Initial thought on How We Decide

I’ve just started reading Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide. Here is my initial thought/interpretation of what he’s saying. I wonder how it will hold up as I keep reading…

Emotions can be seen as an evolutionary tagging system. Through experience, we begin to recognize and record patterns. These patterns are tagged with emotion. When we encounter a similar experiential pattern again, the emotion serves as the quick reference that allows us to act. It’s like shorthand for our brain. Or like an indexed database (to go back to the flawed analogy of our brains as computers).

The Serious Wonderer

One of my favorite things is the Radiolab podcast. And on that podcast is Robert Krulwich. I just stumbled across a blog he writes called “Krulwich Wonders.” I almost never read the comments to things I read on the internet, which is a shame because the interactivity of commenting is one of the great things about the internet. I just don’t have time when my rss feeds are already piled up to the ceiling. I don’t even have commenting enabled here (but that’s mostly because this is just a personal blog).

Anyway, I did happen to read the comments to this particular post, Leonardo’s To-Do List. Krulwich himself had added this:

One reason I love doing this blog, jumping around from one curious thing to another, is that if I do it right, I can attract the sort of people who take wondering seriously, who deepen what I do, sweeten it, take it to harder, more painful, more beautiful places. T Bacon (who wrote in about this post, his comments are below) is one of those people; I’ve said this before after he’d made a contribution that caught me by surprise, when he and folks like him come around, I feel that my little digs have just gotten a touch roomier, the ceilings higher, the lights brighter, the windows wider, and suddenly there’s more to see, more to consider, so to “T.” and to all the others who have shared here, thank you.

T Bacon’s comment is about his crippling ADHD. He’s been able to cope with it and absolutely thrive, it sounds like, by throwing his brain into multiple projects or activities. I don’t have ADHD, but at least a couple of my teachers thought I did back in grade school. One teacher, who must have been particularly naive when it comes to this subject, gave me a stack of worksheets to do when I felt bored. As if I was going to merrily hop on extra school work. No way. I wanted to draw and talk to my friends. But this sort of behavior was squashed rather than channeled.

Today, I slowly feel myself giving myself more and more permission to explore, to satisfy my curiosity, and to synthesize from disparate interests. It’s one of the things I value most in my life. I hope to cultivate an ability to “take wondering seriously.”

I wonder what an education/school/curriculum/pedagogy designed around supporting frenetic mental activity would look like.

TEDx Iowa City

Went to TEDx Iowa City on Friday. Great event. It was awesome to see not only people doing things to help build a better community, but also to see the sponsorship from local government. People are having conversations about place and community and what factors have the most impact. Peter Kageyama’s talk on The Love of Cities was one of the most inspiring for me. Of all the people in a city, he says, a small fraction, less than one percent, of those people are the ones who make a city what it is for the rest. These are the “co-creators.” The people who always have an inordinate impact on city life no matter what they are doing because they love the city so much that they are willing to invest their time and energy into making it great. However, there is always a gap between the city people want to have and the one they can afford. Kageyama suggests that cities focus their energies on attracting more co-creators. If the math holds true, then an increase of just a few tens of co-creators in a city of tens of thousands of people can have an exponentially positive impact and make that gap seem that much smaller.

A good friend of mine, Nate Staniforth, also spoke at the conference on performing magic. His talk was the perfect complement to his stage performance where only a slice of his philosophy on magic gets to shine through. I was reminded of a quote from Anais Nin.

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

Nate said that as we grow up, it becomes ever harder to be amazed. We slip into a jaded apathy from having “been there, done that.” The more I learn, the farther I can see into the vast abyss of knowledge that I have yet to acquire, the absurd immensity of what humanity has yet to comprehend. We have only dipped our toes into what’s possible. So, it seems strange to me that anyone can feel not amazed, be not in constant awe. It’s good that the world has people like Nate in it to remind us to appreciate the mystery.

Drawing letterforms from memory

sketch from quotidian concern

“The designer is well advised to make his small-scale sketches as accurate as possible. A very common mistake is to sketch the lines of text unrealistically; usually the lines are indicated too vaguely. On conversion into the 1:1 format it may be subsequently found that the texts will not fit into the size desired. Practice is needed to sketch texts realistically on the very smallest format. The best solution is for the designer to draw the typeface true to scale whenever he can. He must feel confident with the shapes and proportions of the various alphabets and be able to sketch them from memory. Only in this way is it possible gradually to acquire the ability to produce, even in very small sketches, typographic patterns which are realistic, i.e. which can be transferred to the final format without difficulty.”

From Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Muller-Brockmann

Oh, how times have changed. How relevant is an intimate knowledge of letterforms while practicing digital typography? Beyond the spiritual satisfaction and greater appreciation for type, it seems that this type of craftsmanship is all but obsolete. Obsolescence stemming from the lack of “transfer to the final format.” We mostly work in the final format. Especially if publishing online.

Label design

Caitlin and I made some basil lemon oil this weekend and I made a label for the bottle. Fortunately, we had some spray glue that was perfect for the job.