May 2008 Archives

My landlord here in Brooklyn was kind enough to allow me to use a small 4' x 10' area behind our building to place my containers.  After some research, I found that 'self-watering' containers would probably be my best bet.  They differ from your standard pots by having a reservoir that stores water so the plants can draw on it as they need it.  By asking questions, I found that the Earthbox was the self-watering container of choice for many gardeners.  

An Earthbox costs $30 and has a three gallon water reservoir on the bottom.  Although I could have probably crafted cheaper ones on my own, the official product is built in a manner that should last many years.  Considering the importance I place on sustainability, it should not be a problem for me to spend some money on a company that works to make it a possibility.

I planted everything on April 20, which seems to be a safe time in the NYC region.

I am growing the following in my earthboxes:

I finished Theodore Roszak's The Cult of Information a few weeks back and am just now writing my notes.  I boil the premise down to this: man needs to stop believing in (and therefore worshiping) the superiority of the computer.  True, the machine can perform programmed tasks at a much higher rate than any man - yet this is not intelligence.  The author also rallies against the use of computers in the public school system, as they are being put there for the wrong reasons.  

This second edition was published in the early nineties, which was well before the mass adoption of the Internet.  That being said, and noting that I work in the industry, I believe the author makes excellent points that still apply today.  

Despite what seems to be popular opinion, I do not believe that the computer is not smarter than you or I.  Faster, yes, but not more intelligent.  It is not self-aware, and it is arguably far from ever becoming so.  I also support Roszak's statements about computers in the school system and believe that they are generally a bad thing.  They (in a general sense, of course) do not teach us to  think any better, and I would firmly support any decision to purge them from the school system along with increasing the pay of the teaching staff.  I argue that the mass infiltration of computing systems into public schools has occurred out of fear.  No one wants to 'leave the children behind', just as a politician does not want to be painted as 'weak on terrorism'.

In today's information-saturated world, I highly recommend a healthy dose of Roszak for the sake of tempering our addiction.  I look forward to reading some of the authors other work.  

Yoga is traditionally broken up into eight separate limbs that are meant to be tackled sequentially.  I will refer you to this Wikipedia article for an overview, as I only have limited exposure to the first four limbs and would hate for my inexperience to mislead anyone. 

The first step, Yama, translates to 'restraint', and is usually applied as a moral control.  Tradition states that one should practice:

1. nonviolence
2. truthfulness
3. nonstealing
4. contience
5. noncovetousnous

These are all 'Golden Rule'-like, and are foundations for most religious and spiritual practices. While they do require a certain amount of discipline, the points can be considered common sense.

I am curious if this interpretation is as deep as the limb is intended to go.  To find out, we should examine the step's intentions.

It is my opinion that Yama isn't meant to make moral commands for the sake of making moral commands.  Yoga is a system built to allow the operator to experience the final of the six-fold senses: the mind.  In its simplest form, the system is spiritually agnostic and I therefore doubt that seemingly religious commandments were snuck in.  I hypothesize that the true intentions of this limb are to teach you to constrain your energy.  

Killing the neighbors and having extra-marital affairs both take a lot of energy and have repercussions that consume a lot of energy.  If you are out doing things like this, you won't be able to focus on your growth.  The same can be said about being covetous: if you are envying your friend's latest gadget-of-the-minute, you're wasting cycles and are not going to make progress as fast as you otherwise could.  This seems to be the key point: one should enforce reasonable constraints to stop from deviating from the work at hand.  

I am grateful to have come to this conclusion, even if I find out that this defies the tradition.  I love to learn, and love to experience.  I have a reputation for taking on a hell of a lot, and coming back for more.  I have never had one hobby; I prefer a list of them.  I am an information junky, and love to stay up to date with hundreds of RSS feeds and mailing lists about an wide array of topics.  I do all of this, and it is hurting me.  

I have a constant buzzing of thoughts.  I will get up mid-task without consciously realizing it, go do something completely different, and start talking to myself about another project at the same time.  I often walk the streets completely stuck in my head.  A few paragraphs ago, I checked my email and moved a few messages; I have no idea why that was necessary and barely remember it happening.  Certainly, this is consuming a large amount of mental energy!

Cut out the crap.  Stop multi-tasking.  Make a list of all of the things you do or think about in a day, figure out what is actually important to you, and just dump the junk.  [I just checked my email again!] Formulate goals rather than allowing them to remain fuzzy in the mind.

Some things I've done so far:

Perhaps this time will be different, or at least I'll make it a little farther.  I'm fine with iterative development.  The introspective tools of Yoga, even for a novice like myself, ought to help speed things along.  I'm interested to see what else I will learn about my ego's inner trappings.