14-ish

Sara is just starting to show a bit more now, so we thought we had better start to take some pics before it is too late to compare them!  This was taken around the 14 week mark.

In other news, it is snowing today!  Little while Christmas surprise.

full cup press

A little peaberry coffee for the afternoon homestretch...

consistency and society

This is what happens when you think and study something a lot.  You see it everywhere.  I went and talked to a friend's high school class two days this week and I was trying to get them to think about how we internalize 'social stuff' and then that gets generalized over all our interactions so that our 'social worlds' are much more consistent and predictable.  This all happens unconsciously, seamlessly, and nearly instantaneously.  

Yesterday I was driving home from my impromptu office for the day at a coffee shop and was waiting at a stop light next to a fast food restaurant.  A guy walked out, wearing a shirt and tie underneath a somewhat over-sized sweater.  He was carrying a file folder with him, and as he left he crossed himself.  It caught my attention, because, I thought to myself, why would one cross their self as they leave a fast food joint?  Hope they don't get sick?  Nah, I bet he just applied for a job there.

At that point I stopped.  I think I was right, but the fact that I may be right about some random dude I have never seen or met is amazing.  Think about it.  I noticed him because he crossed himself, basically, in a setting that is not typical for that symbol.  This in and of itself takes an amazing amount of generalized social experience.  That is, I have accumulated a certain amount of experiences in my past that I noticed it, knew it was out of place, and potentially figured out what he was doing at that moment.  And that knowledge was unconsciously applied, without thought, to make sense of a new experience.  

I had to know what it means to cross one's self.  When, where and why crossing one's self usually happens, and that fast food is not the primary association for it.  Knowing what crossing one's self means in the right setting, I am able to figure out what it may mean in this setting.  Additional 'cues' were that people do not usually carry file folders with them, wearing what he was wearing, which was obviously not his typical clothing.  

All of this nearly random background information is instantaneously merged together, without thought, to give meaning to this experience.  Our ability to internalize 'society' brings consistency to my world.  It decreases unpleasant surprises or the feeling of being 'lost.'  It literally makes the world a meaningful place for me (yep, and you).  In other words, my expectations for what will happen is what brings meaning to my life.  Without our ability to 'expect' things and link the past to the present we would be unable to have the experience of a life characterized by coherence and consistency.  

Babies

So just about everyone we know is having kids it seems.  They are all over.  So as to not be out done, we too are having a baby.  Baby Franklin as we call the child... seems better than saying 'him' or 'her' since we don't know yet and also better than 'it'.  Anyway, things are going to be changing I imagine.  We are pretty pumped.  After all, everyone seems to need a native Texan in the family.

Sara even made a stocking for little Franklin.

We're not alone

This week I installed an add-on for both Firefox and Chrome that allows me to see what websites are following me as I use the internet.  It is actually pretty astounding just how many different people know all of the clicks you do on the internet - most of which is probably use to sell ads, but it is stored data none the less.  For example, Facebook likely knows everything you do on the internet even when you are not logged into your account.  Many people, for security reasons, 'register' different computers with Facebook so that both you and them know it is actually you.  On the other hand, this registers your IP address with them, so they can link that IP address back to your anonymous browsing when not logged in.

Check it:

This is a picture of a 'test' browse.  I started at yahoo.com, went to facebook and logged out before leaving, then went to hulu, amazon and pandora.  So I went to 5 web sites (each circle above is a site, ones with a 'halo' are ones I actually went to) and the above web of connections is what resulted.  They were all interconnected and were aware of my browsing activity in addition to other web sources that I never actually went to.

This shows just the connections made by a site 'invisiblehand' that I never actually went to.  They know that I was at both facebook and amazon, and they let google, twitter and some other sites I don't know aware of what I was doing.

This one shows that more clearly.  These are the connections made by facebook.  Not only is facebook telling those 6 sites listed on the left that I was on their page, but they were following me and aware that I was at both amazon and pandora.  So even if you don't have 'social' turned on with pandora, 'social' still knows.  ...I think invisiblehand was a plug in I had (as in I removed it after seeing this) that told me whether other sites had things for a lower price, like books.

Pretty crazy!  Happy online shopping! Since this time I have seen some sites with wayyyy more activity.  One single site I went to informed over 30 other sites that I was there.  Jerks.

Bill Gates is a bad-ass

[found this post in our 'drafts' and thought I would just put it up.]

So I never thought I would think of Bill Gates as a bad-ass, but at least in this instance he is.  Not all that long ago he stepped aside as the one running Microsoft so that he could devote himself full time to philanthropy.  That is pretty sweet.

What is even more cool, however, is that he seems to be attempting to make a difference in unconventional ways.  For example, recently he was at a big tech conference and wanted to make a point.  He released a cloud of mosquitos into the convention center in order to make a point about the dangers of malaria.  He said, "malaria is spread by mosquitoes.  I brought some here... there is no reason only poor people should be infected."  Of course these mosquitoes were not carriers, but still, nice work. 

Farmer's time, a second time

Recently I posted a blog that was apparently overly vague.  Sometimes I shoot for brevity and stuff gets lost in the process... my bad.  Here is the thought in just five sentences or less:

[Farmer thinks] We should preferentially care about poor people; focus on the care and not the cost.  It is hard to get other people to understand that point of view, and it likely takes time more than it takes ingenious arguments.  People ironically complain that it costs too much to preferentially care for poor people, but the same people do not complain that they make too much money.  This may apply to anyone living in the US.  Often we have great reasons and arguments for why we don't care about poor people, as if that in and of itself changes how much they need help.

Cheers.

More to come at another time...