I take back what I said previously about you not appreciating tacos. There are many fine authentic Mexican taco trucks, at least in warm weather. Also in warm weather, your citizens apparently hang out in public spaces and bring their unique talents to the public arena, and I'm glad to see this.

However, this trip has strengthened my beliefs about you in two ways:
First, exclusivity is the primary commodity in New York. And frankly, that's just not hip anymore.
Second, New Yorkers can't do anything for themselves. Including, apparently, opening doors and using a restroom sink. I'm not sure if you, Manhattan, are encouraging or responding to this phenomenon. But as a Westerner, it feels pretty awkward to have a guy standing in the bathroom turn on the water for you and then hand you a paper towel.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Over the Edge, the roleplaying game of surreal danger, Atlas Games is open sourcing the game's core rules as WaRP: Wanton Role-Playing System. The Open Game License is a popular "open source" license for role playing games, introduced by Wizards of the Coast when they released Dungeons & Dragons version 3.

Over the Edge has a very simple and flexible rule system that's designed to let you play any character you can imagine and tell any story you like. I've created Over the Edge characters as mundane as a mystical soup-makin' chef from New Orleans and as wacky as a sentient trench coat who psychically controls the person wearing him, questing for his lost wife (a fedora) and their two young boots. I've also wanted to play Count Von Count in a one shot :-)

Over the Edge is set in the imaginary island of Al Amarja. It's a place full of conspiracies and fringe science and street gangs and ancient mysteries. It's a great place to play, and the WaRP system can expand the playground to anywhere you can imagine. Space westerns? High fantasy? Regency romance? International thriller? Blaxploitation? Give it a go! And with the OGL rules, you can send all your players a link to a PDF so they can arrive at your house ready to play.

I know some of my Italian friends will like this story. It's about organized crime in northern Naples, which has some differences with the Sicilian-style Mafia that Americans are used to stories about. Most prominently, for a couple decades there was little violence. The head of the dominant clan, Paolo Di Lauro, had more of an accountant style than the typical murder-prone crime boss.

One thing that was clear to me when reading the article is that organized crime is all about social capital. And in Italy, the government doesn't have a lot of social capital:

An anti-Mafia judge told me that some of the police—even those who have not been corrupted—would rather not see the government prevail, because they fear the even greater disorder that would result. Another judge pointed out to me that the government needs the Camorra for social control. He said, “For a political leader, it’s easier to speak to a Camorra boss than to 100,000 people to get a message across.” More than that, he said: the Camorra sets standards, enforces laws, keeps police power itself in check, fends off aggressive tax collectors, employs a huge percentage of the population, creates and distributes wealth more efficiently than any other sector of society, and stands in to keep things going, especially in times like these, when the national economy has failed and the currency itself is at risk.

One popular narrative about the European financial crisis has been that Mediterranean cultures are lazy while Northern European cultures are hard-working. But I think it goes deeper than that: around the Mediterranean, a lot of work is put into building social capital and paying social taxes–from favors to protection money–and avoiding the government's tax collectors. In the north, there's a tradition of strong government and paying your taxes. Of course, in the Northern style, a clever financial mastermind can accumulate massive wealth without paying off a whole city's worth of associates. He'll also be less likely to face solitary confinement.

... it's not the self-driving car project. But it is what I've been working on for quite a while.

Google Drive includes file sync programs for Mac and Windows; smart phone apps, online viewing of PDFs, Office documents, images, videos, and text; an updated organizational UI for the Google Docs list; a folder-focused UI; file search using OCR and Google Goggles image recognition, and a lot more. It's closely integrated with Google Docs, so you can use the same fine-grained sharing for photos of your kids, scanned tax documents, and CAD drawings as you can for a family budget or a short story.

Google Drive is a much more effective backup strategy than my previous "drag all the files from my old computer to my new computer, maybe twice" practice. By storing my old school papers and various projects in the cloud, I can access them anywhere, even if my house burns down or my laptoo gets stolen. I also took the opportunity to convert a lot of my AppleWorks 6 files to PDF to avoid proprietary format bitrot. Maybe I'll eventually gettgem up on my website.

Google Drive has been a long time coming and people have wanted it for a long time. I'm glad to have helped bring it to fruition.

Comment on this post and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

A month and a half ago, vvvexation participated in this meme and I said "I'd love some prime subjects." I just recently noticed that I have this draft sitting around that I should post.

prime rib

I'm not particularly picky about which part of the animal my meat comes from. I usually cook sausage and stir fry when I make dinner for myself. Lengua plus onions and cilantro is my favorite taco filling. I enjoy ordering pho with bible tripe, partly because the name sounds funny.

prime numbers

I remember reading that 37 was the "most random" number. It's prime, it's not a number that turns up naturally very often, it's bigger than ten but less than a hundred, and it kind of rolls off the tongue. In other words, it seems like a great choice when people are asked to "pick a random number."
Really big prime numbers are cool too. They're a crucial part of digital encryption. They can also have questionable legal status.

primary colors

At lunch one day, some of us observed that Google is kind of like preschool: there are lots of toys around, you can have a snack in the middle of the afternoon if your blood sugar is low, you're free to take a nap, and everyone eats lunch together in a cafeteria in primary-colored chairs.
I like primary colors and other colors that are easy to express in the RGB color space. Partly this is because I'm much more of a symbol-processing geek than an artist. I'm aware that using more subtle colors provides a more appealing visual experience, which is why I let other people be in charge of how things look.

primal scream therapy

It can be very cathartic to yell when you're as mad as hell. I'm not sure it would be a good practice for a 50-minute therapy session, since after the first two minutes or so you typically run out of things to be mad about or you've gone horse. 50 minutes staring at a Munch painting might be pretty therapeutic, though.

lexical priming

Lexical priming is the effect of word and grammar associations such that when we hear or read a particular word, we expect another word or grammatical construct. Conversely, if one is present but the other is missing, the phrase may sound weird. For instance, if a maw were described as anything but gaping would seem off.
I suppose lexical priming might help explain why most people have trouble understanding legalese. They don't have much priming for the words and structures used, so understanding the text is a bit like reading in a foreign language, even though you know the meaning of most of the words.

the genus Primula

I'm not a big fan of flowers (he said, sitting naked in the back yard enjoying the smell of dandelions, bluebells, and columbines). As noted on my LJ profile, I'm the only user interested in genus allium. Perhaps the layers of onion, garlic, leek, shallot, chive, and scallion appeal to my software engineering side. Among eudicots, I'm a big fan of family Cactaceae and other succulents. (He says, sitting naked in the sun.)

Optimus Prime

I haven't watched more than a couple minutes of Transformers since I was four or five, but I remember enjoying the show, particularly the noise they made when they switched form. The action figures (of which I owned none) were pretty cool too. Four years ago, I mused that a Transformers RPG could be pretty fun. And now that self driving cars are a real thing, it wouldn't have to seem too futuristic.

Originally posted by bashorg at Bash.org QDB - 950581

Earth Day is this Sunday, which means Saturday must be Earth Eve. Or, depending on your persuasion, "I think I'll pass on the munchies day."

Regardless of what you're celebrating, do it at my house! As usual, show up at or after 2 PM and stay until you have something more glamorous to do. Bring any games, friends, food or drink you'd like to share; those with dietary restrictions are responsible for their own intake.

In case you haven't memorized my coordinates yet, I live at 4245 Martin Dr., Boulder, CO 80305. My phone number is 303-EEL-WANG. I think the street sign for Martin Drive at Table Mesa might still be missing (big wind storm); if you miss it, turn north on any numbered street.

Happy middle-of-April!

I bought a car made in Eastern Europe. The Czech Engine light is on all the time.

(best said in a Steven Wright monotone)

The problem with social networks is that they present the same context for all sharing, no matter what the content. Even with LiveJournal friends groups and Google+ circles, your heart wrenching post about inner demons might show up between two lolcats and people think you're a let down when they want a laugh. Or your flippant lolcat might show up between an article about child abuse and a video of an earthquake and you come across as an uncaring douche.

In real-life sharing the people in the audience aren't the only determinants of appropriate sharing. The context they've created is also key. The things we share with a couple friends at a rock concert–passion, dance, exhaustion–are different than what we share with the same people in a coffee shop–analysis, discussion, confusion‐even though they're both done in public.

I don think big social network sites are able to tackle this well. The goal of UI designers is to create a simple mental model for users interacting with the system and the goal of software engineers is the create a simple operational system for interpreting user actions. Neither goal is helped by a flourishing diversity of contextual social norms. I hope all the bulletin boards and topic-focused sites survive in an ecosystem dominated by the Twitbooks. Because humans do really well when they can use location and appearance as cues to social behavior.

Apparently all the AIM developers have been fired by AOL.

I'm rather disappointed by this. I've had an AIM account since '97 or '98, which predates flwyd.dhs.org (1999), trevorstone.org (2002), LiveJournal (2001), and (of course) GMail. The communication systems I used before that -- bvsd.k12.co.us, colorado.edu, nyx.net, irc.undernet.org -- don't get my attention much these days, but I've been logged into AIM pretty much continuously (summers in college on dialup) since I was a freshman.

AIM really brought real-time internet communication to the masses. IRC and ytalk and other protocols had been around a long time, but getting your technically challenged classmate to install mIRC and find you on a channel was a way bigger hurdle than saying "Hey, install AIM and we can talk about this project tonight." Since then, a bunch of other protocols and clients have sprung up, with pretty much the same feature set: A small window with back and forth chat, a scrolling buddy list with with icons and groups, different noises for different event types.

I suppose most of the AIMers are using Facebook Instant Messenger or whatever they call it over there. But unlike Facebook and Google Chat and, to some extent, Yahoo! and MSN messenger, there never seemed to be an assumption or a desire to get AIM users to be "full" AOL users. Anybody could download a client, even written by someone else, and create an AOL account that was only ever used for AIM.

In the last year or so, most of my AIM messages were from the same sex chat bot, which was a lot less amusing than the salmon precursor to ChatRoulette. But there are folks in my Buddy list that I'd be interested in talking to, but who I don't know by any other contact means. So if I'm in your buddy list, pick your favorite alternate contact Trevor method. My most ubiquitous chat medium is trevorstone at gmail, but you can also find me at pinkflwyd on Yahoo, or flwyd@livejournal.com on Jabber/XMPP (you can even post by IMing frank). Adium also has me persistently signed in to OkCupid, so yeah.

Or maybe not. But I can still be disappointed.

Originally posted by vsmallarray at Murder Sandwich

I'm not sure if I feel worse for the countries that don't have any films about them, like Suriname, the countries associated with something horrible, like Armenia -> genocide, or the countries whose main film association is another country, like Pakistan -> India.
vsmallarray is the infographic project of the artist behind catandgirl.

Got some time to kill? Been through all Vi Hart's videos on YouTube? The next best thing there is almost assuredly Don't Eat the Pictures, a Sesame Street movie from 1983 full of dark myths and deep characters. I saw this on TV when I was 4. Years later, I remembered parts of it vividly, but nobody my age had any idea what I was talking about. Did I really have an imagination rich enough to come up with this? A couple folks have confirmed my memories that this producted. And now, thanks to scott_lynch, I know what it's called and where to find it.

Originally posted by scott_lynch at Against Big Bird, The Gods Themselves Contend In Vain

To celebrate the government declaring a holiday for Washington and Lincoln, you should come to my house on Monday afternoon and play some games!

As usual, things get started some time after 2pm and go until everyone goes home. So even if you have to work, stop by in the evening!
Bring snacks, drinks, games, friends, jokes about famous political figures...

I live at 4245 Martin Dr, Boulder CO 80305. You can call me at 303-EEL-WANG. I'll be driving up from Denver, so if I haven't arrived at my house by the time you do, hang out. If the door's unlocked, make yourself comfortable. (But knock so you don't surprise my roommate.)

See you Monday!

Two weeks ago Wednesday, on Boulder's winter bike to work day, I was feeling pretty good on my commute. The weather was warm, there was no snow or ice to be seen, and I had a good head of steam on a downhill and a green light ahead of me on the 28th St. frontage road at Colorado Avenue.

But as I approached the intersection, a white pickup truck suddenly appeared in front of me, making an illegal right turn from northbound 28th. I clamped down on my brakes as hard as I could, but my frankencruiser's brake pads are pretty smooth. With the time dilation of an adrenaline rush it felt like I was gripping the brakes for a couple seconds, but in reality it was probably more like 15 to 20 feet before I hit the truck bed straight on.

( If you don't care to read a long narrative about how I crashed my bike, sprained my wrist, went to the ER, and then went to work for the afternoon, you can stop reading now. )

Celebrate Alan Alda's birthday, Data Privacy Day, the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, the birth of Henry VII, the death of Henry VIII, and the 199th anniversary of the publishing of Pride and Prejudice (those are some old zombies) by playing games at my house. You may also learn how well I can shuffle with one hand.

Where: 4245 Martin Dr, Boulder, CO 80305
When: Saturday, January 28th, 2ish post meridian
Contact: 303-EEL-WANG

Bring drinks, snacks, games, friends, children, private data, Tudors...

New York City has a reputation as "the great melting pot." But long before the Puerto Ricans moved in next door to the Jews and the Italians, the plantations of the South did a lot of melting and cultural exchange. Myths, music, symbolism, and bits of language were passed between former tribesmen who would never have interacted in Africa. Babies were probably born to parents whose extended families were at war with each other. And this melting pot was further flavored by the WASPy culture of the slaveholder, yielding a much more fun version of going to church.

Today, some U.S. cities (particularly in the east) have an Irish neighborhood, an Italian neighborhood, a Greek neighborhood… several generations since anyone came over the Atlantic. But I've never heard of an American city with an Akan part of town and an Igbo neighborhood. Sometimes starting from scratch is more effective than standing on the shoulders of giants.

The theory of supply and demand explains that when a resource is more plentiful, market pressures lower the price, but when a resource is in short supply and high demand, prices go up. Apples are cheap, lobsters are expensive.

This principle ought to apply to the labor market too. The supply of actors exceeds the demand, so most get paid very little, doing uninteresting work. The supply of folks that can sell fast food or dig ditches is pretty high, so they don't get paid very much. Similarly, there's not much demand for driftwood gatherers, so it's a hard way to make a living.

But the model breaks down for high supply, low demand positions. There's a very small and essentially fixed demand for professional baseball players. There's a huge supply of people willing to do the job. But the people who get the job get paid millions, even though they'd probably do it for much less 'cause it sure beats digging dishes. Star actors get way more money, more control, more fame, and more fun roles than their struggling colleagues. In most companies, a promotion means you get more money to have more power and do more interesting and impactful things. If supply and demand worked like they do on the chalkboard, shouldn't a promotion come with a pay cut? Aren't there people who will work as the CEO of a multinational corporation for less than a million dollars?

This illustrates that when it really matters, quality trumps market forces. Even with thousands of Minor Leaguers to choose from, the Major League pays big money to get top quality. And while a CEO with a $5 million salary may not perform ten times better than one who will do it for 500 grand, he may make more than five million dollars of difference. It's more rewarding to be good than to be cheap.

Alternatively, money follows something like the general theory of relativity: very massive bank accounts distort the gravity of the surrounding economic field.

At 05:30 UTC this Thursday, December 22nd, the Earth's axis will be exactly in line with the sun. Seen from the northern hemisphere, the sun will be the furthest south and closest to the horizon at that instant. The winter solstice has been celebrated for millennia by cultures from the Andes to the Urals and from Ireland to Japan.

Lacking precise astronomical tools, and desiring an excuse to party during the cold and dark season, cultures around the world often extended that moment to a day, a week, or more for a festival celebrating light, rebirth, and keeping warm. Scandinavians would gather family and friends and place a large yule log on the fire, feasting and celebrating while the log burned for many days. Similarly, in China, the Dōngzhì Festival features feasting with family. Solstice often marked a key point in the calendar. Celts and Druids created large stone structures structures like Stonehenge and Newgrange, in where a position is illuminated only at the solstice.

Winter solstice is the longest night and shortest day of the year. The cultural symbolism is thus often tied to the return or victory of a sun figure in the local mythology. Some examples:

• Japanese myths tell of the sun goddess Ameterasu being lured back out of a cave and into the sky on winter solstice.
• Korochun, celebrated by Slavs in Eastern Europe, marks the death of the old sun god and his resurrection as the new sun god.
• The practice of lighting the menorah on Hanukkah may have originated as a solstice tradition.
• Hopi and Zuni Indians celebrate Soyal, when the sun returns from a long sleep.
• Sol Invictus, celebrated in the Roman Empire, translates literally as "Invincible Sun."
• During the festival of Şeva Zistané, Kurds celebrate the rebirth of the sun and victory of light over darkness.

The theme birth and rebirth sometimes includes non-solar figures as well. The births of Pryderi (Welsh), Mithra (Persian), and Dievs (Latvian) are all celebrated at the winter solstice. Contemporary Wiccans and Neopagans often celebrate winter solstice as the death of the old god and birth of the young god. Locally, many Neopagans gather at Red Rocks before dawn on solstice to drum up the sun.

Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, falls on December 25th, the designated date of winter solstice in the Julian calendar. Christmas in many contemporary European communities incorporates old local solstice traditions such as the yule log. The practice of Christmas gift giving may have arisen from Saturnalia, widely celebrated in Rome when Christianity was introduced.

I've posted my good photos from this summer to Picasa (or Google+ if you prefer that interface). Based on a conversation on a Google+ post a few weeks ago, I've adopted the following face-tagging policy:

Feel free to tag yourself in my photos. Please don't tag other people unless you know they're okay with it. If you see someone you recognize in a photo and don't know if they've seen it, send them a link.

2011 Winter and Spring

2011 Beltania

2011 Apogaea - Illuminate

2011 Dragonfest

2011 Burning Man

2011 Summer Misc

A recent This American Life is all about that awkward period known as middle school. Near the beginning of the show, they state that middle-school-aged kids have more neuron development than at any other time after infancy. That period of our lives is thus, in large part, us becoming the us we will be in life.

Given that, I think my priorities worked out pretty well. Unsurprisingly, I was a nerdy middle schooler. While some of my classmates were learning how to flirt and switching their dating status every other passing period, I was learning how to use Unix and spending Friday afternoons at Computer Club (which is still happening, even though Scott Dixon retired). I also managed to get elected vice president of student council (probably because I was the only boy running) and competed twice in the state geography bee ('cause I'm a map nerd).

I didn't have anything resembling a date or a girlfriend until I was a senior in high school (summer 1997), but by the end of middle school (June 1994), I'd helped organize an international email pen-pal program via elm, found ASCII kanji instructions via gopher, had multi-way interactive discussions on ytalk before the term "instant message" had been coined, read erotic fiction on Usenet with trn, been confused by vi, and used two web browsers in an age when the computer teacher could still cut out and post every local newspaper article about the Internet. ("Whoa, check out this NCSA Mosaic thing! Unlike lynx, you can see pictures!")

I think it worked out pretty well. I got to put off awkward romantic fumbling until I'd learned what sort of person I'm attracted to. I got to use the Internet when it was still a text adventure. And while I helped the Unix-understanding neurons win the battle against the girl-flirting neurons, today my girlfriend gets excited by the fact that I work at Google. Oh, and in third grade when I gave up on cursive and penmanship and started typing all my school assignments? I totally have no regrets.

Vote for my spark for Ignite Boulder 17. It's near the middle, but you should read all the sparks and pick the other ones you want to see, too.

Growth, Decay, and Balance: Success in a Finite World (by TrevorStone)

When the economy stops growing we call it a crisis, but when flowers stop growing we call it a winter. Using our social capital, we can be resilient and sustainable in a world of ups and downs.

Ignite Boulder 17 will be at the Boulder Theater on November 30th.

A little bird reminded me that Sunday afternoon already features the Big Game Hunt; a day of board gaming with friends in downtown Boulder. Rather than having two parties with one goal, let's just have one. Don't come to my house; instead go to RightNow Technologies at 1300 Walnut, Suite 200. Still starts at 2 PM, goes until 9. Still bring snacks and games, etc. Event details at http://plancast.com/p/805i/boulder-big-game-hunt or http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=294369370576285 if you've got a Facebook account.

The air's getting colder, the satisfying crunch of dry leaves is under our feet, and it's time to all be warm in one room drawing cards, rolling dice, and moving small objects around on a table.

Sunday, October Twenty-third, Two Pee Em Until Late
Forty-two Forty-five Martin Drive, Boulder, See Oh, Eight Oh Three Oh Five
Three Oh Three EEL WANG

Bring a snack, a beverage, a favorite game, some children, or nothing at all!
And maybe by the end of the night we can celebrate a Cardinals victory in the World Series.

Google just announced Android 4.0, code named Ice Cream Sandwich, and a new "this is what a good Ice Cream Sandwich phone is like" Galaxy Nexus. A couple of the new features really stand out for me:

Powerful voice input engine

Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input engine that offers a continuous "open microphone" experience and streaming voice recognition. The new voice input engine lets users dictate the text they want, for as long as they want, using the language they want. Users can speak continously for a prolonged time, even pausing for intervals if needed, and dictate punctuation to create correct sentences. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. After dictating, users can tap the underlined words to quickly replace them from a list of suggestions.

The main reason I'm not a big fan of cell phones is that I'm a very writing-centric person and producing any quantity of words on a smart phone makes me want to bang my head with a Model M. But smooth dictation with easy correction might be enough for me to get a mobile data plan. Speaking of mobile data plans,

Control over network data

Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data for streaming content, synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of users with tiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls for managing network data usage.

In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total data usage on each network type (mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used by each running application. Based on their data plans, users can optionally set warning levels or hard limits on data usage or disable mobile data altogether. Users can also manage the background data used by individual applications as needed.

One reason I haven't gotten my Android on a cell network is that T-Mobile prepaid data comes in two categories, "30 megabytes" and "unlimited." (In their contract plans, they've also got "Unlimited (200 MB)" and "Unlimited (2 GB).") How much data would I transfer in a month? I have no idea because the last time I cared about minimizing network bandwidth was 1998 when I was using a dialup modem. But if I can easily monitor and control bandwidth on cellular networks while transferring as much as needed over WiFi, I might be convinced to pay for the former.

Android Beam for NFC-based sharing

Android Beam is an innovative, convenient feature for sharing across two NFC-enabled devices, It lets people instantly exchange favorite apps, contacts, music, videos — almost anything. It’s incredibly simple and convenient to use — there’s no menu to open, application to launch, or pairing needed. Just touch one Android-powered phone to another, then tap to send.
…
Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth HDP

Support for Wi-Fi Direct lets users connect directly to nearby peer devices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication. No internet connection or tethering is needed. Through third-party apps, users can connect to compatible devices to take advantage of new features such as instant sharing of files, photos, or other media; streaming video or audio from another device; or connecting to compatible printers or other devices.

These two features sound like an opportunity for developers to create some awesome experiences. Imagine a game you play at a large party or gaming convention where people have different clues to a puzzle on their phones and when you meet someone you get closer to finding the solution. Or, in a world where music labels realize that giving away music to gain new fans makes sense, your friend says "Hey, check out this new band I've been digging," you tap phones together, and now you have a copy of the song too.

Oh yeah, you can also unlock your phone with facial recognition. Or, if you have a Richard Stallman approach to passwords, you can set your password to Guy Fawkes.

I just submitted my spark idea for Ignite Boulder 17:

Growth, Decay, and Balance: Success in a Finite World – When the economy stops growing we call it a crisis, but when flowers stop growing we call it a winter. Using our social capital, we can be resilient and sustainable in a world of ups and downs.

This event will be Wednesday, November 30th at the Boulder Theater. Spark voting will be soon, and I'll let you know when it's up. If you're new to the party, here's what I did last time.

I'm in New York for work this week, so I walked down to Zuccotti park last night to check out the general assembly for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some thoughts and pictures are on my Google+ stream. Since it's a public post, you shouldn't need a Google+ account to view that though. If that's not the case, please let me know.

I just had a long and odd dream.

I'm a kid in a rather intense school. They've got an all-day event where there are a whole bunch of games and challenges set up in a pretty wide area in a dry valley with a parking lot next to the highway by the rim. The adults running things are pretty gruff. I'm not remembering specifics of the games, but they're sort of carnivalish in flavor, though without the carney advantage -- they're doable, just hard and somewhat demeaning. Groups of kids go from one to another, and they're supposed to eventually do all of them.

After one or two, I decide the whole thing sucks and is bad for me as a person. I slip away from my group, and am making my way towards the parking lot, but occasionally get pulled into a game. When I reach the parking lot, there's a game in one half of it and a tent with a TV, I think playing sports, and a bunch of adults drinking beer. Really nervous, I slip into the sports bar tent. I end up with a bottle of wine somehow.

As the game to my left comes to a dramatic conclusion, a bunch of turnstiles click together, lights go out, and the area is locked. But the turnstile line is just behind me, and there aren't any turnstiles in the sports bar. The adults get up and walk around, and I quietly slip to the front, walk unobserved out of the tent, out of the parking lot, and start walking down the road with my bottle of wine.

Along the road, I pass some houses and also a few adults from the program I'd gotten away from. Either it was officially over or they didn't recognize me, so they were nice to me and didn't realize I'd skipped out, They also didn't notice the bottle of wine.

I eventually walked down the road and met up with my parents at their car and put the wine in a bag so nobody would notice I had it. They were glad to see me, and thought the event with all the demeaning games was lame, though I don't know why they didn't write me a note to excuse me from the event. Another school's football team showed up. Since most of the kids from my school were at this weird event, I think the other team won by default, but they wanted to scrimmage. They had me join them to play the position "short weakling wide receiver," and I happily went along with it.

Movie recommendation: The Interrupters. I just saw it at IFS. It's playing short engagements around the country and in the U.K. The credits include Frontline, so I assume it's either been on PBS or will be soon. It's intense–I was crying a lot more than I was laughing. It's also important–it's a documentary about people taking action and getting results on a major social problem: inner-city violence, especially the cycle of revenge killings.

The Interrupters is a documentary about the organization CeaseFire in Chicago. Their goal is to stop the spread of violence by interrupting situations that could escalate into somebody getting killed. To do this effectively, the interrupters have to be people that the potentially violent folks can relate to–former gangbangers, hustlers, and convicts. Just as only a recovering alcoholic can effectively lead an AA meeting, these are guys (and a couple women) who participated in the cycle of violence, paid the consequences, and realized they need to help their community understand that those consequences aren't worth whatever benefits folks see in the moment.

This movie goes deep with a handful of interrupters, catching amazingly candid discussions. They start by diffusing an immediate situation, from two groups about to clash in the street to folks who call up feeling they've been wronged and want to kill the punks who messed things up. And while the immediate interventions are a great way to reduce murders one at a time, the real strength of the program is how the interrupters stay involved with the people they've intervened with. The documentary follows several of these long-term relationships, where the goal is to defuse not just a situation, but someone's attitude and outlook on life. And it works: 41-73% reductions in killings in neighborhoods where CeaseFire was working with a 16-35% drop directly attributable to CeaseFire. That speaks to what they call "a public health model to stop shootings and killings." They're working to build up herd immunity to violence in the neighborhood, but instead of vaccinations and doctors they use conversations and role models.

Where I'm Coming From

I was interested in this movie in part because it's similar to the work I do as a Black Rock Ranger at Burning Man, though these guys have orders of magnitude more intense situations, more personal connections, and more long-term value on the line. Some similarities:

Mediation, not authority

In both cases, many the folks we're reaching out to don't always have a good relationship with authority figures in general and police in particular. As mediators, we're not telling people what not to do; we're helping them think through why their first instinct may not be a good idea.

Social capital as a tool: community members, not outsiders

People are more likely to listen to folks they can identify with. As ex-gang leaders and hustlers, the people walking the streets for CeaseFire share a common background, skin color, and communication style as the folks they're reaching out to. As Burners who like to spend their vacation helping out, the Rangers share the aesthetics and lingo of the folks we're interacting with. And despite training and experience, both of us would do worse if we switched scenarios. I can create a much better connection with hippies and ravers and drunks and nerds and artists than I can with African Americans from the inner city. And vice versa, I expect.

It's not about you

This is a phrase the Rangers use in training to remind ourselves that the Ranger isn't the important one in an interaction: we leave our ego in camp and focus on the needs of the participants having a challenge. The movie didn't raise this point explicitly, but I noticed that the interrupters they followed were completely focused on the folks they were trying to help. When they talked about themselves, it was to illustrate a point, to let the person know they'd been there and they'd come around. It's not about trying to be a hero, it's about doing what you can to make things better.

Community acknowledgment

Through the social capital they've built through past actions, both groups are recognized as important mediators. While the movie had a scene of a hospital visit to an interrupter who'd been shot, it seemed the communities generally respected them; both sides in a conflict would listen to a guy with a CeaseFire logo. Rangers similarly focus on social capital, and have created a situation where someone in a khaki shirt and a floppy hat will usually be listened to with respect.

Focus on the immediate problem with an eye to education for the long term

One way the Rangers have it a lot easier than CeaseFire is that our solutions only need to work for a week. If two camps are driving each other crazy with their music, we can mediate a solution that will keep everyone from coming to blows until Sunday, when they get to pack up and not be neighbors any more. We try to educate so that participants will be less likely to have the same problem next year, but our main concern is the immediate situation. CeaseFire's first goal is to make sure nobody gets shot right now. They then take it a day and a week at a time, checking in on their new friends and finding ways to show them how to make progress.

I'm not claiming to be in the same league as these guys–my week in the desert contributing to public safety is nothing compared to stepping into potentially lethal situations, year round, day in and day out. But I'm glad to see that we've independently developed a similar approach to community conflict resolution. This style works well in inner city environments with decades of social baggage from unemployment, challenged schools, and cycles of violence. It also works in a radical experimental city with a demographic slanted towards the college-educated, the middle-class, the artistic, and the broadly-traveled. Maybe that's evidence that it can work in communities all over the country and throughout the world.

I'm turning 100000!

Come celebrate my last day of five digits by playing games and hanging out with cool people.

Sunday, September 25th
2ish PM until late evening
4245 Martin Dr, Boulder, CO 80305

Bring food or drink if you like. Bring a game if you'd like to play it. Presents are not expected, and I'll return the favor by not filling your house with stuff you might not need.

If you'd like to celebrate the occasion by damaging your liver, I recommend Boulder Pirate Con on Saturday night. I'll be at TedX Boulder in the evening, but intend to cap it off with a yo-ho-ho and several drinks of rum around Pearl St. for a couple hours. http://boulderpiratecon.org/ has the schedule.

Hope to see you soon,
Trevor, at the end of his 11111

Boulderites: be on the lookout for a banjo (or a funny-looking black case). From my dad:

Hello, my Friends

My banjo was stolen Friday night from the backseat of my car! I know it's unlikely that any of you will see it, but with your interest in music, anything is possible, and my heart is breaking at the thought of being without my constant companion and muse-partner of the last 40 years. I played it on mountaintops and seacoasts, in forests and prairies, in churches and cabins and concert halls, on ships and trains and hayrides, for young square dancers and very old ladies, for mourners at funerals and for drunks in Irish pubs, for my dying friends and for my newborn children, on couches, stages, radio and TV. All along, of course, I mostly played for myself and for the music.

It's a Gibson Mastertone 5-string, specifically a 1926 Ball-bearing, converted from tenor to 5-string about 1970 at GTR in Nashville. It has a mahogany resonator and neck, with Hearts and Flowers inlay pattern on the ebony fingerboard. The finish is worn on the resonator and peghead, and there is considerable wear on the first few frets. It has an unusual five-finger tailpiece, and the bridge has the initials RW on it. The frosting on the head is worn enough that you can see into the inside. Stamped in the wood on the inside of the shell (have to take the resonator off to see it) is the number 522643600. It was in a black hardshell case with no stickers or decorations, some wear in the handle. Blue plush inside.

Again, I don't expect any of you to find it, but one never knows, and if you could spread the word wherever and whenever you happen to think of it, it can't hurt. I am contacting the police and music stores and pawn shops, but it is a huge and daunting task. I've emailed Banjo Hangout's website, and Banjo NewsLetter, and I'm contacting you and all my friends, mostly just to share my grief with you. If you have any suggestions for me to help me in my search, please let me know, either by email or at 303.442.3939.


Thanks to all of you for your good wishes, your prayers, your influence with the universe, and most of all for your love and friendship.
Fergus

I finished my ranger email art project at a quarter to ten last night.
I finished packing clothes, food, and camping gear at half past midnight.
I finished loading the car at 1:30 AM.
It's now almost noon and we're just about ready to hit the road, meaning we should arrive at the campground near Diamond Hot Springs at a reasonable evening hour.
And hey, I've been getting practice not getting tons of sleep :-)

If you need to get in touch with me in the next week, send correspondence to
Ranger Stonebeard
Ranger Outpost Berlin
3 o'clock and C
Black Rock City, NV 89412

Even if you aren't going to be covered in dust all week, I hope you have a fantastic time.