Bo and I talked a lot last night at the Holy Grill, a little burger place just next to Zynga. I got the diablo burger, which was nice, but a little too fatty. Bo and I had two beers each and had a pleasant conversation. It was an interesting conversation where we talked a lot about where we wanted to go with the next stage of our lives. He is in a pretty tough spot and need to find something relatively stable. The biggest problem is that he still sees finding a job as giving up on his dreams. He doesn’t allow for the possibility of going after his dreams while working. I think once he does have a real job, since he hasn’t held one for any significant time before, that he will see that you can work towards your dreams and work a normal job. I hope he finds something that allows him to do that, but he may just have to settle for something stable to start out and then work towards the job that supports his dreams.
This book is a really interesting case for Atheism. I’m not wholly convinced that there is no God, but I’m decently convinced that the god of the Judeo-Christian faiths is not there. I’d like to think that God is a personal God, but that is less likely than a Deist God. I plan to read the holy books of several different religions so that I can more understand them. The biggest thing right now in this arena is to amass more knowledge so that I can more fully understand the arguments for and against each religion. To start that I must understand what each religion says about itself, starting with the holy books. This will probably take a few weeks to work through, and finding audiobooks of all of them may not be that simple.
This evening I biked to the Chocolate Garage and had some tasty chocolate. The one I liked the most was a milk chocolate with nibs that I had already bought called The Boss. I didn’t get any, and after tasting some Riley and I went to Philz Coffee and I got a Chai Tea. The Chai there was fantastic.
After coming back Stephanie had already been joined at the Chocolate Garage by Candice and Brian. All of us then went to a pretty tasty place called Curry Up Now. I liked it, but not sure I’d want to go back. I’d prefer Umami over Curry Up Now.
Tina hosted a drinks night at Beachhead last night. It was a rather enjoyable affair, with Wit, Riley, Adam, Tina, Stephanie, and Myself in attendance. There were some really interesting conversations around fonts, Adams prospects in jobs, and core functionality of basic console commands. They pranked Riley by changing his console commands so that ls printed to the screen “I love Orwin” and which would not find the ls file that had caused it. I found it hilarious, but Stephanie wasn’t too interested since she hasn’t ever dealt in console. I broke out a bottle of the really good Riesling Heinz Eiffel, and also tried some of Adam’s Manhattan from Utah. The manhattan was decent, but I still much prefer the Riesling. We ate a bunch of Bolani, and Stephanie put bean curd sauce in with her egg salad tofu to make a splendid mix of flavor and texture. Tonight we can try the bean curd sauce with the spicy tofu, which I think will be even better.
The history in this book before the modern era was very interesting. It supposes that writing came about for understanding debt. Debt is more what someone is owed for their contributions than what someone owes for their usage. The later idea of debt is more modern. The creation of money in the modern world is a very interesting topic covered in this book. I think that the way they show how bubbles are created and burst from ways groups can defraud certain groups. It also points out something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. There is a divide between those who understand and use the system that has come about, and those who choose to be used by the system.
While this book was very interesting, it was more about general interpersonal relationships than about specifically the intimate relationships. That kind of thing is certainly encapsulated in the book’s message, it isn’t really the only thing it is about. The book says there are 3 types of behaviors (really says people, but i think any person can show a type of behavior at any point). The three behaviors are Anxious, Stable, and Distant. I know I have exhibited all 3 at points. The book talks about how to handle these types of behaviors, whether they are coming from yourself or from others. It also says how to be happy with someone if they exhibit specific types of these behaviors more than others. It bases most of the arguments it makes on the idea that the monogamous relationship is the foundation of social interactions. From what I’ve read and come to believe, I’m not sure that is true. That said, the book talks about interpersonal relationships, so the true message isn’t lost even if monogamy is not the basis of society.
This book talks a lot about evolution of both societies and species. The evolution points towards nonzero gains of traits and patterns. The main premise is that nonzero gains are also inherently zero-sum, since the benefits must be split. The evolution occurs where there are nonzero gains to be made, and the path of evolution are determined by how those nonzero gains are split in the zero-sum fashion. He also says that this movement forward is self perpetuating, since the improved next generation will be able to take bigger advantages of the nonzero sum outcome, and there will be more intense competition since the pervious set of winners will make up the current set of opponents that must split the gains. This is close to one of the premises I would like to test, relating to business and women. I hypothesize that women will naturally tend towards the nonzero gains of a project and focus on that, while men will tend to more focus on the zero-sum splitting of credit for the outcome. I also hypothesize that men will gravitate to the projects that provide more zero sum gains, but higher returns for themselves; while women will tend towards the more nonzero gains, but less for themselves. The result of this hypothesis being true would be that women running the show would make everyone prosper more, but men running the show will lead towards a few businesses doing incredibly well at the downfall of others. This is just a hypothesis, and I can think of a few ways to start testing it, but that would be quite difficult.
This season is starting to really pick up, and they are going off book more and more. Most of what they are doing is condensing things, but some of what they are doing is actually changing items completely. The pacing is also very different. Theon’s story is going much more quickly, and it is also much more condensed.
Nick hosted last night, and lots of people came over to watch. We cooked a lot of chicken and some nice gilled veggies.
I rode Calypso yesterday at horseback riding. It was very different from riding Smoothie. Calypso is easy to get going and I actually had to slow him down. Calypso is also more unruly. I had a really tough time doing any of the things I had gotten pretty used to doing on Smoothie, but that will happen when getting used to another horse. I didn’t make any real progress, but I think this sets me up to make a lot of progress next week.
It's an Exciting World 