In My Copious Free Time

snippets from the day

I asked Alex what he was doing as he played Lego Star Wars (Wii) and he said, "Oh, I'm just adventuring right now."

This morning Alex came and got in our bed and we stayed there talking and snuggling together until almost noon. We had so much fun, giggling and playing. There was much talk about Alex's belief that he owns the middle, including speculation about where any future sibling would be allowed in the mix. Alex insisted he would remain in between Joe and me and any future baby could sleep on my other side (the outside). Trying to explain how Alex could share the middle, Joe held up four fingers of one hand, saying that the index finger was him, the middle finger was Alex, the ring finger was the baby and the pinkie was me. Alex protested, "But why does Mommy have to be so short???" Way to sidetrack the discussion, kiddo.

(No, I am not pregnant and not trying to get pregnant.)

After we finally got up I cleaned up and went out to meet some friends for makeovers at the MAC counter. Chris did terrific work as usual, doing my eyes up in a fabulous combination of Shroom, Aquadisiac and Plumage. I wouldn't have chosen these colors normally, but wow, were they ever gorgeous on.

Swatches from Temptalia, one of the most awesome of awesome beauty sites - her collection of product color images (swatches) is staggering, her reviews are always very informative and her makeup artistry is phenomenal. Plumage looks more dark navy/teal than purple in real life. I would swatch the actual colors on my hand, but it turned out that both Aquadisiac and Plumage were out of stock:

I noticed Eddie, one of the national makeup artists for Chanel, walk through the store and realized the Chanel counter was having an event, so I went over to say hi. Eddie has done my makeup a number of times and always does something really cool and inventive. Eddie loved what Chris had put on me, asking "Is there any color you can't wear?" Lately I'm realizing that I used to think I could only wear a few colors, but that is so wrong. I'm cool-to-neutral toned, so I can get away with a lot of warmer shades in addition to cools, and there isn't a color that I don't own and wear. It's all about finding the right shade and texture. I ought to post something girly and picture-laden about some of my recent makeup finds, but not tonight. :)

When I came home, Alex was playing Wii and we were all talking. Joe said something about Alex looking handsome and Alex agreed, saying he and Joe were both handsome. And I was the beautiful one. :)

A very grainy picture taken with my laptop camera - I love how he's reaching back to touch my face -- he is just the sweetest boy:

Hurry up, Spring

Aside from the fact that it will be nice to be done with snow and ice for a while, what I am really looking forward to is wearing spring clothes. This weekend's work took me to DC where I had a successful couple of hours shopping on M Street in Georgetown. At BCBG Max Azria I found these two dresses:

Aside from the fact that they look great on, they both have pockets! BCBG has now secured a spot in my person list of favorite brands. The black dress on the right is just perfect - I could wear it to the office with a cardigan (the bodice is sheer, but there's a slip lining underneath) or to a party or nice dinner out.

I had similar good luck at Anthropologie. At the Georgetown shop (which I don't think I've ever been in), I got these two skirts (sorry the images are a bit blurry):

One of the things I love about the clothes Anthropologie carries is that they are beautifully detailed and unlike most things found in department and chain stores. But there's something about their detailing that reminds me of a bit of trivia about the making of "Gone With the Wind."  When an actress (the one playing Careen or SueEllen?) commented that there was no need to spend time and money making lace-trimmed petticoats and  crinolines because no one would know they were under the dresses, David O. Selznick reportedly responded, "But you'll know they are there." A typical lower-end skirt like this won't have any lining at all. Something more mid-range will have a lining, but it will be simple muslin or acetate, and more often than not, cut in a way that is barely functional. These skirts, like others I have from Anthropologie, are both exquisitely lined, with lining trimmed in matching lace.

Isn't that last one spring in skirt form?

As if TED2008 wasn't enough on its own...

They had to go and throw in a new chocolate addiction, too.

I am not a big chocolate eater - it's good, but I don't get omg-chocolate-or-death-have-to-have-it-gimme-gimme-gimme or anything like that. So for me to rave about and almost obsess over any chocolate is a big deal. But that, my friends, is what Vosges chocolate will do to a person.

Vosges pushers representatives held chocolate tastings throughout the conference and I don't think I even wandered their way until day 2 when they had a spread that included various chocolates with bacon. Go ahead, let that sink in a moment. Bacon. If I were a true chocolate lover, I'd say something like "the two most perfect foods together in one delectable, bite-sized morsel. The applewood bacon and chocolate truffles were amazing.

The next day included spicier fare such as Red Fire Chocolate Tortilla Chips. I wouldn't have thought of the combination, but I gotta say, I'm glad Vosges did. Yummy.

The biggest surprise of all, however, was a little thing called the Rural Blues truffle. The website says this white chocolate truffle contains "Anson Mills grits + burnt brown sugar + dried corn kernel." GRITS. IN CHOCOLATE. Sounds disgusting. Tastes delicious. (These truffles seem to only be available in assortments either sold with champagne for $111 or with a CD for $75. The second one is the "Groove" collection, which is also available in a Swarovski crystal box for $275. I'll just have to remember how they tasted. ;))

My favorite, though, was Bapchi's Caramel Toffee. Check out the website's description:

We make our crunchy, buttery toffee in large sheets, sprinkle each with mineral-rich pink Himalayan salt, coat the top with deep milk chocolate and finish it off with a sprinkling of roasted, organic walnuts and pecans.

Pink salt. I have just ordered 2 boxes for myself. :)

Inclusion: The BIG Idea

I'm at the Institute for Inclusion's Inclusion: The BIG Idea Conference, in my usual seat at a conference, in the back of the room so that I can take notes on my laptop with as little distraction to others as possible.

Right now I'm listening to a panel of leaders talk about 21st Century Leadership: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and the conversation going on right now is about values and how important values are to organizational success. A comment from the audience was made about measuring leadership performers on values and how many leaders began to get motivated to promote people values when they were dinged on their bonus eligibility based on not meeting those same requirements. Hal Yoh, chair and CEO of Day & Zimmermann responded:

We don't believe in 'bonus for values'; we believe in 'employment for values.'

What a strong statement about how living company values -- ALL of them -- are simply the table stakes and that you don't get a reward for doing the minimum expected.

More to come...

Why I love Johnny Lee

I was delighted when Chris Anderson brought Johnny Lee onto the TED stage to demonstrate his interactive white board. I was delighted because it's something I've been excited about since seeing it on YouTube and I think this really smart guy deserves the attention of the TED crowd.

But last I realized the other reason this was so exciting. For four days we talked about massive challenges -- and the TED Prizes are all about projects that seem to require super-human effort. Yes, the TED crowd can line up lots of funding. However, what we need is elegant, CHEAP solutions to problems. Solutions just about anyone can implement. I'm not saying a white-board is going to save the world, but it's this sort of innovative thinking that WILL create cures, solve resource challenges and give people the tools to care for themselves and lift themselves out of poverty.

Pop quiz time

Question 1
If I leave Aspen traveling east at 350 miles per hour, making a 55 minute stop in Denver, then continuing east at 400 miles per hour to Washington, DC by midnight, at what time will my luggage arrive?

a) midnight
b) roughly 12:15 a.m., depending on how fast the ground crew is at Dulles
c) noon-2pm the next day

I suppose I don't have to tell you the correct answer is c). My luggage never even left Aspen, despite the fact that I checked in over an hour prior to my flight.

Question 2
Assuming the same conditions as described in Question 1, at what time did my thrice-confirmed driver arrive to collect me at Dulles?

a) roughly 11:40 because he wanted to be there in case I got in early
b) midnight
c) this is a trick question because he never showed up

'nuff said.

Question 3
How long did I have to wait for a cab at the airport?
a) 5 minutes
b) 15 minutes
c) 30 minutes

(Just go ahead and pick the worst possible option, because that's how my travel luck is going tonight.)

On the bright side, I did meet Wade Davis, who gave a talk at TED on day 1, in the cab line.

TED2008 Day 4, closing session: And the point?

Started off with the "yes we can" clip...it's a nice clip and I wouldn't be disappointed by an Obama presidency.

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John Francis
After witnessing two oil tankers collide and dump 500,000 gallons of oil into the San Francisco Bay, he began a silent life with no speaking whatsoever for 17 years. But that's not all, he gave up all motorized transportation. He walked across the country, obtaining a Ph.D. along the way.

"If you are a teacher and you aren't learning, then you probably aren't teaching very well."

He was the only person writing on oil spills when the Exxon Valdez disaster happened.

First spoke again on Earth Day 1990, joined the Coast Guard and went on to write oil spill regulations for the government and became a UN good will ambassador.

"All we have is how we treat ourselves and how we treat other people."

"We have to leave the security of who we have become and go to the place of who we are becoming. Let yourself out of any prison you may find yourself in, as comfortable as that prison may be."
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Stefan Sagmeister

Things I have learned so far:
Everybody always thinks they are right
Drugs are fun in the beginning but become a drag later on
Worrying solves nothing
Money does not make me happy
Keeping a diary supports personal development
Complaining is silly, either act or forget
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Tom Reilly
taking the stage to do a quick recap

To Queen Noor "It's really hard for me to share the audience with another world famous queen."

"I'm blown away by Al Gore. If you remove one word from that I'd be in heaven."

"I just published my autobiography, 'The Billion Bottoms'"
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Jonathan Haidt
author, The Happiness Hypothesis

Ideology and Openness to Experience - liberals are much higher on this personality trait - they crave new. Conservatives are lower and crave the familiar. You can predict a great deal about people based on these traits.

If our goal is to reach greater understanding, then we will fail because of our lack of moral diversity (since a show of hands tells the TED is overwhelmingly liberal). This leads to a moral matrix in which liberals thing conservatives vote a certain way because they are religious or stupid. It closes down critical thinking.

**This is critical because it highlights why I am so upset about the lack of diversity here**

The "first draft" of the moral mind -
The initial organization of the brain does not rely that much on experience- nature provides the first draft which experience then revises duilt in does not mean unmalleable, it means organized in advance of experience

Moral foundations - first draft of moral mind
1. Harm/care
2. Fairness/reciprocity
3. Ingroup/loyalty
4. Authority/respect (based more on voluntarily deference)
5. Purity/sanctity (obtaining virtue based on what you are willing to do with or put into your body)

How does the first draft get revised?

Check your moral settings at www.yourmorals.com
The major disagreements aren't over harm and fairness, but about authority and ingroup loyalty.

But what makes people loyal?

To get real cooperation from large groups, you need more than an emotional appeal - you need some sort of punishment, either real punishment, fines or something as simple as gossip.

Liberal morality rejects ingroup, authority and purity. They speak for the weak and oppressed, want change and justice, even at the risk of chaos Conservatives speak for institutions and traditions and want order even at the cost to some.

Conservatives and liberals need to be the same as yin and yang - not enemies but parts of a whoe,

"If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between for and against is the mind's worst disease."
-Sent-ts-an, c. 700 BCE

Our righteous minds were 'designed' to:
-unite us into teams
-divide us against other teams
-blind us to the truth

Let us:
-understand oru design
-cultivate moral humility
-turn our understanding into a better future for us all

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Kids Table Collective
Ze Frank, Jill Sobule, Rives, the Raspini Brothers

"What's beyond the what-the-fuck?"

These people simply rock. Aspen rocks!

Jill Sobule sings a verse about TED:
"The black swan came and I went broke,
but everything got better when I had my stroke"

Ze Frank - let's just hope they put this up online soon because there is no way to capture how hilariously he summed up a lot of talks.

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Bob Geldof

All human progress depends on unreasonable people. - George Bernard Shaw

"I don't do audio-visual because it always gets fucked up."

The unreasonable persist in trying to change the world to suit themselves. TED is the Olympics of unreasonable people.

Sometimes we confuse science with progress. All it can really do is add a twist to the normal madness.

"We didn't expect that the punk would be Thatcherism and that she would swing her handbag to knock down those institutions." (paraphrased a bit)

"We paid taxes to create surplus food, we paid taxes to store the surplus, and most obscenely of all, we paid taxes to destroy the surplus."

To die of want in a world of surplus is not only intellectually absurd, it is morally repulsive.

  The lingua franca of the planet is not English, it's rock and roll. - thus BandAid, USA for Africa, LiveAid and so on and so on.

The act of putting a dollar in a box is a political act - if there are enough, political policy changes. That's charity - it must continue. If we are desensitized tot he suffering of others, something withers, something is gone, some part of the human necessity is lost.

Poverty is an empirical condition and it can and will be beaten.

Because of TED, Bono asked for a million people and we have 2.4 million, a billion impressions.
We asked for help in Africa and you are wiring up Africa and I ask you to help.
Africa will transform itself through technology and the tech that will do it will be mobile phones.

It's in these ways that the lights of human genius wink out and we cannot let that continue.

I'm going to log mankind for all of us, take all extant photos, movies, drawings, recordings. I'm going to map the unfolding narrative of us and we will watch it, have dialogue.

The political paradigm of the 21st century must be cooperation not competition.
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And so TED2008 comes to an end. So many things to reflect upon, infinite connections to be made of all the provocative and stimulating talks and ideas, and even a letter that needs to be written to some people who do amazing things and also do, like all of us sometimes, some unsettling things. I think they'd want to know what all those things are.

TED2008 Day 4 Session 1, pt 2: How dare we be optimistic?

Al Gore
y'all know who he is

Giving a presentation that he's never given before - that's good because I like to see new things - got to hear his Being Fearless presentation this year and now something else new.

Optimism is characterized as a belief, an intellectual posture. The outcome of which we wish to be optimistic is not going to be created by the belief alone, but by the behavior it brings about.

In order to solve the climate crisis, we need to solve the democracy crisis - we need people advocating, speaking up, using their voices and their votes.

We need to find a unified earth theory. The problems of extreme poverty and disease are connected to the problems of waste, consumption, and pollution.

Environmental challenges fall into three categories - local, regional (acid rain), and global. We have to organize our response appropriately.

MLK jr said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The same is true of the environment - what we do in the poorest countries matters a great deal to our own.

We have to mobilize political will in order to mobilize resources.

A tale of 2 planets: Earth and Venus are essentially the same size with essentially the same amount of carbon. The difference is that on Venus, most of it is in the atmosphere and on Earth, most of it has leached out of the atmosphere and deposited into the ground.

68% of Americans believe that human activity is responsible for global warming
69% believe the earth is heating up in a significant way
Yet when given a list of challenges to confront, global warming is still ranked near the bottom. There isn't a sense of URGENCY in this issue.

Eco ad:
2005 - 6.1 billion tons of CO2 into atmosphere. That's equal to 1.2 billion elephants. "It's time to stop ignoring the 1.2 billion elephants in the room."

Even if the "developed" nations were not in the picture, we would still have a climate crisis.

What's the solution? Put a price on carbon - create a CO2 tax to replace the employment tax.

There's a proposed energy super-grid proposed for Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East - Nature magazine.

Investments - tar sands, shale oil are sub-prime carbon assets based - junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and legs fail - tar sands and shale oil are the toes here, people

780 cities in the US that support Kyoto even though the US is the only nation to not ratify the agreement. I can only hope that we get a change in presidency to change this fact.

We need another hero generation - history has presented us with a choice. We have a culture of distraction and a planetary emergency - we have to find a way to create a sense of generational mission.
"Don't tell me we don't have the capacity to do this - if we had just 1 week's worth of what we spend on the Iraq war, we would be well on our way."

We have the opportunity to rise to a challenge worthy of our best efforts, that has the ability to pull from us more than we thought we could do. We should approach it with joy and gratitude that we are the generation years from now will be celebrated by poets, singers and orchestras, saying "they were the ones."

"If the future of all human civilization depended on me, what would I do? How would I be?" - Buckminster Fuller

TED2008 Day 4, Session 1: How dare we be optimistic? pt1

Perhaps one of the physicists speaking at TED could illuminate for me why none of my belongs fit back into my suitcase quite as well at the end of my trip. I only bought 1 pair of jeans and the majority of my TED gift bag (and the bag itself) went back home in a box already. Much like this conference and my brain...I'm beginning to feel like, just as I have sweaters poking out of the closures of my suitcase, I have ideas and inspiration hanging out of my ears, trying to cram themselves into my brain.

I cannot say enough about the weather this week in Aspen. Each day has been more brilliantly blue, more crisply sunlit than the day before.

I wanted to go ahead and post this before I chicken out and edit out my very strong feelings about the performance going on right now.

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Johnny Chung Lee

He has the Wii hacker guy!

You can download the software for this project for free -- it's been downloaded a half-million times.

He's also used the remote to create a head tracking system:

EA is releasing a game this spring with an Easter Egg embedded using the head tracking technology.

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Kaki King is performing with the Thomas Dolby House Band now -- I haven't talked much about the music but as a whole, it's been outstanding and unexpected. I continue to marvel at Kaki King.

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Paul Collier
author, The Bottom Billion

A billion people have been living in economies that have been stagnant for 40 years. The question isn't how can we be optimistic

Compassion - needed to get ourselves started
Enlightened self interest - needed to get ourselves serious

if this divide continues it will build a nightmare for our children

What did we do the last time the rich world got serious about developing another region was in the late 1940. That was America and the region to be developed (redeveloped) was post-war Europe.

So what did we do? Initiated the Marshall aid program, but even bigger, we opened our markets, liberalized trade, reversed isolationist security policy (100,000 troops in Europe for 40 years), stopped treating national sovereignty as sacrosanct and joined the UN.

We need to be at least as serious now as we were then.

What is the relationship between higher prices of commodity exports and the wealth of exporting countries. Short run - everything goes up, all good. If you have good enough governance, there is no resource boom/bust - everything continues to go up.

Autocracies are often detrimental for resource booms. However, democracy has a significant effect on these resource booms, but the effect is adverse on resource booms. The electoral process is detrimental, but checks and balances are supportive.

Simple proposal - we should have international standards to spell out the 5 key decision points.
1. Resource rights - the current process is currently closed, exclusive, good for the buyer and seller (govt) but not the nation. But through verified auction this can be changed.

We cannot change these societies, but we can help societies re-stack the odds in the favor of those who are struggling.

The cost of promulgating these standards is nil, but until we have critical mass of informed society, politicians will continue to make gestures that have little meaning and impact.
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Nellie McKay
musician

Well, I don't know what to think about this. Nellie McKay has a great style but her first song totally rubbed me the wrong way. From the TED stage, a stage that has only had one person of black African descent on it this year, I don't think the N-word has a place. This isn't a community that has shown a lot of credibility in terms of diversity. Sure, we've talked a lot about helping people of color (by default) in developing and impoverished nations, but it still feels a little bit of us and them -- those of us sitting in the room, allowed in, able to marshall the resources to be here. Some will argue that words are just words, and that's certainly valid. Personally, I really don't think a white person should ever use the word, and certainly not in a context that is extremely lacking in diversity where there is no discussion of what the word means and why it has power.

And for the record, yes, I get it. She's edgy, she's political, she's bringing up issues meant to make people uncomfortable, But it is not OK to bring these up in a way that doesn't allow for discourse. This ugly, divisive word has no context otherwise and therefore is reduced to its most elemental hurtfulness. I hope the TED community will think carefully about why the word was used, what the context really meant, and how it's a word too often wielded in hate, ignorance and fear.

TED2008 Day 3, Session 4: What stirs us?

We had a few 3-minute talks here in Aspen before this session which I missed most of, but one I caught a bit of was about Zero Footprint, an online calculator and information tool.

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Helen Fisher
author, Why We Love

Have you ever been rejected by someone you really loved?
Have you ever rejected someone who really loved you?

95% of people asked say yes to one or both.

The most romantic poem she's read:

Fires run through my body -- the pain of loving you. Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you. Sickness wanders my body with my love for you. Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you. Consumed by fire with my love for you. I remember what you said to me. I am thinking of your love for me. I am torn by your love for me. Pain and more pain. Where are you going with my love? I'm told you will go from here. I am told you will leave me here. My body is numb with grief. Remember what I've said, my love. Goodbye, my love, goodbye.
-anonymous Kwakiutl Indian poem

Brain activity in people who had just been dumped - the area associated with love (you love them harder even though you want to move on), the region calculating gains and losses, and the region associated to deep attachment to others. No wonder people suffer and there are so many crimes of passion - you are engulfed with love, feeling very attached and intensely motivated to take big risks.

The less my hope, the hotter my love. - Terence, Roman poet

The god of love lives in the state of need. -Plato

Romantic love is an addiction - you focus on it, think about them obsessively, crave them, distort reality, tolerate more and more of the subject, suffer withdrawal...

The question she is working on now is why do people fall for one person rather than another?

Women get intimacy face to face, looking at each other and talking. Men gain it working side-by-side.

Love is in us, deeply embedded in the brain. Our challenge is to understand each other.

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David Griffin
National Geographic

Flashbulb memory - when all the elements of a scene combine to not just give us what it looked like, but what our emotional connection to the event is.

The pictures were nice and I liked the way he showed how the photographers created a story, but it didn't wow me.

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Chris Abani

He did exactly what Fred does - when he came out and greeted people and when he didn't have the greeting returned, he asked again.

"My search is always to find ways to chronicle, share and document stories about everyday people that offer transformation and transcendence that are not sentimental or look away from the darkness and ugliness in us."

"The world is never saved in grand gestures but in the accumulated acts of simple acts of compassion." (I missed words there.)

When his mother cried after a stranger gave her some clothing when she was in need, she said, "You can steel your heart against any kind of horror, but the simple act of kindness of a stranger can unstitch."

In Uganda for a long time, the words for marriage and rape were the same.

Lucille Clifton
Libation - I need to find the words for this poem because it's great, but my quick and dirty google didn't turn them up on the first page.
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Benjamin Zander
author and conductor of Boston Philharmonic

I love the story he usually tells about the 2 shoe salesmen who go to a remote area and both telegram back about the prospects:
One said "Prospects grim, they never wear shoes here."
The other said, "Prospects are incredible, they don't have shoes yet!"

"I'm a one-buttock player" - the music moves his body around. (@missrogue and I went to Twitter this at the same time and we've finally worked it out so we'll take turns instead of double tweeting the good stuff)

People aren't tone deaf. Everybody has a fantastic ear. If so many people were really tone deaf, they'd never know when to shift a manual transmission car.

He played a Chopin prelude in different ways, finally telling a story of the longing in the piece and how the notes reflect the feelings and they need to be treated as a whole, not as each individual note to be plunked out on the keyboard.

"For me to join the B to E, I have to stop thinking about every note along the way. This is about vision, the long line, like the bird who flies over the fields and doesn't care about the fences below."

"The conductor's power depends on his ability to make other people powerful. My job is to awaken possibility in other people. If the eyes are shining, you know you are doing it. If they aren't shining, I must ask, "Who am I being that my players aren't shining?"

Possibility to live into -- we might not be able to achieve perfection or a very lofty goal, but we can work into it, live into it.

Please consider reading his and his marriage partner's (Rosamund Stone Zander) book The Art of Possibility. It's a short and easy read, but very inspiring.

He told a story about some of his students not showing up to watch a performance and how disappointed and mad he was and Rosamund told him to apologize. "If people don't do what you want them to do, you can always apologize because you didn't enroll them."

He went way over, but I don't think anyone cared at all. We ended with everyone singing the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 - he put the words up on the screen in German (sort of phonetically spelled) and worked us through it and each time we'd all start singing and he'd stop us and encourage us to put more into it. He told a story about a musician who was practicing a piece for an interview to be the associate (2nd chair?) cellist? (sorry, can't remember) in a Barcelona orchestra. Zander thought the guy was holding back - he kept working with him until the guy was giving it all he had and the guy went away to Spain for the interview. He came back and said he hadn't gotten the job because he played the first way, holding back. But then he said, "oh, fuck it" and went to Madrid, auditioned for 1st chair in their orchestra and got it. So Zander says that you have to get BTFI - Beyond the "fuck it" point.

That's the long way of saying that we got BTFI and it was incredible for that many people to be singing together one of the most joyous and magnificent pieces of choral composition ever created at the end of day 3 of one of the most stimulating thinking experiences imaginable.
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After the session ended, we all loaded up on shuttles, went into town and hopped on gondolas to go up the mountain. I had the pleasure of sitting and talking with Scott Belsky of Behance, a company that makes beautifully designed productivity tools for creative people. If you are in need of something to help you manage your work in a way that isn't too rigid,if you're into productivity, Getting Things Done, or  if you just love cool paper products and office supplies, you have to check out their stuff.

 

The other great part about the gondola ride was the night sky. I have never seen so many stars as I did this evening. The altitude, the lower level of light pollution in the area and the winter sky combined in the most spectacular way.