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I went to the pool today, only to be shut out by a youth swim meet. So I jumped on the erg instead. Ten minute warmup, and then 5000m in 19:22. I didn’t try to kill myself, since I didn’t want to blow out my back or anything silly. Always tough to get on the erg, no matter what shape you’re in, but it’s painful to compare this time to my past. During the piece, I even thought about whether I would record the time, but that’s all that kept me honest and pushing the last 1000m, when I accelerated a little bit (3:46). The lungs are fine, but the muscles are not ready for rowing right now (no surprise). If I’m going to find a regatta with my friend Charlie this year, I have some work to do. I did some weights afterwards, just to make sure everything I did today would leave me sore.

Just a normal 25 minute run to work, and a cold bicycle ride back home.

(I’m backdating these posts to the day of the exercise when I’m behind.)

Ran home from work, in the chilly-for-San-Francisco evening, in about 26 minutes.

My wife’s book group discussed A General Theory of Love, by three Bay Area psychiatrists, Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon. I read the book after getting a “you might like this… it’s about the brain” recommendation. After reading it, I have several reactions.

They have some core ideas of interest, though I was not always convinced.

While I might wish for a magazine article of New Yorker or Atlantic length instead of this full book, the second and third chapters are genuinely interesting. Through a survey across time of studies and theories about the brain, the authors explain the concept of the limbic brain, which is the unthinking emotional center that (for the authors) is the core of who we are emotionally. Unthinking is not negative, just descriptive. The neocortex, with its conscious thinking, cannot overrule the limbic brain, which developed earlier on the evolutionary timescale. The authors put the common split between the heart and the head all in the brain: the split is between the neocortex and the limbic brain.

These ideas and theories were not entirely new to me, but they were explained well, despite (in some cases) the language. The more evocative leap from there was to the idea of limbic connection, and how central it is to human development. Essentially, if you don’t connect emotionally during childhood, you’re scarred in almost physical ways, at least as far as your brain patterns and social development go. This isn’t news, really. But the emphasis on how mammals depend on these connections for any kind of satisfactory life goes further here than I’ve seen before. It’s not simple, and the authors don’t pretend to explain it fully, but they certainly believe their attention to this concept can carry it far beyond individual development.

Our society overlooks the drain on emotional balance that comes from severing attachments. From the dawn of the species until a few hundred years ago, most human beings lived out their lives in one community. The signature lesson of the twentieth century is that unforeseen complications are ever the faithful companions of technological progress. The convenient devices that enable extensive mobility are problematic because limbic regulation operates weakly at a distance. We have the means to establish a periparetic lifestyle, but we will never have the brains for it.

Statements like this are how we go from the brain to “a general theory of love.” The brain and our changing insights into how it works physically and emotionally captivated me. The attempts at extending these ideas to society as a whole snapped the spell.

This book needed a firmer editor.

Each chapter was dramatically individual in its style. It was jarring to jump from heavier science about brain chemistry, however well described, to anecdotal passages and excerpted poetry and broader extrapolations about society and human development. The authors clearly aimed for a sweeping tone, but it led them astray, in my reading.

The authors should have worked harder to find a consistent tone, or identified themselves for each chapter. I’ve seen that done in some other multi-author works, although it is rare. I did not race through this book, as I’d get bored with some of the flowery language. Which leads me to…

Someone should read some Hemingway.

Maybe old Ernest was too sparse in his language, but after you read a few sentences like this, I was ready to throw myself into the Sea with the Old Man.

As a collection of dense matter betrays its presence through electromagnetic emissions, a person’s emotional Attractors manifest themselves in a radiant aura of limbic tones. If a listener quiets his neocortical chatter and allows limbic sensing to range free, melodies begin to penetrate the static of anonymity.

And there’s plenty more where that comes from. I’ve been known to stretch for a few ten-cent words now and again, but oof!

The Painted Veil is an Edward Norton vehicle, and that’s OK. The movie inspired little interest in me in the book from which it’s adapted, but the film engaged us both. Some balance between the personal story of their relationship (from deeply frosty to fiery, and parts in between) and the development of Chinese nationalism in the mid-1920s. The relationship, though, takes center stage. To its credit, the film doesn’t take the easy way out at the end.

The Chinese countryside plays a supporting role: it’s a pretty place in this movie, despite the cholera epidemic (!) which drives the plot forward. I simultaneously wondered whether it was easy to find places in China that looked as if 80 years had not passed or it was hard to find a place that was not despoiled (environmentally) by the fervent rush for progress which marks most of the tales of China seen in the American reports of the last decade or so.

Metacritic score of 70…works for me.

Note: I still wonder whether Matthew Hurst is a big Edward Norton fan, or he has simply found interesting data points around Norton’s recent movies.

Short run to work, stretched a few minutes more than normal (27?) as I cut by Moscone Center on Howard to see how the Macworld setup was going. I want one.

Afternoon run out to the ocean and back, with erratic pacing…blame the boy on the bike during the family outing. I’m glad he got tired before I did. 😉 Sixty-six minutes or so. Already feeling sore.

Ran home from work, ~24:40. Back is stiffening up, so need to rest tomorrow.

And it’s great when they are celebrated. Man Is Rescued by Stranger on Subway Tracks made me give thanks this morning, and try to imagine if I could do the same. I hope I never need to find out. What a remarkable story, and a remarkable man.

I’ve seen the meme for a few weeks now. During the holiday week, Ken tagged me. So, five things about me you probably didn’t know.

1. Kaboom
The Activision game Kaboom for the Atari 2600 was the first video game (there are only two) where I actually felt competitive. I scored 3,000 at one point, and took a picture of the screen to earn myself a T-shirt. I never sent in the photograph (it’s in a box in the garage, I think), so I never received the “earned” T-shirt. If your gaming memory doesn’t include this classic, you can play a Flash version of the game right now: Kaboom. (I’m not much good anymore.)

2. Cabal
Shhhh… don’t tell my parents! During my first year of college, I finished the video game Cabal. My roommates and I often stopped by the arcade room in the basement of the dining hall, and I got to the point where I could spend waste a full 25 minutes on a quarter, finishing the game. The standup game had the trackball, fortunately. I never played the game on a computer or console.

Hmmm… two video game notes. But I’ve never gotten hooked on PC games or bought a console since the Atari 2600. Moving on…

3. 20/20
No, not the TV show: eyesight. I started wearing eyeglasses at age six. I was thrilled to start wearing contact lenses in seventh grade. I got lazier during college and thereafter, switching back and forth between glasses and contacts. But I haven’t worn either for more than five years. Thank you, Lasik. I hesitated for years, asking my optometrist just about every annual appointment. When I finally took the plunge (here), I was only upset I waited so long. I’ve slipped a bit since the surgery (can’t fight aging), but I was 20/20 for a while.

4. Hockey
I covered the varsity hockey team for the college paper for one season. It was only two years after Harvard won the national championship, so the hockey team was the most popular spectator sport. The team wasn’t nearly that strong any more, but expectations remained high. You can read my reports and columns on the Crimson website, which (to my amazement) has everything online going all the way back. Click on the “Sports” tab to see most of my stories.

On the technology front, my reporting entailed writing articles from the road on a TRS Model 100 and using the 300 baud modem. I did dictate the articles a few times, too. Feeling old school now…

5. I demo’ed for Bill Gates
I have proof, in the form of a videotape (remember those?). Of course, the VCR is shaky, and I have no equipment to transfer this to YouTube or your favorite video-hosting service. So you’ll have to harken back to October, 1997, when Internet Explorer 4.0 was released. A key feature of IE 4.0 was supposed to be Active Desktop channels, which brought pieces of web functionality to your desktop. (Hmmm… nearly 10 years later, how far have we really come?)

Snap.com (not the current one, the first one) was fresh out of the gate. So, being part of the IE 4.0 launch was a big deal for Snap. The channel was jury-rigged demoware, but we hustled to be part of the event… with several dozen other companies spread around Fort Mason, too.

My role? Demo boy. For the random folks (press, other companies with channels) wandering around, I’d show them the channel. Part way through the evening, Bill Gates was wandering around, and Tom Melcher buttonholed him to show him the channel. Tom did the talking, and I was the keyboard jockey. Never spoke a word, and the whole thing lasted maybe three minutes.

The fun part? Because CNET was there, with video cameras and (most important) bright lights, someone smart on the CNET camera crew followed Bill Gates over, turned on the lights, and drew a crowd to the demo.

Like moths to the flame… it was all the bright lights, not my demo.

(Anyone have the equipment to transfer VHS to a digital file?)

Next…

Since chain letters memes are meant to be shared, I’m tagging Dennis, Vin (personal blog?), David, Matt, and Stephen.