Author: smartpeopleiknow

Thinking of starting up your own craft business using etsy.com to distribute your wares?

Then you should read this: Hobbyists Use Etsy to Trade Day Job for Hard Work – NYTimes.com. This quote sums the article up well:

“Etsy saved my life,” Ms. Gibran said. But, she added, “this is the hardest job I’ve ever had.”

As anyone who has tried to make a go of it running a small business can tell you, it’s alot of hard work. Then again, it could be the best work you’ve ever had.

Warren Buffett on the state of California and its finances

In this good article summing up the dire economic condidtion that California is in (California on ‘verge of system failure’ – The Globe and Mail), there is this quote:

Billionaire Warren Buffett, who advised U.S. President Barack Obama during his White House run, suggested recently that a Washington bailout of California and other troubled states is inevitable. How, he wondered, can Washington deny California after saying yes to General Motors, AIG and dozens of banks.

“I don’t know how you would tell a state you’re going to stiff-arm them with all the bailouts of corporations,” Mr. Buffett said.

Warren Buffett is a smart man when it comes to money, so I am wondering how he could have made that comparison. For the companies that accepted (or were made to accept) bailout money had to do so with signifigant strings attached. I wonder if the same could be said for states that were to accept bailout money. Would California turn governing over to the Feds? It seems unlikely, so that comparison seems invalid.

That said, there is a model of how this could be achieved that is already being demonstrated in the U.S. It’s the Race to the Top program that is part of the Stimulus Act (ARRA, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). Perhaps something similar could be put in place to spur reform in areas other than education.

How serviceberry trees are actually great bird feeders, too

I love birdfeeders, but I can’t have them on our property in Toronto because it attracts everything but birds. This is a shame, because it is great to have something to attract birds to your yard.

Surprisingly to me, the serviceberry tree in the front yard is not only a very nice looking tree, but it turns out it is also an excellent birdfeeder. I have had a number of robins and cardinals fly into it, gobble up some of the pea sized berries, and then fly off. And unlike birdfeeders, it doesn’t attract a ton of squirrels or other unwanted mammals. In Canada there are lots of beautiful trees you can plant in your yard for a variety of reasons. Besides the serviceberry, I also have a Himalayan birch tree and a Japanese maple. But for the added benefit of attracting birds, consider a serviceberry tree.

Posted via email from Bernie Michalik’s posterous site

Some thoughts on Vacational (?) Thinking

We think differently – or aim to – when we go on vacation. in fact, if I go
on vacation and find myself still thinking about my day to day
preoccupations, I feel I have failed to take a proper vacation. To me,
vacational thinking can be thinking whereby I forget my day to day cares
for a period of time and with any luck I think instead about special things
that I might not normally think about. It’s not enough to attend an art
gallery or a restaurant or a performance in another place, I have to think
that it is something special and unique in some way and my thinking
reflects that.

But there is another aspect of this thinking, too. With vacational thinking
your brain operates in a less (or sometimes more) excited state than your
day to day state. Your thinking may relax on vacation. Or if you are going
someplace exciting, you mental state may be excited. Either way, it is
likely a break from your typical emotional state.

I thought of this because I have been planning my summer vacation, and even
if I don’t go any where, I plan to shift my way of thinking when I am on
vacation as well as my mental state. But I also plan to think like I am
some place special, even if I am going to a cafe or an art gallery or a
park in Toronto. I am going to think: if I was in Florence or Paris or San
Francisco or Miami, how would I be thinking about that experience right
now? Or, right now I am sitting on my porch and the weather reminds me of
being in Florence ages ago and I am trying to recall how I felt about those
nights in that city. To make myself appreciate the beauty and the
specialness of where I am, even if it is home for me.

When I moved to Toronto from Cape Breton, people would always tell me how
beautiful my first home was. I never really appreciated that until I
travelled to other places and then travelled back to Cape Breton. It hadn’t
changed much, but my mental state and way of thinking did. I could
appreciate the beauty of something that I used to experience all the time
because I changed my mind. I had achieved vacational thinking.

this morning I was planning to be late for work. I took the time to have a
coffee at a cafe. For the few minutes I was getting my coffee while
watching some World Cup play, I could imagine I didn’t have to go to work
(for no one else there looked like they had to go to work either) and
instead I imagined that I was on vacation. It was an oasis of calm thinking
in an otherwise hectic day. If your days are the same, I recommend take
micro vacations at the very least ehenever you can. It will benefit you
more than you can imagine.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. May you have many frequent
vacations soon.
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.

Posted via email from Bernie Michalik’s posterous site

Some thoughts on the dissolution of time even as it accelerates and accumulates

My kids are like timepieces. I can convince myself that time is not moving,
or moving very slowly and I can be convinced of that until I think about
my two kids. They are like Dorian Grey’s painting: constantly showing the
acceleration of time even if nothing else is.

I thought of this when I checked on my son sleeping the other night.
Already he has gotten so big. I can recall just how a few short years ago
he was just a small thing sleeping. Now he is so big I can barely carry him
up the stairs. Yet looking at him, I could skip around in my mind and see
all of the times when he was lying there sleeping. It was like time was
dissolving and I was moving back and forth in time, and he was the time
traveller’s son.

The other day I was in the powder room washing up and he was calling my
name from the other side. For a moment I imagined I was in the future and I
was in the powder room and I was recalling what it was like to hear his
voice on the other side of the door but in the future he would not be there
and I would open the door and he would not be there. He would be grown up.
Gone. So I slid back to the present and there he was and I gave him a hug
and we went out and played.

In Awakenings, by Oliver Sacks, his patients go into a vegetative state
that allows them to perceive time as hardly moving to them, even though it
is changing rapidly for the rest of us. Decades could pass by, but it would
be perceived as no time at all for them.

I was reading last week that memories are not something like words on
paper. They are more dynamic than that, and we are constantly writing them
and rewriting them all the time.

I wonder how much of our perception of time and how it passes has less to
do with the world in itslef and more to do with the limits of our current
thinking.

If time is relative, then maybe we can learn to have future memories and
alternative memories?

Memories are just a form of thinking.

I can imagine how tomorrow will be, and though I can control a lot abot how
my perceptions will match the outcome, the outcome will be determined to a
large degree on the predictability of others. In effect, I can remember the
future only to the degree that others are predictable. Others dissolve the
future.

If everyone in the world thought like the patients in Awakenings and I did
not, I could predict the future, for I could see what was coming well
before it happened. In effect my ability to perceive time at an accelerated
rate would allow me to respond better to events and have more time to
prevent others from dissolving the future.

In Borges story The Secret Miracle, a man about to be executed is allowed
to live his whole life in the few minutes he supposedly has before he is
executed. This ability to live a long life in the time span of a few
minutes is the miraculous part. When the time comes for them man to die, he
is …happy?…because he has lived a full life, despite what others have
perceived.

The passage of time is as much a matter of perception as it is anything
else. If we were not to physically change in a way as to show our age and
if we lived in a way that spent less energy on tracking time, then how
would we perceive time then?

We have only begun to play with time.

Time for me to sleep. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.

Posted via email from Bernie Michalik’s posterous site

On the destructive nomadic aspect of business

One thing I often hear when someone gets laid off is something to the effect that this person had a lot of valuable skills and had accomplished a lot and therefore it’s surprising that they were let go. I call this the old house theory of employees. Such employees are like old houses: fill with old antiques and some newer things. Those things do have a lot of value. However, it goes against the increasingly fast natured approach to business. Businesses are becomng less established and solid, I believe. They are becoming more like tribes of nomads. And like nomads, they have very transient like structures and they travel light. And employees who are nomadic in mindset will be the ones who will be the most successful.Hacked together on my blackberry. Thanks for reading this, and if you have
a comment, thanks even more
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.

Posted via email from Bernie Michalik’s posterous site

Feeling “meh”? You need the awesomeness of Sam & Dave

If you liked Janelle Monáe video, Tightrope, then you need to check out Sam & Dave.

Here’s the incendiary Hold on I’m Coming

and the sweet slow sound of When Something is Wrong with my Baby

and I haven’t even included the often imitated, never duplicated, Soul Man.

If you want to know more, you can read a little about Sam & Dave at Wikipedia or here at Ta-Nehesi Coates blog at The Atlantic. You can get what looks to be a great book, Amazon.com: Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick that goes into things at depth.

The end of miscegenation – part 4

This is a good story for the U.S.: Interracial marriages at an all-time high, study says – CNN.com. There’s lots of good material in there that’s well worth a read.

So while you still have the likes of people like Sen. Jake Knotts in South Carolina calling people racist names, that type of thinking and the fear it brings with it is dying out. Instead you have people loving people for who they are and people supporting that. And that is a smart thing indeed.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree By William Butler Yeats

You can find out more about this great poem, Lake Isle of Innisfree, at that link. But first, read it for yourself:

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,     
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;      
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,     
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.     
    
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon apurple glow, all a glimmer:
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.     
    
I will arise and go now, for always night and day  
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;      
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,     
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

How having an unsecure Wifi network connection could cost you alot more than you think

So you have a router at home, or you are using your laptop in a cafe or an open space and you have an unsecure wifi network setup. You might think: what’s the big deal? How’s that going to help anyone? Well as Oscar González shows, you need to be careful when using WiFi. Your files could be exposed. (from his Techie of All sorts) blog. Even exposing a little information via wifi can potentially expose alot.

Now, you might think: fine, he can look up all that information about me, including personal information…big deal. Well, actually for someone malicious — unlike Oscar — it can be a big deal. Alot of institutions use that information to establish your identity. Someone can get that information and commit some nice identity theft (not to mention other theft as well).

Short of it is: follow Oscar’s advice and secure your connections as well as other information about yourself out there.

P.S. Even if you are not a techie, you should check out Oscar’s blog and in particular this post.

Some thoughts on epiphenomenalism and running

Because I run alot, people ask me: what do you think about when you run? Well, if I am running at a slower pace, I think a myriad of things, not unlike what people when they are walking, or shopping, or generally milling about. However, if I am running at a faster and harder pace, my thinking is directly affected by my run. If I am having a difficult run and I am experiencing alot of pain and suffering, my thoughts automatically turn very dark. I will suddenly notice this, for it creeps up on me. It’s as if I am trying to tune out the difficulty my body is having, so my mind starts having dark fantasies and thoughts. And that form of thinking makes the run even harder: it’s like a downward spiral. Whenever that happens, I either cut the run short or ease back on the tempo until I start to feel (and think) better.

The flip side of that is when I am having a very good run, I start thinking very creatively and imaginatively. It’s as if my mind is freed up to think this way. For example, tonight I was thinking of an essay I read by Sara Ruddick on maternal thinking and how it relates to Martin Buber’s I and Thou and how, while it relates to Buber’s ontological thinking, it differs in that a maternal relationship is symbiotic to a degree and that defines a different form of identity and relationship than Buber’s. And I thought about other things, like…well…running and epiphenomenalism! 🙂 And I think if anything illustrates empirically that epiphenomenalism — either weak or strong — is not true, then I think my runs do that. (Not to mention one of the reasons why I like to run.)

Posted via email from Bernie Michalik’s posterous site

Black Humor 101

What is black humor? Well the wikipedia definition is a good one: a sub-genre of comedy and satire in which topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo are treated in a satirical or humorous manner while retaining their seriousness. Synonyms include dark comedy, black comedy, dark humor, and morbid humor.

This image of how not to fast-rope onto a ship is an excellent example of that:

The recent events of the Israeli Defence Forces trying to stop the flotilla trying to break the embargo of Gaza is a deadly serious matter and it hardly seems worthy of laughter. However, this pseudo-instructional image satirizes and mocks the IDF for doing what they obviously should not have done. (At least in the eyes of the illustrator). I am a big fan of black humor: it is sometimes the only way to deal with extermely difficult subjects. This is a well done example of it.

From Fast-Roping 101 – The Daily Dish  By Andrew Sullivan

Moules marinière: fast food of the gods

Are Moules marinière, mussels in white wine, the “fast food of the gods”, as this blog, Mastering the Art of 10 Minute French Cooking, says? I think so! And even if you don’t, if you like shell fish, you will like this recipe.

The recipe I use, from Lucy Waverman, is slightly different and uses a cup of white wine and a cup of water. Instead of the scallion, it uses four cloves of garlic thinly sliced and two onions chopped. (You could get by with one.) As for herbs, it uses two dried teaspoons of thyme, which I really like.  Finally it uses 2 pounds of mussels.

However you want to make it, really, it’s the combination of white wine, herbs, and onions that create a wonderful broth and the means to steam open the mussels. Feel free to experiment. While the mussels are great all by themselves, if you want something to go with that, frites, or at least a good bagette to soak up all that delicious liquid. Finally drink the same wine you cooked with.

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music…Ain’t No Sunshine – Bill Withers (version 1) and Sting (version 2)

It’s pretty tough to improve on the original version of Biill Withers performing Ain’t No Sunshine, seen here:

However, I came across this version by Sting on the sublime music show from the 80s, Night Music. Sting, combined with David Sanborn and with some other great musicians, perform a great version of it as well.

Enjoy both.

You too can be a great American politician (or at least go through the motions)

Your first responsibility as a great leader is to stabilize the debt.  And if you click on that link, you will see what choices you have in front of you. Ross Douthat an American right of centre commentator at the NYTimes.com, has made his choices. You can go to the stabilize the debt site and make yours. If you are going to be honest, you should make hard choices and reflect that if you are to the left, you will have to support left-wing choices that add to the debt. Likewise, if you are right-wing, you will have to make some right wing choices and that too will add to the debt. Anyone who thinks they can just make choices that reduce the debt regardless of political pressure is not ready to be a great American politician.

Give it a try.

How to easily just get the “High/Low” items from The Moment on nytimes.com?

Easy: just use my Yahoo! Pipe here: Pipes: NYTimes-The-Moment-High-Low. It combines the RSS feed from the Men’s and Women’s fashion on The Moment blog on the NYTimes.com, then it filters out everything but items that contain “high low”.

The benefit of this is that if you are simply interested in great fashion bargains, you don’t have to wade through everything else.

Also, if you use iGoogle or My Yahoo, you can get it on those pages too. Heck, there are lots of ways Yahoo Pipes will deliver it to you. Check them all out! And if you find this useful, please let me know.

The White House moves Recovery.gov to Amazon’s cloud

The Obama administration continues to take the lead when it comes to using the latest technology. Not only do they take the lead, but they succeed. Their latest effort is moving the site Recovery.gov to Amazon’s cloud (reported on O’Reilly Radar). Anyone looking to move parts or all of their site to a cloud should consider this, as well as read the article, which provides some interesting facts as to why they’ve done this.

Buick: it’s what old people drive (although GM wants to change that)


I had always suspected that our oldest citizens drive Buicks. It was confirmed in this article by David Olive on the surprising rebound of GM and Chrysler in the Toronto Star.

Recently, it turns out…

“GM’s decision not to renew its Tiger Woods endorsement contract is a key sign of a culture change essential to GM’s long-term prospects.

Tiger Woods and golf were the wrong message for Buick. During Woods’ long association with Buick, the average age of Buick owners rose to 72.

Liberated from appealing to older consumers, GM has outfitted its latest Buick LaCrosses and Regals with satellite navigation systems and DVD players important to the younger couples and family buyers to whom Buick strongly appealed only two decades ago. Thanks to that and sharper design, the average age of Buick owners has quickly dropped to 65.

So, the average age has dropped from 72 to 65. I guess that is progress of a sort. But I also had the morbid thought that maybe the older owners just, well, died. Or the owners in their 70s didn’t like all that stuff GM was putting in their Buicks and switched to something else. (Cadillac?)

Actually, I have rented Buicks before and I liked them. But I also thought: I can see why older people like to drive them. Soon enough, I will be older too: perhaps I will buy a Buick then.

Interestingly, according to the wikipedia entry, Buicks are big in China. In fact, the entire wikipedia entry is interesting. Take a look. And also, David Olive’s column is typically good.

On how the hung Parliament/minority government is working in Canada

John Ibbitson makes two mistakes in his otherwise good article, Parliament takes another step toward being a true arm of government inThe Globe and Mail. First up, he says this:

For 24 years, from 1980 to 2004, majority governments ruled at the federal level. Successive prime ministers used those majorities to expand their own powers at the expense of their party caucus and Parliament itself….

Cabinet ministers were turned into ciphers; parliamentary committees became rubber stamps; the opposition was demonized or ignored.

It’s the part in bold that I think was a mistake. While PM have expanded the powers of the PMO, ministers, at least in the Chretien government, were anything but ciphers. As I recall, Chretien was consistent in having his ministers be front and center on the files that they were working on. I saw an awful lot of Allan Rock and Paul Martin in the days that the Liberals held consecutive majorities. In general, good ministers have a way of getting out there. Bad ones, not so much. (Or in a bad way).

Second, he says this:

There have been mistakes. The attempt in 2008 to force a coalition government on the Canadian people was an adolescent effort by the opposition to wield its newfound power. As coalition negotiations in London this week demonstrated, voters expect the party with the most seats to be part of the government.

I don’t think this is true, either. Stating categorically what voters want is a losing game. But in terms of preferences, I think what voters want first is good government. And if good government can come as a result of the smaller parties joining together, most voters would prefer that.

I also find this mistake ironic, since I believe Ibbitson is not a big fan of first past the post. I thought he would have said, voters expect the party with the most votes to be part of the government.

Otherwise, a good article.

Brilliant architecture

From Sunshine+Design. When…

…Architects Martín Fernández de Lema and Nicolás F. Moreno Deutsch weren’t allowed to remove any trees on the grounds of this Buenos Aires spot [they went aboutw with a] design of the house was built around the landscape using poured concrete and slabs of wood.

Here’s one great example of the result:

Sunshine+Design has more great shots of the house.

On Facebook’s privacy bamboozlement

Check this out: Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options – Graphic – NYTimes.com. It also says that “Facebook says it wants to offer precise controls for sharing on the Internet.”. Frankly, that is nonsense. Facebook no doubt has many highly competent developers on staff. And any good developer would tell you that rather than have to make those settings at a lower level – as depicted in the diagram – you could be provided with the ability to set things at a higher level. For example, you should be able to have a “Friends Only” for each and every setting and have that set all at once. Facebook could then go through and make all those privacy settings to “Friends Only” all at once.

Instead, my belief is that Facebook sets those things to be public, and then makes YOU go through each and every one of those settings. Most people will not bother or give up.

That’s just one example of the bamboozlement. The fact that it’s privacy statement is so long is another.

Sad.

“Privacy is dead” is dead

Or at least, there is an Oversharing Backlash based on this post on The Daily Dish  By Andrew Sullivan. His post has a rundown on how younger people are reining in the amount of sharing they are doing via the Internet. Some of this could be attributed to sharing fatigue (i.e. maybe people are tired of blogging). Some could also be attributed to younger people growing up and feeling that with more responsibility, the need to act more responsible on the ‘Net is greater. But I also think some of that is a growing awareness that the need to protect one’s privacy is important.

I expect to see more on this meme in the upcoming months. If someone is smart, they will come up with better privacy in the social networks they create. If they do, they could turn Facebook into the next MySpace / Friendster / AOL.

Music for the Midweek: Finley Quaye and Melanie Fiona

Wednesday music should not be too up tempo, but it shouldn’t be too quiet. To me, it should be something like…well, these two pieces:

First up is Finley Quaye and Your Love Gets Sweeter Everyday. It reminds me in parts of Sam Cooke, Van Morrison and Fine Young Cannibals. How can you not listen?

Second to no one is Melanie Fiona doing Cupid on Billboard.com’s Mashup Mondays (Melanie is great, but those video overlays are so annoying…look away)

Both songs have good vocals and good acoustic guitar work.

Hey, there’s a few more hours of work until Friday: these tunes will help you get there.

Where are the best Greasy Spoons in Toronto?

BlogTO.com has a run down of the Best Greasy Spoons in Toronto, and I have to say that, having eaten in many of them, they have a really good list. If anything, it is a bit of a disservice to call them “greasy” spoons, since many of them have tastier food than you will find in alot of fast food joints or pubs. Plus these diners have plenty of charm and are often in great locations. As the article says, these types of establishments are fading fast. Get out a grab a club or an open faced sandwich while you still can.

I would also add Sunset Grill: it does mainly breakfast, but the cooking style is in line with these other places. And if you are ever in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, you have to go to Mike’s, my all time favourite restaurant service just this style of food. Delicious!

Banksy in Toronto?

It certainly looks like it, based on this recent work in T.O.

I’ve seen his work referenced on a few sites, but I wanted to point to Show & Tell Gallery because they are also a site you want to see for more than just Banksy. Check ’em out. They have more Banksy images, as well as more on the work of the artists they represent.

If you are thinking of leaving Facebook, but can’t thinking of alternatives, then consider

This post on rocket.ly,  Why You Should Still Quit Facebook, and in particular, these alternatives:

I am not aware of any good solutions for privacy in social media. Facebook has expressly moved away from providing one. But there are plenty of good opt-out solutions. Twitter works fine for status updates. For photos, we’ve had Flickr for years. For video, YouTube. For link sharing, Digg. I’ve picked these because they are all independent companies, but there are dozens of solutions for sharing social media.