The Competing Aims of your fantasy and need to put up the Christmas Tree

Although I still believe that it is possible to create the life you desire around you (within limits), I have learned that there are two major obstacles that I under-estimated. I now have the kind of job that I wanted when I left law school, but I underestimated some of the ways it would effect my outside life. I will address this in another post.
I have also come to learn that if a committed relationship is part of the life you desire, you will have to learn to meld your vision to the desires of your mate, either through convincing them of your vision or changing yours to meet their expectations. Neither are easy.

How much is free will worth?

While I was in law school, I was afforded time to think; more than I had while working, and really more than now, as I work again. During this time I became enamored with the idea of trying to conform life around you as much as possible to one's imagined ideal.
I never believed it was completely possible, but I believed as an exercise it had two great benefits. First, it required that you figure out what it is that you really wanted out of life. For the exercise to work, the life imagined couldn't be a static if-I-won-the-lottery life, it had to be ongoing, a habitual way of living. Second, by deciding what you wanted out of live, your were forced to confront what sacrifices that you were willing to endure to achieve such a life, i.e. what costs could be placed upon the benefits.
I became convinced that if someone really thought about it, they could create a semblance of a 'perfect' life around them. I also came to see that some people I knew had done this unconciously, while others, even high-achievers, had followed a life defined by what was expected or normal, often ignoring some peripheral aspects that are imporant to life.
What I really liked about it was that in a way it all came down to deciding for yourself, "what do you really think is fun v. what do you do for fun because you've always done it?"

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Now, I have been out of law school for several years. I have persued one particular goal at the expense of others, I have stopped doing my mental exercise. I have also learned that in a relationship, your vision of life must be melded with that of your mate, though probably leaving room for each's own particular tastes.

So, now with this simple little log, I want to try and recapture some of that feeling of control and wonder. The ultimate navel gazing! I don't care, because this is for me.

Our Robot Swarms will Defeat you!

Over at Winds of Change, Joe Katzman links to a Defense Industry Daily article about the use of UAV swarms and satelites to photograph and collect the layout of cities in order to create a virtuallized reality, i.e. 3-D maps of cities based upon just gathered information. Of course, there are many civilian applications of the process also. I find the idea of swarms of UAVs instantly mapping an area great.

They Say the Joke is Dead

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points to a New York Times reports that the Joke is Dead.


However, as much as the Internet may haved killed the joke around the office, this is not true for those who swing a hammer; where the need for the spoken form is still pronounced, especially on the long tedious days. It also makes for a great ground breaker. The summer after law school while doing some labor for my Dad's company I was left one day with a fellow I'd had only just met. Once we started working, he looked at me and asked, "Okay, which jokes do you NOT want me to tell?" After telling him I'd pass on the racial ones, he went right into a round of equally offensive, but alternatively themed jokes. Bad as they were, they made the time pass quicker.

Elam Bendginnings

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