beauty is something I would like to define, if only to greater communicate my love for it.

Ideally, it would be hyperbolic, but I think it's probably not a linear pattern of any kind. Not that I can map anyway. bleh.

Strangely, it seems that the more competent or knowledgable I become, the more hesitant I am about the subject. Certainly, over the last two years I've become vastly more uncertain about myself, my thoughts, my core competences. So what's the limiting case? Is total competence an absolute freezeup? Or is the trend hyperbolic?

I think that knowing more makes it more difficult to make decisions for good simple reasons in some cases, and vastly easier in others. The deciding environmental factor appears to be whether the decision regards a finite deterministic plan, or a creative unbounded one. Creative tasks actually get harder the more information you're trying to include. Engineering gets easier because your bag of preset tricks is larger.

So what's the solution? If competence leads to problems in creativity, and anticompetence leads to issues with design, is it simply a two directional tradeoff, with no shortcuts?

Well, things aren't that simple. But one good way to keep yourself from becoming too competent, is to learn in new areas. increasing your total bag of tricks, whilst making you magically a rank newbie in some area. This doesn't solve the underlying problem, but it helps psychologically to have something you can do.

Real creativity is of course, out of the picture for humans. We are neural creatures, and our 'creativity' consists of misapplying pattern to object. We can't generate from principles, or come up with de novo patterns effectively. Perhaps there is some way around this, but that is why more information retards our creativity. A more aptly designed intelligence would not have this problem, I suspect.

Real design is more likely, but it has problems. Because our scientific method are so primitive, we have very few really solved design problems, we have preferred solutions, but few things have been optimized to a point where re-use is the simplest and best option. So design becomes a creative endeavor on some levels. So it's difficult to seperate too much, and not enough information. See above.

Psychologically the problem becomes even more complex, because in order to design and create well, we need confidence, attitudal differential , a sense of place, certain environmental factors must be invariant, etc. Providing yourself with a good working state can be more difficult than the work itself, sometimes. Which is frustrating, exaberating the problem.

unfortunately, this is another one of those areas where a few million years of development would come in handy. If we had more history, we might have optimized strategies for dealing with situations like this. But we're a young species, so you'll just have to work it out on your own. If you do, let me know, and we'll try and get the word out. On how NOT to do it, if nothing else.

the most one can say about jhonen vasquez is that his work is in poor taste. But if you can't laugh about death, then you probably aren't in a good position to do serious work on this particular planet at this particular time.

On the other hand, maybe not. But the comics are still fun, and the shows are still amusing.

Inasmuch as I can be regarded as having a schedule anymore, I'm trying to work on the Threats paper as much as I can. But progress is slow. I'm very sorry about this, to the few people I have talked about this with, but i can't see a shortcut.

movies are no fun anymore. I find that they're never shocking enough, or too impressed with their daring for the small steps they take into shocking territory.

Strange, how taking yourself seriously can screw a sequel. X2 stayed comic book, and was better than it's predecessor, and...

I'm going to leave this one alone for a few days, perhaps someone hasn't seen it yet.

my imminst interview, i finally got a chance to look at it, I come off pretty well, better than I would have expected. Though I sound a little starry-eyed at the end.

I have too much drama still in me from my teen years, I guess. But it's strange to see yourself on someone elses website like that, it makes one think of social rank, and dream of selecting only the very best mates....

I jest, but it is nice to be noticed.

If anyone comes to this lil infrequent blog because of that article, welcome, and sorry i'm not more prolific. If I spent as much time as I liked on any one thing I do, I wouldn't get anything done.

But, ain't that always the way.

A friend of mine here in Utah says that immortality would be required just to master being human, much less go beyond. I think he's probably right. At least if your immortal you have time to perfect the little things you dream about, like throwing cards like bullseye, or talking in metaphor like Ricky Jay. Of course, Ricky Jay throws cards too. He wrote a book called "throwing cards as a martial art" before his illustrious career as an actor.

For those of you still wondering what the hell I'm talking about, google: ricky jay, actor, stage magician, or throwing cards.

cellphone currently online.

cell phone will be offline for the next five days.

email or call home number.