but the gist of it was a scene of opulent excess, an enormous feast, only in that particular dream-like way something was wrong. I don't know whether it was the undercurrent of doom, barbarians at the gate, flood-tide rising, or just everyone's declining cardiovascular fitness; I just remember saying to one of my companions, "hedonism is so distracting".

And so it is, and this is a growing concern of mine.

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Old and Toothless

I am now 32 years old, and it shows. Quite lucky to be alive though. As my good buddy LGD says of getting older in our 30's, "other than the rapid physical decline, it's awesome!!!"

So yeah, I could stand to loose some weight and it'll be many months before my teeth are right, but life is basically good, and I have my friends and fam to thank for it.

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Passenger Time

I was in an airplane the other day, and got a little meditative about the experience of being a passenger. It might be physically uncomfortable for those of us two or more standard deviations away from the norm in height, for me it also provides access to a special state of mind.

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"Black Swan" / I'm Losing My Edge

The perhaps inevitable counter-note to the previous upstroke post: another week finds me contemplating my history in the arts and more generally on "the edge" of what people do, feeling — as I put it in a blissfully forced condensation on Twitter — "out of shape and uncool."

And so naturally references to LCD soundsystem and the latest Oscar winner from Aronofsky.

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In Which I Feel That I Have "Arrived"

Last weekend I caught up with an old dear friend from college. Mulching that over leads to the first serious post in several weeks: an attempt to explain what I do for a living.

This turns out to be harder than it seems.

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Aaaaand... we're back

Sorry for the downtime, y'all. I have been incredibly busy this past couple months launching Pantheon Systems and neglecting this old blog both from a writing standpoint and from a regular maintenance point of view.

But things are back in order. My domain name is no longer adrift and my creaky old VPS (ironic, I know) is paid up. I'm off to DrupalCon today. More when I return.

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