Zen and the Art of Datsun Maintenance

Meet the newest member of the family.

It’s been something like 4 or 5 years now since i dropped the Datsun hobby and, like they say, you never truly appreciate something until it’s gone. Recently i’ve had the bug again. I’ve even had a few dreams about driving my old 240Z again. So i’ve been telling myself that some day (when the time is right and a good deal comes along) i will get myself another Datsun to fix up. Fridy night this one fell in my lap; an unbelievable steal… surprisingly rust-free and the frame is as straight as an arrow. Driving it home was a joy. I’d forgotten how much i loved these cars. And then some interesting things started happening.

For a while now i’ve lamented the fact that i’ve been forgetting all the details of what i’d done to my previous project. People would ask me about it and i’m not so quick at rattling off a list of parts and modifications like i used to be. In fact, i was starting to forget some of the basics of engine theory… but on the 2hr drive back home, all these numbers started randomly popping into my head.

“460/282… those were the specs on your old cam. you should get another one just like it…”

Stuff like that. Part numbers. Phone number of my old datsun parts salesman. Things i haven’t thought of in years. It was like i reactivated a dormant part of my brain.

Then when i started working on it yesterday evening (a thorough under-hood cleaning and replacement of crusty wiring) i had a “moment”, if you will. After a few hours, i noticed that i felt really really GOOD. I was being active, yet meditative. Silent and content. I was lightly exericising and my blood was flowing at a slightly elevated rate, but at a noticably low pressure. Satori. I wasn’t thinking of checking my phone or smoking a cigarette. i wasn’t thinking of my work or my health.

Turning wrenches is, i now believe, sort of yoga-like in the way that you contort your body into certain shapes in order to reach hiding bolts and then hold that pose until you get it loose.  You practice creative visualization when your fingers are blindly trying to fit a socket over a bolt head that is completely hidden from view. And of course, you are taking a dive and creating something… which is great for training your mind to make decisions and follow them through to completion, with nobody but yourself to decide what the end result should be. The automotive hobbiest is an artist in this respect. And all art teaches you confidence in your own decisions.

I don’t think i even noticed it last time, because i started this hobby when i was 18… long before i subjected my body and mind to the many delusions and distractions out there. But now that i have had some contrast, i realize how badly i needed this.

Kinda makes me want to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance now.

Barry Schwartz on Loss of Wisdom

Barry Schwartz always has a message that i can get behind… this time, literally. I had the honor of doing his slides for his TED talk this year! Take some time today to enjoy this inspirational presentation about the loss of morality and wisdom in the work place.

http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html

TED Talks Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as
an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully
that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical,
everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world.

More about TED:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/

More about Barry Schwartz:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/barry_schwartz.html

Happily Ever After

I never knew anything about the game Eve until I read this article…

http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/02/11/the-eve-upset/

…and for a while I was really confused as to what I was reading. I knew it was a game that was being talked about, but it sounded like a case of real-life espionage. Again, I find it fascinating how our video games mirror our lives…

“Lots of folks lose their livelihoods when an empire falls, and players invested in BoB are likely upset that years of work were lost. But EVE is not a game about the height of the Roman Empire. It’s a game about the sacking of Rome by barbarians, so that they can become the next short-lived top dog. BoB existed to be torn down, and anyone who dreams of permanent glory in a game like that should understand that their destiny is to be taken down by the next upstart, in a dog-eat-dog world.”

“the game, as a game, does want BoB to fall, because from a purely mechanical point of view, what is fun about EVE is the struggle, not the victory condition. The victory condition is boring.”

This is fascinating. I have often mused over how funny it is that people get so impatient with the struggle of life… people can’t seem to wait to get to “happily ever after.” But there is no such thing as happily ever after. That’s why there has never been a movie about being happy, foreverafter… the boredom would be annihilating. The fun comes from watching characters struggle to overcome obstacles… resolve conflicts… learn lessons. So the real “happily ever after” in life can only be found in the joy of watching your story unfold.

There have been several times in my life where i felt like i reached “happily ever after.” My dreams had come true… nothing could be more perfect… time to roll credits. The next day, however, i still had a job to go to. I still had traffic to contend with… office politics to overcome… unexpected drama from friends and family… The human condition is meant to be turbulent.

Maybe this is why there is always unrest in the world. Maybe if the wealth was evenly distributed, humans would lose their personal character-arcs and become depressed. Perhaps a certain level of struggle is necessary to keep this life meaningful.

Present Moment OS

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/03/phantom-operating-system-to-kill-windows-and-linux/

I think insinuating that this OS would somehow “kill” Windows and Linux (but for some reason not OSX) is pretty ridiculous… but there is something else in this article that really fascinates me.

For the longest time I’ve been saying how computers have been modeling reality… Binary is analogous to the light-dark duality in nature… video games have become physics engines… electrons become akin to pixels… and all the while we are creating the next world in our own image… but now the idea behind this OS takes things to a new level.

Instead of having files saved on your computer in the traditional sense, it continually saves “states” of the entire system as a whole… Now your computer becomes a continually changing present moment, with all your “files” becoming objects with persistent states.

I know… it’s out there… mark my words though… computers and the internet (or the upcoming “grid” or whatever they’re going to call it.) will be at the heart of the 2012 event. I can feel it in my bones.

On that note, I read that this “grid” will make data transfer so fast, that it will change our concept of ownership completely. Instead of things being stored on your personal equipment… it will all be “out there” in the cloud of cloud-computing… instantly accessible and no longer necessary to “keep” in the traditional sense. This too, is just like quantum reality. The cloud we experience is “consensus reality” and our concept of ownership is illusory… after we die and our hardware exits the cloud, all of our artifacts still remain accessible to others.

It sounds both bleak and romantic, but what if 2012 arrives in a cataclysmic fashion and humans find out that, in order to survive, we must enter the virtual reality we have created? And what if several million years later we find ourselves cooperating to build hadron colliders, to break open tiny elements of our reality to find clues to a grand design behind it all? What if the current LHC actually finds evidence of this picture-in-a-picture scenario having already happened a time or two before?

In this framework, i find it almost LIKELY that 2012 could be synonymous with this “global transformation of consciousness” that so many of my new-agey friends pray for. Frankly, my hopes are just as lofty. Even if it’s just the global sense of ownership that changes, that will still be a MAJOR evolution of one of the most fundamental concepts behind class-separation.