tales from urban dilettantia

A recent post over on the Wired Science blog reminded me that I have been neglecting my favourite subject lately, discussing as it does the way in which happiness and sadness appear to fit the infectious disease model in large social networks. The Wired article leans a little far towards generalisation and pop-science for my taste, but the original study looks quite interesting and has made me wonder about the underlying assumptions, methodology and data set.

Looking through my bookmarks, it turns out that over the past few months I’ve hoarded quite a number of interesting articles on life, happiness and well-being.  In March, Scott Berkun wrote something that really challenges me to read, dealing as it does with being unbusy, being still and cultivating time.  It’s called The Cult of Busy.

Last month Dave Navarro (no relation) from Rock Your Day posted How To Stop Telling Your Sad, Sad Story, which I really loved; it’s such an ass-kicking.

Over at Fora.tv, you can watch Is The Pursuit of Happiness Making Us Miserable (which is probably is, if we take ‘happiness’ to mean hedonic pleasure).

Tim Ferris has written an epic piece on vagabonding, simplicity, travel and well-being.

Everyone’s been writing about Stuff versus Experience this year. There are posts on Unclutterer and CNN and The Frontal Cortex. This is something I wrote about some time ago, at least in relation to my personal experience, and it’s interesting to see it unfolding elsewhere.

On a slightly bigger scale, The Atlantic has an article from back in February on What Makes Cities Happy.

And lastly, the FlowingData blog has these two wry charts: Flowchart to lifelong happiness, and Path to happiness gets complicated and confusing.  FlowingData blog, you make me happy.

This post is like a Leftovers-Night dinner.  You’ll see.

Right now I’m doing some work that involves re-running a model through twenty or so different scenarios, and each run takes around a minute, so I have Notepad up and am using the runtime to write. It feels like a luxury to have some time to start thinking about having a page to fill with words.

I’ve been trying to manage the number of hours I’ve been spending in the office, but even when I’ve been able do that, the intensity of the last month has been something to behold. There’s not much I’m able to say about it in a public forum, but it involves a lot more responsibility and a whole bunch of time-critical work. I’m hopeful October will see a promotion, as I feel there’s a significant mismatch between the level I’m on and the work I’m doing.

Over the past month, the last module of my professional qualification has started up, so I’m studying and involved in a bunch of other things too. I know it’s something I come back to time after time here, but the struggle to manage commitments seems to be something of an ongoing theme in my life. I made a mind-map while I was having lunch yesterday, and even though many things spawned sub-commitments and began to ooze from the edges of the A4 page, it feels better to have the majority of it laid out.

Out of everything I’m doing at the moment, passing the last module of my Grad Dip CA is far and away the most significant one when it comes to my long term well-being. In part, this is because repeating will be a very expensive exercise, but more because the timing of finishing the course directly relates to when I’ll be free to leave Large Accounting Firm without having to repay my sizable study debt. ‘Freedom, horrible freedom!’ as they say. (‘I’m the Queen!’ ‘No you’re not!’)

What else? Oh yes, the week just gone has been a shocker when it’s come to mental health – by far the worst in recent times. While horrible, the upside of this has been that I’ve managed to get through it without messing up anything significant, which is quite exciting – my ability to manage depressive episodes has really lifted in the past couple of years, and this is a topic I’d like to write more on at a later date.

Other than that…well. I’ve seen The Mountain Goats, Jeff Martin and Henry Rollins recently. Rollins was doing his Frequent Flyer spoken word tour, and I don’t think I have anything near the articulacy to express how moving and inspiring I found it. The man is a spectacularly interesting human being, and I find much of his discussion around depression, adventure, happiness and human experience to be almost painfully resonant. (I’m selfishly frustrated that he’s famous, because if he weren’t it would be easier to say ‘hey mate, come have a drink with me and we’ll talk about life the universe and everthing’.)

Musicwise, I’ve been obsessing over a few things, mostly relating to recent gigs. Jeff Martin’s Live in Dublin album is excellent, and I would strongly suggest getting it from iTunes if you haven’t already. portabledave has also put me onto The Tallest Man On Earth aka Kristian Mattson, a profoundly Dylan-esque folk muso from Denmark whose new album, The Wild Hunt, I’ve had on repeat. And then there’s the latest Mountain Goats album, The Life of the World to Come, which has this song about the thylacine, the dodo and the golden toad which just about moves me to tears every time, because (like most Australians?) I’m well aware of the heartbreaking footage they’re referring to in the first verse:

And finally, a few links that I’ve stumbled across and appreciated in recent weeks:

The last couple of weeks have been rather a hive of political activity.

I suppose everyone’s seen the WikiLeaks / CollateralMurder.com news unless they’ve been off-planet for the Easter break. I’m not sure I can add anything by commenting on this; it speaks – poignantly and heartbreakingly – for itself.

Malcolm Turnbull announced on Tuesday that he won’t be running in the coming Federal Election, and interestingly first released the news on Twitter. I respected him, appreciated the direction in which he attempted to steer conservative Australia, and I’m genuinely sorry to see him go. Later in the day, Nationals MP, Kay Hull, announced she wouldn’t be contesting the 2010 election either, a decision that may shake things up a little if the Libs start eyeing her seat of Riverina.

In state politics over in Tasmania, the hung parliamant saga goes on. And on. While Labor on ten seats appear keen to handball the ordeal of minority government over to the Libs (also on ten), the Tassie Greens are using their five seats to broker a power-sharing agreement. Meanwhile, the whole mess will fall into the lap of Tasmania’s Governor, and I will rant angrily yet predictably about the monarchy after a few drinks down at the pub. Interestingly, this peculiar situation isn’t an entirely unprecedented one; anyone remember the 1989 Tasmanian Election and its aftermath, or are we all too young?

Running a little ahead of Australia, the Brits have called their general election. Gordon Brown is playing the middle-class card for all he’s worth, and the Greens have fielded the largest number of candidates in the party’s history. For anyone interested in following the action, The Guardian are running a very comprehensive, live-updating site. (I found out today that the Home Office has granted my citizenship application, but of course as a non-resident I’m not eligible to vote.)

Possum over at Crikey has written a good piece on politicking, bad statistics and immigration: Net Arrivals

And finally there’s been much said recently on the topic of the institutionalised protection of child sex offenders by the Catholic Church. Michael Nugent from Athiest Ireland posted a critical analysis of Ratzinger’s apology a couple of weeks ago on his blog. As an ex-Catholic, and indeed as a human being, this is a topic that fills me with a cold, cold rage, and it impresses me to see someone with the capacity write so rationally and analytically on the subject, rather than mirroring the vitriolic rant to which I would be inclined to descend.

As boxer_the_horse says,’sometimes the internet is great!’ So, in lieu of me actually managing to finish writing a post of my own, let’s have a look at some random internet squishiness.

To begin with, I’m obsessed with the Michael Buble Being Stalked By A Velociraptor blog at the moment.  Gosh it’s great; that raptor lurking in the crowd or behind the curtains cracks me up.  I just keep randomly going to the site and giggling about it, even when there aren’t any new ones up.

BBC Wildlife is offering a series of free PDFs in the Photo Masterclasses series.    Covering a wide variety of topics from birds in flight to photographing wildlife at dusk and dawn, they’re well worth a look.

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across the concept of Demand Resistance which describes me so very well, and links in with procrastination, perfectionism and anxiety.  I promised to send information on this to a number of people, so here’s a link and here’s another with some good information in the comments.

I have a feeling I may have linked Visual Complexity before, but it’s still beautiful and there’s always something new to see. In fact, one of the things I discovered there this morning was a link to Sourcemap:open supply chains, a tool for researching and sharing where things come from.

Here’s a tribute to New Zealand-born photojournalist Margaret Moth who died earlier this month, and to her fascinating and adventurous life.

And finally, photographers, travellers, architecture enthusiasts and UrbExers, check out this Russian LiveJournaller who has taken a set photos of abandoned churches.

Yes, sometimes the internet is great!

It appears to be Random Links-I-Like Round-up Wednesday here at The Flying Blogspot, as I have some random linkage for you. Also, it happens that today is a Wednesday.  (Happy Hump Day, hipikat!)

It’s been far too long since I’ve subjected you all to a healthy serving of link spam. Here, suck this up:

@bunnycronkite – For reasons that are yet to be adequately explained, I made Bunny Walter Cronkite his own Twitter account yesterday.

Two Hands Project – Using JetBlue’s unlimited US flight plan, these guys have spent 8 Sep – 8 Oct filming a documentary about Maker/Hackerspaces in the USA. (One of them is also noteworthy for having crowd-sourced his hair!)

The League of Moveable Type: An open-source type movement, featuring beautiful, free fonts.

The New Rules of News – An inspiring article from the Comment Is Free section of The Guardian, talking about media, ethics and contemporary journalism. After reading this, I happened to see a copy of The West Australian around, and cried a little on the inside.

Gorillamobile – The people who brought you the brilliant Gorillapod now have a device that fits the iPhone. iPhone + my bike = living the dream, albeit for a fairly substantial price.

Dots gloves: Speaking of irresponsible iPhone use while cycling, these Dots make gloves with little finger pads that allow you to use the iPhone’s touchscreen while wearing them. Brilliant.  (So brilliant in fact, that it looks like you need to back-order or wait for new stock to arrive.)

Giant balloon sculptures – Apologies for linking to The Daily Mail, but come on, you know how I feel about installation art, deep sea freaks and big things.

Antelope Canyon – Beautiful photographs from a geological wonder of the world.

Google Wave – Invites went out on 30 September and I still don’t have one.  Bring your A-game to this, people – Wave-i-fy me!