Snow is mostly a distant memory. But I daydream often about winter nights in Timmins, when the mercury drops way below zero. There is no snow falling from the sky but there is a lot of it under my feet. It crunches as I trudge down the street, around the block, sometimes on my way to a destination, other times just out for a walk. The smoke rises gently from neighbourhood houses, people gathered warmly around a television. It's hockey night in Canada, and most minds are focused on the match. I don't play hockey myself -- the snow is much more interesting. Snow is where I find peace. Even if the wind howls and my face grimaces in response, I find myself in that pure white. Of course there is joy as I come back in, my glasses fogging up. The snow does not go away though.

As I share more and more of myself on the Web, I often wonder about the wisdom of being open in this forum. Is it ironic that I should be so concerned about projects like Total Information Awareness (TIA) when I'm basically feeding information about myself to the open Web that TIA would probably not be able to find on its own? How can I get upset at advertisers, telemarketers, and the like who pay good money to learn about my buying habits when I write on the Web about books I read, talk about where I live, gadgets I have bought, magazines that I look at, friends I have -- perhaps a more vivid description of my life than my credit card statement? And who knows what a future employer or prospective date think about me after reading my blog? What I consider honesty, they might consider self-indulgence.

More questions than answers at this point. Some things that I think might be pieces of the puzzle are: notions of the transparent society (time to read the book?), in which there can be "freedom through accountability"; images of heaven in which we will all be transparently known (to God and to others) -- nothing that we have done or said will be secret any longer (Luke 12:2-3); openess as a way of encouraging others to be likewise (or not!)

Trackback has been implemented for Manila -- but I'm still trying to get it to work. This entry is to see whether I can get trackback communication going both ways between my two blogs. If I can, then cross-referencing will be much easier to manage.

After I skimmed Krista's Visceral Appeal of Public Transit...? , I gave her a call -- I had been away for couple of weeks but had been following her blog from afar. We talked about various issues about blogging, and I encouraged her (as I hope to here) to keep up the writing. Although I won't be able to respond thoughtfully to everything she's writing, I'm reading her blog. Much of what she is sharing might not elicit an immediate response; some piece might judge lodge in my mind until weeks or months later only to come together with a disparate observation or idea. But what Krista is writing will help us immersed in our car-dependence to see into the personal angle of living in a different and free way.

I do, however, want to jot a make a few points in response to Krista's post -- some of which arose during my own bike ride to and from church today. First, a quote from Krista:

The fact is, public transit actually does appeal to me on a visceral level (as do bicycling and walking)--and that's something that I wish I could convey better to others. The absolute luxury of having someone else deal with the driving and traffic (not to mention maintenance and liability) while I read, write, sleep, pay bills, or talk to a friend--sometimes seems like a kind of miracle. My survival instinct also kicks in here--I feel a lot safer in a train, on a track, than amidst hundreds of unpredictable independently moving high-speed vehicles (not to mention my own car's mechanical unpredictability)--and statistics bear out this instinct. The exhiliration of riding a bicycle, the relaxed pace of walking--these things also appeal to me on a deep emotional and physical level.

Today is another glorious summer day in Berkeley, an absolutely lovely time to bike. As I pedaled my way home today, felt the soft breeze on my face, watched a young couple holding hands on the street, I wondered whether I had ever seen TV commercials that tried to capture what I was feeling right then. Perhaps car fanatics will disagree -- but I find biking a much more connecting experience than driving -- joining me to the elements and to other human beings. All those car ads (I have in mind images of a SUV serenely rounding the bend on a country road, absolutely alone) seem much more farfetched than an ad I can imagine celebrating the joy of cycling. (Imagine this: Happy cyclist in moderate physical condition with broad smile, soaking in the sunshine, pedling past gardens, trees, other happy people, little contented children -- bonded together in a great human community. Cuts to cyclist arriving at home, "glowing" from the ride and from the knowledge that he or she has not only gotten good exercise without adding any noxious fumes to the air. OK -- I would make a terrible ad man....) Why aren't there more ads that touch on the visceral appeal of cycling? (How does BART advertise? Does Critical Mass advertise? How?)

And we haven't even talked about walking yet....

Lloyd on google ads in Phil's blog:

So it's a terrible conundrum, my friend. You are in need of funds for your life as a college undergrad, and yet... if what you've done becomes the start of a trend in weblogging space, then it'll ruin weblogging for me (and perhaps others) in a fundamental way. All of us are assaulted on every side by ads and commercials already, that I think it's important to keep some space sacrosanct. For me, that would be weblogs.

Or maybe I'm being awfully curmudgeonly in this regard. Why shouldn't commercialism penetrate every inch of virtual real estate on the internet and on the web? I feel like I'm sticking my neck out on a silly ideal and at the same time trying to walk through quicksand here.

I don't have as strong of a negative feeling against ads in blogs as Lloyd does. The fact that Lloyd reacted strongly against the ads does make me wonder whether I've acquiesced when I should not have to the commercialization of our lives. I'm not inclined to stick ads on my own blogs or websites (though if I ever use the Amazon associates functionality to let people buy books on my blog -- something I've thought about doing -- then my site will also be explicitly commercial). Then again, I wasn't planning to make money blogging. Now, that doesn't mean that blogging might not have longer range economic benefits for me -- by enhancing my reputation, by getting my name out there, by getting me my next job. Those prospects have certainly crossed my mind. Hence, because we're thoroughly economic beings, I suppose I just think of myself as a sophisticated navigator of the medium -- and just overlook ads (or click on them, knowing full well that by doing so, I'm participating in some economic exchange. I also don't feel the obligation to click on links just to help out students (but then again, they're not my students....).

All this sounds fine and well until the thought crossed my mind: how would I feel if I started to wear logos and banners paid for on my sports jacket the next time I give a talk at a national forum? It's certainly done right now, and I would be a bit taken aback if speakers somehow started doing that. One might ask, "well, why not? Professional athletes wear logos all the time...." So what's the difference between my being upset at an academic speaker saying "hey, I'm sponsored by XYZ Computing" and Phil's google ads? (I'm sure there is a difference but I can't tease it out yet....)

I still hope to make it to the 10:45 service of First Presbyterian Church on time....If I don't make it on time, it will not have been the first time that I'm late on the account of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier or Mass in B Minor or one of his cantatas. I know that corporate worship is important, and all of my upbringing should keep me from being late. Nevertheless....

I flew in from Toronto last night to a lovely summer evening at SFO. My absence of two weeks feels longer than that -- which I take as a wonderful sign of some rest at least. I probably don't know what real rest means -- but at least being in three different cities that are not where I normally live (Montreal, Cambridge/Boston, Toronto) helps get me out of my rut.

I pondered and prayed a lot on the plane -- because there was much to ponder and pray about. In the months to come, I hope to share some of what I thought about. As I become more and more into blogging, one of the filters I apply in guiding my reflection is whether and how I might write about that matter. Using such a filter may seem strange (especially to non-bloggers and non-writers) -- but it's a handy filter for me. My mind is typically racing in too many different directions, leading to diffuseness of thought and action. Writing with enough clarity and background to make my thoughts and feelings comprehensible to anyone who cannot read my mind limits me in a good way.

Let me give an example of this filter in action. I was up before 6am this morning because I'm still on east coast time. A sweet way to get back into my Berkeley life is my morning breakfast ritual. Having been away for two weeks meant that my current periodicals pile now contains one issue of The New York Review of Books, two issues of The Times Literary Supplement, two issues of The New Yorker, and the latest issue of Books and Culture -- not to mention today's San Francisco Chronicle. The suspicion that I have been subscribing to too many magazines came to the forefront this morning as I wondered how taking a few hours to read all this stuff was going to help me. Undoubtedly it would be a pleasurable experience for me, lots of mind candy, lots of provocative ideas, great prose, etc. At this point, I don't want to stop reading these and other sources -- otherwise, I won't be in dialog with others. At the same time, I don't want to spend too much of my time just trying to absorb the unabsorbable mass of media (good and bad) out there. How to strike the balance?

OK -- this has been a long-winded way to say "hi, I'm back." In a few more minutes, I must be off to make calls at one of my favorite organizations, Alta Bates TeleCare, something I will write about at length "any time now".

Ginny made the following observation several weeks ago :

Here you bring up a question I've wondered about for a long time: why, at best, my journal-keeping workshops draw only one-third men, when on the evaluation everyone writes that yes, they'd recommend the workshop to men as well as women. I've thought about starting a blog but then wondered to what extent I'd want to "go public" with what's on my mind. This is always a concern of women in my workshop (say, even about reading aloud something they've written). But aren't most bloggers men? I've read only a few, but I now have Rebecca Blood's book. (So many books, so little time.)

I don't know whether more bloggers are men....I suspect so since I guess that most bloggers are those who have easy access to networked computers -- and aren't there more men than women who fit this description? A relevant article is Lisa Guernsey's "Telling All Online: It's a Man's World (Isn't It?)" in the NY Times (November 28, 2002, Thursday, Late Edition - Final; Section G; Page 1; Column 1; Circuits), which is archived on Lisa Rein's blog.

My personal experience with blogging has not made think that blogging is a male-dominated medium. Of course, maybe what I really mean is that it is not any more male-dominated than other forms of media, and that I have encountered very significant female voices in the blogging world -- first and foremost in my own immediate blogging community and then also in the blogosphere at large. I hadn't heard any comments from women bloggers about particularly gender differences in blogging -- but then again, I might not have been listening carefully (or I may not have been privileged to hear them).

I'm very curious to hear the perspective of other bloggers, especially women on this topic.

BTW, a piece on writing differences between men and women (as uncovered by computer analysis and manifest in the use of pronouns) that Catherine found has possible ties here.

As I noted briefly last week, I've been avidly following my friend Krista's new blog (My Transportation Diary). I've learned a lot from Krista about the "problem of car-dependency in our culture", the central theme of her blog, and admire how she has been living out life in the East Bay without owning a car, while making the best use of her bicycle and public transit options. I myself am fortunate to live less than 2 miles from the Berkeley campus where I work, enabling me to bike most days. Still, I own a car but have been wondering whether to sell it (to free myself first and foremost from the financial burden of car-ownership.) Krista is someone I look to to help me figure out whether I really need my car; I hope that she continues to report on her experiences because a lot of us do need help.

So when I saw "The Thrill Of The SUV", a segment on 60 Minutes last Sunday, I thought of Krista and a specific question I have for her. The most intriguing part of the show was an interview with Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, the most famous of the "car shrinks" who help car manufacturers to sell cars to us by tapping into the deepest recesses of our subconscious minds. Whether you believe Rapaille, you have to admit that he's a good salesman for his ideas. Here are some quotes from the transcript:

“Why do you buy a car that doesn't even make 10 miles per gallon, doesn't fit into your garage? Do you really need that? And you don't need that intellectually,” he says. “But at the reptilian level, what I call the reptilian level, the reptilian brain, the deepest part of you, the gut level if you want, you feel like you need that.”

“We are at war. You don't go to war in a Pinto or in a little Volkswagen. You want a tank, you want, you know, and I told the people there in Detroit, you know, SUVs - you put a machine gun on the top, you're going to sell them better, you know”

“Why? Taller. Stronger. I mean, the elephant, the bigger you are, the more chance you have to survive. Now, we know that the higher you are, more chance you have to roll over. And we know that SUVs have a higher rate of accident for rollover than other cars. I mean a Porsche is a lot less chance to roll over than an SUV. That's at the cortex, which means people know it but they don't refer to it because there's something stronger which is the reptilian- the bigger, the tallest, and more chance to survive.”

If Rapaille is right, then what can be done to reduce our dependency on cars, let alone big gas-guzzling vehicles? Is stopping Americans from driving SUVs like trying to stop them from eating, drinking, and having sex? (Not quite, of course) What part of the reptilian brain does public transit tap into? Is the appeal to public transit always a "higher brain" appeal or one to the more visceral side?