January 2007

Lately, one aspect of my professional life has not been all it could be. It certainly doesn’t match the picture I have of a completely rewarding experience, one in which I would eagerly jump out of bed to greet.

One definition of maturity I’ve come across recently (not that I was looking or anything), is the acceptance of your current circumstances as a prelude to change. In years past I would have been much more vociferously bemoaning my fate and eager to get out of the situation with no more than a cursory understanding of why I got myself into the situation in the first place. With this current situation, I find myself still as frustrated and annoyed but not as eager to jump away from it into something, anything, else.

What is different now compared to similar situations in the past? For one thing, and possibly for the first time in my life, I can more clearly see my own role in getting into the situation and I feel that it is important for me to understand that role as a prelude to getting out of the situation. Another reason is that I don’t have all my eggs in this basket. I’m doing something outside of this situation that can be considered of a professional nature and that gives me a high degree of personal satisfaction in its professional aspect.

Further, a large part of this issue boils down to a mere personality conflict between myself and another person and really those are just silly. Nevertheless, I will leave you with this quote from Dr. Sanity as an indicator of how a portion of my day has been.

Avenging petty slights and insults is not a high priority to a psychologically healthy person.

What the homestead looked like around 8 am this morning. As if this writing, it’s still snowing.

Remember the Global Orgasm experiment? The organisers really got into the idea that millions of orgasms specifically dedicated to world peace on December 22nd would have a significant effect as measured by changes in recorded random effect generators, basically little machines dumping out random numbers. You can read the wikipedia article for background on the overall experiment.

While admitting to the humorous nature of the whole thing, and really how can you not smile — okay, laugh out loud — at the thought of millions of people screaming out “World Peace” just as they slip into esctasy, I don’t have an opinion (I’ll share on this blog) about the validity of the experiment. I did, however, wanted to see how it all came out, and the results are a bit mixed, it would seem:

We watched the Global Consciousness Project’s live read-outs from their network of random event generators and we like to think we saw more fluctuation than usual. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but wishing for something positive never hurts.

So, something happened. Maybe. If you look at it positively. And, really why not? Having a positive view on things is better than having a negative view, I always say.

Okay, I don’t. I’m more of a cynic than I would care to admit in polite company. And with this kind of pressure, can you blame me:

The director of the GCP, Roger Nelson, has said that more events of this kind will be needed for statistical analysis to be meaningful, so here’s the plan: we would like all of you to continue to practice dedicating your orgasms to world peace

Man, talk about high expectations. I can get into the whole practice thing because practice makes perfect, I always say.

Okay, I don’t. But if I got to practice something, orgasms are a good choice, mainly because it’s so fun to practice, but if I’ve got to practice for world peace? That’s just a lot to put on a guy’s shoulders. We have enough to worry about as it is when we practice, expecially when we practice with a partner.

At least you don’t need any special equipment. Okay, you could use special equipment, but then you’d just be a freak.

I’ve often felt some small amount of awe at the lack of guilt and the conversely intense sense of entitlement Europeans feel about their vacation time. There have been many times in my career, usually during a stressful period in which I’ve been putting in many more hours than I consider reasonable, when I felt that 6 weeks of vacation a year was the MINIMUM for sanity and that maybe, just maybe, those lazy Europeans were actually on to something.

Now, via Reason, there seems to be a side benefit to all that sloth: reduced greenhouse emissions. It’s the second item on the page, after the prostate cancer piece.