The Voice

I have to admit it: I've been skimming a book about blogging since being hit with blog envy from reading entertaining, killer blogs. Mrs. Fox sure can't turn away the cheap coaching a library book might offer. Still, am I hopelessly backward? Is getting a book on blogs counter-insurgency? Reading "Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies" (horrifically, printed in 2005) - and placing holds on other blog related books is pretty old school, eh?  But wait! If I have to put a hold on these other books, doesn't that mean there are other yahoos out there like myself?  I.....I'm not alone!

Sometimes it takes a book to tell you what you need to know so you can change things. The ego can take it. MY ego, that is.

It seems my "voice" is all over the place. My attitude is also all over the place. You, gentle reader, don't even know what you might find when you come to my Foxden mailbox. There are times I don't know what I'll find until the writing has begun. The variety of written voices and mishmash of ideas will have to do for now.

Q: Shhh! Chop! Shhh! Chop!

Visiting the library is one of my favourite activities. I grew up going to library of my own free will and under my own power. I have many enjoyable memories leisurely looking through and borrowing books, and returning them – more than a few were atrociously late. Things sure haven’t changed much.

Over the years, my SOP for a library visit can be summed up by two words: Anything Goes. My book browsing always begins with picking through the lined up library carts full of returned but as yet unshelved books. The carts represent in microcosm the variety that the library can offer, and there really is no telling what subject you’ll find compelling until you lay eyes on it. On those library carts is a heady mix of chance and chaos. I don’t always select borrowing material from them, but they always deliver entertainment value by making me think about why something was borrowed in the first place. The only thing that makes me wonder more is just how many other library-goers harbour the dirty little secret of being drawn to these carts. I certainly never see them, but they must exist. Sort of like Carl Sagan’s Extraterrestrials – logically and mathematically speaking, but far more earthbound.

Now, my new favourite haunt is the Express Book shelf. It represents in miniature the newest additions to the library and runs the gamut of subjects and fictions. Damn if it isn’t tasty selection. I have a real penchant for social psychology books, and the book express shelf has given me serious food for thought. The latest find that I’m really into is “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”. A month or so ago I also read “Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children”, which wasn’t a parenting manual as much as it was the book “Drive” with a differing perspective and authors. They both have data and interests that seem to have sprung from some of Malcolm Gladwell’s own researches that produced his books and essays (which I also enjoy greatly).

The idea in "Drive" is that people fundamentally want to produce and perform intrinsically with little thought for reward, especially when the work has a creative facet to it. We’ve been poisoned with rewards, bonuses and little happy face stickers on our tests that we expect when we do well…instead of being encouraged to learn and perform as well as is personally possible. Paying employees bonuses and giving rewards only reward the cutting of corners and selling the future short, and encourages employees to only work when they know bonuses are involved. In short, bonuses or pay increases or rewards for doing your job only corrupts employees and interferes with “Flow” which corrupts any enjoyment that most people can have performing their job. And while employees need salaries because there are bills to pay and lives to lead, Dan Pink states, ‘salaries should be fair so they can be removed from the table’ – this is so the employee no longer thinks about money. It becomes a given so they can move on and not nag at them.

If there is something that should be given more frequently it’s feedback that is sound and comprehensible. We all know that most employees never receive feedback except at annual/semi annual review – if that, actually, and it barely rates as it's not time sensitive or even applicable. Feedback is the most prized “reward” that doesn't corrupt that an employee can receive. Think of it: Productivity could increase with a decent feedback loop!

A: Conan the Librarian

Schlock & Awe

The Olympics has become as much a cliche as it has become obsolete and above all, decadent. Manufacturing and giving 60,000 ponchos to the stadium crowd to enable projecting images onto the audience seems on the face of it to be vibrantly non-green. If they were made of corn plastic, it would’ve been naturally plastered all over the internet!  And the creation of a Woodstock of plenty to celebrate athletes who practice sports that invoke permanent damage to their very human anatomy through simple routine boggles my mind. So what if the marathon used to kill the runners. That was then, this is now. I have a pretty firm belief that knees shouldn’t be sacrificed during normal pursuit of a sport.

The pull of the Olympics is as straightforward as it is hidden. One of the fundamental ideas of the Olympics as a peaceful celebration of the power of human beings from the world’s countries is a very appealing and an extremely honourable one.  Coupled with the fact that the four year cycle makes it rare and ephemeral makes the Olympics very hard to ignore for most people with a TV and a pulse.

It is the Olympics’ very rarity that has elevated it into an event that triggers ancient and deeply embedded cues that prompt awe and wonder, albeit on a rather low frequency. The call of ritual and tradition are an inherent part of the human brain’s makeup. That’s why people like the idea of Christmas, Easter, or Canada Day -so much so that they implemented them in the first place. Stonehenge – they sure knew what they were doing, and it wasn’t just crop insurance. On the loom of life, ritual gives pattern to the fabric.

Our parents have answered the siren song of the Olympics, and as children we watch and learn and then follow in their well-modeled footsteps. Organized religion is no slouch at maximizing the operating systems that we humans have and our preference for rituals and memes, and people rarely veer from their parents choice of religion (if they continue to adhere to the one they were raised with, that is!). The Olympics are rather more like a religion, one that glorifies ‘amateurs’ who wear down parts of their very human bodies in their single minded pursuit of ‘excellence’ in sport. The irony is of the painfully delicious variety. The Olympics has become a genuine Greek tragedy.

Its worth debating how worthwhile the Olympics are.

Nurturing your nature

When I was growing up, the big bang theory – the 1970’s version to be sure – was certainly talked about. And even though I was a member of a church going catholic family, I was not hidden from these scientific discussions.  I remember seriously thinking about the ‘big bang’ and getting my head into a knot as I tried to comprehend what was BEFORE the big bang and everything that followed.  My tiny noggin was just not up to the task of comprehending nothingness that wasn’t even space – heck, I still can’t!  I’ve just learned to take it as fact without trying to force myself to recreate it or imagine it within the extremely finite cubic centimeters of gray matter that is my brain.  As a child, I just didn’t know it wasn’t possible. Trying to create a mental construct of the pre big bang is probably where I first made my acquaintance with alpha waves, and it rather hurt my head.

How did someone who was probably about 8 or 10 years old get a good initial dose of the big bang theory?  I think it stems from my father’s interests. He enjoyed a variety of scientific endeavours, such as astronomy, paleontology and anthropology. He also very much enjoyed sharing his interests, so I don’t doubt the big bang theory might have been discussed in the house with my (much) older siblings and I caught wind of it.  I remember being taken out to see a lunar eclipse.  My memory is of my Dad taking me and my brother for a drive down to Miller’s Field with a stop at a local grocery store – and this is the part that truly captures my father’s genius -  for an oreo cookie package.  We spent the summer evening watching the moon turn dusky red and back again and munching on the cookies of the gods.  I also remember being taught about the constellations – the few that are so very easy to spot, anyway - and still enjoy the return of certain constellations as the old friends that they are, even when they are the harbinger of a return to winter.


The lessons my father imparted were many and some quite easily memorable.  Never stop learning, See the world, Life is for the living, Try hard to be good, Walk in like you own the place. … just a sampling of his easy-to-rattle-off one-liners.  They work well as mantras when you need them,  and I think my father found them to work the same way.  I find I enjoy learning and wondering and discovering many of the things that he did enjoy as well – if not exactly, then on a fundamental level.  The chances are good that as one of his children, my (and all of my siblings) brain categorizes and works and learns in a similar way to my father – or my mother. Perhaps even a mix?

 There is something to learn from the pattern of our parents, even if it is things that didn’t work for them.  While we are ultimately our own selves we have a personality, intelligence and desires that are an offshoot of all those that have gone before. It shouldn’t betray our individuality to recognize the living and learning that our own kin has gone through, in fact, it should be said that it’s smart to not have to learn something the hard way.

All that being said, it’s a terrible thing that we never admit “mom was right” until we’re moms or dad ourselves.

"So we are all reincarnations -- though short-lived ones. When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere - as part of a leaf or other human being or drop a dew. In short, on an atomic level, we all live forever."
      -A Short History of Nearly Everything
      -Bill Bryson-

It can make your skin crawl...

It was a different world back then. Right now, all I can think is the odds of someone on that plane being a perve is pretty freakin' high. Enjoy this refreshing taste of wierdness as I get a decent blog post finished over the next few days...