Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

January 27, 2013

New year, new blog

Filed under: Uncategorized — philip @ 1:38 pm

The database for this site was down somewhere between 2 and 8 weeks. I didn’t even notice. That’s how underutilized this site is.

First year of school has been interesting. I’m surprised that what takes up my time is absolutely not classes, which haven’t been too demanding, but all the external stuff:

  • TA duties
  • grant applications
  • conference submissions
  • journal submissions
  • research team meetings

I guess in that sense it’s good preparation for academic life.

I really don’t know what to do with this site, and a lot of posts about not knowing what to do with this site aren’t very interesting. I don’t feel like I have anything new to say. If I did, I’d make sure the syndication was feeding to Facebook, but then no one would comment on here because everyone would comment on Facebook. I really hate how FB has taken over so much of our communication, and yet… it’s taken over our communication! There are “friends” (admittedly, not close ones) who wouldn’t bother to reply to emails but who reply to FB messages.

I don’t know the way out of this. I think we need to be as devious as the blue menace. Someone should write a FB app that sucks in content via syndication (RSS, Atom), but only to the cut line, and then offers a link for more. It should allow FB comments, since everyone’s conditioned to them — but cut them off after 80 characters, offering to let the user post more on the native site. It should allow Likes, but periodically fail, and instead post a “Like” comment on the blog.

I’m not so silly as to think my empty content would lure people over here, but some people’s would. I don’t know, what solutions do you have?

September 8, 2012

I want to break free from Facebook. You should join me.

Filed under: Uncategorized — philip @ 2:50 pm

You should comment on my blog to let me know that you, too, want the benefits of social networking without having it all controlled by one corporation. Then we can go be subversive together.

Assange vs. Zuckerberg: Man of the Year?

Here’s my current Facebook status:

I ask this from time to time, but how would one really “get off of Facebook”? I don’t mean quit cold turkey and sacrifice the benefits of S/N, which is obviously possible; I mean to replicate as many of those benefits as possible in a less proprietary setting.

E.g., I can use Twitter for my statuses, but that’s a pain because I don’t buy into the artificial 140 limit. So I’d like someplace to put my statuses that’s less clumsy than Twitlonger.

More after the jump.
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March 25, 2012

If i could share only one piece of advice….

Filed under: career, my psychology, spirituality — Tags: , — philip @ 2:07 pm

I certainly don’t think anyone is turning to this blog as a source of advice on how to live life (and why aren’t you? hmmmmm??? oh, that’s right, because i often wonder if i have any clue on how to live life myself). But i’ve been thinking about what would be my one pithy thing to share, as though i could ever be pithy.

Don’t torment yourself with trying to find the one blessed path of what God wants you to do with your life. Just look for any path, any good path, and trust that he will correct your course as needed. (Proverbs 3)

February 24, 2012

Restart v. 2012.0

Filed under: Uncategorized — philip @ 4:29 pm

Obviously i am now the absentee blogger i feared becoming. (Is that really such a bad thing?)

I still have things to say, and this could be a venue to say them. Maybe not important things, but important-to-me things. So i need to get back to writing here, and that starts now, with a mostly contentless post about how little i have to say.

I’ve been under the weather a bit, and it’s times like that that remind me how much i need to slow down. (Carl Honore: In Praise of Slowness. The last couple of days, i’ve gone crazy watching TED talks.) It sucks that i don’t feel like being around people, but i also feel so isolated.

What do single adults in the US in 2012 do to keep from feeling isolated?

August 24, 2011

Metaresearch

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , — philip @ 7:13 am

In pondering whether to pursue an academic career, it all comes back to: Does anyone actually use research to make anyone else’s life any better? I’d rather not spend the rest of my career in a parlor game, even a parlor game with the goal of keeping myself employed.

So…. now i want to find “metaresearch”, research on the use of research. Actually i can see myself happily doing *that* sort of research. Thoughts?

August 22, 2011

GothiCon cell group idea: Suggested geographical groups

Filed under: GothiCon etc., underground — philip @ 11:03 am

Although GothiCon attendees came from both coasts, the bulk obviously came from the states closest to Cincinnati, hence from the Midwest and to a lesser extent the South. Therefore the level of detail below isn’t meant to slight the coasts, the South, or Texas — it’s just some suggestions based on the geographical distribution i observed:

  • MN, ND, IA – suggested hub: Twin Cities – Des Moines and Fargo are both 3-4 hours away. Much of Wisconsin would be within 3 hours.
  • Chicagoland – enough population to be its own cell.
  • Central IL – hub: Peoria (?) – Decatur, Quad Cities, i’m not sure who else. Could also extend to Southern IL and even metro STL.
  • Greater Cincinnati, KY-IN-OH – Donna and her associates have done such a great job here that it probably stands alone as its own cell.
  • NW OH / MI – hub: Toledo – A half-dozen of us within an hour’s drive here; we could also join in with Cincinnati on occasion.
  • TN and other parts of the South – hub: Nashville. Also Florida could easily stand on its own, even tho i didn’t meet anyone from FL at GothiCon.
  • MO: I know there were some people from KC there, not sure about St Louis, but if so then this could be another logical grouping. The distance from KC to the Twin Cities is a bit farther than would be reasonable. Perhaps the central IL folks could meet up in STL.
  • East Coast – There’s obviously a ton of population here. I don’t have the feel for it that i did when i lived there, but at the very least one cell covering PA and western NY, and another covering say metro NYC up to New England, seem logical.
  • Texas – its own thing
  • CA – San Diego and the Bay Area are about 8 hours apart, so there’d logically be somewhere in the middle to meet. There might be other ways to organize this to include the desert SW (AZ, NV, etc.)
  • Pacific NW – plenty of people, i’m sure, but i don’t really know them.
  • And i don’t even know where to begin in talking about outside the US.

    • I propose that Grave Robbers (or Asylum or whomever) start to build these cell groups by creating a very simple communications infrastructure for each of the above. Email lists would be great. Facebook groups would be OK.

    I want to emphasize that these are just suggestions to get things rolling. If the individuals involved find that another organization works better, more power to them. Like any living organization, i hope that these groups will grow organically, divide, plant new ones, etc.

GothiCon follow-up: Regional cell groups

Filed under: Uncategorized, spirituality, underground — philip @ 9:04 am

GothiCon was really marvelous, of course. Thanks to Donna, as well as to the 86 Club, its volunteers, the bands and speakers, and all the attendees for making it a great weekend.

I mentioned to Donna and to the Asylum leaders (Ben, Bill, KJ, Liz) my perception that we need to follow up with some sort of more regionalized, more frequent group, which i’ll here call a “cell group”, evoking the idea of home groups that make up such an important part of many church congregations. Here’s a first pass at a proposal, which i’ll try to flesh out later.

Purpose: The purpose of these groups would be: To pray for each other, encourage each other, and brainstorm how to connect with the alienated in our local areas; to do all of this more frequently than is practical in existing formats (GothiCon, Cornerstone, Ichthus, etc.).

Autonomy: The groups would be mostly self-determining — in content, emphasis, geographical divisions, etc. The role of the central actor (be it the Grave Robbers, Asylum, me as an individual, whoever) would be mostly advisory, to get people in touch and get things started.

Geography: In general these groups will be arranged so as to be at most a 3- or 4-hour drive from participants. I have some ideas of natural groupings that might emerge in the Central US, because the location in Cincinnati meant that most of the GothiCon attendees the Midwest or South. The East and West Coasts, as well as locations outside the US, are less clear to me. Perhaps there are other events in those places (e.g., Unified Underground in Maryland) or organizations (e.g. Steiger in the countries where they have bases) that would be helpful in scouting the territory. For now i’m happy with building this idea out in the Central US and letting people in those other places figure out what they want to do.

(For detail see: Suggested geographical groups.)

Activities: I’ll put together a sample agenda, with the understanding that groups can adapt it as they’d like. I emphatically recommend a huge emphasis on prayer, and in particular on prayer preceding decisions about action. Action is important but our plans need to emerge from prayer rather than presenting God with an agenda and asking him to bless it.

Information required: Really just names and contact info of people who’d like to be involved — Donna indicated that it may not be as easy as i thought to get the list of conference attendees. We may have to piece together various sign-up sheets and mailing lists.

Subcultural scope: We’re probably best off recognizing our historical roots in goth but also being fairly open-minded about not attaching ourselves exclusively to our scene.

Much more to follow….

January 26, 2011

On schoolwork and inspiration

Filed under: Uncategorized — philip @ 9:02 am

It’s really interesting how much of my approach to school is based around sudden bursts of inspiration. I sort of like the work, those rare times that i can get into “flow”. But i have to stay marginally engaged with the subject matter the other 90% of the time to get to flow. It’s staying even marginally engaged that’s like pulling teeth.

January 10, 2011

Caring and not caring

Filed under: my psychology — Tags: , , , , , — philip @ 10:29 am

Usually, caring about the broader context is a Good Thing. Sometimes, it’s a Bad Thing.

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December 11, 2010

I connect.

Filed under: my psychology, spirituality — philip @ 2:16 pm

The last couple of days I’ve been toying with a new identity statement, I guess you’d call it. Really it’s more of a slogan.

I connect.

It has meaning in at least three distinct dimensions:

  • Cross-cultural communication is one of the few themes uniting different segments of my life. Once I was passionate about traveling internationally. Then I became passionate about uniting Brasilian immigrants and English-speakers in Boston. Then I became passionate about doing outreach to subcultural young people. At times I’m passionate getting people to see across divides of corporate or organizational culture.
  • My brain sees connections between items that other people would find wildly disparate.
  • I naturally find empathy easy. I tend to “connect” with people I talk to, even when their value system differs radically from mine.
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