Strategic oversight

I have a strategic mind-- always angling for the best combination of factors so that the Flow proceeds smoothly. I derive enormous satisfaction from a good plan well executed.

There is nothing wrong with this, but it behooves us strategists to remember that we never have all the information. We need that reminder to keep us humble, and to keep us from wasting too much time planning in an unpredictable world.

I had a perfect taste of this recently.

It is possible for me to be stumped by a situation of overchoice. On Saturday, I stood before the salad dressing section of the grocery store, surveying the possibilities. Quickly my mind assessed all the relevant variables: I wanted something without 17 g of fat per tablespoon, but also not fat-free (they tend to taste awful). I wanted something more like a vinaigrette than a creamy flavor, probably not containing tomato. I wanted something where the ingredient list didn't start with either water or soybean oil, and didn't have sugar or corn syrup listed as higher up than some kind of real flavor. Finally, I was unwilling to pay $6.99 for a bottle, but neither did I want the $1.99 special.

There was no perfect choice among the 30 or so offerings. And I'm embarrassed to say that my mind whirled around, stuck in neutral, for about 10 full minutes. I wanted to choose, but just couldn't. Finally I selected one, convinced that I had optimized all the variables to the degree possible.

Seeds of Change organic basil vinaigrette for $4.59.

Pleased, I went home. But when I unloaded the groceries....... I saw that the bottle was stamped with "Best Before 07/2005."

Aaaaaaaaaagh. I stood in the kitchen laughing my ass off! It was exactly what I deserved.

Morning light

Ah, the switch off of Daylight Saving Time. Suddenly it is getting seriously dark by 6 pm, which will soon be 5:30 pm, and then 5 pm by the time of the winter solstice. Some people take this opportunity to bemoan the encroaching darkness.

But I find a brief period of joy and amusement for about 2 weeks at this time of year. Due to this artificial time shift, there is a brief period when the morning is lighter than it was before! When I get up tomorrow at 5 am, it will be as bright as it was at 6 am a few days ago. In other words, it won't be pitch black at 5 am, as it had been for about 2 weeks in mid-October.

So I am enjoying this short time of lighter mornings!

A measure of success

Well, how about that. The heat capacity devices I used to take my thesis data have been awarded the American Physical Society's 2006 Keithley Award for Measurement Science. These devices were conceived and first built by my thesis adviser, Frances Hellman, but several of her students continued to improve and mass-produce them over the years. In particular, I used to spend summers at the Berkeley Microfabrication Laboratory to make them. Photolithography is kind of fun.

I've written a bit about these microcalorimeters on my regular web page.

Congratulations Frances-- and the whole team, really!

Arlene Blum

If you've never heard of Arlene Blum, here is your chance. It's worth it.

I heard Arlene Blum speak last weekend. She was one of the first women mountaineers, beginning her quest to the top around 40 years ago as an undergrad at Reed College in Oregon. She is currently on a book tour for her second book, Breaking Trail. If you get a chance to see her-- grab it.

Arlene is a dynamic speaker, and she has things to talk about. She's scaled Anapurna, Denali, and a dozen other sky-scraping peaks, including a trip up Everest. Oh, and she also has a Ph.D. in biochemistry and played a key role in getting a toxic chemical banned that used to be used in children's sleepwear as a fire retardant. She is still a fierce advocate of better regulations on the harmful chemicals we live with in our industrialized world.

Her first book, Anapurna, is about that trek specifically, while Breaking Trail is more of a retrospective or memoir on her life as a climber and trailblazer (in so many ways). I was moved by her accounts of bitter cold, painful decisions under tough conditions (push on? Or set up camp for the night? Your life could depend on this decision), and the death of friends at the unyielding hand of Nature.

As in other difficult activities, women are presumed to be incompetent. She encountered many who said women couldn't handle high altitude or the stress of climbing, or were too weak physically, or whatever. When she led a group of women up Everest, taking 7 sherpas along to haul the equipment, she was told that women hadn't really done it alone since the sherpas were male. Of course, when a group of American men were hailed for being "the first Americans" up Everest, no one commented on the 40 non-American sherpas they brought with them!

Later, she did a really neat trek. She walked almost the entire length of the Himalayas, from the edge of China, across Nepal, Tibet, and India, and finally into Pakistan. She did it with one companion over many months. Once, when they came into a village in India, it happened that the Dalai Lama was there -- just for that one day -- giving a lecture in English. How neat!

And later, they almost had to turn back when there was too much snow and they couldn't break trail. They would have had to go back for nearly a month in order to get around the mountain range that was about to be snowed under with the arrival of winter. But then, out of the blue, four yaks appeared, walking in a line. They were essentially breaking trail! Arlene and her companion scrambled to follow the yaks, and eventually made it into a small town with a Buddhist monastery. The monks came bounding out and welcomed them with food and warm tea.

And of course, the whole lecture was done in conjunction with slides showing the most beautiful pictures of snow-capped Himalayan peaks, grinning climbers, and dizzying drop-offs to both sides.

Arlene laughed and said she had "a very busy mind," and had never been able to handle meditation. But she also noted that when you are tiptoeing across an ice-covered ledge, aware that one false move will mean plunging to your death, you get focused. FAST. Mountain climbing is her meditation.

And it certainly seems to have freed her spirit. Check out her website.

PS: Remember those shirts that say "A Woman's Place is on Top"? Arlene was the original creator of those. She sold them to raise money so she could climb Anapurna!

The Corruption Perception Index

Transparency International gathers up data on public-sector corruption in various countries, meaning how severely public officials use their positions to enhance themselves personally.

Their 2005 Corruption Perception Index ranks Iceland as #1 (least corrupt), followed by Finland. The US ranks a respectable #17, after much of Western Europe (although ahead of France!). In fact, this is the same rank the US had in the 2004 Index also.

This provides a nice reminder to those who speak loudly of America's steep plunge into corruption since 2000. Obviously the vector points in that direction, lending credence to the warnings, but a little bit of global perspective shows that panic is unnecessary.

Calm action would serve better, not to mention providing a useful model for others.

The Dalai Lama at Stanford

The Dalai Lama is coming to Stanford! Not that I could get a ticket of course, but in this modern age, he will be webcast. So all of you can follow along too, no matter where you are.

Here's the program. It's November 4th and 5th.

Verse 97

I have been studying Buddhist literature for a year or so now. Not in great detail, but enough to start seeing some patterns. I want to share one particularly amusing thing.

There is a classic text called the Dhammapada. Although there is no creation myth or general "beginning" to the Buddhist mythology (analogous to Genesis in the Christian Bible), many regard the Dhammapada as a "basis" text. The great thing about Buddhist literature is that there are multiple translations, and all scholars read many versions of each sutta (text/lesson/saying) in order to explore different aspects of it. This is not Truth-with-a-capital-T, like some sect's particular version of the Bible for which all others are blasphemy. This is religious scholarship at its best.

There are lots of translations of the Dhammapada. I got interested because my teacher Gil Fronsdal recently did his own translation and gave an evening of readings from it. I have also read several other translations of it.

[What is it translated from? We don't actually know what language the Buddha spoke. Most of the stuff was finally written down in Sanskrit, which was later translated into Thai and now English and many other languages. The earliest texts are usually called "the Pali canon," because Pali was the spoken language presumed to be common at the Buddha's time.]

Let's talk about Verse 97. This one is hilarious.

The whole thing is an extended pun. In other words, it's a joke-- you know, they had jokes even in 500 BC. And even serious meditators like jokes. It was probably intended to shock the listeners and get them paying attention.

The literal translation goes something like this:

"The man who is faithless, ungrateful, a burglar, who destroys opportunities and eats vomit — he truly is the most excellent of men."

Um, right! But if you get the joke, you see that there are other ways to translate these indelicate words. Bhikkhu Bodhi says it this way:

"The man who is without blind faith, who knows the Uncreate, who has severed all links, destroyed all causes (for karma, good and evil), and thrown out all desires — he, truly, is the most excellent of men."

And Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes it thus:

The man beyond conviction
knowing the Unmade
who has severed connections
who's destroyed conditions
has disgorged expectations:
the ultimate person.

Gil had yet another version, but I don't have his book yet.

Now compare these translations-- all of which were done by actual Buddhist monks or teachers-- to the "academic" translation by the Professor of Buddhist Studies, Glenn Wallis:

The person who is beyond faith
and who understands the unconditioned,
who cuts off rebirth, forgoes opportunity,
and gives up wishing--
that one is a superior person.

Uh oh! Wallis unwittingly used "forgoes opportunity," which is in the joke portion! He apparently didn't get that that's the joke, and he was supposed to use something like "thrown out desires" or "disgorged expectations." I checked the footnote about this verse, and Wallis doesn't even mention that the whole verse can be seen as a pun.

In other words, the academics don't really get it. This is the peril of just knowing about Buddhism, not actually doing the practice.