Cell phone obsession

I took this picture way back in the day when I had my own cell phone with it's own camera. We were all new to Japan and just got our phones, so we sat there trying to understand the Japanese interface. People are far too into their phones. Phones aren't people, you know.

L-R: Mayur (now in Kyoto), Nancy & Myles (my next-door neighbours from Victoria, BC)

Advice for the disconsolate experimenter

"Our thinking must come up against some hard focal point of facts that sobers it and corrects it; in the absence of such a corrective, it easily turns into a projection of private flaws (or virtues, it doesn't matter) -- onto the plane of the thing being studied. "

- Stanislaw Lem, "His Master's Voice", p. 29

Saki - the previous kanji

The kanji on the left is read as "saki" and I don't understand it. I think studying it reveals something about the way you talk about time in Japanese. It means, and read these carefully, "(1) previous; prior; former; (2) point (e.g., pencil); tip; end; nozzle; head (of a line); (3) destination; (4) the first priority; the future; objective; sequel; remainder; the other party;". What kind of word means both former and the future? Sequel and future? The objective and what already happened? It seems a little odd to me.

There's another kanji which is pronounced "mae". It means both "physically in front of" as well as "previous". I guess that's like the English word "before". But it also seems strange, because we think of something that's in front of us as something that is about to happen, and things behind us as the past. But what is "before us" can mean both "that which came before us" and "that which is about to come".

So this idea in both Japanese and English of words of position and time, it's ambiguous.

The Roped Chair

Calhoun - not this post - the previous one.

I am writing this message from the computer desk in the teacher's office. Someone, I suspect the janitor but frankly it could be anyone, has tied the chair to the desk. Several of the chairs have been tied to their desks. It means every time this poor lady Mrs. Mori (or whatever her name is) uses the computer, she gets up and trips over the rope. It means when I use it I feel like the desk is suffocating me and I have to slide back, pulling the desk with me and almost dropping the printer on the floor. This roped chair is an illustration of how they do things in Japan. Why did they rope the chair? I don't know - they don't tell me shit. I just came in and it was roped. I guess it's because people slide all the way back and block traffic in the narrow aisle behind the chair. It's really too narrow. So instead of asking someone to move or asking people to not block the aisle they rope the chair. That way they can solve the problem without direct contact with someone that might turn into a discussion - even a disagreement. Wow, great solution guys!

Principles: Take 'em or leave 'em

Why should I be principled? Firstly, it's good to act properly in a society so that we all get along. But that still leaves a lot of room for bad behaviour that society can tolerate. Such as, I could decide to sleep around as much as possible, and that wouldn't really negatively affect other people. But there are these things called principles. They sound so restrained and uncool, but that's only because they are restrained and sometimes, possibly, uncool. The good thing about not sleeping around is that I'm not being reductionist. I'm not reducing sex to the act itself and therefore avoiding the meaning that comes with it. Reductionist behaviour is everywhere in modernity because we know that it is a faster route to the answer, money, satisfaction. But is it the best satisfaction? Is it the right answer? Whether it's cutting corners on a project or having a conversation, there are many ways I can go about it. I could design the building to leave out the tolerances for an earthquake - if I were a structural engineer. Or I could bullshit my way through the conversation instead of being truthful. Admittedly that's useful and necessary sometimes, but it's not something I like to do. And the consequences of the building design could be much more dire than the consequences of the conversation, most likely. But the thing that both building and conversation have in common is that they are based in reality. In fact, they are both constructed reality. We think of conversation as something far less "real" than a physical building - after all, we can talk about things that couldn't exist but we can't build something that doesn't follow physical laws. But we are building something in both cases, and we can be proud of our creation if we do it in a principled way. I can be proud of my creation if I do it in a principled way.