Category: Field notes
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Air and Light: My favorite outdoor photos from the last few years
I seem to like close-up photography and patterns.
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Many and Few: The lowest common denominator drags us down
Leo Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Jim Harrison wrote that our wounds…
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NY, NY: My first visit in New York was for the New Year, and I understood why people like that city
The first time I came to New York, I came for the New Year. My friend’s friend had gone back to Mexico for the holidays…
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Santa
This time of the year makes me reflective and sentimental, so here’s my thought for today: My kids met Santa in front of the supermarket…
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Bad Faith Communication
Engaging in direct debate with those who communicate in bad faith is a waste of time and emotional energy. Similarly, following debates between bad faith…
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Silent Night, Silently
“Why would a chorus need a sign language interpreter?” I thought as the performance began. On the stage in front of me stood a hundred…
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Pyromaniac
Trying to light a camp fire when it’s raining and everything is wet is a humbling experience, and not one that practicing in dry conditions…
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My Second Day At Work
Like so many minds of my generation, best or otherwise, I came to California for work. The biotech company that hired me paid for my…
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Revenge
The worst job I’ve ever had was also my first. This helped me later in life, with every job I’ve had since having been an…
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Pharma Ads
My wive and I had dinner at a noisy hot pot restaurant on Geary Boulevard. The restaurant was packed. When my wive went to get…
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Corporate Email
Here are two emails from my workplace, normally notable for its lack of quirkiness. Good morning Hope you are all well. Just in case you…
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Ambivert
I’ve never felt solidarity except while making love, or with a tree or animal or while utterly alone on a river or in a swamp…
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Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
I had seen posters advertising the movie Jane Austen Wrecked My Life earlier this year while traveling in Europe. The name was funny enough that…
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Rejecting Authenticity
It doesn’t matter much if it’s authentic. What matters is if it’s good. Good and inauthentic is better than bad and authentic. This is true…
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McDonald’s Innocence
McDonald’s, according to journalist Chris Arnade, often is the only place for the very poor to meet and relax. It’s open to all in a…
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The Things We Don’t Have to Do
It’s the things we don’t have to do that make live worth living: Art, humor, play. Fleeting grace. Beauty. When that fight to save humanity…
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Helmets
The idea behind the helmet law is to preserve a brain whose judgement is so poor it does not even try to stop the cracking…
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The Smile Brace
One of my ancestors was a medical doctor who was responsible for accompanying the corpse of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to his final resting place after…
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Easily Amused
I used to have laughing fits that lasted for several minutes. I want just that I couldn’t stop laughing, but I couldn’t even remain upright.…
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Your Photos Have Already Been Taken
Taking photos on vacation is pointless. For any tourist attraction, you’ll find pictures that are better than you’ll ever be able to take yourself online. Any…
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By Myself
I’m lucky to have friends I can talk to about weighty concepts such as grace without feeling silly. It takes a few beers to get…
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People Are Better Than Dogs
Two days ago, I was in my neighborhood bar run by the American Legion. There was live music and general good cheer. People like to…
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In Tech America, AI Fact-Check You
This happens to scientists fairly often: You remember some finding you came across a few weeks ago. You don’t remember where you read it, but…
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Hitchhiking
After hiking through the desert for a week, I was standing on the American side of the Mexican border. I was dusty, tired, needed a…
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Country Club Work
I am lucky: I can treat work like a country club. I can go there when I like to. It’s a ten minute drive. I…
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We Are Meant To Be Many Things
Singular focus is not a human trait. It is a machine trait. Human life is fragmented on purpose. We are meant to be many things:…
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Eccentrics
The body shop where I was picking up my car is on the wrong side of the highway. The neighborhood is nondescript in the worst…
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Eating Sushi With a Fork
Imagine being so narrow-minded that you would outright reject eating sushi with a fork instead of the customary chopsticks, without even having tried it. Because…
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America!
Chanting USA! USA! is warranted when it comes to air conditioning. Not saying it isn’t warranted for other things too, but AC is an obvious…
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Knives: I have an irrational fondness of them
Since I was a kid, I’ve liked knives. Maybe it’s some primordial instinct that attracts me to those simple tools. Some of the earliest known…
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Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom
You have to give it the old communists: They knew how to create a good slogan. Some of them are still in use today, and…
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Signs and Spirits
I used to take a bus past a church sign on 19th avenue in San Francisco every day. The message changed every day. This was…
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Rushed Endings
At high school, we had to write at least one long essay every week. I remember one assignment in particular: Write a well-structured adventure story.…
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Avoiding Organic
What matters more, what you eat, or the quality of that food? What’s healthier, low-grade boiled GMO vegetables from Food ‘n’ Stuff or a bag…
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Small Gifts for Small Kids
Small kids travelling in Europe get gifts all the time. This started on Austrian Airlines, flying from California to Vienna. Our three daughters, aged 3,…
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The Decorated Buck
My brother’s cabin is deep in a narrow, forested valley in Lower Austria, not far from where I was born. The gravel road leading up…
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Pictures of the Atelier
During my current stay in Austria, I’m spending a few days in a vacation home in the South of the country. It’s the same house…
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It’s Priced In
Someone recently pointed me to this old rant on Reddit. I don’t think it’s accurate, but it sure is entertaining.
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Walking Vienna
Change is the only constant, but it can take a long time. This summer, I’m spending a month in Vienna. I went to high school…
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Anthroposophy
There are more than 1,000 Waldorf schools worldwide, and more than 2,000 Waldorf kindergartens. As a kid, I went to one of them and didn’t…
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Unpacking
When considering whether to attempt something new, should you contemplate the ways in which it may go wrong or be unpleasant? Yes, says Adam Mastroianni…
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Star Axis
Construction began almost 50 years ago and may finish before the end of this decade. Here is a video, here is the Wikipedia entry, here…
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Speaking Extemporaneously
The conference ended on Friday afternoon and my flight didn’t leave until Saturday. I was free to spend Friday night exploring Barcelona on my own.…
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Flowers, Raindrops, Tracings
We’re all flowers for the void Gary Snyder We’re just raindrops on a window Jerry Seinfeld Our life is a faint tracing on the surface…
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The Delivery Driver
As I was about to enter my house, a man stepped out of an old car parked on the other side of the street and…
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Primitive Technology
Primitive Technology is a popular YouTube channel about making things from scratch without any modern tools or materials. It’s not just what it’s about that…
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Meaning and Miracles
Mid-way through reading this I paused and thought, “This is better than anything that I’ve read in a long time. I wonder who it’s by?”…
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Temptation
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do…
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My Reactionary Demands for Art
The artist is the creator of beautiful things Oscar Wilde In high school, I got into an argument with my art teacher. For a project…
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The Atelier
My stepfather, a sensitive, alcoholic, intelligent, paranoid, articulate, chain-smoking, erudite and irresponsible artist, had an atelier on the ground floor of an old apartment building…
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Stainless Steel
The oldest piece of kitchenware I own is a stainless steel teapot. The previous occupants had left it behind in a flat in England I…
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Sister
One of my daughters, when she was around four years old and wanted to show off to strangers, liked to inform them, “I have a…
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When I Broke My Brother’s Nose
The moment my brother was old enough to travel, he flew to Thailand to study mixed martial arts. In the years leading up to this, he had…
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Managment Consulting
A consultant is a guy who borrows your watch and tells you what time it is Howard Gossage I used to work for a large,…
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Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller was the Jack Kerouac of Germany. Both were rebellious, youthful writers that didn’t only inspire a generation, but represented some feeling that still…
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Surely
This is Daniel Dennett in Intuition Pumps on the use of “surely”: When you’re reading or skimming argumentative essays, especially by philosophers, here is a…
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Los Angeles
The first conference I went to after the pandemic of 2020-2021 was in Los Angeles. It was my first visit to the city. I had…
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Miami Consul
To get my Austrian passport renewed, I needed to visit one of the consulates my native country maintains in America to hand over my documents.…
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The Egely Wheel
As a kid, I had a device that proved that I had the ability to move physical objects with my mind. It consisted of a…
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Playing the Harmonica
A few years ago, I decided to learn how to play the harmonica. I started by watching a few YouTube videos, buying a $20 harp,…
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Kids’ Birthdays
Some kids light up when their parent brings out the birthday cake with the candles and everyone sings “Happy Birthday,” enjoying being the center of…
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Esperanto
Compared to the other languages I attempted to learn as a kid, Esperanto was easy. Already knowing German, English, Latin and some Russian meant that…
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Quikscript
A constructed alphabet for English, if we ever have to start a new writing system from scratch. It looks pretty.
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Growing Up Without TV
I was driving my oldest kid back from kindergarten when she asked, “Papa, how come some houses don’t have a TV?” I realized that she…
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A Thin Film of Inertia
The world is covered with a thin film of inertia. Maybe it is created by entropy, or human nature, or a magic yet-understood, or all…
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What’s Enough?
How do you know what’s enough until you find out what’s too much? Tom McGuane in All That is Sacred
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Moments of Grace
There are moments when I can feel grace. Driving home after a drink with colleagues or friends while the sun is setting. Everything is more…
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Party Crashing
My friend and his wive lived on a cemetery, where they rented a small apartment attached to the groundkeeper’s house. The location was ideally suited…
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Humility
Here are some good quotes on humility: Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less C. S. Lewis You might not…
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Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a great resource for finding photos and diagrams on any subset. The Picture of the Year winners highlight the quality of what’s…
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Niven’s Laws
There are several laws, or maybe aphorisms, that science fiction writer Larry Niven has come up with. Wikipedia has a good list, and here are…
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Money or All This
We’re spending the days between Christmas and New Year at a ranch house on the Eastern slope of Mt Shasta. There are no neighbors apart…
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Steak
This morning, I had Cinnamon Toast Crunch with milk and I liked it better than any of the four steaks (two mignons, one sirloin, one…
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Silent Night
This time of the year, everywhere you go, you hear Christmas songs. Some of them have been around for a long time. Silent Night was…
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Malmö
Crossing the Öresund Bridge that connects Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden, I knew a new part of my life was about to start.…
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Brixton
Emerging from Brixton tube station for the first time and stepping out into the street, I entered a world I hadn’t experienced before. It was…
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Metaculus
Metaculus aggregates forecasts on a large number of questions. Because participants don’t make any money for making accurate predictions and instead only gain in reputations,…
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Those I Admire
Here are some of the people I admire: Richard Feynman, Shel Silverstein, Jim Harrison, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Venki Ramakrishnan, Jack London, Stewart Brand, Max Perutz, Benjamin…
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The Original
For three years, while working towards my PhD, I shared an office with eight to ten other students and postdocs. The office with its gray…
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The Inner Ring
The so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and…
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This is Water
From a commencement address given by David Foster Wallace: Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what…
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What My Father Did Wrong
On my desk, I have a picture of my father together with a four year old girl. They both look at the camera. She’s not…
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The Value of an Education
Of my mother’s many siblings, there’s one I’m close with. When I was at high school, he gave me a summer job at his business,…
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Ode to Carbonation
There is no culinary experience I value more than sparkling water hitting the back of my throat. For optimal effect, the level of carbonation is…
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A Lucky Guess
A colleague and I were looking over a graph with same data he had produced. I didn’t understand it, so I asked him about a…
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Artist and Work Becoming One
32 minutes into the documentary All That Is Sacred, Tom McGuane quotes Stéphane Mallarmé: At the point at which an artist dies, whatever his life…
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Wearing a Dead Man’s Shirts
When my friend died, I started wearing his shirts. He died the day after we celebrated Christmas eve, and last weekend his widow came over…
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Blitz Tourism
We were vacationing in the Austrian alps. Our cabin was at the end of a small, winding road, on the edge of a pasture with…
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Against Binoculars
I have nothing against birds. Unlike birdwatchers, I’m more interested in their personalities than their looks. I’m incapable of watching them and not ascribing a…
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The Long Now
Before I traveled from Cambridge to San Francisco for the first time to do research on mutant yeast, a friend said: “While you’re there, you…
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Bears
Talk with backpackers anywhere in the Western United States, and eventually bears will come up. I’ve come across bears a few times and they now…
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Fourth of July
The 4th of July is a day people spend with their families and friends, often over a barbecue. When my wife and I moved to…
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The Sound of Music
When I mention that I’m from Austria, frequently The Sound of Music comes up. Chinese in their 40s and Americans in their 70s are especially…
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Just Let Me Drink
We went to a Japanese restaurant and ordered food and flight of sake. The waitress returned promptly with five small crystal glasses arranged on a…
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Heroic Overeating
When you are a kid, eating gets you respect. My siblings and I had a grandmotherly neighbor who took care of us when our parents…
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Bicycle Conversion
Leaving a hardware store, I saw an e-bike unlike any I had seen before chained to a lamppost. It was a standard road bike with…
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