Personal: Dual Mode Nerd

Dear Blog,

Each of us has multiple modes we operate in, and most have to do with the type of concentration we're using, which in turn, is a time sclicing problem as we use our meager intellectual abilities to do one or more things of differing complexity.

I have a friend mode, a teacher mode, a professor mode, a philosopher mode, an economist mode, and like most people, a lay-on-the-couch-watching-bad-sci-fi mode, which means "doing nothing". But aside from the last one, each of these modes increases my reasoning ability, but at the same time, increases the nerd factor, by selectively eliminating layers of interpersonal consideration in favor of objective truth. This is a hard skill to develop, but the ability to switch it on and off is better than simply being an anti-social nerd all the time.

This morning I was writing about debt, the economy, and politics. A subject which requires me to vacilalte between modes as I write, often making my writing difficult to understand. I am not one of those amazing people who can do multiple things at once, and writing in one voice while thinking in another is something that is beyond me. I seem to be able to do it while speaking, since the person I'm talking to is a tether to reality that I can grasp now and then during the conversation.

Anyway, Allora asked me a question and I did not toggle out of economist mode and into friend mode, and when I do this, it means that I am very intense, and intolerant. I know that changing is beyond me because this mode switching in the first place requires herculean effort on my part, and changing topics under consideration amplifies the problem geometically. I have struggled with this all my life and have developed a dozen tools to help, but the underlying context myopia is something that I cannot seem to alter, and in this later stage of my life, I find that it is the source of my skills, and therefore something I do not really desire to lose, and instead, would prefer to amplify.

So, this makes me a bit of a jerk to be married to, unless there are a dozen people around in a social environment, I tend to be thinking about something fairly complicated at any given point in time, so the chances that any random question is going to drag me out of one context into another is highly likely. For years my dear wife had tolerance for this fact, but for a variety of justifiable reasons, largely to do with having a child, a home, and a job to keep running, mean she is time sliced as well, and has her own context problems.

So my response to her question about what time it was, when, she could have been referring to any of three time zones, was less charitable then it should have been. How does this relate? Well, it relates to travel since travel makes people spend more time together. It relates because one of the reasons to travel is to be closer together. It relates because in economic terms, the reason we need an economy is that we're all time slicing in a division of labor, and because we need to develop tools to handle that division of labor.

The trick is, that the tool needed in this case, which is to be able, not to specialize, but to generalize across more topics than any of us can physically accomplish, may be something that can only be solved by doing less of them. And all that that entails for interpersonal relationships. That is, unless we choose to do without, or choose to live on less affection, which is the compensation we give each other in exchange for mind share.

Everything is economically based.

Curt

The trek from Seattle to Milan

My parents were wonderful enough to watch our son while Curt and I went on a trip to Italy and Russia. We flew to Atlanta to drop him off and then we flew to Milan.

We spent four days in the Milan area before meeting up with Max and Olga in Russia. After we flew into Milan, we drove to our hotel in Como, Italy. We spent the first day catching up on sleep and wandering aroud the small town of Cernobbio. Then we spent the following day in Como and driving to Bellagio, a day in Zurich and a day in Milan. Then we will fly to St. Petersburg.

Here are pictures of the trek from Seattle to Milan and our rental car, purely for documentation purposes - no aesthetic value whatsoever :)

The Trip To Milan, and some observations

Dear Blog,

We are in a hotel room, in the town of Como, on the lake district in northern Italy, not far from the Swiss border. We just finished dinner of Chianti, caprese, veal, cappuccino, and a frozen Tartuffo that was perfect. It was clear that the tomatos were not from a garden, because they lacked that fresh taste, and that no thought had gone into picking a buffalo mozarella that was elegant and fresh, but the quality was good. Fresh lemon on the veal went perfectly with whatever they'd done to the veal - something I couldn't quite place myself, but was aromatic and sweet. The coffee was more nutty and less bitter than we are used to in Seattle, and tasted far better with the meal.

Unfortunately, the only place open at 10PM was called "Harry's Bar". But it was fine dining on the water, overlooking the lake, the boats, and with the lights of houses near the tops of the alps on the other side of the lake twinkling down at us as if they were nearby stars. The customers were an interesting mix of travellers who were desperately wanting to be cultured but unable to make a decent go of it, (the worst being New Yorkers who seem elegant at home and absolutely selfish, ignorant and pedestrian anywhere else), and other vacationers relaxing, and a few multi-generational family groups celebrating thier joy in each other. The service was pleasant, friendly, fast and helpful in a way that europeans find professional and we americans sometimes find uncomfortably disinterested.

We landed in Milan. It was noticeably quiet and we were surrounded by well mannered and honest people. (very different from those in Naples for example, where you have to keep your wallet and electronics in your underwear for safety). Freaking everyone speaks English, and some better than Americans. Even all the signs and menus are in English. We can't brush up on our traveler's Italian because we don't get a chance to use it.

Bait and switch: well, it is more typical in my experience in Italy than elsewhere, but we tried to rent a bmw 3 series and when we arrived we got a diesel powered Saab instead. No complaints because the car is fun to drive, and has that fluid shifting that I find in Saabs, but I'd prefer the bmw, for the same rate because if you're going to advertise that car, you should get that car. Personally, I wish I'd shipped the Ferrari over here, but we brought too much clothing to fit in the small trunk. (I keep telling allora that all she needs are a couple of t-shirts and a leather mini skirt and a pair of espadrilles, but she just scowls at me - partly because I bring more clothes than she does.)

While waiting for our luggage I noticed one thing that appears to be true in many manufacturing towns, but is perhaps more dramatic here because of the contrast of the moment: Local Italians are often ugly people that have somehow managed to overcome the protection embedded in that 80 percent of our genome that is irrelevant.. They're a mix of Greek, Semitic, north African (derivation), German (late migration), pre-Celtic Europeans (the small people), Franks and Gauls (which stick out), and the smaller brown haired Celtic. But these people in a blender and the genes just don't know what to do. The proteins must feel like they're lost in Grand Central Station on the Friday before a holiday, and a lot of them miss their trains. That's probably why the locals dress well. Except for the odd family that is somewhat homogenous, they have to dress well to mask how freaking ugly they are...... (Now someone has to leak this to Sandro so I can start some trouble with him.) But I mean, we need a frew hundred years of survival of the more attractive to weed this out of the gene pool. Either that or we need to hurry up our genetic engineering. I favor the latter just for the record.

The hotel is the Grand Hotel di Como and I recommend it highly, although I should give credit to Allora since she did the hard work of finding it: 140 per night, and it is worthy of the four stars. Staff is wonderful and pleasant: they only lost our reservation once, only forgot to register us after we were in the room already yonce, and only tried to give us the keys to the wrong room once, and only took our passports twice without registering us, and just tried to give us the wrong passports back once they did register us. Unfortuately, we cannot pass for Japanese, or I might have taken them just for the fun of it. So, for Italians, they're doing business better than usual, and at least are genuinely apologetic about their disorganization and rampant incompetence. I think it is a combination of the wine and heat and laziness that makes them so forgetful.

There is a copy of a painting by Boticelli on the wall above the bed. A mirror on the opposite wall. Allora says jokingly that she is convinced that there is a camera behind every mirror in every hotel. In response I keep telling her that anyone that would post that video on the internet would lose the respect of his or her peers. (Half heartedly I tried to show her how to hide a pinhole video camera and how to spot one way mirrors, but again, she simply looks at me with disdain. I think that look means she loves me but I am never sure. All those looks are so similar I can't discern which is which.)

The room is clean here in Como, which is remarkably unlike the one in Atlanta, where despite being a non-smoking room which obviously hadn't been used that way, we had to change rooms and I had to fill myself up with anti-histamines just to sleep for a few hours. What's worse is that the entire staff in atlanta was intentionally hired to include people who were below room temperature IQ, and then they didn't turn up the air conditioning enough to save money, and and the already marginal staff became zombies as they lost an additional ten percent due to the heat. Combined with the southern disdain for moving faster than a dull saunter, it was like being in a hot and humid idiot farm buried up to our knees in cigarette-scented molasses while tired and weighted down with luggage, as we tried desperately to find something to eat. We waited an hour for sandwiches in the restaurant. We waited an hour for room service. They could not help us get a wireless connection. I could go on but needless to say, I would avoid the Renaissance Hotel chain.

From my perspective, this illustrates how roles have reversed between the US and Europe. While Europe has come out of the post-war resource-conservatives, and finally moved into the twentieth century, the US has been cash-flush long enough that people are dramatically redistributed across the employment spectrum, and everyone in the entire country is peter-principled, and working in his maximum capacity. That means that everyone is equally incompetent, and you can't run a hotel or burger joint because only idiots are available to employers. And therefore service is idiotic. For societies to function intelligent people, at least, people intelligent enough to excel at whatever job it is they're doing, need to be distributed across all the different jobs. you need a fairly smart janitor, to make the rest of them viable. Too much cash means that society reorganizes and breeds only smart people with smart people. The danger here is both economic and genetic. I've covered the economic, but genetically, for example, schizophrenia has to do with dissonances between hemispheres. (yes, Virginia, every human has two minds, but fortunately only one of them has language skills.) This reorganization should increase dementia, Furthermore, combined with an aging childbearing population, it should increase autism, and decrease the rate of intelligent people being born, because wealthier people have fewer children, and enough fewer that they cannot make up for it with concentration of intelligence in children. (Was this enough of a sidebar? Allora is teasing me now ...) Anyway, back to Italy:

While you still can't find a grocery store like QFC with that spectrum of choices and that quality, food prices here in Italy are quite good. Munchies are cheaper in stores ( meat and cheese), but restaurants are a little more expensive that you'd expect at home by perhaps ten or fifteen percent. But at least the waiters don't try to entertain you with their personalities or interfere in your dinner like they do in the US. That makes me crazy personally. I mean, after all, if you're that freaking interesting, what the hell are you doing waiting tables? It's not like you can hold a decent conversation with me after all, are you?

Tomorrow we're going to either visit Milan, and maybe Ferrari factory if they'll let us drive by. The day after its Zurich Switzerland. I like the Swiss. The only pacifists in the world that actually found something useful to do with themselves: Banking. And the only government that actually undestands what privacy is, and how to keep it. They made it a crime punishable by decades in prison for violating it. It's a measure of their Germanic character that no one has violated it yet. They'd probably kill you, your whole family for three generations, and sterilize all your neighbors just in case it was catching, then write it off as a hunting accident in the press.

My kind of people. Sort of.......

Curt. Monday August 13