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This is my dynamic, frequently updated homepage. This is a NewsLog, also known as a WebLog or Blog.
Everything is evolving, so don't assume too much.
People to watch:
Adina Levin
Andrius Kulikauskas
Britt Blaser
Catherine Austin Fitts
Chris Corrigan
Clay Shirky
Dan Gillmor
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Mary Forest
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Nathalie dArbeloff
Netron
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Ray Ozzie
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Roger Eaton
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Ross Mayfield
Scott Lemon
Sebastian Fiedler
Sebastien Paquet
Skip Lancaster
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Timothy Wilken
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Ton Zijlstra
Lionel Bruel
Loic Le Meur
Nancy White
Mark Frazier
Merlin Silk
Robert Paterson
Colby Stuart
Nova Spivack
Dan Brickley
Ariane Kiss
Vanessa Miemis
Bernd Nurnberger
Sites to watch:
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Co-intelligence Institute
Free Expression Network
Collective Intelligence
Action without borders
Manufacturing Dissent
Explorers Foundation
Disclosure Project
ThoughtsOnThinking
Forbidden Science
Emergent by Design
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French:
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IokanaaN
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Ming Chau
Serge Levan
Jean Michel Billaut
C'est pas Mécanique
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| Sunday, September 28, 2003 |  |
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 I'm going to make a more concerted efforts to collect patterns. It is something that well summarizes something I care a lot about. I'm talking about patterns that make things work well, in contrast to patterns that don't work well. Uplifting patterns, transformative patterns, generative patterns, ecological patterns, synergetic patterns.
It is an activity that probably doesn't make sense to everybody. A meta level of dealing with the world. But patterns are essentially a way of successfully navigating an otherwise confusing world. A pattern is the way things are arranged. Without worrying too much about the exact things that are arranged, one concerns oneself with the arrangement they're in. Structure as opposed to content.
I know that very well from my work as a personal counselor. NLP is essentially all about patterns. Discovering what patterns people think in, and how they do things. And then either using the existing patterns for doing what one really wants to do, or adjusting the existing patterns so they work better.
E.g. many people have a pattern in their mind where they make clear pictures of something, and then they get a strong feeling about it, and then they tell themselves things that reinforce a course of action about it. If they make the clear pictures of something they actually want, and they get an energized feeling about it, and tell themselves encouraging things about it, they might be very productive and effective. But if they make pictures of what they don't want, and get freaked out about it, and then feed themselves pessimistic and discouraging statements about it, they might just be a mess. It is the same pattern, but depending on what content you put into it, it might be more or less useful.
Procrastination is a pattern that usually doesn't work well. One notes something that needs doing, and one places it out in the future somewhere, and then it feels like one has cleared space for doing something else in the present. The thing to do pops up once in a while, presenting itself with some kind of bad feeling, and one lessens it by again putting it out in the future. One can either change that pattern, by putting things into a different order, or one can use the pattern itself, and, through a kind of mental judo, realize that one can just procrastinate "later". Try it sometime. You can procrastinate tomorrow.
Anyway, now I'm also interested in patterns of personal organization, business, and group collaboration.
A website has things arranged in a certain way, and that way will greatly influence how people use the site, and what is accomplished. Apparently tiny details that are casually decided at design time might have enormous consequences later. For example, some things I've noticed are: If you make a list of people or weblogs, sorted by update time or popularity or something else like that, people will get into a competitive mode in order to end up on top of the list. And/or others will start feeling differently about the people who happen to be at the top. And I've noticed that if you list a bunch of items, like people or websites or weblogs, in one place, in one list, people will start believing that they have a relation to each other, even if they don't. If you put an item on top of a page, people will consider it more important than it it is at the bottom. Many of these observations are "duh, of course!" kinds of realizations. It is simple in retrospect, but not necessarily in advance.
Here's an article: "an Building Communities with Software" by Joel Spolsky about a number of the design issues in community software, which contains many intelligent observations. If you put a button people need to click on at the bottom of the page, below a bunch of entries from other people, it is more likely that those entries will be read. If you send people in e-mail responses they've gotten to messages posted in some forum, it is much less likely they'll go and browse around there. The design choices in Usenet readers makes for long-winded threads that people lose track of the start of. The mechanics of IRC groups makes for lots of effort spent on fighting for specific group names and handles. All because of the patterns things are arranged in.
Chris Alexander talked about "Pattern Languages" as it applies to architecture of buildings. And it has spread to software.
But we need pattern languages in all aspects of life.
There are patterns for organizations, which can be well represented in system diagrams. Gene Bellinger has an exellent page, "Mental Model Musings", containing lots of system diagrams for organizations.
Various good people are thinking about Uplift Pattern Languages.
For a while I would draw diagrams of patterns I noticed in a book I kept next to my bed, the same that I wrote dreams and good ideas into. I will continue that habit.
[ Patterns | 2003-09-28 15:44 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Recently online business networks have become a more important interest of mine. In part because I actually have a need for networking, because I need new business. So, there's one point there. A lot of people who are networking are doing so simply because they're looking for a job or project to do, and when they've found it, they disappear. But some people are great networkers AND are already busy doing great things. The latter are the people I expect to learn the most from.
Anyway, these are the networks I currently use occasionally, and what I've noticed about them.
Ryze has become a huge network, and a lot of people I know are in it. It is also the network that has been most useful for me in finding local contacts in my new home town. I was at first a little puzzled at ryze's success, as the site does a number of things I absolutely hate, and which normally would make me leave and never come back. Such as frequently popping up screens saying things like "You would be able to actually see the results of this search if you were a gold member, which is only $9.95 per month". I.e. it is deliberately crippled and pushy on signing people up. But somehow it is also very easy to find people, particularly after I finally broke down and paid the stupid gold member fee. Leaving a message in somebody's guest book is the main way of contacting others. And looking at other people's contacts is a good way of finding other people one might share something with.
tribe.net is new, but expanding very quickly too. It takes a bit more work to find people, and you're not talking with them out in the open like in Ryze. But it doesn't have those annoying signup screens, and it seems to have some good features, like classified listings and job search.
ecademy has good features like seeing who's online and good searches. If one has the right kind of membership, which is free the first month, but then costs money. I like that way of doing it better. A business oriented network, also connected with business coaching services from the British company that created it.
LinkedIn has probably the most high-level business contacts. In part because it is rather hard to contact anybody, and you need to be introducted through shared contacts, potentially through several steps. So you can expect to not be bothered very often. That also means it is rather hard to find anybody, and it isn't a good place for making new friends. But I wouldn't be surprised if it is useful for doing serious business for a number of people.
Friendster is huge and my daughter seems to find it very useful for finding people to chat with. For me, it just makes me feel sort of old. But if you're vibrating at the right wavelength, it is probably great.
Friendly Favors remains a network I feel connected with, because its creators are friends of mine and I was there when it started. And I did find new contacts in France through it. It is useful to do a search in, but it isn't suitable for hanging out in, or communicating through on an ongoing basis.
The New Civilization Network is of course my home network. Not just because I started it and maintain it. It is where I go first every morning. It is good for ongoing support, and a sense that there's a place there one can come back to. But it isn't particularly useful for finding people to do business with.
Now, jumping around between several of these, one of the things that immediately becomes apparent is the repetitive effort of linking up to people as your friends or contacts. It is often the same people on the various networks, but even though they're your *friend* in 4 other networks already, you still need to request it again in the 5th. I'd much rather see a standard in place where we each could record on our own computers who we think are our friends, and those networks could be fed that information.
[ Organization | 2003-09-28 16:50 | 0 comments | PermaLink ]
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| Wednesday, September 24, 2003 | |
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 Ah, DSL!! Always-on broadband Internet. With my own IP. I can breathe again. Not to mention, work. And staying more up on things.
One can certainly better appreciate that technology after being without it. Until they come up with cheap ubiquitous wireless access there's a considerable class difference between those who can connect and those who can't. And occasional great annoyance for those, like me, who's gotten so used to fast always-on Internet that everything grinds to a stop when it suddenly isn't there.
Now, my adventure in getting the DSL connection was also a good study in how to get things to happen here. In principle I should have been able to just pick up the modem in a store, and the line should have worked within a week. But various things stopped that from happening, like first that I didn't have a bank card, and then that the line came up as being unsuitable for DSL.
There's the approach that Polly Platt in her books calls "Persistent Personal Operating (PPO)". Which is particularly needed in France, but of course also in lots of other places and situations. The point is that you need to keep working your options, and you need to get others to help you, and get creative about getting around obstacles. The answer you get here when dealing with bureaucracies is frequently "No, that's impossible, good bye!" But that really just means that you need to try a different way, say it differently, charm them, or get somebody to help you. Specifically what seems to work very well is to actually lay out your whole problem for somebody who might help you. I.e. don't just expect they'll do what you say or want. They won't. But if you involve them in what is really going on for you, and why you need it, and what is in the way, people will sometimes go greatly out of the way to help you get there.
In this case, my saving angel was the lady at the France Telecom office where I actually signed up for the DSL account. I suppose she then was on vacation or something, as she didn't answer my phone calls and e-mails at first, and I therefore tried other things.
Wanadoo (France Telecom's ISP) had called me, saying that it was impossible to set up the account, and had sent me several letters that the account was now cancelled. I then called up several different departments, and they told me that it was impossible to get DSL. I was just too far from the central, so it was out of the question. Then I did a little research and managed to find the phone numbers of my neighbors, which I checked for DSL eligibility on the Wanadoo site. Hahah, it is available to all of them, and then of course they should be able to see that I can have it too. But, no, they then said that I was connected to a different central, and DSL wasn't possible. But I could maybe call France Telecom and ask them to switch me to a different central. I figured my French was going to be inadequate to do that negotiation, so a French friend offered to help by calling them. But they gave her the runaround too, and it was essentially impossible. One could maybe apply for such a change, but it might not go through, or might take months.
And then I guess my person came back from vacation on the same day. She called and said that she was very sorry, and it wasn't her fault, but the France Telecom bureaucracy. She made some phone calls, which I overheard, talking it over with her supervisor, calling various departments, pleading my case. I'm a nice man, I'm Danish, I don't speak much French, and I've been promised that DSL a month earlier. And she came back and said that it would be turned on the next morning. And she would send me some free soccer tickets, to alleviate a bit of my suffering. But, well, instead the line went down the next day. Which really seemed to be a unrelated coincidence. But another call to her got some new assurances from the technicians of getting all that fixed. And it took a bit longer than expected, but it came through. Because of finding the right somebody who's in a position to make it work, and who will see it through despite obstacles.
[ Diary | 2003-09-24 03:44 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Tuesday, September 23, 2003 | |
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 My telephone has been out for a week. Well, it is a long story, related to my struggle to get DSL from France Telecom.
I had actually gotten them finally persuaded to turn it on, despite various messages to the contrary. They said it should be working the next day.
Instead the phone line went dead. At first that just made me think they were working on it, switching my line over to a central that would support DSL, so I didn't worry at first.
But that was a week ago, and various phone calls, and a visit from a technician happened in that week. He thought the problem was up in one of the poles, so they had to come back. And then, this afternoon, they showed up with two trucks full of France Telecom people. They blocked off the whole street, and their crane truck put a guy in a basket up in several of the telephone poles. Still no luck.
Then, inside my house, after a call to my landlord that helped them finally locate where the line came into my house, they found the problem. As a matter of fact, the guy was shaking his head, insisting that we couldn't possibly ever had telephone service with that kind of wiring, as it wasn't really connected properly. "Tres bizarre!" Of course all the wires were in the closet in our bathroom, which tends to have a water problem when somebody takes a shower on the second floor. This is a nice-looking new house, but the wiring and plumbing is a little hokey.
Anyway, so the phone is on, and the green light is now on on my DSL modem. But they somehow had cancelled my actual account and forgotten to reinstate it, so I still can't get it to log in. But we're a good deal closer.
On the picture you see the phone guy in the pole, incidentally while one of the strange A300 'Beluga' transport planes was coming in for landing in Blagnac with airplane parts for Airbus.
[ Diary | 2003-09-23 17:12 | | PermaLink ] More >
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 Now, since I couldn't be on the net anyway, it was quite convenient that this was the weekend scheduled for going to Fontainebleau outside Paris to work with George Por on a project we're exploring. More on George here.
We're working on some tools to help knowledge workers organize their thoughts and guide them towards constructive innovaton. More on that later, as I can't really say too much right now. But George and I are quite on the same page in many areas, and it has great potential.
Since I was there anyway, I took a few hours to do a little sightseeing too. The Palace of Fontainebleau is quite a place for one thing. Since the 12th century it was a royal hunting lodge, surrounded on all sides by a large forest, and it was later greatly expanded and a long line of kings and queens and emperors have lived there one time or another. On the picture you see Napoleon's globe in the Gallery of Diane, which was later turned into a library.
In Paris I walked around in the Notre Dame cathedral and in the Louvre museum. Which in itself one can easily use days in. I picked the wing with the Mona Lisa, and just walked through a couple of floors. She didn't really look like much, though. Anyway, I ofcourse also walked through the controversial glass pyramid which is the entrance to the Louvre. It actually works quite well there.
I found an open Wi-Fi connection in my first try, on Place de Chatelet, while sitting on the fountain, when I got worried about not having checked my mail for a while.
[ Diary | 2003-09-23 18:05 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Monday, September 15, 2003 | |
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 This evening we were coming back from dinner at our new friends Lionel and Silvie. And somehow I had thought that the metro went till half past midnight. But it doesn't on weeknights and the Capitole station was all closed up. So we were looking for buses, but there were none going to our part of town. One last bus showed up and my wife went to ask the driver where he was going. I instead were looking at the chart of bus plans and had already decided that it was hopeless. That bus was going to Empalot, which is in a totally different part of town, in a different direction. But a helpful employee of the bus company magically showed up, and after some discussion with the bus driver they decided that we'd just go with his bus, and when he was done with his route, he would drive us to where we needed to go. And, wonder of wonders, that's what happened. Instead of finishing his work day at 1AM, he drove us almost all the way home in his bus, and he was all smiling and friendly about it. The typical answer you get in this kind of situation here, when people go out of their way to help you is "c'est normal". "It's normal". Meaning: Of course we'll help you, it's the right and proper thing to do, no need to mention it.
But there's a way of getting there, and a way not to. Notice that my wife was over there, involving the bus driver and the bus company employee in our problem of how we get home when the trains and busses don't run any longer, and we're tired and have a little kid, and there's a long way home. That's when it becomes quite possible and likely that they'll decide to help us solve it. Whereas I was just grumbling about having misunderstood the metro schedule, looking at the bus plan and deciding that there was no way, unless we walked or took a taxi. I obviously have a few things to learn about how to work things here.
[ Diary | 2003-09-15 16:52 | | PermaLink ] More >
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 Sunday we were on our second outing with Toulouse Hash House Harriers. And what is that, you say?"The Hash House Harriers is a running/drinking/social club which was started by bored expatriates in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1938. ("Hash House" is the nickname of the restaurant/bar to which they retired for food and beer after a run). Hashing is based on the English schoolboy game of "Hare and Hounds"; a Hash is a non-competitive cross-country run set by one or more runners called hares. The hares run out in advance of the other runners (the pack of hounds), and set a course marked by white flour, and/or chalk marks." Apparently this exists all over the world, which you can see at the Global Hash House Harriers Home Page.
And, well, it is quite a hoot. Here in Toulouse there's an event (a hash) twice per month, each time in a different place in the surrounding countryside or in the city itself. Which provides a fine way for seeing places you haven't seen before, and meet interesting people who speak English. As the site says it is "a drinking club with a running problems", but the run is actually the major part of the event, timewise. There is usually a path laid out for runners and another for walkers, each one intended to take 1-1.5 hours to get through. And, yes, you're following a path marked with occasional splatches of flour or chalk marks, and part of the enjoyment is to try not to get lost, or to get lost and to find your way again, or not. Being first is not in any way a virtue, so being there is the main thing. There's an assortment of rules about what you say to let others know we're on track ("on-on"), and when you're not, and how to interpret various signs.
The more silly and fun ritual takes place after the run, where various points of order need to be taken care of. One of them is to assign punishments to various participants for no terribly good reasons. There's almost always something to punish the hares for, and whoever tended towards being first deserves another one, and of course any new people. The punishment is generally a "down-down", which is a drink of choice (beer, or water if you prefer) which you have to gobble down in one go while everybody else sings the accompanying down-down song. That's the drinking part, obviously. And also, anybody who's been there a while will be assigned some silly and preferably somewhat offensive and suggestive name that they'll be known by for the foreseeable future, and there's a ritual to administer that. All of it is crazy good fun, and it is a good place to meet other foreigners. This is obviously a British idea, but there are also Americans, Dutch, French and anybody else who somehow gets inspired to come.
This time we were accompanied by our new friends, fellow Dane Thomas and Karine, who's from Toulouse. Delightful people that it is a pleasure to know. And well, they were Hash Virgins, as was Zachery, so here on the picture you can see them get ready for their down-down initiation.
[ Diary | 2003-09-15 18:40 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Friday, September 12, 2003 | |
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 One of the best demonstrations of economics I've gotten, I got from ... a monkey. It was a little monkey at City Walk by Universal Studios in L.A. It had its owner with it, who was playing an old-fashioned organ where you grind the handle and it plays a corny old tune. The monkey was dressed in a silly costume, and there was a sign presenting the simple business proposition: Get out a quarter and the monkey will come over and get it out of your hand. Get out a dollar bill and the monkey will not only come and get it, but he will also shake your hand. Which is all cute, and well worth a quarter or a dollar, just to see that the monkey knows how to get the money, and to feel that it actually shakes your hand. I got out a dollar. The monkey snapped it up, shook my hand, and moved on to other businesss. Not so much as a smile, but I still felt satisfied with the transaction.
But now, the remarkable business action going on becomes apparent from observing that there's continuously 50 to 100 people standing around, and the monkey is essentially running around as fast as it can, picking up dollar bills and shaking hands. Seemed like 10-20 customers per minute to me. And, well, despite that I'm no business genius, I can easily add that up to $600-1200 per hour. Indeed, the organ grinder had a a rather large box that all the money was dropped into, and it was running over when I saw it.
I was sort of stunned. But that is a money machine at its best. Once you've trained the monkey, it takes very little effort, brings in loads of cash, and all the customers are happy with the transaction. The monkey works for peanuts, but I'm sure he's happy too.
I have peanuts. I have a roomy bucket that will hold a lot of money. But where do I get a monkey?
[ Organization | 2003-09-12 09:05 | | PermaLink ] More >
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 I feel inspired to explore the subject of wealth and business. I'm both interested in unearthing the seedy channels that money flows through when we dig down a little bit. And I'm interested in discovering more integruous, but practical, ways that good people can have access to the wealth needed to live meaningful lives.
See, it still seems like most people are either wage slaves, who do things they wouldn't do otherwise, for people who make much more out of it than they do. Or they're the people who exploit the wage slaves, getting them to do as much as possible for as little as possible. Or people are self-employed or small business owners, who work harder than either wage slaves or big business owners, for more uncertain rewards. Or you're somebody who has found a way of exploiting the system, particularly if you're in a socialized country where you can get social security. Or, you've found you own niche where you've made some kind of deal or investment in the past, or you happened to have been married to the right person, and now can live off the fruits of that. Or you're one of the somewhat few and lucky people who actually are doing exactly what you want to do, and people voluntarily reward you for it.
I personally usually have ended up either being somebody's wage slave, or an indepenent contractor that works very hard, or sometimes I'm lucky that I'm rewarded for things I've done and enjoyed. And I've realized by now that it doesn't work well for me at all to try to act as an unscrupulous business person who sells useless stuff and buys things for too little. Or as a stock market gambler who buys and sells stocks based on numbers, rather than on whether they're good companies or not. Or an MLM guru who signs people up into questionable pyramid schemes by enthusiastic BS sales talk. Neither am I somebody who even sells myself well. What works for me has been to be very pure and integruous about doing the stuff I really care about, whether it pays or not, and then to take work where it is offered, even if it doesn't exactly match the stuff I really care about.
But the third possibility is to be instrumental in generating more true wealth in ways I actually can defend morally. Which for me points towards either helping people realize their dreams individually or creating networks that help them do so, maybe by doing business with each other. And to do so in a way that is actually viable, for them and for me.
It seems quite obvious that a sufficiently large network of motivated and skilled human beings can do great things together, if they each get clear on what they have to offer, and what they need, and they share some resources, knowledge and infrastructure.
Sofar I've been most into creating network facilities for purposes that are far removed from the idea of doing business together. It wasn't exactly intentional, but it is at least a reflection of my own distaste for phoney and blatant commercialism. The result is, however, that I mostly have managed to create spaces for stimulating human interaction and discussion, with not much grounding in tangible shared projects. But really I have nothing against facilitating that people do honest business with each other. And I have nothing against loads of money in my hands.
And there's the thought that *business* is a natural key point. Doesn't even have to be commercial business to make money. It might be putting together a non-profit organization. But there's something that happens when people go into business, where some real resources have to be committed, and there's something at stake, and a tangible outcome in sight.
And, not to complain about my friends, but it seems like most people I know aren't much into that. They're great and warm and interesting people, and interesting discussions can happen. But mostly they're not potential business partners. They have jobs, or they don't need jobs, or they have businesses but never tell me about them, or they have causes to promote.
Anyway, I'm just thinking aloud and considering that there's a way I can more actively pursue business opportunities, without selling my soul, and where I can explore the potential wealth of networks.
So, I will be exploring what is out there, and direct some of my energy towards a different kind of networking than I normally do.
A keyword is "Free Agent". Somebody who's neither an employee nor an employer, but who has some resources and skill, and a keen eye towards the resources of skills of others, and who's able to network them all well, so that the least possible effort gets the most result, and he/she is both well supported in life and free to pursue his interests, and others are too.
Another word would be "Weaver". Somebody who notices opportunities for something good to happen which isn't already. And who then helps some threads to be woven together, for the benefit of all involved.
It is still a conversation, but it is a conversation directed somewhere. Towards the realization of projects that are not only good and desirable, but also viable.
So, a key is to reframe business from being about cheating people to being about making activities be viable, finding the greatest good for all involved, and activating untapped potentials for greater synergy and leverage.
That becomes much easier if there is a supportive network, of knowledge and resources and tools, and people who're ready to play with others.
There are already lots of business people in the world, who already know well how to do their craft. I guess I'm mostly casting an eye towards the folks who're still stuck in jobs that don't serve them, who might be better off as free agents and entrepreneurs. People like myself who somehow can't quite figure out how to effortlessly generate the wealth to support their lives without selling their souls to those who do know how.
[ Organization | 2003-09-12 20:03 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Thursday, September 11, 2003 | |
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 Oops, I forgot to blog for a whole week. No particular reason, other than that I've gotten into a daily routine, and there were plenty of other things going on each day, which took more of my attention.
And I still don't have DSL, so I'm still not as plugged into the rest of the blog world as I used to be. My phone line somehow registers as being not suitable for DSL, even though those of my neighbors are perfectly suitable. So, the person who signed me up had some technicians look at it, and decided that of course it should work for me too. But when other people in the same company then look at it, they've forgotten that, and the line just comes up as being unavailable. So I have to work through that maze. Oh, it isn't particularly harder than in the U.S. I had similar problems when I first got DSL in Van Nuys, and it also took more than a month. The language just makes it slightly harder to negotiate myself through things.
Part of the trick here, to pretty much anything, is that you know somebody. There is such a drastic contrast between the cold bureaucracy you often meet first, and the personal service of somebody who knows you. They don't have to be your pals from highschool or anything; I'm just talking about that they've met you a couple of times and recognize you. Like, at the France Telecom office, I asked for the same lady I had talked with a couple of weeks before. And she recognized me right away and came over and shook my hand and apologized that she had to finish up with some other people first, and she brought me a glass of water. And then, when she heard that I had taken the bus to their office, which is a little outside of town, and I had to walk a bit to get there, she said that, oh, I shouldn't have to walk back in that heat. So she got one of the other employees to drive me to town in his car. I would like to point out that nobody at the phone company in L.A. has ever driven me home, let alone recognized me and come out to greet me.
My older kids, Marie and Zachery, go to French classes at Alliance Francaise every day. Which has already made a huge difference, and they come home chatting away in French. Already after 3 days, Marie, who a week before insisted that French was just impossible to learn, was suddenly answering phone calls in French, and having a great time with it. The class is 3 1/2 hours every day, and lots of extra activities too, and chances to hang out with other people who've come here from all over the world.
Not much change in my work or money situation, so our life is still very modest. I.e. we can pay the rent and eat cheaply and ride the metro, and that is about it. Not that that is horrible in any way. I just prefer a little more abundance and freedom of movement. I got a couple of small new contracts, but I'm still looking for more significant business opportunties.
I'm still looking for some opening into getting a French social security card, while I'm waiting for paperwork I need for my Carte de Sejour (residence permit) card. Like, I need (I believe) fresh copies of birth certificates, with nice looking stamps on them, and in the proper language. I've gotten somewhat conflicting information about that, but I'll try to be as prepared as possible. The local Danish consul (who didn't speak any Danish, and not much English), and the Danish embassy in Paris, were very friendly and helpful in providing information, and in translating birth certificates to French. The local U.S. consulate, and the U.S. embassy in Paris, however, seem rather rude and uncooperative by comparison. Whereas the Danish Consul was somebody I just come by and visit, who spent quite some time with me, trying to help me as best he could, the U.S. consulate can only be contacted through an answering machine, asking for an appointment, which will only be available on Wednesdays. It took them about a week to call back. And then they insisted on sending me some papers I'd need to ask for birth certificates (which I probably already have), after which I have to call again to get an appointment to see the Consul. And I haven't received anything from them after about a week. And really, all I needed was a notary public to notarize a signature on a form that I could fax to the U.S. and I'd have the birth certificates I needed in a week or so.
My wife Birgit finally found a library that she could borrow books at. That took about four tries. The local library we first found was closed for the summer at first. And the English library that seems to exist at the university is not going to be open before the end of the month.
And little Nadia has found kids to play with at the playground. So life is pretty good for all of us.
Oh, we'd really kind of like to receive our stuff from the U.S. soon. We still have just the clothes we carried in our suitcases. Somehow the shipping thing turned out to be a bigger hassle than expected. First of all it was shipped a couple of weeks late, because they couldn't get a ship for it for some reason. And for some strange reason, they shipped it to England instead of to Marseille. And apparently it takes a while to clear customs and everything, and then they need to look for a truck that drives this way. Hopefully within a week. Not that we've been missing terribly much, but there's a few items that could come in handy.
[ Diary | 2003-09-11 07:22 | | PermaLink ] More >
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 There's a secret to how to live a relaxed and secure life. It is unfortunately one I haven't mastered very well myself, but I do have an idea of what it is about. It is simply that to do many things in life without being stressed about them, you need to get them out of your mind and embedded into a system which will run on automatic, even when you aren't paying attention.
This applies to money making, and it applies to organization.
As I've mentioned before, most people aren't actually making a living by doing good work and being duly rewarded for it. They do it by having a system in place that pays them money. The low level way of doing that is having a job. You show up every day, appear to be doing what looks like a job, and you get a paycheck every two weeks. More successful people have set up other kinds of systems. The most successful and leisurely way of making a living is to have set up a system that pays you each month forever, without requiring that you show up for anything, or do anything. That is called residual income. You happen to have invested some money wisely, or you've patented something or created something that people pay you royalties for. Or you happen to have gotten in early on some multi-level marketing scheme and have thousands of people paying you percentages. Or you have this website that sells things while you sleep. All of those are systems. You've set up something that will work automatically, with as little involvement from you as possible. The more involvement you have, and the more it depends on your daily work, the more you're a slave to work. And the more it has nothing to do with your actual daily work, the more you have succeeded and freed yourself. The more you can pass the buck on to somebody else who will do actual work, the better. In a capitalistic society, the ultimate accomplishment is to have a lot of capital which you can lend to others, and which they're forced to bring back to you with interest, without you being involved in how.
But it isn't just about passing the buck and living off of the work of others. It is also simply that it is generally a good idea to figure out how to do the most with the least possible effort.
That might be more obvious when applied to organization. Organization is generally about setting up a system that best deals with the stuff that is there to do, requiring the least possible brains to manage it every day. If there's a job to do, and a bunch of people to do it, you don't want to every day try to figure out how to do everything all over again. You'll make up an outline of how things will flow. Orders come in here, then they go over there, and these people here pack things in boxes, and those over there keep track of the numbers, and somebody answers the phone, etc. You set up certain posts, certain hats that somebody can wear, and some lines between them. And then, even if the posts are manned by half-asleep minimum wage employees, things are likely to get done. There's a system in place, and the system keeps things running, somewhat on automatic.
Same thing with my personal organization. Bills go into this basket, letters to answer go into this one, and there are file folders for everything, and a routine for doing things. A good system would require minimum attention, and one doesn't have to be very awake to carry it out. You just follow the system. A well designed personal organization system will take all the things to keep track of out of your mind, and down on pieces of paper or lists or in computer programs, or whatever it is that works. And you can just relax and concern yourself with more interesting things, trusting that the system is keeping track of things for you.
It is almost like it is a step in human evolution. If we're smart enough, we can potentially free ourselves from repetitive work and unnecessary stress. We figure things out well once, and then hand most of the job over to a system of some kind. And if it at some point is found not to work so well, we change the system. But we'd spend most of our consciousness on the things in life we actually enjoy spending it on, rather than on solving the same problems over and over again. So, maybe, if we successfully offload more of our lives to automation, we might pass on to another level of evolution.
I don't know. That's an idea. I can't say that I typically find rich MLM people or super neat people terribly evolved or worthy of admiration. But there's something to it somewhere. Some kind of message that we'll only survive if we can manage to offload bigger chunks of our lives into automated systems. Or there just isn't enough hours in the day to making a living and keep track of all you want to keep track of. A lot of us are drowning in things to do, and don't have a chance of doing it all the hard way.
As I said, I haven't really figured this out in some key areas of my life. I tend to end up doing most things the hard way. I work for a living, and the moment I stop or slow down, my checkbook is empty. And my desk is crowded with paper. I don't always remember to pay bills, and I often can't find where I put certain papers.
I do notice that some people do these things fairly naturally and effortlessly. Their desks are clear, and when something needs doing, they don't just volunteer to do it. They typically will find the way of doing things that requires as little involvement of their time and resources as possible. I need to study how that works.
Doing more with less. That's what I think I'm talking about. The right system can leverage your energy to you get the most done of what needs to be done, using the least possible resources. Which then can be free for other endeavors.
[ Organization | 2003-09-11 17:19 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Thursday, September 4, 2003 | |
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 This region contains much history and many ancient mysteries and legends and interesting places and stories.
The Gold of Tolosa is one of the good stories.
Toulouse first appears in the history books around 24 centuries ago when the Celtic tribe Volcae Tectosages settled in the Garonne valley and called their main city "Tolosa".
In the 3rd century B.C. Celtic armies had been attacking Greece. It is a longer story, but affairs were a bit messy, and it was a tempting target. Battles were fierce but ultimately the main Celtic force, lead by Brennos and Acichorios in 279BC more or less defeated the army of the combined Greek city-states at Thermopylai. The battles had however been very bloody, losses considerable, so instead of trying to push any further, they decided to just go raid the temple of Delphi, where immense riches had been collected for more than a thousand years, and make their way home. And despite obstacles and opposition, the Celtic force apparently managed to leave as quickly as they had appeared, with most of the treasure.
All signs point towards that the greater part of this treasure ended up being consecrated by the Cimbrian Druids to their own gods, and that it was hidden in a sacred well in the main temple in Tolosa. Which happened to be located approximately in the spot where today the Saint-Sernin Basilica stands in Toulouse.
There the treasure stayed for many years.
But Tolosa was a wealthy and flourishing city already then, and was located in a strategically convenient place, so it was only a matter of time before the Romans started becoming interested in it.
Consul Q. Servilius Caepio plundered the town and the temple in B.C. 106 with a large army. And he dragged off the treasure from the well, planning to take it to Rome.
However, they didn't get far. Cimbrian and Teuton armies engaged them and wiped them out. Caepio was defeated and 112,000 Romans and allies were left dead on the field.
And the treasure vanished again mysteriously. Official history doesn't have anything to say about what happened to it.
Nostradamus thinks it was miraculously restored to a good hiding place back in Toulouse, to be re-discovered at a later date. "In Toulouse, not far from Beluzer making a deep pit a palace of spectacle, the treasure found will come to vex everyone in two places and near the Basacle." Sounds a lot to me like a metro station on the new B line they're building, which happens to pass right by St.Sernin Basilica. Often, when they dig new subway tunnels here in Toulouse, they run into ancient ruins. So, lots of things might come to light. I might even find the treasure in my basement some day, who knows.
Other people speculate that it might be the mysterious treasure that a priest seems to have found in the 1890s in Rennes-le-Chateau, rather than parts of a treasure the Visigoths took from the temple of Jerusalem, which is what is normally conjectured. And Rennes-le-Chateau is after all not far from where the Caepio was stopped in his tracks on the way towards Rome, so it makes some sense as a possibility.
Based on this part of history and the fate of Caepio and his army, a Latin saying developed, "aurum Tolosanum habet" ("He has got the gold of Tolosa"), which essentially came to mean "His ill-gotten wealth will do him no good". Caepio became the poster boy for bad karma acquired from laying your clammy hands on treasures that aren't yours, instead of doing your job. So, I guess I've better concentrate on my own sources of wealth.
If you are in the mood, somebody even made a game "The Gold of Tolosa", loosely based on this story.
[ History | 2003-09-04 10:37 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Monday, September 1, 2003 | |
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I'm trying to find my way through the maze of paperwork needed to stay in France. And I have help, so maybe I need to change my mind about how difficult it is supposed to be. My new friend Leyla is dragging me around to government offices and doing most of the talking for me. She thinks it is easy, and that civil servants are there to help you. She is a lawyer, at least almost, and she just became a French citizen herself. Right now we're working on how we can have health coverage, without actually paying for it, which we need to get the residence permit (Carte de Sejour). There are various hurdles to go through, but people are friendly, and indeed it seems like things aren't all that much of a problem. And some new rules in various areas seem to have made things easier. That would be a nice change. Imagine that, government employees who actually are there to help you, and who care about finding the best solution for you. I somehow didn't expect that.
And today a company called me from Costa Rica out of the blue, wanting to hire me. They sort of randomly found my resume on the net in a search engine. And, despite that that resume is sort of arrogant, and kind of hinting that if they want to offer me a regular job, they can go jump in a lake - they wanted me to move to Costa Rica to work for them. That's a beautiful place, I'm sure, and I'd love to visit, but I'd really like to get this France thing worked out at this point. So hopefully I can work out something else with them. If not, it is at least a good sign.
[ Diary | 2003-09-01 17:03 | | PermaLink ] More >
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 A fairy tale from Max about traveling emperors.Then, a while later, in the far, far, away country, the silent voice talked to him again: "my son, so far, so good. But there is a secret you apparently are not quite aware of. If you want to feel true power and nothing but true power, you must start with nothing, absolutely nothing! This is the deepest of the secrets of all Emperors. So, if you don't mind, I'll arrange that you lose your remaining funds and income from the old new world while being back in the new old world. Just leave it up to me!" Alas, knowing the secret of emperors doesn't always make it easier. Sometimes a little magic would be nice.
[ Inspiration | 2003-09-01 17:03 | | PermaLink ] More >
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 A fellow named Marshall Brain wrote a couple of interesting articles, Robotic Nation and Robotic Freedom. Essentially he points out that it is pretty inevitable that in a few years a lot of jobs will be done by robots. Particularly minimum wage low level jobs, like clerks at Walmart, the people at the counter at McDonalds, etc. So, a lot of people will become unemployed, because their jobs can be done without humans, or with much fewer humans. But the people who own those companies will make the same or more money. Wealth gets amassed into fewer hands and large masses of people will have no chance of playing in that game. And the author then tries to come up with some creative scenarios of how wealth might become more distributed.
Many good points in those articles, and some good ideas too, although probably not all workable. I'd insist that there are some fundamental problems in our economic system which would need to be solved, and which won't be solved by creative ways of paying people money so they can keep being consumers. The current system is rigged towards amassing money for large corporations and banks, and little sub-schemes aren't going to change that.
The robot problem indeed points out some of those design flaws in the system. Indeed, if a piece of work could be done well by robots instead of humans for 1/2 the price, few corporations will hesitate to make that choice. So, take that a bit further and imagine that at some point most work could suddenly be done by robots. The "rational" decisions for a board of directors, if there's a cheaper and more efficient alternative, will be to fire everybody, except for a few managers or designers or whatever would still be needed. Taken to its full conclusion, we end up with just managers, board members, business owners, investors, and we don't need everybody else. Automated factories can ultimately produce everything, and smart robots can do all manual work.
But hey, where's then the future we were promised? If most things end up being done by automation, we'd expect to be able to live lives of leisure, pursuing purely artistic or philosophic endeavors. Growing orchids, painting, traveling, studying ancient languages. If machines could produce in abundance everything we need, there would be no great reason why we shouldn't. Then why isn't it going in that direction?
Despite announcements of us living in an information economy, we're really still living in an economic system designed for the industrial revolution, meant to centralize the production power, and the capital needed to finance it. Under such a system, ubiquitous automation would mean that almost everybody's unemployed and that the owners of the production apparatus would be incredibly wealthy.
That is not going to happen, just for the reason that the capitalistic system doesn't work without most of us being consumers. I.e. we need to be able to pay for whatever is produced. The wealthy corporate owners enjoy being very wealthy, but they know full well that it in their best interest to keep most other people in a state of being affluent enough to buy the products that are being produced, but stupid enough to not be able to threaten their position. So they would naturally look towards inventing some more useless jobs to replace the jobs that are automated. Probably they won't create those jobs themselves, but they might persuade a government to increase its budget or start a war or something. Or they might think of ways of making life more complicated so that some new kinds of professions are needed to sort it out.
There's also the entirely more optimistic possibility that the new technology will become inherently liberating for everybody. Just like the Internet tends to flatten out hierarchies and give equal possibilities to a much wider group of people. Robotics, artificial intelligence and nanotech might possibly do that too. There's indeed a trend towards putting the means of production more into the hands of regular people. It won't be all that long before you can have a "printer" in your house which can "print" things that are actually useful. Right now you can buy such a thing for making prototypes, and it will make plastic models of computer design, and it has dropped drastically in price over the last few years. Just like desktop publishing revolutionized publishing, desktop manufacturing will too. Potentially the advantage of huge centralized production facilities will disappear for many purposes. You might be able to produce things just as cheaply in your kitchen. Or maybe, as with desktop publishing and website design, even cheaper on your own than if it were done by a huge corporation.
And maybe, along with all that change, somebody will come up with a new economic system that actually is good enough that it sticks. A system where it actually is a good thing for everybody if something can be produced more efficiently, rather than an unemployment headache.
[ Organization | 2003-09-01 17:03 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Friday, August 29, 2003 | |
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 There's an ongoing conundrum I have in my life, about how to both do good things that need to be done, and also happen to make a living from it.
Let me address it from a different angle, and provide an answer, even though it isn't one I entirely like.
I will often lean towards the new agey concept that if I just put good thoughts and works out into the universe, I will naturally be supported or rewarded in return.
It is a bit like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into the ocean, and hoping somebody will find it and that something comes back. And if I'm in a bit of a hurry I'll just kick out a whole bunch of bottle messages.
I happen to have done that enough to know that it works. However, it is also very indirect, the results are unpredictable, and they happen by a timing I don't control.
Now, the more sensible, practical and grounded alternative is that I more directly create that which I want to happen.
If I want water, should I sit and pray for it? Should I write extensively about my problems finding water? Or should I just dig a well?
If I want to go to the movies, do I sit down and make positive affirmations, and visualize that somebody will come and take me to the movies? Or do I just get on the bus and go to a movie theatre and buy a ticket?
Things happen when you do something that makes them happen. Some activities are much closer to the target than others. If I want water, starting in the desert might be a bad idea. If I want to bake bread, a screwdriver is not the best tool. If I want my garden to grow, writing doesn't help.
Same thing with money. You make money by doing something that makes money. Duh. Certain activities in certain settings make money. Others don't. If you want money, you need to do some of those activities that make money, in the manner and in the environment where they happen to work. You are free to invent something new, but it has to work.
One of my skills is as a computer programmer. That can be a potentially lucrative and rewarding thing to do. However, that doesn't mean that if I just start programming, I'll automatically be rewarded handsomely. Not any more than a ditch digger will be rewarded for just starting to dig. You need to dig in the right place, a ditch that will be useful to somebody, and they have to agree to compensate you for that.
There's a structure to making things that work. Not just one structure. The trick is to find the structure that works under the circumstances. If you need to build a bridge over a chasm, you need to analyze the geology, the wind conditions, and many other things, and you need a considerable amount of knowledge and tools to create the right design. And considerable skill and manpower to actually build it, with the proper materials and techniques. Then the bridge will work, and you can drive over it. If you screwed up one of the steps, or your plan wasn't connected with the real world, it just wouldn't work.
So, some of the ways NOT to make money are:
don't do anything
don't make up your mind what you'd want to do
don't make any moves towards what you'd like to do
become skilled in something that isn't very needed
pick a profession that is badly paid
go somewhere where your skills aren't needed
don't mention to anybody what you can do
don't feel like working
don't ask for money when you do something
demand conditions that aren't available
sit down and wait
complain a lot
don't contact the types of people you'd like to pay you
don't do a good job when you have one
do something else than what is needed
You get the point.
It is a disconnect I know very well from my work as a counselor. Many people aren't getting what they want, because they just haven't connected A to B, and they didn't notice. "I'd really like to go out with Joleen, but she's not paying attention to me", "Well, did you ever try talking to her?", "..eh, no".
So, the short answer is:
get clear on what you want to do
make sure it is possible and needed
find out how to do it
find out where best to do it
go and do it
if it isn't working, learn why and adjust your approach
Very simple. So, as to money, money isn't made by being a nice guy, or even by doing good work. It is part of it. But money is made by making a profit, by getting something cheap and selling it for more. If you don't know how to do that, you hook up with somebody who's doing that, with you as part of the input or output. Which is called a job, or a contract, or a pension, or whatever.
The how-to is often hidden, particularly when we're talking about money. The people who know how will often not tell you, or will give you a cover story. The cover story will often sound like the new age supported-by-the-universe story. I.e. that they're just thinking positive, doing good work, and money just flows to them. Not to put it down. Being positive and doing good work is great. But the secret is often that, under the hood, something else is going on. People did some much more specific things to arrive at where they are at. Maybe some of them are coincidental and can't easily be repeated. But often there's a specific structure to what people do or did in order to make their lives viable. Not any one universal structure, but many different structures. All of which you can learn from. There's always some key details there.
I'd personally much prefer if I didn't have to figure out money making. I'd much rather just walk around and do what I'm inspired to do in life, and then receive a stipend from Universal Resources. It isn't fair.
There's obviously several schools of thoughts here. What I'm talking about here is the approach of figuring out the HOW and then doing it. That is contrasted with the approach of emphatically ignoring the how, but concentrating on the WHAT. Build it and they will come. Dream the dream well enough, and the details will fill themselves in. Each school of thought is a little distasteful to the other.
[ Patterns | 2003-08-29 11:42 | | PermaLink ] More >
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| Monday, August 25, 2003 | |
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Work like you don't need money,
love like you've never been hurt,
and dance like no one's watching |
I saw that in somebody's profile, and I'm sure I've seen it somewhere else before. And, hey, I'd like to think I live by that motto too.
I just haven't quite figured out the "Work like you don't need money part". To me it means to work on what you're inspired to do, to work on things that need doing. "Do what you love and money will follow" kind of thing. Except for that it isn't that simple.
I'm ready to believe the universe works that way. That you're inherently supported in doing what you're inspired to do. That when you feed energy to something, it becomes more real and viable.
But our economic system doesn't work that way. It isn't inherently based on supporting good things. It is to some degree based on scarcity and abundance. Because of the way money is created it is very much based, not on what is of value, but on what turns money into more money. So the point to making money is not so much producing something needed and valuable, but rather to manage to become part of a value chain that at some level produces more money than what is put into it. I.e. it matters not at all whether you're doing something totally useless if the big company you're working for is making money. It doesn't matter if your activities are good for anybody, as long as you have a contract or a relationship that compels somebody to give you money.
Doesn't mean it isn't possible. Some people manage to concentrate on what they actually want to do, and also be paid well for it, without having to worry about it. You can be an artist, a writer, a speaker, a consultant, a researcher, just doing what you like doing, in the way you want to do it. And others might notice that it is good and useful or desirable, and they will pay you for it.
And, yes, if you're good enough at what you're doing, and/or good enough at presenting yourself, that can very well translate into natural success in the money world too. But there's some kind of secret ingredient there. People who do so are usually either very confident about the ease with which they'll live, and good at compelling the universe to follow their lead. Or, their income is really from something entirely different than what they do now. It is a lot easier to be an inspired artist or philantropist or playboy if you have a trust fund, or the investments from selling your company 20 years ago, or the proceeds from that lawsuit you won, or whatever it is.
I'm looking for the real deal. The ability to dance to your own inner tune, to throw yourself into life, to live and love more fully, to do work that is there to do, that inspires and moves you. And for that to actually be a viable life style.
So, if it works like that for you, please tell me. And give us some hints.
There is another angle of interpreting it, of course, which I have indeed followed most of my life. It is that you might indeed pick a job for the money, but you'd work it like you didn't care about the money part. I have indeed found that I was most fulfilled and most useful if I did a given job the way I felt it needed to be done, no matter whether anybody agreed or whether I'd be likely be fired for doing it that way. In other words, do your work without fear. Do what is true for you within the circumstances where you find yourself.
[ Inspiration | 2003-08-25 04:01 | | PermaLink ] More >
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This is a collage of things that catch my eye, things that need to be said, and stuff I really care about
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