How would you describe your personality?

Guarded, but among friends, out going. I suspect I sometimes bore people when I get excited about a subject. Others often bring up a topic just to leave it when the conversation becomes interesting. Which is a self-centered way of saying, I suspect I drone on about subjects that interest me long after others grow tired of the conversation thread.

This is probably why I prefer on-line communication, and especially fora like USENET groups where the subject is somewhat set, rather than chat. Chat doesn't reward thoughtfulness, but quick typing skills, but the question isn't "what form of on-line communication medium you prefer?", it "how would you describe your personality?"

I have a tendency to run off half-cocked, to rush out the door, for instance, just to return and collect my things. I find it difficult to connect emotionally with others, although I am prone to emotionality, at times, but often disconnected from any events that I can attribute my emotions to. Rather I end up riding through mood swings. I have learned to expect and, with mixed, but mostly positive success, ignore these waves.

Philosophically, I am materialistic, and humanistic. I regard individual human happiness as the only good, and pain and suffering as the only evil in the universe.

I'm creative, a decent writer, or so I've at least deluded myself, but have trouble with large projects as I'm pretty well always going off on tang ... Oooh, shiny!

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How would you describe your style?

If you have to describe your style, you don't have any?

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What's in a question?

Last evening a friend exposed me to a new social media tool called Formspring.  You may have noticed this if you follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, or read this blog regularly.  I apologize for the cascade of stupid questions and short one or two word answers that came down to clog your bandwidth while I messed with this new toy trying to find out what it would be good for.

But I think I've got it now.  It seems to me to be a really useful tool for self-discovery much more than for social interaction.  I find that 90% of the generic questions that pop up are uninteresting, but now and again, you find something that makes you think, wonder about yourself or the world around you. 

Sometimes all it takes to get me writing is a simple question.   Questions are odd in that they can often teach us more about ourselves, our assumptions, and culture than the answers we give.  That the  I ask may tell the world more about me, than the answers will tell me about the person being asked is very interesting.  Also, a question out of left field, one I'd never think of asking myself, can send me down a whole new route of self discovery.

In the tab I have open to Formspring now, the question awaiting my answer is "what is your earliest memory?". 

That's a very simple question, on the face of it, but when I think about my earliest memories I notice some odd peculiarities. my really old memories seem to be in a third person perspective, as though I'm watching them play out before me.  It's also telling that most of these early memories are from periods when I'm at home, often holidays or family gatherings.

This could just be a coincidence, or it could be that I am not remembering the events in my life at all, but my family member's retellings of these events.  I for instance can remember quite clearly (despite the peculiarities I mentioned previously) the events that occurred on christmases and birthdays when I was only a very young child, but I have no recollection of my early elementary school lessons, teachers or friends.  The difference I think is that the earlier memories were reinforced, perhapse even implanted by retellings by family members, long after I lost track of my elementary teachers and school-yard chums.

But back to questions, a question about what your favorite movie, song,  book or video game can tell you as much about how important the particular medium is to the answerer as it tells you about their favorite piece of art in that medium.  I find it really hard to write a short answer to for instance what's my favorite book, or favorite song, because writing, and music are both hugely important to me, but I'ts not hard at all for me to knock out a favorite movie, or TV show, because I just don't care as much about movies or television as a whole.

So, Formspring to me is a perfect opportunity to learn a bit about my friends, and a whole lot about myself.

Do you have any scars on your body? If so, how'd you get them?

Yes, I have a scar in the center of my forehead I got as a child when I busted my head on the corner of my aunt's brick house. I have a small scar on the skin below my right eyebrow from when I crashed my motorcycle and my glasses cut me there. I have a largish scar on the inward face of my left-knee from where my knee kind of got caught between the left cylinder-head of my bike and the car's fender. I have a scar on my right thumb where I accidentally cut myself with a sword, and several very small scars on my left hand from working on several vehicles.

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What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?

I've eaten a few odd critters in my life, rattle-snake, turtle, armadillo, but most aren't really weird, in that they're just meat from ordinary animals that people don't ordinarily eat. I'd have to say that oysters are the most unpleasant food I've ever tried to eat. Foods that others might find unpleasant but that are actually quite good are things like ceviche made with squid and muscles, squid based sushi, conch and other squidgy type sea foods.

I love mollusc like squid and octopus and conch, and muscles and clams, both bivalves, I should also like oysters, but the one I ate tasted like cold flem. Ew!

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What do you think is your most attractive feature?

My nose. My calves are quite nice in form, but are extremely harry on the inward sides, and virtually bald on the out-facing sides..

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What was the most interesting place you've traveled to?

Probably South Florida, where I grew up in Ft. Pierce and Vero Beach, for the sheer bio-diversity of the flora and fauna, particularly I loved the Indian river (actually a brackish lagoon), where my family spent much of our together time.

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Are you more of a talker or more of a listener?

I'm definitely more of a talker than a listener, just try to shut me up once you get me started talking about a subject I care deeply about.

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Do you believe in life after death?

I don't believe in dualism, the soul as a separate entity from the brain/body. There is too much evidence of peoples personalities being altered my changes in the brain (drug use, physical trauma, etc.) to seriously entertain the idea that who I am is in any way separate from the patterns on neurons in my noggin.

However, I do believe there may come a day in the future when the pattern of neurons that is me can be copied and transferred into some other medium, allowing a sort of life after death. In the mean time, I'm betting that when I die, my soul will cease to exist.

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Would you rather get up early or sleep late?

All other things being equal, I'd rather sleep late, not really late, but I don't like getting up before sun-rise. However, since most businesses, employers and etc. start work relatively early, I'd rather get up early as I hate having to race to get dressed, get my kit together and get out the door and get to an appointment on time.

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If you won a million dollars what would you do with it?

Pay off my debts, and invest the remainder in land in a state or nation with very strong property-rights laws, and a very stable government.

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What's one thing you own that you should probably throw away, but never will?

My Apple //e which needs some repair work to get working again, but I just can't bare to throw it out and don't have the equipment to fix it.

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What is one of your favorite novels and why?

Wow, that's a tough choice, but I'd have to pick Eon by Greg Bear, partly because I like the characters, particularly the ever plucky Patricia, and Farley's gregarious and generous nature. And partly because the story is just so epic, but mostly, and this is going to sound totally geeky, but because the Thistledown, and Nexus city technology is just so cool.

I love the idea of neomorphs, building structures with space-time, hollowing out asteroids for space-ship/cities, and the idea of a religion where Ralph Nader is a prophet for a Luddite religion. But mostly I just like a big epic story.

Star, Fate and Pneuma be Kind,
Dowe Keller

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What movie most scared you as a child?

What movie most scared you as a child?

Answer here

What's the kindest thing someone has ever done for you?

My mother loaned me the money to buy a car, and helped find a very nice car to buy when my old reliable finally gave up the ghost. That being said, I've run across many very kind good people in the world. If you turn off the nightly news and meet some folks out in the world, you might just be pleasantly surprised.

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Who's the most beautiful person you know?

Either me or my cousin Marsha

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If you could have been the author of any book, what would it have been?

Bleak House

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What was the worst movie you've ever seen?

Cold Mountain

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Is the general public becoming more nerdophillic, or am I living in a virtual nerd ghetto?

A Facebook friend posted a popular comic strip, popular off-line, in the world of paper and ink and Sunday funnies as well as with the internet crowd, that contained a reference to Star-Trek red-shirts (that is the nameless crewmen who get shot/eaten/vaporized/etc. upon beaming down to that episode's planet or abandoned space-ship).  I commented that I wondered how many of the comic's readers would get the red-shirt reference, and the poster replied that the strip in question often referenced Star-Trek and other "geeky" content.

That got me thinking.  It seems like over the last few years, the general public is becoming more nerdy or at least more nerdophillic if you will.  We have Big-Bang Theory on network television for instance.  But I'm also aware that just as I am more likely to associate with people based more on similar interests than geographical nearness to me since the internet, I am also able to filter a larger amount of entertainment media based on my interests than I would have before broadband made the worlds media so ... so greppable.

I guess what I'm wondering is if I'm seeing a genuine shift in the culture as a whole, or if I'm living in a sort of virtual geeky/sciencey ghetto.  I can see both happening, in the eighties, when I was a teen, there was no internet access outside a few expensive universities, so we had BBSs that were either local and cheap, or long distance and expensive, and neither was likely to have the best social software.  So we tended to befriend people based on geography more than on shared interests, goals, and etc.

I've read blogs and opinion pieces that argue that we as a culture are segregating ourselves into like-minded on-line ghettos of people who all agree with us, cutting ourselves off from the culture at large.  In my opinion, this is an oversimplification, at least as far as my own experience leads me to believe. 

In my experience, while I do befriend people on common interests rather than geographic locale, I don't end up with a load of Facebook friends who all mirror my ideals and beliefs.  Why is this not the case?  Because in reality we are more than one dimensional, just because you and I may share an interest in an author, television show, political issue or computer system.  It doesn't then stand to reason that we agree on everything else.

While some interests may well intersect in individuals (for instance, computer geeks are more likely than the general public to be sci-fi fans), others don't.  So that if you, like most people, have more than one are of interest, you will find that your on-line community actually turns out to be quite a diverse group.

So, that leaves the question open, is the culture at large becoming more geeky, or am I just filtering for geekier entertainment?

No Internet and No Phone for Nearly 3 Weeks

Some of you might have noticed that I've been remiss about updating my blog, or for that mater, my normal quotes and other trivial blithering on facebook and twitter.  Well, whether you consider it a curse or a blessing (or something in between), I'm back.  You see, Bakersfield had a bit of bad weather, some rain and wind that would have been routine in much of the country, but was, for this area considered an emergency, and AT&T's cobbled network of 19th century technology patched together and last maintained, I assume, sometime in the mid 1950s, failed.

Worse yet, because they were taken completely off guard (surprised, I expect, to find that anyone actually still used land-line and DSL), it took them forever to get the grand old copper kluge back on it's casters.  The result is that for several weeks I got to experience life with out telephone, Internet, and because I get all my TV through Hulu and YouTube, no TV either.  Not to mention no online gaming and pr0nz.  But I'm back and I've written a comic-strip about the incident (think of it as a sort of natural experiment).