Author Archive for Andrew Gonsalves

Is Buying Expensive Things Stupid?

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on May 8, 2012
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The weekend before last, I bought a new pair of boots. Excited by my new purchase, I wasn't shy about mentioning them to my friends and getting their opinions. As expected, pretty much everyone thought they were awesome. That was, until a couple learned how much I had paid for them.

The cost of my boots was $480, plus New York sales tax.

"It's stupid to pay that much for shoes," I was told.

But is it really?


First of all, these are beautiful, if I do say so myself. Every time I stare down at them, I can't help but admire the shape, color and feel. No other boot or shoe that I had been checking out matched what I was looking for in this sense. Some came close, but would I have been happy paying $150 for something that didn't quite please me?

The last pair of boots that I bought, a year ago, cost $100 and I loved them almost as much at first. But time went on and the nicks and scratches piled up. The weather took its toll and the leather loosened. Now, my feet wobble around in them, the ankles are slouched, and they will never return to the color they once were. To the donation pile they go.

Before that, two years ago, I purchased a pair of track boots for $215. They were bought to replace a similar pair that had lasted me 6 years of daily use. Today, they're still in use and they are by far the most comfortable boots I've ever had. There's just one drawback: they are almost irredeemably ugly. I'm not the most fashion-forward person on the planet, but they are the footwear equivalent to BCG's.

By comparison, the boots I just purchased were made to last AND they're sexy. The company that makes them has an outstanding reputation and the customers who own the very pair I have can't help but talk about them. In fact, while I was trying them on in the store, a customer came up and raved about how much his son, who has owned them for 2 years, absolutely loves them.

So, was it stupid for me to put down five bills? Sure, there is a wealth of footwear that I could have bought for much less. I might have even been able to achieve the same amount of satisfaction with both quality and style for even half as much had I looked harder. Maybe I should actually consider the cost of the shoes more objectively: is $500 a lot of money?

Sadly, for most of the world, it is. Hell, even for a great number of fellow New Yorkers, that much money is more than they spend on food, transportation, and entertainment every month. And for even more, it's greater than the amount that they put away into savings in just as long. I'm fortunate enough to have a well-paying job, and my tax refund from the previous year (despite only working for half of it) was … bountiful. Maybe it wasn't rash of me to spend that much on a pair of shoes so much as it was insulting for my friends to hear that I could do it with such ease. I guess it serves little purpose to also explain how conflicted I was about the purchase, but I can put it into another perspective.

I'm fairly certain that more people buy $500+ iPads than buy $500+ shoes. These are two items used for two different purposes, but here's the real difference: shoes are a part of every outfit, while iPads are nothing but toys for 99% of the people who own them. Similarly, for computers, would it be stupid for me to buy a top of the line computer for $1500 when I could buy a computer that could squeak by for $300?

I guess I am writing this all because my feelings were a little hurt. But hey, maybe I hurt my friend's feelings, too. Money's a touchy subject for many people. However, as long as you can afford the purchase and you enjoy what you got out of it, there's nothing wrong with spending a little money.

In Defense of a Ballhawk

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on May 5, 2012
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Let me introduce you to Zack Hample. He's a New Yorker in his 30's who has built his life around a very interesting hobby, casually known as "ballhawking." Zack is the king of ballhawks. He attends Major League Baseball games quite frequently with the intent of catching baseballs that are hit or thrown into the stands. By the end of this 2012 baseball season, Zack will have collected over 6000 Major League baseballs over his lifetime. He has a streak of catching at least one ball per game that goes back 19 years and he frequently hits double digits. His single game record is 36 balls. Last year, he deliberately set out to establish a ballhawking record that will never be broken, snagging 1157 balls over 131 games while visiting all 30 Major League stadiums. Sit and think for a moment about the logistics of that.

Zack's hobby, and particularly Zack himself, is a magnet for trivial controversy. Going to a baseball game and catching a baseball is something that anyone who loves the sport will dream of and here Zack is, living that dream to the extreme. Many people resent that. Others see it as an easy target for ridicule. Full disclosure: I am not a ballhawk, but I am a close friend of Zack's and have attended many games with him. I have endured listening to his rants and have personally assisted in inflating his ego at times. I've known him for a good 6-7 years now, so you're going to have to trust what I am about to say about him. I'm writing this article because I have read many criticisms about Zack as a person and about ballhawking that, frankly, are not very fair. It's time to fully explore the ethics of ballhawking to set things right. Let's begin.

First, let's talk about ballhawking in general. It's a game within a game. Just like college basketball fans like to get themselves involved in the action by inventing new ways of distracting players at the free-throw line, ballhawks seek to get closer to the game by taking home a piece of it. There are many different ways to ballhawk. Zack only goes for baseballs acquired at Major League events, while some people count Minor League balls in their collection. Zack shows up early for batting practice and gets a large number of his balls thrown to him by players and coaches. Some people are only in it for the glorious game-used balls that fly into the stands from foul balls and home runs. Nevertheless, ballhawking is simply the hobby of collecting baseballs.

But this explanation isn't enough to fend off criticisms. Many people complain that ballhawks steal balls from others. They're greedy and they occasionally knock over small children in their quest to rob everyone else of a ball. This analysis is extremely short-sighted, though. First of all, the emergence of ballhawking is merely game theory in action. Balls are highly desired because they are perceived to be rare and they have added value because of their affiliation with the player who hit or threw them, therefore it is inevitable that a population of ball-seekers will emerge. Furthermore, the act of catching a ball under these conditions is exhilarating, even after the 6000th time. Chastising someone for wanting to catch a lot of balls is equivalent to ridiculing someone who collects any kind of trophy or strives for any kind of personal milestone.

The argument that ballhawks rob other fans of baseballs is not as valid as it might seem. Zack and other ballhawks are masters at "manufacturing" balls. That is, they can convince players and coaches and even grounds crew and security guards to toss them balls that otherwise would have never reached the stands. Zack has gone through the trouble of learning how to ask for a ball in a multitude of foreign languages and he interacts with players jovially to earn their respect for a toss-up. He also shows up early for games so that he is the first to get through the turnstiles and into the stands, looking for balls that have already reached the seats before anyone else. He even has an ingenious "glove trick" that he uses to grab balls several feet below him on the field. Any casual fan should readily admit that these balls were not going to reach them anyways and should not be griping about a ballhawk counting them in their collection.

What about the balls that are up for anyone's grabs? What justifies a ballhawk to get them over anyone else? Let's get something straight: even the best ballhawk only catches a small portion of the total number of balls hit or thrown into the stands. This is because luck plays a huge part in who ends up with a nugget. Also, if a fan wants even one ball, it is not hard for them to acquire. The simple effort of bringing a glove to the game will greatly improve your chances and I think it is fair to say that a fan who doesn't bring a glove has no platform to gripe from. Case in point: I have not tried particularly hard, but I have snagged a total of 10 balls for myself, including 5 in one game. All of these balls were either intended for me, hit directly to me, or promptly handed to their intended receiver after being caught. At the same time, players are eager to distribute balls to small children before they even consider giving them to teens and adults. So, when it comes to a contested ball that everyone tries to get, why fault a ballhawk for catching it over everyone else? When it's possible to obtain balls that aren't contested, it reeks of false entitlement to complain about others beating you out over a highly contested one.

Speaking of entitlement, let's not misinterpret a ballhawk's drive to acquire so many balls as this. They realize that nothing is owed to them and that is exactly why they put so much effort into going after balls. That's why the competition exists in the first place. It's true that some ballhawks lack class. They wouldn't have a reputation for knocking over kids and elbowing people out of the way if there weren't at least some culprits. But there is a central community, a network of ballhawks who communicate with each other, who collectively shun these actions. I've seen Zack pull a kid aside to remind him about these values. Just like a tourist may get the impression that all New Yorkers are assholes because they only run into assholes during their visit, so it goes with ballhawks. If you had a bad experience with one, it's likely that this person is new and overeager.

Now let's talk about the man, Zack Hample himself. Ballhawking is a lot of work if your goal is to obtain as many balls as possible. There are hundreds of different angles to approach a game from. Zack has written two books on the subject and is also the author of one of the most popular fan guides to enjoying the game, Watching Baseball Smarter. It is not a trivial undertaking, it is a passion. Some people have claimed that Zack's passion is ill-placed, that if he put half as much effort into other things in his life he'd be ... well, he'd be someone else entirely and that is totally missing the point. People like to project their own insecurities when they criticize others. I'm confident in saying that nobody who is at peace with their own passions, no matter how important or trivial, would fault Zack for making a life out of his.

Many people who have never heard of the man often jump to unfortunate conclusions with very little information. To begin this article, I gave you a few facts about Zack so that you, too, could make a judgement about him. Did you think to yourself that this guy must be weird, loser-ish, or totally awkward? What if I also told you he has a few world records in some classic arcade games? I've heard people posit that Zack must live in his mother's basement, that he's never gotten laid, or that he must be the most selfish person on the planet. Now, Zack does love attention, but he isn't selfish. In fact, he is very respected amongst his many friends and he devotes a lot of his time to maintaining contact with his fans and acquaintances. He lives in his own, very impressive Manhattan apartment, and, as for his intimate experience, let's just say that he would put any of his critics to shame.

Some of Zack's more creative tactics can draw the ire of other fans. One possibly shady practice of his is to wear the t-shirt and hat of the current team on the field, "tricking" them into thinking that he is a fan. This works especially well on teams that are visiting a long way from home. Is it dirty deception or is it, as Omar would say, all in the game? Let me call your attention back to my point about "manufacturing" balls. The only time this tactic works is when he's trying to get a ball that ordinarily wouldn't reach the seats. There are even times when I've witnessed players looking for fans to throw a ball to, standing there waving the ball and waiting for someone to speak up and claim it.

Still, is there anything to be said about deceiving the players, or even simply pestering them while they're out there trying to warm up? Such distractions are built in to baseball and players zone them out at will. If a player wanders close to the fence with a ball in his hand, his name is heard in chorus from ballhawks and ordinary fans alike. Zack is different, though. He often tries to engage the players and make it more than just another ball to add to the list. If the player is willing, Zack is always up for a game of catch, he's always vocal about thanking someone for a toss-up, and he's been known to hold conversations with players who recognize him. There's hardly anything shady going on. Clever, but not shady.

So, when you hear about this crazy guy who runs around baseball games, grabbing as many balls as possible, and you take into consideration everything I've said to defend the practice of ballhawking, you may still have your reservations about one man taking home 10 or 20 balls for himself from a single game. Don't worry, there's more to it that you haven't heard. Zack actually makes a point of giving away a couple balls at each game to young children who brought their gloves to the game, but haven't succeeded in snagging a prize. That is to say that he rarely comes home with the number of balls that he says he caught. He's not fudging his numbers, I've seen him do this at every game that we've been to. It really makes someone's day. Who knows what might have happened if those balls had been caught by someone who felt entitled to them.

More impressively, Zack uses his ballhawking prowess to raise money for charity. I can verify this as well because I am the one who helps him set up his website to gather pledges throughout the season. Fans pledge a penny or more for every ball that Zack grabs (I have a pledge in for 10 cents this year), and at the end of the year, they send a check to his charity of choice, Pitch In For Baseball, which provides baseball equipment for underprivileged kids all over the globe. He's been doing this for a few years now and it's been very successful. And it doesn't stop there. Other ballhawks are doing the same.

In a recently published flavor piece about Zack, MSN decided to call attention to his ballhawking antics, labeling him as a ball hog, asking readers to judge him on similarly scant information to what I presented in my first paragraph. Predictably, the comments section was filled with vitriol toward Zack. Of course MSN left out the part about him giving away balls and raising money for charity, but sites like MSN and Deadspin thrive on the controversy that they throw to the wolves. User engagement über alles. Balanced reporting be damned.

Sometimes Zack is a victim of his own desire for sensationalism. During his appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Zack played into the conversation and joked about shoving kids out of the way to get a ball, which prompted Conan to call him "the worst man in America." On many other interviews, the same formula repeats itself; so much time is spent talking about the snagging that Zack rarely gets a chance to play his other cards. The result is that even people who are casually familiar with what he does can get the wrong impression. But he's in a tough spot because he needs the publicity to fuel his baseball-related endeavors and he's ultimately at the television producer's whim.

The ethics of ballhawking make it a controversial hobby, but it is ultimately a harmless one, if not a completely natural and expected reaction to the phenomenon of a ball, touched by a star player, finding its way into the stands. You may as well vilify heckling or autograph collecting. Zack, being at the forefront of this steadily growing game-within-a-game, takes the brunt of the misinformed opinions about it. If, after reading all of this, you still think Zack Hample is the worst man in America and ballhawking is a bane on the ballpark experience, I don't have much more to say. At the end of the day, we're talking about catching baseballs at a game. If you have a problem with someone catching them all, then grab a glove and be the change you wish to see in the world.

Review: Free Will

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on May 4, 2012
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I'd never thought much about the concept of free will before. To me, it didn't seem like it mattered if we have it or not. Free will was usually just used as a buzz word for our ability to make decisions for ourselves and to take responsibility for our actions. When I started thinking about my philosophy of nature a couple years ago, the notion of free will began to come into play, but it always seemed like a fringe philosophical issue. In fact, when I came to learn that many of the rationalists who I admire don't believe it exists, I simply shrugged and thought, "that's nice."

After having read Sam Harris' very short ebook, aptly titled Free Will, I have a lot more respect for the whole concept and what it means for society. It was quite shocking to learn that the justice system of the United States is based upon the whole idea that free will exists. What makes that point even more ponderous is that, when you give it as much thought as Sam Harris has, you find that free will really does not exist at all. This then makes you wonder what the point of a retributive justice system is. Ultimately, we're punishing people for being things that they had no real choice in becoming.

You didn't decide where or to whom you would be born. You didn't decide much for yourself in your most formative years. Even now, as you're deciding to read these words on your screen, you can't account for the reason why you're doing this instead of something else. The person that you are, at this very moment, has been shaped largely by circumstances completely out of your control. These influences come from your environment and they come from your brain chemistry, so at what point can you really say that you are the source of your actions?

The implications of realizing free will is just an illusion are many. For one, we can no longer justify acting cruelly toward others, even criminals. After all, what choice had they in becoming who they are? They were simply unlucky enough to live the life they did. The choices they made along the way weren't really exercises of free will, as they appeared to be. So many factors that they had no control over ultimately drove them down the path they were on. Now, it may be hard to relinquish the desire to punish people for violating the lives of others, and in many cases it does us no good to simply accept that the person committing a crime is just a puppet of infinite invisible forces (for instance, as the crime is in progress), but if you think about it, compassion may ultimately be the better conclusion for everyone involved.

The flip side to appreciating that people have little control over their misfortunes is also realizing that we have just as much (zero) dominion over our successes. I have a nice job right now that I worked hard to obtain and I'm currently planning for a comfortable future, but I must give credit to my parents for raising me to be responsible. I have to thank the universe for being born white and male. I also have to thank my DNA for gracing me with intelligence and curiosity, traits that not everyone is granted. But I'm not a complete success story. I'm definitely certain that I have held myself back from obtaining my potential in terms of creativity, monetary success, personal relationships, and other things. But did I really, consciously, decide to scuttle my efforts just to be mediocre? Am I a spoiled brat for being fortunate enough to have all of these factors for success on my side and not fully embracing them?

Or am I just me: a unique collection of neurons and synapses, shaped by the forces of nature into a living, breathing being that is ultimately a slave to the ebb and flow of chemicals swishing around inside my dome.

There is a point within this book when Harris describes the differences between his concept of the lack of free will and that of Daniel Dennett. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, so to decide whose side I was on, I flipped a coin. Not really. Free will joke. Get it? Anyways. The differences between the two arguments are subtle (If you want to know what the arguments actually are, you'll have to read the book yourself. It'll take 2 hours out of your day.), but in the end, I found Sam Harris' position to be more in tune with the principles of materialism, and, ultimately, nihilism, which is my own philosophy.

I recommend this book for one simple reason: like Sam Harris' previous ebook, Lying, it is a very short time investment, but the amount and quality of brain food you get out of it is beyond compare. Even if you're not much of an armchair philosopher, the practical implications of abolishing the notion of free will are many. One thing's for sure: you're probably not in control of whether you follow my recommendation or not.

Review: Sex At Dawn

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on May 3, 2012
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Sex At Dawn begins with a scathing analysis of what it refers to as the “standard narrative” of human sexuality. You’re probably familiar with it: the story goes that humans are naturally monogamous and it is simply in our nature for the sexes to be completely at odds with each other throughout all phases of a relationship. The ball and chain is supposedly ingrained in our DNA. As a particularly sexually free person, I’ve always felt that this was somehow a perversion of how things really were. Nothing in popular culture seemed to address my suspicion; in fact even the most edgy commentaries seemed held back by the supposed inevitability of the standard narrative winning out. And then Sex At Dawn came along.

The scope of Sex At Dawn is broad; it is about more than just sex. In order to justify their opinions of the standard narrative and of their own theory, the authors have to string together world-beating evidence from a number of different disciplines. They talk about evolution, pre-historic society, economics, and philosophy. And, in this amateur’s opinion, they succeed.

I have to be careful because this book tells me exactly what I want to hear, and more. In fact, what makes it so astounding is that it steps on toes everywhere it strides. From anthropology, to primatology, to evolutionary psychology and beyond, apparently there are a lot of things that we haven’t been told and Sex At Dawn is more than willing to fix that for us. Its authors aren’t very well known, which makes what they have to say even harder to swallow.

But, being a rationalist, I also cannot fault the authors for their lack of notoriety. After all, an idea should be explored on its own merit, not that of its thinker. Though I readily admit that I have not checked out any sources, there are plenty of them, which makes this book an impressive feat of research, if anything. But I am not without a little knowledge and opinion in the various areas of academia that get hung out to dry and I have to say that… I concur with everything that is said by the book.

Do I really think that vital facts about our sexual nature have been downplayed and misinterpreted by researchers because they did not fit with the collectively accepted view of how we function? Absolutely. When you look into the history of sexual research (check out Mary Roach’s Bonk, if you will) and the attitude toward sexuality through the ages, along with the views that have had the biggest impact on sexual trends, it’s really fucking obvious that the mainstream concept of sexuality is wrong. The real question is “how wrong?”

Answer: very fucking wrong. We are sexual beasts. Our bodies and minds are designed to fuck. A lot. With a lot of people. We evolved without the concept of monogamy or marriage. It’s no wonder that these concepts bore us to fucking death. Of course, you may disagree with me and claim that you’re quite happy with your traditional relationship, but you must know that I am drastically simplifying things for the sake of summary. If this subject interests you in the least, I recommend that you read the book for yourself and then make up your mind.

I have looked for a few critiques of this book, but I have not heard any real damning counters to its main points. Most criticisms poke at the ways that the authors present their information. Some cite inconsistency, some are offended at the attempt to actually define human nature (didn’t you hear? It is supposed to remain nebulous!), some throw a bucket of red herrings by saying that the authors didn’t debunk a whole slew of other theories that could also be true. Some also invoke the naturalistic fallacy card, but just because something is fallacious doesn’t mean it is false. I’ve even encountered someone using evidence that the book itself presents for a point as evidence against the point. I remain in want of any real objection.

The big problem is that Sex At Dawn really ruffles a lot of feathers. Maybe too many. Maybe too vigorously. It’s really hard to imagine people who have lived their lives (personally or professionally) in the shadow of the standard narrative suddenly turning on their heels the minute they read this book. Personally, I’d love to see it start to drum up some high-profile responses. So far, the biggest name to fly its banner has been sex advice legend Dan Savage. But will a professional scientist, with their reputation at stake, lend their support to a premise that is so broad and, dare I say it, revolutionary?

What’s more disappointing is that I don’t see this book picking up much steam outside of select communities that are focused explicitly around human sexual relations. It’s been out for a while now and it feels like it has already came and went. People enjoy learning new things through pop-science books, but this book starts out by telling them that everything they know is wrong. It’s not easy for some to accept, especially when they are emotionally invested in the whole monogamy racket.

Evolution vs. Social Darwinism

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on April 27, 2012
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I recently had an online exchange with a Presbyterian Christian who began with asserting something rather peculiar; he suggested a link between religiosity and being "fit to live." The very term "fit to live" should send chills down the spine of any decent person, but this guy threw around the term as if it was elementary. The conversation that unfolded was disturbing to me because I am not sure how many people actually share the views of the fellow who was on the other side. In any case, here is the exchange and I'll come in with my own comments at the end:

Him: When an atheist considers belief in God to be a weakness, yet the person who believes is more fit to live than the secular. Paradox.

Me: What defines fit to live?

Him: Darwinian style: fertility and health.

Me: I think you mischaracterize evolution. In fact your mischaracterization of "fit to live" is the basis of a lot of horrible philosophy. Might I even say that it is the basis for eugenics.

You are so so wrong.

Him: the basis for eugenics was the idea of the superman. that idea is false. I am not saying that we should make a superman, but where the evidence falls the religious are more fertile, how can you deny that? Survivla of the fittest many times means survivla of the fertile.

Me: Whaaaaat? Where is your evidence for the religious being more fertile? And by fertile, do you mean that religious people have better-functioning genitalia and reproductive systems or do you simply mean that they procreate more?

This, and I haven't even gotten into how misled you are about the difference between biological evolution and social darwinism, which you seem to be a proponent of.

Him: "And by fertile, do you mean that religious people have better-functioning genitalia and reproductive systems"
No. Religion does not have much to do with genetics, as you may know people in the same family can be both religious or non religious.

Why do you have to be so adversarial. Religion is not in the genetics, but instead is beneficial to survival, like say agriculture. Being secular, in evolutionary speak, is actually a disadvantage to fitness it seems. Social darwinism has to do with innate traits, which religion is not. You are the one putting me up with them to use the guilt by association. What I meant by fit to live was like how farmers five thousand years ago were more fit to live than their hunter gatherer counter parts and often drove them away. Yet farming is not something inherent to the human, with hunter gatherers many times switching to agriculture by getting it from neighbors that seem a little better off.

I do not know why you ask for proof, it may be that you want to deny deny deny for the sake of being adversarial, but here:
https://galileo.seas.harvard.edu/images/material/2800/1140/Jarvis_ReligionandDifferencesinMorbidityandMortality.pdf
something I found on health. Prayer, meditation and spirituality are actually pretty health promoting activities. Use the US versus Countries with higher religiosity like the US, India, MiddleEastern-African-Eastern European countries also have higher population growth rates than the Western European and Japanese. You want to say this is due to education or another lurking variable, but the speculation is worth looking in to.

http://whitelocust.wordpress.com/avenues-of-western-survival/what-is-the-cause-of-low-birth-rates/ here is an overview.

Why would you want to deny this anyway? It is a good criticism of religion, it makes for a good banner that secular peoples do not contribute to overpopulation. Be proud. It is something that us as humanity need to realise to group plan our way out, and denying is not going to help. Of course a lot of other factor mix in as well, as one would expect. But it seems the "meek" shall inherit the earth.

Me: I'm "adversarial" because you're totally misled. Here, let me explain.
  1. You are assuming that there is a correct "strategy" to survival (there is none) and have concluded that that strategy is to procreate and spread.
  2. You are valuing survival as if it is objectively important above all other qualities of existence (it is not).
  3. You are ignoring the obvious downsides to population growth. (Overpopulation, resource depletion, stress from population density, property disputes, etc)
  4. You mischaracterize evolution with social darwinism. Here, let me fix that for you: evolution is driven by changes in DNA, while social darwinism is the "survival of the fittest" based on socio-economical differences. Your point about farmers driving out hunter/gatherers is an example of social darwinism, not evolution.
  5. You assume agriculture is objectively better than hunter/gatherer life. To quote the historian Jared Diamond: "Hunter-gatherers practised the most successful and long-persistent lifestyle in the career of our species. In contrast, we are still struggling with the problems into which we descended with agriculture, and it is unclear whether we can solve them."
  6. Again, I want to reinforce that the switch to agriculture was not necessarily or objectively a good thing. In the thousands of years after the switch, archaeological findings strongly suggest we were undernourished due to a lack of variety and robustness in our diet. All that agriculture allowed us to do was increase our population density, which gave rise to sedentary lifestyle, war, widespread disease, etc.
  7. It's quite diabolical to think that you will "inherit" the Earth. Like it is yours. That's cute. Don't forget that secularism is what allows your population growth to continue to the extremes that it is now.
  8. Your view is equivocal to "whoever wins the war is right" - after all, your whole premise is based on inheriting the Earth, and how else will you do that without crushing some skulls. This is NOT evolution. It is imperialism. It is social darwinism. It is downright twisted.
In conclusion, you're totally misled about what is important. If you think population growth and forcing out opposing lifestyles simply by overwhelming them is the ultimate "right," then you're a fucking evil social darwinist. Please, stop associating this view with evolution, because it couldn't be further from it. My comment:

Oh boy, where to begin?

You can use the word "evolution" in a number of ways, that much is true. However, it is clear by this man's invocation of Charles Darwin that he is referring to the theory of evolution through natural selection. He seems to conflate social change as natural selection. This is a misconception that has justified many flawed philosophies in recent history. Just because someone defeats or displaces another person does not mean that the victor is justified, righteous, or more "fit." The framework of thought behind this justification seems to come from the preconception that there is justice in the outcomes of every decision. This is understandable, coming from someone who believes in an almighty god who oversees everything. The reality is that the world is not just and there is no universal definition of "fit to live." In fact, the act of defining "fit to live" is one of supreme arrogance.

I hate to Godwin my whole point but let's face it, the whole Nazi agenda was based on Social Darwinism. Then again, who are we to say what is right and what is wrong when, in the end, we will be defeated by someone and they'll be the only ones around to dictate morality? Still, you have to stand for something, right?

Sunday Music Reviews

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on April 23, 2012
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I know it's not Sunday anymore, but I decided that it might be interesting to post the results of a little activity I did yesterday. It was a rainy day in New York City and I didn't have anywhere to go, so I stayed home and spent my time watching sports and listening to music. I asked my friends on Facebook to recommend an artist and album that I would then listen to and then give a short review. Here's what came of that:

Friend: Sam
Artist: Bonobo
Album: Black Sands
Genre: Downbeat, chill-out
Review: I actually have this album already, but I gave it a quick listen to refresh my impressions of it. This is staple chill-out stuff. More background music than anything, though. This is not what I call "active listening" music. The songs with Andreya Tiana are just bad though. Overall I would say there is nothing special about this album. It would go into my mix of music to zone out to.

Friend: Janet
Artist: Abigail Washburn
Album: Song of the Traveling Daughter
Genre: Country, Folk, Americana
Review: I'll be honest, I don't listen to much banjo music. The instrument seems to give an energetic quality to what would otherwise be a slow and plodding folk song. I appreciate that. I particularly liked Eve Stole the Apple, until it sort of flattens out at the end (must be all the mentions of Jesus). The rest of the album sort of blended together in this Americana sludge. Aesthetically, I didn't find anything too outstanding. Thematically, I just don't jive with Americana at all.

Friend: Danny
Artist: Random Rab
Album: Visurreal
Genre: Electronic, downbeat
Review: It starts off with a song that teases the boundary between "background music" and "active listening" and while I liked it, I wanted more out of it. That's the thing about active vs background - if you actively listen to background music, you get bored. The rest of the album seemed to hover around the same aesthetic territory, not docile enough to fade into the background, not tensile enough to make me want to pay attention to everything. It was an odd experience. I LIKED the music, but I'm not sure I liked the experience of listening to it. Does that make sense?

"Friend": Mike
Artist: Le Tigre
Album: Feminist Sweepstakes
Genre: Punk
Review: You listen to shit music, Mike. Both albums you've recommended to me so far have sucked hard.

Friend: JT
Artist: CKY
Album: Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild
Genre: Hard Rock
Review: Too much rhythm guitar and not enough hooks. And the hooks themselves aren't... hooky enough. Music like this with a lot of energy and no tension is exhausting for me to listen to. There's also something that bugs me about the voice... it seems almost falsetto to get as much angst out as possible.

Friend: Michael
Artist: Van Canto
Album: Tribe of Force
Genre: A cappella ... metal?
Review: Dooon! Dooon! Dooon! Daaaahhh! Come on, this is ridiculous. Corny subject matter. Vocal instrument beatboxing. I can't take this seriously. Rakatakatakatakatakatakataka! I mean, it's funny, but I don't think I'll ever listen to it again. That's not to say I don't listen to my own corny metal sometimes. I started cracking up at the Master of Puppets cover though.

Friend: Ky
Artist: The Avett Brothers
Album: I and Love and You
Genre: Bluegrass
Review: Uhh. Beautiful. Only about halfway through, but I don't feel compelled to rush through it at all. I wanna hear every moment of it.


Hope you found this interesting. Next time I find myself with some free time, I might just do it again. Got any albums I should listen to?

Defining Human Nature

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on April 22, 2012
.
In my previous post, I talked about our sexual nature, but I understand how some people might not be ready to accept what I had to say. I suppose that I should define the scope of human nature before I go on about what that nature is. As concisely as I can put it: human nature is our behavior while in our natural environment. You’ll notice the caveat, which is actually quite important. Our range of behavior is so vast, that to define it all as our nature would take the teeth out of making statements like the one I am making here. In order to understand who we are, we must understand the environment in which we evolved. Doing so will also shed some light on our strangely conflicting behavior when confronted with situations that nature never saw coming.

To get it out of the way quickly, I don’t see our current living situation as “natural,” and for a couple reasons. First of all, we are the products of evolution, which is a process that takes hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions, of years to substantially change a species. Though very specific parts of our DNA may have changed in the mere 10,000 years or so of civilization, we are still very much the same animals that moved out of the jungles a million years ago (give or take a few). Despite that, we find ourselves living in large, dense, centrally governed societies that couldn’t be further from our initial configuration of living.

Secondly, to say that we are products of nature and thus our creations are therefore natural is a philosophical cop-out. It once again defines everything as natural and gets us no closer to understanding ourselves than we were before. What we have that no other organism on our planet has is the will to consciously deny our biological impulses. What that’s allowed us to do, in ever-increasing amounts throughout the generations, is steer our species further from environment-determined evolution to socially determined evolution.

Don’t confuse my argument with some hippie pleading to get back to our nature. The realistic implications of doing that would result in the deaths of billions of people, simply to satisfy the mathematics involved in reducing the population density to pre-agricultural hunter/gatherer times. I say this to illustrate a point; if the removal of billions of people from our planet is only one in a series of drastic steps to return to our original environment, that should help to illustrate how out of our natural element we are currently living.

One feature of human behavior that is constantly attributed to our nature is aggression. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you beat a dog and starve it, can you then say that its resulting ferocious anti-social demeanor is part of its nature? Even peace-loving bonobo apes can be pushed to violence, given the right provocation. Now look at our mutual cousins, the chimpanzees. We tend to empathize with them for their human-like ability to wage war with each other and commit brutal acts of savagery. What if, however, we have merely been misunderstood about the chimps’ nature, as well as our own?

Would you believe that chimps, before they were studied as intensely as they are today, were actually quite peaceful? What changed? You might have heard of the observer effect, where the very nature of observing something affects its outcome. In this case it was the researchers luring chimps closer to their camp with crates of food so that they could watch them more easily. The apes stopped spreading out to gather their food and instead collectively bore down on one central location with a limited and unpredictable source of food. From there, it’s economics: fights broke out because of the limited resources and the high concentration of bodies, and, as a result, the social dynamics of the chimps we’ve studied were changed forever.

Now, when primatologists write back home and say that chimps are vicious, just like us, we take a look at our own behavior and nod our heads, agreeing. But even our own guilt-ridden view of vicious and cruel homo sapiens is mistaken. Let’s not forget that we have been under similar pressures to those of the studied chimps since the beginning of agricultural life.

A quick comparison of true hunter/gatherer tribes, which represent our life much closer to our nature, and modern “civilized” life should do the trick:

  • Our species spent anywhere from 300,000 to 1 million years living in hunter/gatherer formation. Our current formation, as an agricultural (and later industrial) society has only been going on for 10,000 years.
  • Tribes live in low-density, nomadic communities. They move where the food is and spread out so they don’t step on any toes. We claim ownership to our land, defend it, pack in tight, and invade other land if we need more.
  • Tribal population holds very steady over long periods of time. We procreate and spread like crazy, creating higher density communities and an ever-increasing need for resources.
  • Tribes live in non-hierarchical, egalitarian communities. We have economic class division.
  • Tribes work only a few hours per week gathering food that is available in abundance. That’s incredibly low-stress. We spend most of our time working to earn our survival. That’s not to mention all of the other stress we put on ourselves with our increasingly complicated lifestyles.
  • Tribes feed off of plentiful and naturally occurring food sources that take no effort to cultivate. Our food is governed by the economics of supply and demand, which can be a cruel, cruel bitch at times and drive a man to do crazy things.

Though hunter/gatherer life is often depicted as brutal and miserable, it was actually quite peaceful and simple. Meanwhile, its no wonder that we have come to expect viciousness of ourselves; we’ve wondered quite far from the lifestyle that our brains originally evolved into. The result is a hefty amount of stress and other complicated emotions that our bodies have to contend with, and it doesn’t work too well. We’re animals pushed into invisible corners of our own creation.

Is a soldier who snaps and kills innocent civilians just a reflection of supposed brutal human nature? Or is it an animal whose brain has been forced to process stress far beyond the limits of what nature has prepared it for? Is a leader who sends his nation’s youth off to kill thousands of enemies simply defending his turf and the turf of the people who he is responsible for? Or is he just a man caught up in a system that can’t help but expand and grow until it meets resistance greater than it can overcome?

If you take my example of our mythical aggressive nature to heart, you may start to recognize other aspects of human behavior that are attributed to our natural tendencies, but are really just unfortunate side-effects of adopting a lifestyle that introduces us to situations we're simply not built for. Think about it hard enough and perhaps you'll start questioning why everyone says we should be monogamous and chaste, yet we can't help but be curious and explore sexually. Maybe you'll start to see that many aspects of today's world are just poor substitutes for the life of real abundance our ancestors once had.

Our nature has been hijacked. We live in a societal structure that stretches us thin and manipulates our impulses. At the same time, it would be impossible to even voluntarily return to our roots. We’re left helplessly dreaming about the life we could be leading, but are instead obligated to perpetuate the game of have and have-nots. What is possible, though, is for us to recognize and stamp out modern values that perpetuate false ideals. We may not be able to beat the system we’ve created, but we can become better adjusted within it by recognizing and nurturing what our nature really is.

Sexuality Unchained: A Guide To Our True Nature

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on April 9, 2012
.
Something is not quite right. I’ve always felt this way; like society was wearing pants two sizes too small and nobody felt comfortable enough to tell it so. As a kid, I looked out over my neighborhood from the end of my cul-de-sac at the top of a hill and saw rows of houses lined up, facing each other. In each of those houses lived a man and a woman, and often they had their children living with them as well. There they were, like eggs in a carton, each containing their own yellow yolk and clear white filling, just like we were all taught they did.

You break open all of those eggs and weird things start popping out with frightening regularity. Double yolks and half-formed chicks. Cheating spouses, homosexuals and fragile, broken families. The symphony of nature that we are taught we are all a part of starts to sound a little off key. The discord builds in your ear and grows, but everyone smiles and hums along as if the tune is pitch-perfect.

Why do we find it so hard to fit into a system that we supposedly evolved into? That is what they tell us, you know? Even Charles Darwin, the man smart and disciplined enough to develop the theory of evolution through natural selection, had us pegged as an exclusively monogamous species that came down from the treetops in small family units. The field of evolutionary psychology has interpreted our behavior through that same mindset as if we are acting in harmony with nature, but we somehow cannot help but deviate.

If I were interested in learning what a human’s true nature is, where would I start? Would I look at the customers walking through the doors of a Walmart? Would I scan the crowd of a sporting event? Would I sit in the back of a church and take notes on the worshippers? I think I might actually start a little more basic than all of that. I would look to the animal kingdom, from which we evolved, for clues. After all, we’re talking about nature.

We share roughly 98.4% of the same genetic material as two other species of apes; chimpanzees and bonobos. If you want to talk about our nature, as in the lifestyle that the last 3 billion years of biological evolution has borne within us, I can think of no better models for study. We are separated from chimps and bonobos by 5 million years, which is hardly a blink in evolutionary terms. So, why do we find ourselves so far removed from the lifestyles of our closest cousins?

Let’s understand first what we’re really comparing here. The standard narrative of human sexuality describes us as monogamous; naturally inclined to arrange ourselves in nuclear families. We can even take that a bit further to note that our agendas, as males and females, supposedly play against each other; each desiring different things. The male looks for a suitable mother for his child and ensured paternity while the female seeks security and resources. And included in this exchange is, hypothetically, guaranteed sexual access. In short, Darwin says we’re all whores.

So what do we see when we look to our evolutionary cousins? The closest monogamous ancestor we have isn’t even an ape, it’s a monkey: the gibbon. Gibbons, in addition to being monogamous, are characterized as being unintelligent, unsocial, isolated and very infrequent maters. Other monogamous species down the evolutionary line reflect the same characteristics. Does that sound like humans to you?

Chimps and bonobos, however, seem to reflect a lot more human behavior. They’re highly intelligent, highly social, and if you haven’t by now heard of the bonobo’s infamous libido, consider yourself sheltered. The one thing separating these two species would have to be their overall demeanor; bonobos are a peaceful and hypersexual bunch who live in matriarchal communities, while chimps are quite vicious, living in male-dominated clans. Both species, however, are bound by multi-female, multi-male sexual relationships.

Which one are we most like? Most biologists would have you believe that we are most like the chimps. We, too, live in male-dominated societies, as if through nature, and it’s hard to argue against the notion that we are anything but warlike. But those differences that I noted between chimps and bonobos are much more stark when we compare the biology of each species’ females.

Chimps only have sex when they’re ovulating. This small window of time is announced by the swelling of the female’s genitals and the limited “fire sale” of sex ends up creating a market and competition, resulting in male aggression, and hoarding of sexual opportunity. Bonobos don’t announce their ovulation and are pretty much down for having sex with anyone at any time. In fact, bonobo females are almost as attracted to each other as they are to the males.

When bonobos couple, they embrace each other, share a long gaze, and intercourse takes place in a number of positions, including face-to-face. They can do this because the female’s genitals are oriented toward their front, like a human’s. Chimps mate quickly, from behind, and without showing much affection. There’s no need to exhaust you with more examples. By now it should be clear that the bonobo is the most relevant model we have for discovering the nature that underlies all of our societal programming.

Once you realize where we should be looking for clues to our nature, you start to realize that you don’t even have to look only at wild animals. There are humans who still live in societies structured very much like those of bonobos. They are hunter/gatherer tribes who still to this day have shirked off the burden of modernity. These tribes live in egalitarian communities where resources and relationships are all shared with everyone. Even the concepts of paternity and maternity are split up amongst almost the entire tribe, creating interpersonal dynamics that are a challenge for even the most open-minded first-world inhabitant to empathize with.

In some cultures, it is believed that a child’s growth in the womb is helped by the addition of seed from many males throughout the pregnancy. Then, when the child is born, milk from all the women helps it develop until it is self-sufficient. This sharing of responsibility for the creation and growth of a child creates personal bonds amongst everyone involved. The child, when it is grown, then recognizes everyone involved as its parents. Now, while modern knowledge of exactly how a baby develops in the womb might wash away much of the romantic gesture behind adding more seed to the batch, we can learn from the sentiment.

When evolutionary psychologists have admonished the human’s supposed penchant for monogamy, they praise it for the stability and protection that it gives to children in the family unit, ensuring that a child with two parents will more likely survive to mating age than a similar child of a single mother. This is almost like praising a three-legged stool over a two-legged one. But let’s not forget that adding more legs to the stool can only make it better. Indeed, we see the fragility of the monogamy stool every day when we hear about the children of divorced parents who grow up without proper role models.

When every family is its own little self-sufficient pod, when things go wrong, our children grow up fostering feelings of exclusion and separation. Therapists are called in to handle the burden that would ordinarily be split amongst a whole village. When a child belongs not only to the mother who birthed it, but also to the whole tribe, the support network is built-in and, truly, no child gets left behind.

Under this lens, all of the blurry edges of our society come into focus. It’s a bit easier to see how things get out of hand when you realize that we’re just as estranged from our nature as the animals we cage at the zoo.

How did we land so far from our nature? The short answer is agriculture. In the hunter/gatherer model, the division of labor meant that everyone contributed to the society and everyone shared. People were nomadic and sparse; therefore there was no need to protect land that provided more than enough for everyone. There was an equilibrium that allowed tribes to live comfortably, but never grow larger than their environment could sustain. Agriculture changed all of that.

It’s tough to sum up everything that growing our own food did to change how we structured our society, but there were three big things that need to be mentioned. First, food production begat centralized food distribution, creating a bottleneck through which nutrition could be obtained. The need for government and protection of the resources naturally followed. Second, the ability to squeeze more food out of the land allowed populations to swell, changing the quality of life profoundly. Third, and most importantly, the concept of individual property developed as roles diversified. Society now had distinct classes and property was handed down through families. Now, for the first time, people had land and status that they needed to pass along to their progeny. To ensure this system worked, the human libido was redefined.

Ten thousand years later, we’re taught that this is human nature. Our religions and culture perpetuate a false understanding of what is “natural” to us. It’s quite ironic that the “natural” behavior of mating only for reproduction is really a trait of most animal species while the desire to have sex all the time with everyone, referred to in popular culture as “animalistic,” is precisely what makes us human. Unfortunately, even if we did away with the flawed standard narrative of restrained sexuality, we would still find it quite difficult to adjust. As a society, we simply live in too-dense, too-classified configurations to really embrace our egalitarian roots.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t adopt the spirit of our earliest societies by embracing our hyperactive sexuality as a natural, healthy and positive trait. When we think about what’s natural, let’s realize that many of society’s darker aspects are likely the result of us curiously suppressing and misappropriating our peaceful, loving and sharing instincts. Compared with the rest of human history, the era of agriculture is more experiment than evolution, and while it may be hard to imagine the world any other way, we shouldn’t let it speak for who we are and who we want to be.

I have no practical suggestions for change. I’m not telling everyone to go out and be polyamorous. I’m not saying we should go back to being hunter/gatherers. I’m not even advocating for Marxism (it can't work on our population size). I just know this: denying human nature has only brought us perpetual discomfort as a society. While single-partner devotion is said to be our natural inclination, we still, in some cultures, find it necessary to threaten death upon those who would violate it. And, despite the punishment, people still cross that boundary every day. What is that, if not nature?

(Note: If you enjoyed this post, I highly recommend reading the books that inspired it: Sex At Dawn and Guns, Germs and Steel.)

Thailand Part 5: Totally, Completely Gay.

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on April 5, 2012
.
Welcome to part 5 of my Thailand adventure. If you missed the previous three parts, start here. If you're all caught up, enjoy:

Day 5: Chiang Mai

On the second day of our trip, K. and I had booked our ride north to Chiang Mai in a package with our guest house and an all-day tour with several events along the way. This was the day of the tour, so we woke up early and headed to the reception area of the guest house for breakfast while we waited to be picked up. This was our first American breakfast, but we appreciated its filling qualities in the face of a full day of constant activity.

We crawled into a crowded van with many other tourists and quickly set about judging them all. There were nice ones and there were quiet ones, some had interesting accents, some were good looking, some were ugly, but the ones we couldn’t stand were a pair of sisters from, of all places, New York. One of the sisters was the type who always had to talk and rarely listened enough to know what was going on. K. and I resolved to avoid her as much as possible.

Our tour guide familiarized us with the oft-repeated phrase “same same but different.” Like good tourists, we all laughed when he said it, then repeated it amongst ourselves. There is no word in the Thai language for “similar,” but the concept is necessary to convey to tourists, thus an iconic catch phrase was born.

Our first stop on the tour was at an elephant sanctuary where we got to ride on the backs of big, lumbering adult elephants. Drivers loaded us into iron benches that were teetering on the spines of the gigantic animals, then sat on the heads of the elephants and urged them forward. K. and I held on for our lives as the procession of pachyderms slowly trudged through the jungle at a slow and deliberate pace.

As I tried to adjust my seat to prevent myself from slipping off and falling to my misery into the trampled trail of mud and elephant feces, I reflected on the fact that I’ve never really desired to ride an elephant, but having done so, was vindicated in my apathy.



After the ride, K. and I paid for some tiny bananas to feed the elephants. I let the littlest one take each one from my hand, only to have it drop to the ground because it was still too big for its trunk. After trying unsuccessfully to pick up the banana, it would hold out its trunk for another one. When I tried to pose for a picture with it, I felt the trunk frisking me in search of yet another.



Bamboo rafting was next for us. The rafts were essentially just long chutes of bamboo held together by shreds of bicycle tires. This wasn’t such a big deal since the river we coasted down was quite tame. That didn’t stop our raft’s driver, who used a thin bamboo chute to push against the ground and steer us, from trying to get us wet anyways. While other rafts in our group were drifting calmly and serenely down the stream, we were convinced our raft was going to fall apart from all the rocking he was doing.

This was fun, though, and it gave us the opportunity to bond with our raftmates, Chris and Ellie, who were a married couple. Halfway down the river, I moved to the back of the raft and stood up, using my balance keep me dry while everyone else was getting splashed and nearly drowned by our crazy driver. We watched as other rafts drifted quietly along while we screamed and laughed and splashed around. I'd say we lucked out.

Our lunch was a simple affair of chicken, vegetables and rice, but it was filling and tasty. So, sedated with full stomachs, our group was driven to a small village of indigenous Karen people. It was a surreal experience; not because we were seeing a new world or anything, but because we were a large group of tourists invading what seemed to be a movie set of equal reality and fabrication. Women sat weaving garments of simple quality, men relaxed in hammocks, and our tour guide talked about their traditions. Our cameras were clicking away, but there was a fake quality to it all. The annoying new Yorker lady observed out loud that the garments that were on sale by the weaver were far too intricate to be hand-made with the techniques that were being displayed. None of the garments hanging around us were anywhere near as simplistic as the ones being actually woven.




We continued to work off our lunch by nature hiking to a small waterfall, but only a few members of our party felt the need to wade into the murky water. K. and I found more amusement at a shack cafe that overlooked the water, relaxing there until the group was ready to keep moving. On our way out of the wild, we came upon another village. Instead of a bunch of "handmade" scarves to sell, there was a man offering us a chance to fire a handmade crossbow at a papaya pinned to a post. Three shots for 10 baht. Hit the bullseye and get a free beer. K. was one of the first to jump at the chance. We pooled together 20 baht and watched the first shooter take their shots.


I knew they were aiming straight for the bullseye painted on the fruit, so when the bolt sailed high on each of their shots, I knew what I had to do. K. insisted that I go first, so I stepped up, handed the man my money, lifted the crossbow and took low aim. Thunk! My first shot was off from the bullseye by half a centimeter. I tried to appeal for that to count, but I was ignored, so I let the man reload the bow and took aim again. My other shots fell off to the side, speaking to the crude quality of the weapon, but I shrugged and congratulated myself anyways. People took turns firing the crossbow until the man ran out of bolts. Nobody else came as close as I did, but I'm sure if the bolts had been a bit more uniform, there would have been a few winners.



That was the end of our tour, so we found our way back to our van and sat there like tuckered out children as we were dropped off at our lodgings pair by pair. That had been a reasonably enjoyable adventure, but I was starting to get excited about the little adventure I had been promised from the night before. We had dinner at some street stalls and I stopped off at the tailor shop to get a better fitting for the coat I was having made. After that, we made our way to Anh's travel agency.

Anh greeted us with a hug. K., he grasped around her shoulders. Me, he grasped around my hips, pulling his hips to mine. Quite a greeting for someone who's only 20% gay, but I played along with him, thrusting back. K. and I had been talking throughout the last 24 hours about the possibility of going zip lining while we were up there in the north. We had heard that it was the best place in the world to do it. K. had gone zip lining before, but what she described seemed to be peanuts compared to what the Thai companies were advertising. We had already booked the next day for ATV riding and we were scheduled to head out the following day, but that wasn't set in stone yet. Another thing that made me hesitate for a moment was the budget that we had talked about in passing, or something. K. convinced me, though, that we were already here, halfway across the world, in the adventure tourism capital of the world, and everything was incredibly cheap, so to not do it while we were here was quite absurd.

We used Anh's advice to choose the best company to go zip lining with and forked over the money trusting that he was giving us the best deal available. After that, the discussion was a little sparse. K. and I were exhausted. But I spoke up and reminded Anh about the ladyboy massage he had promised me. He told me to come back to the shop after 10, so we headed to the guest house and crashed.

At around 10 at night, I woke up from my nap and shook off my drowsiness. K. was still passed out, so I left the room quietly and strolled the dark streets of Chiang Mai's Old Town with my head up, looking forward to the encounter I was about to have. The night was chilly, but I had my sweater and a long sleeve shirt on to go with my jeans. I found Anh sitting in front of his office, talking with a couple friends. When he saw me, he quickly ushered me away from them, leaning in to get my ear.

"I get my friends to leave. Then we call and get you a ladyboy to come give you a massage. Ok?"

"Okay," I shrugged, leaving it all up to him.

He took me further away from his friends at this point, deeper into the shop. "First, I will give you a massage, then I call ladyboy. Ok?"

I paused a moment, wondering if I wasn't just mishearing his broken English. A paying customer would, at this point, hold up a hand and reiterate the terms the way he understood them. I was along for the free ride. He reassured me that I would get what I wanted, so I nodded. Anh led me up some stairs that led to a dark loft-like room. It was large and nearly barren. Two thin mattresses sat on the floor and a pile of belongings occupied one corner. A floor fan sat by one of the mattresses. There was no lighting beyond the faint glow creeping in from the rest of the office though a shutter. Someone more concerned with self-preservation would have reversed course by now, but Anh seemed harmless to me. As incapable as I am at fighting, Anh was as menacing as tissue paper. He gestured to a mattress and asked me to take off my shirt and pants.

He left the room while I slowly undressed. I asked myself what the hell I was doing, but the only answer I could come up with was, "seeing where this is going." Anh returned to find me lying on my back on the mattress, still in my long sleeve shirt and underwear. He took off his own pants, which I found alarming, but he quickly replaced them with a pair of shorts.

"Ok, I give you a massage and then we call ladyboy," he reassured.

I nodded, lying there still, emotionless and chilled. I had gotten a couple massages up to this point in my life, so I wasn't going to turn down what could be a really relaxing and rejuvenating experience. After a long day of hiking, my legs yearned to be kneaded and stretched, so I let Anh do his thing. Unfortunately, his thing was the complete opposite of what I would classify as a massage. He placed his fingers at points along my feet and legs, holding them there, sometimes shaking them, sometimes pressing, but never really kneading or rubbing. With every touch, my muscles anticipated the soothing effect of heat and pressure and friction, but they only got fingertips.

As he was busy performing his ritual on my calves, my head was busy trying to figure out what was going on. "I think he thinks that this is actually doing something," I thought. "This must be some new age technique," my mind continued. "Wow, I can't believe he's one of those people." At no point throughout his massage did I feel like I was actually being massaged, and though he talked about the energy I should be feeling, I just felt cold and bored. Anh kept plodding along, though, taking his time on each leg, tracing a connection between my joints and holding his fingers there, pressing down, and moving on. When he finally reached the bottom of my underwear, he paused and held his fingers millimeters away from my ball sack, and then moved back down my leg. He made no mention of my privacy, but instead moved to my arms, using the same technique, trying to draw some sort of energy through my body that didn't exist.

Anh seemed impatient to finish that part of me because he was quickly back working his fingers up my legs in no time. This time, he didn't stop when he reached my underwear. His fingers slid under the fabric of my boxer-briefs and I felt them touch my perineum. I knew it had been coming, but I didn't intend for him to go any further. I decided to finally voice my discomfort.

"No, you don't get to touch me there," I said dryly, pushing his hand away.

"But it necessary. It part of massage," Anh pleaded.

"I don't feel comfortable, so no. Work around it."

Anh moved himself up along my body until he was directly on top of me, pressing his crotch to mine. I looked up at him with a bored expression.

"How about this?" he asked. "Do you like it?"

I arched my eyebrow and shook my head. He slid off of me.

Anh explained to me how he just needed to practice his massage and that, once again, he would call a ladyboy over as soon as he was done. I let him continue, still holding out hope for the final reward, doubting it all the while. This time, instead of creeping under the fabric, his fingers pressed around my penis from the outside, using his strange and impotent pressure point technique. I was chagrined, but I was nowhere near aroused and I knew I could stop him whenever I wanted to. It wasn't long until I felt his hands reach the waist strap of my underwear and pull them downwards, partially exposing myself to him. I caught his hand quickly and scolded him again.

"No! I don't feel comfortable with that. You're not getting any further than this."

At this point, Anh played his entire hand.

"Can I just see?" he asked, suddenly giving me puppy-dog eyes.

I almost laughed, but I was in disapproval mode.

He continued. "Then I call ladyboy and tell her I have big man USA waiting here!"

I shook my head. "I'll show you when I show her. You don't get to see if nobody comes."

Anh made a show of looking through his phone for a number to call, then holding it to his ear and waiting for someone to pick up. In the stillness of the dark room, I could hear it ring. Someone picked up and he spoke in Thai for a minute, then hung up.

"Okay, we get ladyboy to come. First, I finish massage for you."

I sighed and let him continue his massage, tensing up when he reached my genitals again. I glared at him and he stopped.

"Why you don't get hard?" he asked.

"I'm not turned on. This does nothing for me," I answered.

Anh was clearly confused. He tried to tell me that was he was doing was an "energy lines" massage and that he was trying to activate the energy line for my dick. He pantomimed the pattern of the energy lines he was trying to activate. He mused that he always got hard automatically no matter who was giving him a massage. Even old ugly ladies, he said, got a rise out of him and even got him to orgasm by using this technique. I was now 100% certain that I had fallen for a bait and switch. Anh never planned for a ladyboy to come "massage" me; he planned to finish me off himself. I let it out that I was cold and I wanted to get dressed.

Anh talked with me as I put my clothes back on. Apparently no ladyboys agreed to show up. Figured. He asked if I was gay. He thought I was. No, I explained, I'm just really easy-going.

Don’t Make Augmented Reality Boring

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on April 5, 2012
.
Today, Google unveiled their newest future technology project, called Glass. The demonstration video shows a man who goes about his life using the Glass technology, which overlays what he sees with an interface that allows him to schedule a meetup with a friend and navigate to a book store, among other hipstery things. What is being billed as an augmented reality project is more like a heads-up display (HUD) for a smart phone. That's really all that the video for Glass shows; potential smart phone functionality placed into the frames of your glasses and controlled by your eyes and your voice instead of your fingers. When I think of augmented reality, I am imagining computer-generated graphics placed into the scenery, instead of hovering around like desktop widgets.

Well, with all of this buzz going around about what is supposedly augmented reality, I thought it was a good time to unveil my vision for where (real) augmented reality can best be put to use:

Laser tag.

Yeah, you heard me right. Laser tag. It's time to revamp that old American past-time and give it a new identity with bleeding-edge technology. Here's how it'll go:

You step into the dark arena with a gun in your hand and a pair of AR goggles strapped across your face. The game boots up and all of a sudden, the surfaces of the walls and obstacles in front of you are lighted and textured. It appears that you're in a vast junkyard with scraps of metal and rubber strewn all over the place. At the far end of the junkyard, you notice a stirring; there are monsters coming for you! You dive behind a stack of tractor tires, peek out, aim your gun, and fire.

What you're doing now is playing a first-person shooter video game, but instead of sitting on your couch with a controller in your hand, you're in the environment and you have to move and aim with your body, just like you're used to making your character do with a few flicks of your thumbs.

What's happening technologically is your goggles understand the surfaces in front of you and paint over them with computer graphics. Your body position is tracked throughout the arena with technology similar to what we have now with the Kinect. The monsters aren't real; they're merely projected through your goggles, but they move convincingly and make real-enough sounds. When you pull your trigger the direction of your gun is calculated against the position of your target in the simulated game environment. If you hit it, you get to see a splatter of blood and a body hit the floor. If you miss, you should probably find a new position to take cover from.

From the outside, a technician is monitoring your movements by camera on one screen. All they see is a kid who is dashing and scrambling around and aiming his toy gun at thin air. On another screen, the technician sees the entire computer generated environment. And when you've finally beaten the final boss of the level, he hands you your score sheet, just like the good old days, and you can go brag about it to your friends. You can extend this to a multiplayer game where people cooperate against the baddies or, just like classic laser tag, fight team-to-team. Except now, you have an infinite palette of scenery, power-ups, modifications and effects.

Somebody, please make this happen.

Review: Lying

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on March 28, 2012
.
Sam Harris' Lying is a very short read, but it has a tremendously valuable premise, which makes it, mathematically, more worth your time than any other book published in the last year. It's simple, really: lying, no matter how seemingly innocuous, works against everyone's interests. Sure, we're all taught that lying is bad, but we do it anyways because we tell ourselves that we're protecting something by doing so. Whether it be for the feelings of others or for our own hides, a lie is often seen as the simplest solution, a lubricant, a hall pass. But, Harris argues, dishonesty not only deprives the person being lied to of important information that they could use to improve a situation, it diminishes the trust that others have for you and leads to unwieldy mental baggage when a lie must be maintained.

As someone who values his friendships quite highly, I found myself struck by the many examples of the effects of lying and honesty between friends. There are definitely times when I've felt like the best solution to a problem was to not rock the boat, so little white lies were preferable to the anguish I would cause by being honest. Sam Harris has, in only a few paragraphs, convinced me that my solution was not only bad for my friend, it was bad for me, too. He sums up what honesty means to a close friendship as he talks about criticizing his friend's writing:

"Now, when I tell him that I love something he has written, he knows that I love it. He also knows that I respect his talent enough to tell him when I don't. I am sure there are people in his life he can't say that about. Why would I want to be one of them?"

Indeed. Why choose placation over respect? What does it gain you?

I've always wanted nothing less than complete honesty out of my friends. If I am doing something wrong, I want them to tell me. Being full of ideas, I frequently run them past people for their opinions so the last thing I want is to be falsely assured that the idea is great when it really isn't. If my hair is messed up or I have a stain on the back of my pants, I want someone to tell me. This is all about information that I can use to improve my situation and withholding it from me is very unfriend-like. Even as I write this, I am starting to feel resentment toward anyone who opted to spare me from a truth because they decided for me that I would be better off without it.

Please, pick up the ebook or the PDF and start making the world around you a better place to occupy.

Review: A Universe From Nothing

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on March 27, 2012
.
I've recently finished reading A Universe From Nothing, the new book from physicist Lawrence Krauss. Inspired by his fascinating speech in 2009 which went by the same title, this book sets out to explain a simple premise: we are living in a universe whose physical laws allowed it to have spontaneously created its own self out of nothing. The process of explaining, from the beginning, how the state of physics developed and morphed into what it is today would normally be a dizzying affair but Krauss' sense of humor prods you cheerily along as you pick up concept after concept like a runaway snowball. Once you're finally on the level as far as understanding what our physics are capable of, everything is put into philosophical perspective, which makes for lighter reading.

The book contains no real formulas, proofs or even a list of sources, so we're left to take Krauss at his word when he wraps it all up in a bow for us. The lesson is simple and succinct, but the skeptic in me wants to see the work, even if I may not know how to translate it. After all, I'm being told something very important to how I understand the world and how I fit into it. Using this book as a tool of debate is hardly an option in that regard. Krauss may not be too poetic, but he is practical in describing his sentiments, using quotes from other authors to provide the emotional punch he needs, when he needs it.

I would recommend this book to anyone who already knows a fair deal of modern physics, but if this is your first foray into understanding the nature of the cosmos, all of the terminology will make your eyes gloss over.

The one bonus that I got out of this book that I wasn't expecting was a critical perspective about string theory from a particle physicist. String theory is the darling of many popular physicists these days, so reading Krauss' take on it was a welcomed reality check. When I compare it to Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design, a similar book from the other side of the theoretical aisle, I see that it is more fulfilling in the way it reaches its conclusion, using claims of empirical observations instead of mere mathematical theory.

We are left with the reminder that we probably will never be able to empirically prove how the universe initially came about, the very fact that we can plausibly explain such an event without the use of an all-power being gives us materialists a much more defensible position. So while this book may not be a masterpiece to be quoted for ages, it is an important summation of the current state of particle physics and cosmology.

Thailand Part 4: Only Slightly Gay

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on March 16, 2012
.
Welcome to part 4 of my Thailand adventure. If you missed the previous three parts, start here. If you're all caught up, enjoy:

Day 4: Chiang Mai

By the time we arrived in Chiang Mai at 6:30 the next morning, I was exhausted. We stood in the cold morning air while I complained about the utter lack of comfort I had just experienced. We were promised a ride to our guest house by the travel agency, but we waited and watched as our entire bus party found transportation to whisk them away to their lodging. Eventually our ride came when enough curses had escaped my mouth.

The guest house, S. K. House, was pleasingly decorated with traditional Thai paintings and sculptures, but at the moment I was more interested in my bed. Thankfully, we managed to get a room with two of them. It didn’t take long for me to pass out and get some real sleep.



When I woke up, K. and I went out for lunch and to explore the town. Many towns in Thailand have an old part, called old town, and a new part, called new town. We happened to be situated in the old town of Chiang Mai, so there was plenty of culture around us; temples, a moat, and the old city walls. We checked it all out, taking our time to relax in temples and talking to travel agents to compare prices on various adventures available around the area. One of those travel agents, named Anh, was particularly friendly. We’ll return to him in a little bit.



Returning to the guest house, we decided to take a little swim in the pool. The sun was only hitting a small corner of the pool and the high altitude air was chilly in the shade. I slipped into the freezing water, yipping like a puppy, while K. sensibly sat on the edge with a book and her iPod. After a few laps, I was done with the cold and left to go take a long, hot shower.


Later, we hit the town again to get some food. Walking around afterwards, we passed a tailor’s shop. It had to be one of millions in Thailand, but the thing that caught my eye was a mannequin outside that was wearing a thick jacket that looked a lot like my style. I popped inside to inquire about the jacket, but one thing led to another and I was suddenly getting measured for a new winter coat. My favorite coat had been stolen from me several years back, so I saw this as an opportunity to get it replaced for cheap.

We returned to Anh’s travel agency as dark was setting in and engaged him about an ATV riding excursion that K. had gotten excited about. Chiang Mai is known as the adventure tourism capital of Thailand, so there were plenty of opportunities to get out and have fun. K. had never been ATV riding before and Anh was very good at explaining to us the differences between the various options we had. Most of the other travel agents had only a basic grasp of English, but we were able to have a nice conversation with Anh and we became fast friends.

Maybe a little too fast. Once we had decided on the best ATV trip for us, Anh decided to throw in a little bit extra. “You come back from ATV riding, I get you ladyboy massage,” he said. Wait. Hold up. Did I just hear that? Before I could register it completely, Anh had moved on to another subject, as if he had just dropped an embarrassingly bad joke.

Full disclosure: In Thailand, a ladyboy is a male-to-female transsexual. In my opinion, due to the stereotypical effeminate Asian male population, ladyboys are typically more feminine-looking than their Caucasian or black counterparts. They are also more socially accepted there, referred to as Thailand’s third gender. Romantically and physically, I am attracted to women; masculinity is a total turn-off for me. That being said, a pre-op ladyboy is actually a bit of a sexual curiosity for me; the caveat being that she has to be absolutely feminine in every way (frame, face, mannerisms) except, of course, for the penis.

We talked about ATV riding some more before my curiosity got the better of me. “So, about that ladyboy massage,” I said during a break in the action. Anh sidestepped the mention by revealing to us that he was an organizer of ladyboy beauty pageants there in Chiang Mai, so he happened to know a lot of beautiful ladyboys who looks just like girls. He told us about how they develop dementia over time due to all of the hormone treatment they undergo. He told us about how their genitals stop working (sexually) and how their voices get all weird.

Finally, Anh turned his attention to my curiosity. He asked me if I was gay. “No, I’m not.” He admitted to being “20% gay,” but that didn’t change my answer. “Are you sure you’re not gay?” he asked again. I hadn’t turned gay in the last minute, so my answer was still “no.” I explained that I liked the concept of someone who was wholly female in every way, except for the genitals. I admitted that I didn’t really think about what I would do with a ladyboy if I met one. Anh asked me if I would like to make love to one and my face wrinkled up.

“I’m just fascinated by the idea, really,” I said. “I realize that what I have in mind might not be wholly possible. I accept that it is totally fantasy. I’m still quite curious, though. I wouldn’t mind exploring.”

I knew that the probability that Anh knew a ladyboy that matched my fantasy was low, but it was still higher than my chances of just finding one by hitting up the bars. After all, he dealt with ladyboys who knew how to look legitimately feminine enough to win beauty contests. When I asked once more about the massage, he relented and told me to meet him the following evening.

Saying our goodbyes, K. and I decided to explore the town and grab a beer. Walking out of old town through the old front gateway, we eventually found ourselves walking along Chiang Mai’s central strip of bars and nightlife. It was still early, so waitresses from all points on the sliding scale of attractiveness crowded around the entrances, chatting amongst themselves, paying no attention to the passers-by. We killed a little time browsing through some shops before finally settling on a bar near the end of the strip.



Each table at the bar had a Connect Four game, so we played as we sipped our beers and conversed. As coincidence would have it, there was a ladyboy working at the bar. She was definitely on the high end of the attractiveness scale, more so than many born-females, but the more I looked, the more my attraction was replaced by mere curiosity. When she spoke, she croaked. When she laughed, it was a cackle. The way she stood was masculine. The way she played pool against one of the customers was very competitive. I became aware that I was chasing an elusive specter, but I still looked forward to the following evening.

We finished the day by exploring Chiang Mai’s expansive night bazaar, which was not quite as raw as we had been hoping for. We had expected rows of temporary stalls, dim lighting and rowdy crowds. It was actually held in a permanent structure with solid walls, bright lights, a performance stage, and a food court. We would have to wait for the real authentic market culture. As we walked back to our guest house through tight, dark alleys, we talked about travel safety and literature.

Update: The Process-Supported Life

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on March 5, 2012
.
A week ago, I posted a blog entry telling about how I was going to change my life by going to bed and waking up at responsible times, along with making daily trips to the gym. This here entry is where I tell you how I've been doing for the last week, and hopefully make some predictions for the next week.

Well, I have only one word for the experiment so far:

Failure.

The night that I started it, I couldn't fall asleep for the life of me. I spent the night tossing and turning as thoughts and ideas tore up my brain. I sat up a few times just to jot them down and get them out of my head, but they would not stop. I didn't fall asleep until about 6am. As a result, I did not wake up until much later than I had hoped, thus preventing me from going to the gym because I had other things scheduled that day. Going to bed on the second night was difficult because of my severely truncated waking schedule and the whole thing started to fall apart.

Fast forward to tonight, Sunday, and I have logged a total of two workouts in the past week with only one day where I actually managed to sleep before 1am. Waking up at 9? Forget about it. I did wake up quite early this morning, 7:30, but that had more to do with the 6 slices of pizza and 4 beers I had the night before.

This experiment is laughing at me quite heartily. On the mornings when I have woken up to my alarm, I have been completely unphased by it. I hit snooze and disappear for another hour. When there is no real need to get up, I seem to have no discipline to needlessly make myself suffer. So, with a week passed and absolutely no progress made, let's look at the next week to see if anything can be done differently.

A friend suggested that I keep a glass of water near the bed and to drink it entirely as soon as I wake up. I'm going to attempt that tomorrow morning. No promises.

There are two main situational reasons why my schedule has been a failure. The first is that it is really fucking cold in my apartment. This makes it hard for me to fall asleep and even more difficult for me to wake up. I have remedied this by adding a flannel sheet to my bed, which seems to promote heat so much better than smooth cotton. The second reason is that I have been working on a very large project every day. It's fun and it takes up a lot of my thoughts and attention. It is the reason I can't fall asleep even when I am comfortable - I am too busy thinking of what I want to accomplish and how. I honestly have no solution to this "problem" because, honestly, I don't want to stop thinking about it. I like the fact that I am so motivated to work on it; to the point where I don't care if it sabotages my little experiment. As long as I keep working at it, I am happy.

The cold is also what has been keeping me away from the gym. Now I heard via email that there has been some structural damage to the men's locker rooms, which creates another excuse for me not to go in (at least for the next couple days). I don't have any solution to the cold except to wait it out, but that sort of defeats the purpose of doing this now. I guess I'm going to have to get over it, huh?

We'll find out in a week if I am able to grow some balls or not.

Thailand Part 3: Cold But Clean Feet

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on February 27, 2012
.
Welcome to part 3 of my Thailand adventure. If you missed the previous two parts, start here. If you're all caught up, enjoy:

Day 3: Bangkok

After another breakfast in the nearby outdoor market, K. and I checked out of the hotel. Since we knew that we would be coming back to Bangkok for New Year’s, we figured that our stay there had been fairly pleasant and so decided to book another room for our return. K. offered to make the reservation while I sat outside and played around on my phone, which was fine with me. The reason I mention this is not immediately apparent, but it will be a few parts later, so pay attention.

Leaving our bags at the hotel, we decided to walk down Silom Road toward the State Tower. At about this time, I was thinking about all of the food I would probably be craving at the end of this trip. Donuts, I decided, would be high on the list of my cravings, despite the fact that I never ate them regularly back home. I relayed this thought to K., for idle conversation.

Our first stop was a Hindu temple that was beautifully colored and decorated with detailed carvings. A chant played in loops on the temple’s speaker system, but it seemed to fade into the background as I took in the otherwise serene atmosphere. The day was hot and the shade was welcoming, so we sat down and watched everyone praying.


We started back along our route and it wasn’t long before we ran into… drum roll… a donut shop. It was a fancy one, too. The donut I bought had all sorts of chocolate going on and it was soft and melty and crummy all at the same time. We laughed about the coincidence of running into the shop after I had figured that we wouldn’t see one for the entire length of our trip, but I guess it wasn’t such a stretch considering they also had McDonalds and KFC over there. Speaking from the vantage point of almost two months later, I haven’t craved a donut since.


We reached the State Tower, known as both the second tallest building in Thailand and the location of a rooftop hotel scene in the movie The Hangover 2. A dress code posted in the lobby informed us that we were ill-prepared for this adventure, but we decided to press our luck. Though we were dressed like ragged backpackers, the tower employees pointed us up to the famous rooftop bar, where we were able to look out over the city. We weren’t able to actually go outside, though, as the deck was closed. Regardless, we determined that it would make a good location to celebrate New Year’s from.


The rest of our morning was spent relaxing in front of a gigantic display of Thailand’s king. K. and I remarked about how he just didn’t look very regal. He looked more like a schoolteacher than a king. He was demure and his clothes didn’t even fit that well. Never the less, there are posters of him everywhere. He seemed like a nice guy, but it’s a good thing that he’s just a figurehead because I couldn’t take him too seriously if he was supposed to be the all-power ruling monarch.


We figured that it was time to get a real massage, so we returned to the area that we had scouted the day before with all of the massage parlors. K. had decided already on where she was going; one of the legitimate professional-looking places for a 2-hour Thai massage. I, however, was feeling a little frustrated from working myself up the previous two nights with nothing to show for it. I decided to check out the parlor that offered the “testicle massage.”

After removing my shoes and walking in, I was greeted by an old woman who then presented me with a price list. In addition to the testicle massage, the parlor offered cryptically titled treatments such as the “Blue Body,” “Orange Blossom,” and a few others whose names escape me. She explained to me in veiled innuendo, obscured by her broken English, what each menu item meant, but all I needed to do was see the prices, which were far beyond those at other parlors, to really understand what I was getting into.

I pointed to the most expensive item on the list, making the old woman smile and nod happily. She then called out to the girls, who were sitting around in the back of the room behind a curtain of small potted trees. Five girls came to line up before me and I scanned their faces, looking for the features that I always do when on the prowl. I didn’t find what I was looking for. Many of the girls were pudgy, and if they weren’t, their faces were awkward. What can I say? I’m very particular about what I like.

Sheepishly smiling, I turned to the old woman, telling her that I didn’t see anything that interested me. I then smiled embarrassedly at the girls, thanking them and turning back to the door. At that moment, I began to wonder if I was being picky out of fear and discomfort. I guess it didn’t matter. I was looking for a specific experience, not just some quick relief.

Forgetting my main option, I chose to join K. for a two hour, very tame, foot bath and Thai massage. The whole concept of a Thai massage was kind of cool to me. Instead of being prodded and kneaded by someone who is reaching across your body from the side, the masseuse actually, for lack of a better term, gets in there, crawls all over you, and puts your body and limbs in different positions that feel quite therapeutic when they are done just right. If that means putting your leg over their lap or digging their knee into your back, then so be it.

With that said, the whole experience was akin to getting my ass kicked by a small Asian woman. While I’ve always enjoyed massages on my lower body, it was downright excruciating when she worked on my back and shoulders. The whole thing was a learning experience, as I hadn’t received too many professional massages in my lifetime. When it was all over, I looked across the dim room at K. with a bewildered expression. She had enjoyed every moment of her massage while I felt like I had been through some initiation hazing. My favorite part was the delicious tea that was served afterward.

Let’s fast-forward now to the moment where K. and I were dropped off at a travel agency outpost to wait for the bus that would take us to Chiang Mai. Setting our luggage down, we checked the time and asked our chauffeur, a tall, very awkward and manly transsexual, if we had enough time to walk around the block to check out the shops. We were given twenty minutes, so we left our bags in a large pile with everyone else’s and set off.

Returning only ten minutes later, we found the outpost deserted, with our two bags leaning against each other in the middle of the street. We couldn’t find anyone who we recognized in the immediate area. There wasn’t even anyone walking on the street. Determined not to panic, we strapped our backpacks on and headed to the corner, hoping to catch up with our party, wherever they might have gone. A man standing on the corner seemed to sense our confusion and urgency. He looked at us and pointed down the street to his right where we saw a crowd of people waiting to climb onto a bus.

Long distance bus rides in Thailand seem to follow a strict formula: they begin with a loud, violent movie played on a tiny, outdated television, then, once you’re finally able to relax a bit, they stop for food. The entire ride, you’re also usually kept crisp by air conditioning units borrowed from industrial refrigerators. Here’s a tip: never let them seat you in the last row. That’s where K. and I ended up and it was a waking nightmare, seeing as sleep never came for me. The seats failed to recline and my tall frame in a short seat meant that I also had no headrest. There was nothing to be done, though, except get through it, so that’s what we did.

Experiment: The Process-Supported Life Framework

Published
by
Andrew Gonsalves
on February 27, 2012
.
I haven't had a job since last June, so there has been little incentive for me to live by the same rules that everyone else does. I go to sleep when I want and wake up whenever my body is tired of sleeping. Meals happen when I get hungry and any non-essential task is easily pushed aside until it either becomes essential or I get frustrated with myself enough to actually do it. As you might imagine, this isn't the most organized way to live. My time management skills have deteriorated since leaving the workforce, so I'm thinking that it might be time for another experiment, similar to my vegetarianism one a couple weeks ago. Here are the details:

Experiment length: 2 weeks
Starts: Monday, February 27th.
Rules:
1. Wake up every day by 9am.
2. Sleep every day by 1am.
3. Go to the gym every weekday at 10am.
Exceptions: Social engagements
Goals:
1. Develop sleep/wake schedule that is compatible with working life.
2. Discipline myself to do tasks at the time they are meant to be done.
3. Push through the initial defeating mindset of discomfort and inconvenience and adapt a positive outlook on the results.

I am leaving out a few things from this experiment because I do not want to bite off too much at once. For instance, I haven't set schedules for things like chores or meals. I also have not set and specific goals with the time at the gym. Additionally, I thought about specifying time every day to either read or write. While I'd like to limit the amount of time that I waste on entertainment, I'm actually hoping that the simple structure of sleeping and waking, along with a standard activity to start my day, will set the tone for productive waking hours without the need to micromanage every hour or minute. It also helps that I am currently working on a personal project, of which I actually enjoy the process over spending hours playing mindless video games or watching movies.

I will post an update in the middle of this to keep myself honest and to track my feelings at the halfway point to see if they change any by the time I am done. I really have so much free time that there is no excuse to not be using it to its potential. I've always considered myself someone who runs on inspiration, but when the inspiration runs out or the confidence level drops, the fumes sometimes aren't enough to keep all the systems running. That's how I know it is time to adapt a framework for my life and start moving away from the inspiration-only model to the process-supported model.

Wish me luck!