How to Be Alone

As we know, we humans are generally social creatures, deriving a large portion of our happiness from interaction with others of our kind.  However, we are also by definition individuals, who obtain our identity from within.  Thus is born the continuum between extrovert on one hand and introvert on the other.  For some strange reason, we are, generally speaking, much more comfortable with the first end of this scale than the second.

Take this weekend, for example.  A fine weekend indeed, and spent almost entirely at home with Zekey and Ysa.  Highlights included finishing up a short video that I'd been working on, reading a bit, making black bean chili, editing some photographs, and chatting with Jane and a few friends in the States on Facebook and Skype.  The kids played inside most of the day Saturday, half by themselves, and half with a (very loud) young friend who came over for a three hour long match of... Jedi knights?  Ultraman?  In any case, something involving a lot of swords and yelling, in (to me) nearly incomprehensible Chinese.

Sunday, more of the same in the morning, followed by an afternoon following the kids on their bikes as we went first to the exercise park (a small plaza fitted with generically dangerous clunky metal workout equipment that passes for our playground) and then to the paved lot in front of the elementary school, where I watched the kids interact with a streaming succession of friends, older schoolmates, friends' parents, giggling college girls trying to get them to pose for pictures on their cell phones, gaping grandparents who had never seen a foreigner before - still! after us being here for two years!! - trying to push their two year olds into playing with Ysa, who now knows how to deal with such behavior by a simple humph! and a turning away that is just charming enough not to be offensive...

Aaanyway, my point in all this is that, through all this, I don't think I had a face to face interaction with an adult that lasted more than ten minutes.  And was fine about it.  (Notice the obligatory disclaimer.  You see what I mean about us humans feeling much less comfortable with the introverted end of the spectrum, right?) 

All of this a long, round-about intro to this video, which, now that I've gone on for a while, really speaks for itself:



A good reminder that no matter where we travel, the most comfortable, and the most challenging place to live is inside your own skin.

Anti-Intillectuatism in America, part 647.5

Yes, we're all populists now!  I'd comment a bit more, but I think the title of the post says it all...

Harvard-Supported Harvard Grad Mitt Romney Criticizes Obama for being a Harvard-Supported Harvard Grad

Slow and Fast

Speaking of slowing down to notice things, a very cool slow motion video above. Find out how they did it here. (Hint: Einstein was right!)

More teapots, more tempests

Viewing the American news cycle from afar over the internet has been very illuminating. Suddenly, a HUGE POLARIZING ISSUE appears! It came from nowhere, but all of a sudden, this HUGE POLARIZING ISSUE is of vital importance, and how you stand on this HUGE POLARIZING ISSUE represents your outlook on (choose one) freedom, security, totalitarianism, or even The Continued Survival of America Itself! It is, of course, vitally important never to rationally discuss the HUGE POLARIZING ISSUE in any public forum, because to do so will cause your ratings to drop and your voter approval to plummet. (And discussion is for wimps, anyway, right?) Better to shoot off a rant or two, and then hope that the next HUGE POLARIZING ISSUE will further confirm your polarized world view.

Oh, whoops, was I off on a sarcastic rant of my own there? Whoops, my bad. (Or actually, good for me, right? I mean, I'm just following the rules myself, aren't I?) Anyway, far be it from me to imply that I'm away from all this - I read way too many articles on HUGE POLARIZING ISSUEs myself, and of course, get all armchair quarterback-y forming elaborate personal opinions about them. Sigh. Going through my links, however, I have found what I believe to be a few clear well-reasoned voices (okay, clear well-reasoned voices that I also happen to agree with) that I'm reposting below, if only for a sense of perspective the next time one of these HUGE, um... thingamajigs, comes around again on the news cycle.

Here then, some perspectives, starting at the present and working my way back:

• Some excellent questions for all parties involved in the latest Wikileaks scandal.
• Two interesting views of the whole TSA bodyscanning security theater bruhaha, one from a pilot, and one from a guy with several pounds' worth of titanium inside him.
• And, from back in prehistoric last summer, a good postmortem on the whole Ground Zero Mosque thingie, that I may or may not have posted already.

There, that's out of my system. Now, stop paying attention to things and get back to work, already!

What every four year old needs to know

As long as we're on the subject of education, here's a post on early childhood that I ran into a while back that I read every time I start feeling guilty about not homeschooling our kids thoroughly enough, or worrying that they may be "falling behind" compared to their peers in the States.

From the article:

1. "She should know that she is loved wholly and unconditionally, all of the time.
2. He should know that he is safe and he should know how to keep himself safe in public, with others, and in varied situations. He should know that he can trust his instincts about people and that he never has to do something that doesn’t feel right, no matter who is asking. He should know his personal rights and that his family will back them up.
3. She should know how to laugh, act silly, be goofy and use her imagination. She should know that it is always okay to paint the sky orange and give cats 6 legs.
4. He should know his own interests and be encouraged to follow them. If he could care less about learning his numbers, his parents should realize he’ll learn them accidentally soon enough and let him immerse himself instead in rocket ships, drawing, dinosaurs or playing in the mud."

Things you need to know...

...that you won't (or in my case didn't) learn in college.

If you don't read this article, you are 12% more likely to be injured while driving.

What we need from Education

"...in a vibrant and participatory democracy, whatever the wisest and most privileged parents want for their children must serve as the baseline for what the broader community deems essential for all of its children. Any other approach essentially says that our policy toward children comes down to a simple slogan: Choose the right parents! Choose parents with access, power, and money, and the world will open for you; choose parents without access and resources, sorry, you're on your own."

(From this article by Bill Ayers - well worth a read before we start blaming teachers or students for the state of education today.)

Google beatboxing

It had to happen sooner or later. Click "listen" once you get to the site.

Hey, we've been there!

Customers eating at Yang Yang, Chengdu. Image from Eating Asia (see links below)

Another post on Sichuan cuisine by Eating Asia, this time featuring Yang Yang, a restaurant that we've been to a couple of times when we've been to downtown Chengdu. Their review of several ritzy new Sichuan restaurants in the New York times is also worth a look and a read, though all of the other places they mentioned are a bit beyond our budget....

Getting Education Rolling

In the "Links I'm posting only to remind myself to check them out more when I have the time" category comes Redu, a constructive, positive site that not only talks education reform, but has a lot of good stories on what people are actually doing to make a difference in the system.

All our links must go!

Here at the Slow Boat warehouse, we've got all sorts of links just sitting around the warehouse that I've meant to piece together into long, well-written posts that will take your breath away with my hard-earned knowledge and deep and lasting wisdom. And you know what? It ain't gonna happen. No way no how.

So, in the spirit of the Season, I'll posting them all online with very little comment in no particular order. Like a special holiday clearance / advent calendar / annoying Secret Santa kind of thing.

Anyway, to get you started, some cool pictures of China. Enjoy!