Greater expectations

Posted on October 6, 2011 by gydle

The passing of Steve Jobs has rocked the world. Tributes and retrospectives, quotes and video clips, comments and thoughts are inundating the Internet – on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, on blogs, e-mails and news platforms. It’s sobering to realize that very few of us inhabited these places even just a decade ago. Now, largely thanks to Steve Jobs, we’re comfortably ensconced in this connected, vibrant community. And our lives are so much richer for it.

I was thinking today about expectations. I wondered how Steve Jobs’ parents felt about him not graduating from Reed College. Maybe it wasn’t that big a deal to them. Maybe they didn’t have an image of him as college-educated, so he wasn’t letting them down. But then again, maybe he was.

At one point in his career, when he was leaving Apple, he said to a small group of employees, “I don’t wear the right kind of pants to run this company.” (He was wearing jeans – and barefoot!) Another time, when asked what market research went into the iPad, he replied: “None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”

I’m no Steve Jobs expert, but it seems to me that he did a remarkable job of freeing himself to follow his intuition and passion. When crunch time came and he had to make a decision, he chose to take his own path. He didn’t make any compromises. He knew.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Steve Jobs.

Most of us spend our lives working hard, striving, trying to do our best. We all want to make a difference, to leave this world a little better off because we were in it. But let’s face it, we’re most of us square pegs in square holes. We’re not the crazy ones. We’re the ones who feed the crazy ones, listen to their crazy ideas, do their crazy laundry, pay their crazy bills, teach their crazy kids. We’re the ones maintaining the boats that the crazy ones come along to rock.

But here’s the news flash: everyone, deep down, has a piece of that craziness in them. And sometimes it rears up its head and wants its day in the sun.

Why should the misfits have all the fun, after all? They know that satisfying other people’s expectations is incompatible with who they need to be and no fun to boot, so they forge on, shocking, upsetting and amazing people – and changing the world. It might take us square pegs a little longer, but if we’re lucky, we get a glimpse of it, too. That “divine cockeyed genius” that takes possession of you in order to express something larger than yourself is not something to be ignored, no matter when it appears in your life.

Steve Jobs was right. Here’s to the crazy ones. Set your own bar. Set it high.

image: Carl Blake

A bittersweet Nobel

Posted on October 4, 2011 by gydle

It’s that time of year again – Nobel Prize season. Today the physics prize was announced, and all over the twittosphere science writers were tweeting about one of the recipients – the first Nobel Prize winner with a non-professional twitter account! (@cosmicpinot) Would it, could it out-trend the iPhone 5 announcement? How many followers would he have by the end of the day? (It went from 350-1,230 by the end of the day in Switzerland….) Continue reading →

Sandal spotting

Posted on October 2, 2011 by gydle

I just got back from running the Morat-Fribourg race – 17.17 km over bucolic Swiss countryside from the charming walled town of Morat (Murten in Swiss German) to Fribourg. The race has historical roots; it supposedly retraces the steps of a courier who was spreading the news that Charles the Bold had been defeated in a nearby battle. This was back in 1476. The runner carried a branch from a linden tree. Like so many runners to follow him, he collapsed on arrival. They planted a linden tree to mark the event.

I’m not going to get into Swiss history here because I would definitely be out of my depth. Who the heck was Charles the Bold and what was he doing in Switzerland? I’d just reveal my ignorance. (Wait, didn’t I just do that?) The race, however, is very popular. There are people who have run Morat-Fribourg every year without fail for most of their adult lives. This was number two for me.

The defining feature of this race is its altitude profile. (If you look at the link, notice all the first-aid stations…) It can be summed up in two words: bad-ass hills. The race finishes on a brutal uphill. This year I ran it in my New Balance minimalist trail shoes that have recently become my number-one preferred footwear. I was a little nervous about this because the race is run entirely on pavement. Up to now, most of my runs in the minimalist shoes have been at least partly on trails. (They’re trail shoes).

They were fine. Perfect. My feet feel great. My left calf muscle is a little sore, but it was 17.17 km, a lot of uphill. I suppose that’s to be expected. I’m sure a couple of beers and some chocolate will take care of it.

But that’s not the news. The news is that for the last 10k of the race, I ran alongside a woman who was wearing Tarahumara-style sandals!! Universes are truly aligning here. This cannot be a coincidence.

Let’s backtrack for a minute to the pre-race milling about in the starting area and the port-a-potty lines. I spent a lot of time looking at other people’s feet. NO ONE was wearing anything other than bonafide, cushioned, stablilized, run-of-the-mill running shoes. No one but me, that is. So imagine my surprise when a pair of huarache-type sandals edged into my peripheral vision on a hill at about 6 miles. WOW! She wasn’t wearing lycra, either. All of a sudden, the race got a lot more interesting.

We had the same basic pace, that is to say, strong on the ups and lame on the downs – without all that cushioning you don’t tend to overstride and slap your feet down so much doing downhill. Even though we were both running along in our own little zones, I loved every minute – I’d found a kindred spirit. Her form, which unfortunately I got a good look at as she pulled away from me on the last hill, was impeccable. I tried to imitate it, even as I was internally empathizing with the poor courier and his linden branch, and worrying about my own imminent collapse.

I didn’t collapse after all, and as I caught up with her in the finish chute I congratulated her on her footwear. She pointed mine out, too. She said she’d tried to find shoes like mine in Switzerland, unsuccessfully. I told her I’d gotten them in the US, and she raved about all the great possibilities in footwear that could be had across the pond. We basked for a moment in our mutual admiration. She asked me if I’d read Born to Run. Does the bear shit in the woods? Is the Pope Catholic? Then we went our separate ways.

The only other person I saw wearing anything alternative was a man walking barefoot across the finish line, way at the back of the pack. But he was carrying his shoes and his feet had some really nasty-looking blisters on them, so I don’t think the barefoot part had been planned ahead of time. He didn’t look too happy.

On a brief, last barefoot note – last week I walked barefoot all the way from the nasty gnarly trail I photographed for my barefoot blog post to our house the other day (maybe 2km). I just had a sudden desire to go barefoot. It was painful, but great. I like feeling the ground without an intermediary. One of the commenters on my Running and Rambling post obviously lives near me because he recommended a path that I know well. That’s my next step, to run/walk that trail barefoot. I’ve survived Morat-Fribourg, so I’ll do it next week and keep you posted!

About that gut feeling

Posted on September 28, 2011 by gydle

More news on the microbiome. As I explained in my post about bacterial crowdsourcing, each and every one of us hosts about 100 trillion microbes in and on our bodies. This population is known as the “human microbiome.” They’re everywhere – armpits, butt cracks, skin, nostrils… and guts. Our guts alone harbor more than 1000 different kinds of bacteria.

The microbiome is a very hot area of research right now, and rightly so, in my opinion. The US National Institutes of Health is pouring money into the Human Microbiome Project in much the same way they funded the Human Genome Project starting in 1990. Understanding our own cells isn’t enough, see, cuz guess what? All those critters probably aren’t just sitting there doing nothing.

Recent research bears this out. A team from University College Cork recently reported on research in which they fed mice probiotic bacteria for six weeks and then observed their behavior. The mice receiving the probiotics exhibited fewer signs of stress and anxiety. They spent more time exploring nerve-wracking places like elevated walkways and had a smaller spike in their stress hormones when placed in water, another really scary mouse experience. Lead researcher John Cryan was psyched:

“This was really exciting because it tells us the animals are more chilled out and don’t mount the same stress response.”

Even more interesting is that when the researchers cut the vagus nerve (which connects the nerve cells in the gut with the brain), all these beneficial effects vanished. The probiotics aren’t affecting the brain chemistry directly, they’re affecting the gut chemistry, which then gets transmitted somehow to the brain.

Jonah Lehrer wrote about the research in the WSJ, “The Yogurt Made Me Do It.” He proved once again why he’s my all-time favorite science writer by focusing on the study’s philosophical implications. Most of us “feel” like our minds are different than our bodies. But if we extrapolate from that mouse study and assume the premise might also hold true with humans, then what we’ve got in our guts affects how we feel, and how we experience the world. You should really read the whole article, but here are a couple juicy snippets if you don’t have time:

There’s nothing metaphorical about “gut feelings,” for what happens in the gut really does influence what we feel.

This research shows that the immateriality of mind is a deep illusion. Although we feel like a disembodied soul, many feelings and choices are actually shaped by the microbes in our gut and the palpitations of our heart. Nietzsche was right: “There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.”

In another piece of recent research, scientists show that antibiotics can permanently destroy some species of our gut flora. Maryn McKenna writes about it in her Wired blog Superbug. We’ve evolved along with our microbiome in a lovely symbiotic adaptation that’s gone on over countless millenia. Are we eradicating all that hard work in just two generations by flagrantly overtreating common, non-life-threatening infections? Connect these two pieces of research and see what you get. Good gut bacteria = good mental health. Antibiotics kill gut bacteria permanently. Depressed, anyone? Stressed? My question: can yogurt offset this? Are my children going to spend years in therapy or pop Prozac for the rest of their lives because of all that pink antibiotic they swallowed when they were babies? Is the whole thing just a Big Pharma Plot?

As I dug through these fascinating bits of evidence of the microbiome’s importance in human health, I ran across yet another connection. Last June, NewScientist magazine reported on research that found that autistic children had a different “gut bacteria signature” in their urine than normal children.

“It adds another link to the gut bacterial involvement in the onset of disorder,” says Glenn Gibson of the University of Reading, UK, who has previously identified abnormally high levels of clostridium bacteria in children with autism.

One possibility is that the gut bacteria in children with autism are producing toxins that might interfere with brain development. One of the compounds identified in the urine of autistic children was N-methyl-nicotinamide (NMND), which has also been implicated in Parkinson’s disease.

They were hopeful that this could be used as a sort of diagnostic tool, in the hope that addressing the problem earlier, even before behavioral traits showed up, would be beneficial. I hope they go further than this, and try and figure out a way to restore the health or these kids’ gut microbiomes, rather than just help them cope with the effects of toxic ones.

All this research illustrates that the gut microbiome plays a critical role in far more than just our gastrointestinal health. I already wrote about the possibility that the microbiome very likely plays a role in cancer. It’s a good thing that we’re broadening scientific inquiry beyond the limited scope of the human genome. There’s a whole lot more in our navels (and our breakfasts) that merits a good, long gaze.

Dutch treat

Posted on September 26, 2011 by gydle

In my last post I mentioned that I took a week-long trip to Holland. This was not Amsterdam; no, sir, this was the “real” Holland, according to my friend Mieke. Although they’ve lived in the US for years, she and her husband Jan are both Dutch and they have tons of relatives in Holland. I tagged along with her, occupying spare bedrooms all over the country: at a potato farm in the southwest, in the northern village of Zevenhuisen, and in the central city of Gorinchem, just outside Utrecht.

A word on Dutch pronounciation:

Gorinchem is not pronounced “gore-in-kem.” No, for the first syllable, you have to kind of make a gagging sound in the back of your throat. Try putting your tongue up around your tonsils and then pushing air out through them: “aghhhhh.” Then the rest of the word follows fast, kind of like this: “ghhhhohr-i-ghhhhem.”

You, like me, might have grown up thinking that Gouda cheese is pronounced “Goo-dah.” You would be wrong. The -ou phoneme in Dutch is pronounced “ow.” So this is “Ghhhow-dah.” Be sure to get that guttural mucusy growl in the back of the throat going. I’m sure it works better if you’ve eaten some cheese.

I had a few revelations on this trip.

One: Holland is flat. And by all rights most of it should be under water. We went to see a truly formidable engineering project designed to foil mother nature – a storm surge barrier on the western edge of Seeland. It’s no fluke that this country has some really top-notch engineering schools. They need it. The barrier has massive sheets of metal that can be lowered to keep the sea out, should unusually high tides threaten the land. Getting it in place cost 2.5 billion euros, took more than 30 years and necessitated the invention of all kinds of special equipment. This is just one part of an immensely complicated system of dikes and dams and barriers that protects the southwestern part of the country — see the deltaworks page for details. Seems to me it would have been so much easier just to pay these people to move to higher ground somewhere? Like, say, Switzerland? I thought, as I toured the project … but hey, home is home. Here’s a map from the site showing all the places where they’re keeping the water under control:

I have a feeling that the Dutch hadn’t slept well for centuries, particularly when it was raining hard, until this project was finished. Queen Beatrix inaugurated it in 1986. I sure hope the Greenland ice sheet stays put. Might not be a bad idea to invest in a Swiss chalet, just in case…

For someone who grew up in the desert, all this water is mindboggling. In Holland, there isn’t any petrichor. I doubt the Dutch lie in bed feeling comfy and cozy when the rain is falling outside, and go out excitedly the next morning to measure how many hundredths of an inch fell in the rain gauge, like I do at home in New Mexico. In Holland, water is everywhere. Most of the fields are bordered by canals. The clouds are low to the ground, it rains in a kind of misty way a lot of the time, and there is often a strong wind, caught by lines of tall trees or massive white windmills as it whooshes by.

Two: You can put almost anything on a slice of bread. Smoked herring and raw onions, for example. Another favorite: slather a piece of bread with butter and then pile chocolate sprinkles on it. The sprinkles stick to the butter. Any stray sprinkles that fall off can be recuperated by licking your finger and pressing it onto the plate. The grocery stores have a whole section of boxed sprinkles. Little kids definitely have it good here. One day when I went down to breakfast there was a bowl of strawberries on the table. Guess where they ended up?

Three: I have a new appreciation for potatoes. Our first stop was on a farm, where Mieke’s brother-in-law grows potatoes, among other things. These potatoes (“pypers” – prounounced “peepers” in Dutch) are destined to become French fries sometime in the spring. Here is the truckload of potatoes on its way into the barn:

Just look at all those carbohydrates! I took home my very own potato, a huge specimen in the form of a game controller. Here it is in the company of a quarter and a euro.

Four: Just because it’s flat doesn’t mean that the cycling is easy. A good headwind, and all bets are off. My legs are still recovering.

On an unrelated note: My apologies to those who tried to subscribe to the RSS feed and got suggestions for Hot Mamas or Dating Connection. I didn’t know anything about Feedburner until last week. Now that it’s straightened out, feel free to subscribe and get Gydle delivered to your cyberdoor absolutely hassle-free. Either that or bookmark it. And please leave comments! I was absolutely stunned to read the comments on my Running and Rambling post – I had two suggestions for barefoot runs in my neighborhood by people who obviously live really close to me, close enough that they recognized where the photo on the post was taken. The world is tiny, isn’t it?

Barefoot journal

Posted on September 23, 2011 by gydle

Well, it happened! My piece about barefoot running has been posted on Running and Rambling! Go read it now! Comment on what a great post it is, and then please come back and read this account of my very first forays into running without shoes on. (There’s a link at the end of the post to redirect you to the journal here.)

For those of you who are coming from Running and Rambling, welcome. I hope you’ll stay around and read about stuff like crowdsourcing, the microbiome, how to kiss acquaintances in Switzerland and why Craig Venter is in trouble for quoting Proust in a junk portion of artificial DNA. I post new stuff twice a week, on average. It’s all over the map.

To get down to business, then: This is the trail I run on along Lake Geneva, the scene of the forays into barefooting recounted below. No cars, no glass, no snakes, no problem…

Week 1:
Tuesday: I decide to follow Donald’s wise example and take things very slowly. Heading past the friendly bodyguards staked out in front of the Chechnyan’s house, I run my usual 10k along the lake. I concentrate on bending my knees, as Barefoot Ken Bob suggests. On the way back, I take off my shoes and walk a 100m section of the gravel path. Sweet Jesus! How will I ever be able to run on this? I’m relieved there is no one witnessing my wincing, egret-like perambulation. Back home, I consult Ken Bob and discover that I should have kept my head up, not down, while walking. Clearly, this is going to take some time. The soles of my feet are about as resistant as the foam on my cappuccino.

Here’s a picture of just what I’m dealing with:

Friday: This time, I go back and forth on the same brutal stretch of gravel. Ken Bob says you have to start on the gnarliest bit of gravel you can find, otherwise you won’t get the form right, and you’ll get injured. Is it my imagination or does this hurt less than it did on Tuesday? I keep my head up. Damn, these little stones are sharp. I try to visualize the ball of my foot morphing to spread my weight over the stones. I imagine making little running steps but am not able to execute them. I am positive I’m going to puncture the sole of my foot. Every few meters I have to step off onto the grass for a break. Luckily there’s nobody around but an elderly couple, and they ignore me.

Week 2
Monday: Today, I remove my shoes 100m earlier. This section is not as gnarly, and I can get a little jog going in places. A bit of mud feels delicious squelching between my toes. I swear I can feel the ball of my foot adapting to the ground as it hits, and I concentrate on lifting my foot up instead of pushing off. Pretty soon I reach the nasty section, and sure enough the running gets too painful, and I have to walk. I focus on relaxing my shoulders and keeping my head up. It is an incredibly beautiful day, but no one is around to witness this. I find that oddly comforting.

Thursday: I’ve decided that Ken Bob is a sadist. I walk a longer section of the trail, gritting my teeth the entire time. This is definitely NOT fun. Sure, it’s easy for him to say – Go pick the gnarliest section of trail you can find, one that’s full of small, killer stones. He’s been going barefoot his whole life! He is not starting with cappuccino-foam feet! I fume as I walk along. There’s no way I can ever run barefoot on this stuff. There’s no way I’m ever going to get the form right if I can’t break into a jog! This is totally ridiculous. I head over to the lake and walk into the water. This is more like it. I run along the grass a bit, enjoying the feeling of the soft ground beneath my feet. I’m going to have to Skype my brother. We need to find some kind of middle ground here.

Friday: I share my barefoot experiences to date with my writing group. Incredulous, they suggest I update my tetanus immunization. Not a bad idea. I try to explain Ken Bob’s philosophy, that a piece of glass or the occasional nail is not really that big a deal in the grand scheme of a Barefoot Life. I decide to take my mini-Swiss Army knife with me on my runs, though, just in case I need the tweezers. Maybe I’ll also go ahead and start transitioning to the New Balances, because if I continue breaking my feet in at this rate, it’ll be January before I can actually run for any appreciable distance. And no matter what Ken Bob says, frozen feet are not on my list of must-have life experiences.

Saturday: We went hiking on a beautiful trail, and I kept thinking how great it would be to run it in my New Balances.

Week 3

Tuesday: I run five miles in the New Balances. I bend my knees, gliding Zen-like across the ground, slowly. Later I return to the scene of my barefooting to take some pictures, and I make another attempt at walking along the path. It looks so smooth from a distance! But each step is a little world of torture. Makes you think twice about that expression, A walk in the park. Not obvious. Not obvious at all. It’s a function of your footwear and the surface roughness of the park.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: I’m in Holland, where I run a few kilometers every day in the New Balances. My foot is fine! I’m bending my knees like Ken Bob says, keeping weight under my body. Holland is flat. Really, seriously flat, except for the occasional slight rise to get up onto the dikes. It’s also exactly, or even slightly lower than, sea-level, so no excuses. And because it’s really cold here and the only other shoes I brought are sandals, I’ve been doing all my walking around in the New Balances as well. I really like these shoes! I may never take them off!

Gydle gets a facelift

Posted on September 21, 2011 by gydle

The Gydle site is now officially online! Welcome to the new incarnation of your favorite blog. Soon I’ll add other stuff like my translating business, an interactive fiction page and, eventually, the publishing empire in its entirety. But don’t hold your breath. Judging from the time I spent agonizing over the details of the new design, it could be a while. Continue reading →

Tidying up

Posted on September 11, 2011 by gydle

This is going to be an odds and ends post. I have left many things dangling in this blog. Time to clean up.

Disorganization in general is starting to make me crazy. I can’t sit down to work any more if the kitchen counter is cluttered, or if my bed, out of sight upstairs, remains unmade. It’s not a writer’s block-related avoidance thing. More often than not, I’m eager to get to work. No, I am deeply afraid this is genetic.

My dear mom is the kind that makes you clean your room before the cleaning lady comes, so she doesn’t waste her time picking up your mess. You want to make cookies? Fine, but the kitchen better be spotless when you’re done. She has a deep obsession with kitchen counters, or perhaps horizontal surfaces in general – they must remain clutter-free or her karma is just off. And trust me, a karma-skewed mom is a thing to avoid. Continue reading →

How to Swiss kiss

Posted on September 4, 2011 by gydle

Bonjour! (Kiss, kiss, kiss)*
Hey! (hug)
Hello. Nice to meet you. (right hand extended, waist level)
* language and number of kisses may vary

These appear to be the accepted Western greeting rituals. But which to use? With whom? When? And how are they properly executed? It’s no big deal until you screw it up. One moment is all it takes to go from potentially interesting person to totally awkward inept proto-caveman. That first impression is everything, right?

As an expat, this issue comes up frequently. Continue reading →

Black Hat and Def Con

Posted on August 30, 2011 by gydle

(aka the much-awaited post from Dave!!)

Last month I went to Black Hat and Def Con in Las Vegas. Mary was intrigued. A conference and convention about hacking! So I promised to do a blog post about them.

Big mistake.

Now I understand a lot more about writers’ block. The problem here wasn’t that I didn’t have enough to write about; on the contrary, there is too much, and I didn’t even know where to begin. So I am giving myself permission to leave a lot out and just post some random thoughts. Continue reading →