Monday, December 18, 2006

how my psyche is like a snowflake

Quoth an e-mail received just now:
I was talking to [name] about how you seemed really distracted yesterday. He said, "I've never seen that guy in the same mood twice!"
Meanwhile, extremely busy here in Madison, so I am not sure how much blogging the world will get from me.

In the Kurt Vonnegut story "Harrison Bergeron," the protagonist is a genius who, due to certain statutory mandates for equality, is required to wear a device that lowers his intelligence to normal levels. The way this is accomplished is simply that the device emits a incredibly loud noise in his ears every fifteen seconds, preventing him from working up any cognitive momentum. I have come to think maybe this is part of my problem with meetings when there are more than three people and no clear agenda. You'll get like three turns of talk from different participants that seem like they are on the topic you are trying to resolve, and then the fourth just seems to completely derail the momentum toward action onto something else (although, of course, to that person what they are saying may be completely on topic, and it's your own turn that may seem to provide the Bergeron beep.)

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