Ramanujan Redux

The NBA is inhabited by the land of giants. A tall man’s world. The land where seven-footers rule and no one else can match our strength.

Yet who has won the last four Finals MVPs?
2007-Tony Parker
2006-Dwayne Wade
2005-Tim Duncan (although you could make a case for Manu Ginobili)
2004-Chauncey Billups

These are guards moving past big men. They may be taller and stronger. But you are stronger in other areas.

As we see Chris Paul motor his way through the playoffs, forcing the defending champions to give everything they have to stay alive, you realize that you already have what you need. You may be a small man in a big man’s world, in business, in law, in sports. But it means only a little. You were born with your genetics. But you create your own will. You go as far as you choose to go.

Read this post by Razib this weekend, and it got me thinking, which is always a bad sign. It usually means something stupid’s about to come out of my mouth, so bear with me.

One thing that Razib points out is the fundamental difference between gender and genre. Males enjoy plot-driven stories, escapist fiction. We don’t want to focus on characters and their development, we want storyline and plot. Get to the point, get to the next point, etc. Women enjoy more of the character development stuff, the writing prose, etc. etc.

So I was wondering–is our interest in certain books wired into our own primitive desires? Do we like certain books because they fire up a part of our own evolutionary structure?

Think about it. Men enjoy plot-based books, with an aura of mystery but also of adventure and exploration. Books have the power to take us away. It takes us away from the burden of work and responsibility, provides us refuge from the toil we endure. We have traditionally been the ones to carry the load for our families, and while the gender gap has made dramatic shifts in the past 200 years, our brains don’t evolve nearly as fast.

Just like the supposed theory that our bodies have supposedly not caught up to agricultural products toxifying our body, our brains have not yet fully caught up to the idea that women can now bear equal responsibility, so it takes our own growth and development in life to adjust to this. Because of the growing amount of entertainment options in the Internet age and the relegation of books to a niche activity among the XYs, many of us never do.

Women, on the other hand, have traditionally been groomed to find mates. Unlike male, whose work, intelligence, wealth, and physical stature defined him, a female was traditionally defined by the strength of her partner. So it became important for her to find that character, and that required deep examination of human psychology to attract suitable mates. So isn’t it natural that females would enjoy books that involved deep character study and soothing words of comfort and seduction?

(Another possibility is that if females were not happy with the mates they got, they could dream up their ideal Cassanova to escape the doom and gloom of their situation. Hence the continuing popularity of harlequin novels for women in completely unsatisfying marriages.)

I’m not sure how far I’ve gotten, but the last work of fiction I read was Kafka on the Shore, and it touched me so profoundly because of how mystical and otherworldly it was. I felt like I was being transferred away from this world and into a dream. It was…liberating. I certainly felt like I was in another world, and didn’t have to worry about the one I was in now.

Sound familiar?

There’s my crock theory. Someone please tear it apart.

It’s a trivial thing, but it’s one of the many problems the Internet solves–finding information that wasn’t easily accessible in old media days, then having the means (iTunes) to build it up.

YouTube ad commericals are something I frequent when I like the music. Of course, finding the music attached to the piece is a chore, especially if it’s instrumental. But ask the commenters and they can help you find message boards that answer your questions.

I find this particularly effective. Thanks to commenters I found out that Massive Attack was in charge of the song for this chilling West Wing clip. That Dockers SF commercial is only catchy because it evokes funk from Marlena Shaw’s California Soul. Michael Jordan knows how important advertising is, so he mixes powerful music like Zero 7’s Red Dust into his commercials.

Internet communities have the power to relay information much faster to each other than ever before, to help move us and empower us in our regular lives. The next logical step in that progression? Relaying ideas to one another. That’s what blogs, discussion boards and social networks are slowly evolving into.

And what comes after that?

With the NBA Playoffs in full gear, roundball fans are always reminded in commercials of the greatness that once graced the NBA every season. Michael Jordan graced the league for fourteen spectacular seasons of dunks, fallaway jumpers, game winning shots, and championships. He exemplified the winning attitude that all human beings hope to adopt.

Yet one reason he was so brilliant was how easy he made it look. We glossed over the physical punishment that a 6′6″ guard took driving to the hole in a tall man’s world and focused on the breakaway slam reels. For over a decade the NBA has suffered from this me-first type of play, with everyone subconsciously believing that by taking the toughest shots possible, they could be like Mike. And of course, they can’t and couldn’t. People forget all the hard work it took for MJ to be MJ.

Arguably there have been more talented individuals out there, before and since. But no one else put the work in as much on the court as he did, for individual and team. And it shows with the six rings.

But it was never just about making the impossible easy. Let’s listen to the words of the man, shall we? (Click on the link to watch the video).

1. It’s Not About the Shoes

Just like in Fight Club, your possessions do not define you. They are rewards for hard work and accomplishment, not a shallow display of your own self-worth. Unmerited rewards lead to emptiness inside. Your actions are what is substantive. Their impact will last far longer than your shoes.

2. Not Meant to Fly

There are those among us who say there are limits to what they can accomplish. These people are a nuisance. Get rid of them, extirpate these undesirable qualities within yourself, and start learning to break limits before the burden of age catches up with you.

3. Challenge

Sweat hard when you’re battling. Make sure you’re dead tired when you walk out of your workplace. Exhaustion shows how far you’ve pushed yourself in pursuit of your passions. Make sure you rest only when your efforts hinder rather than help.

4. Michael vs. Mia

Once you become one of the best, challenge yourself against the best, or those who share your goals and desires. Their attitude towards work and success is infectious. Let it become the only disease that you never want to heal.

5. Nothing but Net

Challenge yourself in every facet of life, even if it means absolutely nothing in the long-run. It makes life more exciting, more thrilling, more exhilarating. Oh, and put a Big Mac on the line for the winner. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the many things that’s amused and alarmed me is how the iPod generation grows and grows.

Not that the iPod is a bad thing. It’s a great study tool, it’s a great mobile music kit, it’s great for workouts, it’s great for alone time, it’s great for college rave parties, or whatever general students enjoy. Pick your spots and it has its uses.

But more and more often…I see more and more people tuning out the world and tuning into their Top 50 mixes. And I wonder why people automatically place those earphones in the moment they walk outside. Is it a way to escape from saying “Hi” to a stranger? Or avoid meeting the greetings of that girl or boy who attracts you across the street? Or just avoiding the relaxing randomness of life and keeping things safe, simple, and boring?

This is what worries me. That a generation with so much promise and hope is going to tune out the world’s problems and focus solely on their own.

Why do people use their iPods so much?

What’s the next step for the Internet? We’ve reached stagnancy. Information is organized pretty well, we can track people with RSS.

Managing that chaos might be the next step. What if there was an application that tracked all your conversations (blog comments, message board responses, Facebook wall replies, )? CoComment tried it but the format was too cumbersome. Email can track some, but not all of these things. Could there be a Google Conversations in the future that manages our outreach and our communities so we don’t lose track of the open conversations we have on the Internet?

The benefits of such a program are tangible: It avoids the cumbersome nature of clicking back page after page after page. It centralizes the flow of conversation while decentralizing the conversations itself.

Friendfeed is the primitive form of such conversations, but it only deals with some programs and not all. Twitter deals with this on a micro level, but it’s me-centric. Me me me me me. What needs to be emphasized is US so that people don’t feel like they’re floating on an iceberg.

A message board is the perfect example of loose collaboration. People have ideas, other people respond to them. However, there are so many things we’re interested in that it becomes difficult to find every board every day. Message boards are still very insular in that sense–a conversation application that emphasizes each other rather than ourselves.

A big problem with the Internet today is communication. People are still ensconced within their own bubbles that it’s hard to cut through the noise and keep in touch with people.

Just a thought.

Seth Godin seems to be right on more often than not, and I think he’s starting to take on an edge. More and more the Internet is being cluttered with many, many things. However, I don’t think that’s the fault of the Internet. I think that’s just us tech geeks taking the Internet to the extreme.

My RSS feeds are huge, and I certainly only read about ten or twenty. But let’s face it–how many of you actually read your RSS? How many of you actually have RSS?

As much as I enjoy finding new information, new pictures, new sources of data, unless they add something to my life, their appeal is brief and illusory. The only time RSS is probably useful is if it’s current events (politics, sports, entertainment), or if the site is really really good (Umair Haque and Godin are two examples). I think connecting with people will require something separate (RSS 2.0?).

I don’t have it in my head quite yet, but information is one part of the Internet experience, and that’s the only thing RSS does a good job taking care of. It needs to be minimized to what you care about (basketball and football for me, celebrities and their crappy lives or politicans and election results for others) so you can make room for what really matters.

Time to prune that RSS feed now.

There isn’t much of an upside to sleeping for ten hours or more–generally you only need six and a half to eight, and as a college student you desire even less than that. But I’ve found value in recording my dreams, and I hope this inspires other people to do the same.

I’ll try to record them as I go.

04/29/08: I’m back at high school visiting, although I wouldn’t be caught going back here. For some reason half the dreams I remember have me back in high school. I hated high school. Can someone tell me why I’m here? Christ.

04/6/08: I’m with one of the hottest girls I’ve ever met. My family is all around me. WHY. This girl morphs into another cute girl I’ve known since childhood. I finally convince myself to stay back instead of going with the family (Idiot). She kisses me anyway. And I wake up and wonder how much longer I’m going to dream about these things.

04/5/08: I’m on a bus with a zombie, and I’m pretty nonchalant about it because he’s busy making out with the hot chick in the next seat. Makes perfect sense.

03/26/08: Every girl I’ve ever been attracted to in real life (whether from a distance, as friends, etc.) begins to email me asking me for dates. I feel flattered, then immediately wake up and feel enraged.
Thanks to Batman, I remember that dreams are a function of the right brain and that you can’t create sentences in these type of dreams, so all the emails and IM convos made absolutely no sense and were just random strings of words like “will come today you?”. Then again, when I was younger, I also assumed hot women were ditzy dumb blondes who couldn’t speak english. So these sentences didn’t seem too far-fetched.

03/05/08: I only remember passing by a bus with a friend and waving and saying ‘hi’ to her. Only she had one leg. She usually has two. She was pretty happy about the whole thing.

03/04/08: I think it’s Christmas dinner, although instead of being in DC (where I spent last Christmas), I’m eating in my new family installed house. There is a young couple and a wandering drunk. I think I also spend some time in a bookstore, which is useless since you can’t read in a dream. Talk about lame.

03/03/08: I have no idea what the hell is going on. I think I’m in an eighty story building, near the top floor, in something that reminds me remotely of Star Wars. Then I go down the escalator (an extremely long escalator, at least fifteen times bigger than that scary as hell one at Woodley), struggle with a rare case of vertigo and try my best not to start stumbling down.

As I get to the bottom (I think I ran down or flash-forwarded it) and realize that it’s some sort of Star Wars museum. I pass by someone named Nancy Reagan and someone asks me if I’ve seen Nancy Reagan and I tell him she passed by. My dad is interested in the exhibits. This alerts me immediately to the idea that this is a dream because my dad has never been intersted. And of course I’m awake seconds later.

03/02/08: I remember figments. Here I’m back in an idyllic high school (I have no idea where, but there are lots of trees around), just in my college self. And there are certain moments when girls approach me and ask me for help in math class. That’s cool. This happened in real life too. When I was so insecure and depressed I didn’t know what to do with myself. Whatever. Such is life as a teenager.

I remember getting on and off a bus, but don’t really remember what happened on the bus. I also remember coming back for my pencil. I don’t even remember what the hell was in the pencil.

And I walk a lot. I always walk a lot in my dreams.

Okay, that’s a little harsh. But the more I look at it, playing out the clock for your degree is not getting you anywhere but middle management hell. You’ll get a job with nice pay, but probably nothing you love doing.

What’s more important? Befriending a professor. Doing meaningful social work. Reaching out to others. Finding people equally passionate in what you enjoy. Taking a risk. Not shirking away from responsibility. Knowing what you’re comfortable with. That’s what useful about college.

College is a place to discover what you don’t want to be. Everything after that crystallizes what it is you want.

I’m trying to build up a steady resume of my writings and accomplishments online, and I don’t want to seem like I’m embellishing. This is to serve as two things:
1) A set of online accomplishments that can show value to other people.
2) A set of online accomplishments that can show value to me.

As much as I enjoy me, and talking about me, I want other people to know about me. Me is great. Me is the best. So let’s get going spreading the legend of me!

I wrote up three live blogs on The Play in CA (New Orleans at Dallas, Phoenix at San Antonio, Washington at Cleveland). I enjoyed the experience, but one thing I did learn is that it’s not fun talking to yourself on a live blog. It’s enjoyable if the games are great (and thankfully all three lived up to the opening), but I want to figure out a way to blog NBA games and have a captive audience. If I can do that, I’ll be pie-in-the-sky happpppy.

As usual, running Bears Necessity with a deft hand. I’m not exactly tiring out (I come up with decent ideas for posts all the time), I just want more free time to focus on other things. Hence my call for guest posters on Cal football. Hopefully more people will answer the call.

Finally, wrote an article on my slowly developing (and by slowly I mean stagnant) sports site, Get Up Eight Times. How the hell did the Phoenix Suns fall into a 3-0 hole against the San Antonio Spurs? I try my best to explain in the NBA roundball way.

I’m not sure what I’ll do about Squidoo and Metafilter. Squidoo seems to relate more to life experience, and I have very little of that at the moment. Metafilter seems pretty interesting, although it seems to be inhabited by librarians who will pay for gated access and people too snobbish for NPR. I hope this isn’t the case, but those are my preliminary thoughts on the matter.

Tune in for my weekly resume. It should be totally bereft of useful details.