The Grind

OK, enough is enough.

For a while now, I have been hearing from people close to me that I need to lose weight.  I got it 8 years ago when I was not overweight, 5 years ago when I was a little overweight, and recently now that I am a lot overweight.  Well, I have come to the conclusion that I do need to shed a few pounds.  And by "few" I mean around 40 lbs.

When I was younger (early to mid 20s) I was about 185, which I felt was fine, if a little stout.  I have a thick frame and stand at a hair under 6'1" (when I am not crushed by the weight of world), so 185 was perfectly fine, as far as I was concerned.  After getting married and entering law school, I filled out a bit to 200 lbs., which was still a fine weight given my build.  A bit chunky, but most people were still surprised to hear that I weighed that much.  It didn't change much until I transferred to the Tokyo office of my firm.  My first full month out here, I worked every single day of the month of September, generally until 3-4 am.  When you get 2-5 hours of sleep at night, every night, the body starts to fail.  Added to the necessity of eating and drinking to keep myself awake at night (the firm only provided foods like chocolate, coke and the like - and when I am minutes away from passing out, I am not discriminating) and the pounds packed on.  20 lbs. to be exact.  20 lbs. in 30 days.  Wow.

Since then (about 3 years ago) I put on an additional 5 lbs.  I kept saying to myself that I would start working out and losing weight, but the hours I worked just didn't permit excursions to the health club, even the one on the 2nd floor of my building.  So time went on, I stayed big.

Then, not long ago, an acquaintance of ours died of, I understand, a heart attack.  He was 40 years old and left behind his wife and 2 children.  Perhaps he had a heart condition, or smoked, or drank too much, I am not sure of the details.  However, I do know he was overweight (less so than I) and worked fairly hard.  When I heard about that it suddenly struck me that, at 35, while I am not old, I am no longer young and I need to have an awareness that not taking care of myself now could have serious repercussions.  I do not have a fear of death itself (at least, I don't think I do - I haven't really thought about it much) but I have a terrible fear of leaving my wife and children alone.  The thought of my kids growing up without me makes me feel like I am being crushed in a giant fist. 

So, melodramatic though I may be, I have to ensure that I will live as long as I can.  Now, I don't smoke and rarely drink, but I sleep very little, eat badly and don't exercise.  The sleep is not something I can fix until I change jobs, and (for a few family-related reasons) I can't change jobs in the near future.  The eating and exercise I can fix, though. 

So, today, in a few hours, I will make a foray into that gym downstairs and begin the process of becoming healthy.  I will simply take time off work to do it, regardless of what I have on the plate for the day. 

Heh, I wonder how long I can keep this going on this time.  I have had false starts before.  Here is hoping this is the keeper.

EDIT:  Ha ha. I suck.  A few hours has turned into 6 days.  But for sure, today is the day....

Privacy

So, I was thinking about privacy recently and what it means - why is it important or, at least, why do we deem it to be important? Why do people often become upset at perceived violations of privacy? Is there a difference in real world privacy as opposed to virtual privacy?

Why do we value privacy? Though it is sufficient in practice, from a philosophical point of view I don't think it is enough to reply "I don't want you looking in my pocketbook". Nothing in that statement gives any indication of what it is about privacy that makes it worth protecting. Instead, it is a statement of desire, expressing a wish that X not do Y. Maybe asking why assumes too much. Perhaps I should ask myself if privacy even has value in and of itself. As a starting position, I will assert that "privacy" is an empty term that only acquires bite when contextualized - i.e. when the term is applied to something. So, then, to what does privacy apply that I should make a value judgment?

I started to think of all the things to which concerns about privacy could apply (thoughts in ones head, using the toilet, whispering to someone in public, the contents of a bag, etc.) and tried to think of some simple way to distinguish from what is a rather wide range of concerns. Something I came up with (though I am sure it is not original) is distinguishing internal from external privacy concerns. The reason for distinguishing between the two is to asset that a moral right to privacy is not univeral and that it only applies to certain concerns - here, internal ones. I wanted to distinguish internal versus external as "not involving/dependent on interaction with entities beyond the self" versus "involving/dependent on interaction with entities beyond the self". What is internal? Based on the foregoing, perhaps only your thoughts and (to the extent internalized) feelings. So perhaps there is only an abolute moral right to privacy with respect to internal processes - i.e. privacy concerning such matters is to be assumed. Everything else, the external, is not subjectt privacy rights unless justified. So, simply:

internal --> one has to justify why privacy rights do not exist
external --> one has to justify why privacy rights do exist

As mind-reading machines to do not exist, concerns about the internal fall away. So where does that leave us? In the rather unappealing position of saying that one has no right to privacy unless such right is justified. Though I am sure that a whole lotta people would disagree with me, I do not necessarily see this as an issue so long as we also understand why privacy rights might be assetted. Asserting a right to privacy over something is essentially denying another person access to knowledge - knowledge of what is in your bag, knowledge of what you wrote in that email, knowledge of what drugs you injest to take the edge off.

Why deny a person access to certain knowlege? Here, I can't say "Because they don't have a right to it" as I have already stated that there is no pre-existing right to deny access to the knowledge. As the baseline accepts universal access, the point is that they DO have a right to such knowledge. The trick is to find a reason to justify stating that the right to deny access to the information (i.e. the right to privacy) trumps another's right to access that information.

I think one reason is power - access to certain pieces of knowledge increase the risk or potential that another will/can exercise power over another. The more people know, the more powerful they are - this is one reason why "democracies" give so much attention to of open government and governmental disclosure. However, increased power is not necessarily beneficial as not all entities have equal ability to exploit knowledge. Certain individuals or groups of individuals are better placed to make use of knowledge to the detriment of those to whom the particular knowledge applies.

So that is my thought - privacy is a defensive tactic against the abuse of power.

This may seem an odd way to think about it but, on reflection, I realized that I think like this anyway. I am a firm believer in the free flow of information and so, rather than ask myself "Why should I disclose this information?", tend to say "Why should I prevent others from knowing this information?" For instance, I could not find any material reason to justify me preventing others from knowing the contents of my WoW character's bags and bank account.  However, I refrain from posting my bank account details online together with a file containing a valid electronic signature as I judge that the potential for someone using such information in a manner that negatively affects me vastly outweighs anyones elses "right" to know such information.

This still bears thinking about.

CCJP

So, yesterday I attended the 3rd Creative Commons Japan Seminar.  I have long had an interest in those fields that converge in CC - the arts, technology, intellectual property issues, moral rights, freedom, information.  I do not, however, know that much about CC and so went to the seminar to learn more about it and, if possible, see if there is some way that I can contribute.

In a general sense, I am quite excited at the idea of free information - not "free" as in "without cost" but "free" in the unrestricted transmission and flow of information.  In a perfect world, it would be fantastic if information was not a commodity, not subject to hoarding and packaging by interested parties.  I think it a fantastic vision of the future if human knowledge is conceived of as a vast well, into which each human has a right to dip his cup, without restriction or condition.

Then I think to myself, Utopian thoughts don't help the here and now.  Information cannot be free because it has intrinsic value (value in the effort put into the creation of the information as well as value in how the information can be used).  In the context of "created/creative information", there will always need to be a balance with the rights of creators.  As I see it (and I qualify this by saying that I know next to nothing about this topic - I have some reading to do in the near future....) the balance is between the extremes of (i) complete control of creative product in the hands of the creator (or, more accurately, the rights-holder, who is nowadays often not the creator) and (ii) full release into the public domain of the creative product.

It seems to me that (ii) would kill innovation and creation as projects that require full-time attention (and, consequently, remuneration for time spent) would be less likely to be fulfilled - I think it unlikely that someone would spend all their time creating something that is to be distributed freely only to rely on goodwill donations to keep the project alive (and the creator fed).

But (and this point I take from Lessig, Free Culture) (i) also equally suppresses innovation insofar as much of what people create is, to a greater or lesser degree, derivative of existing works.  Which is not a bad thing - originality is not conditioned on ab initio creation.

This, I think, is the tricky point, this balance.  I will have to think about this more.

Oh, and I admit that there is nothing original in the foregoing : ).  I am just thinking aloud (or, rather, thinking online) to make sure that I understand certain fundamentals.

Fix your pants, buddy!

On the way into work this morning, I caught a glimpse of a man in his (I estimate) early 20s walk into the Tully's coffee shop in the basement of my building.  Given that I probably see a few hundred men during my 35 minute commute this would be unremarkable except for one thing:  he had rolled the cuff of the left leg of his sweat pants up to the knee.  Not the right leg, just the left.

Now, I understand that this is a "style" and that I, as I age, am most likely growing less capable of accepting or understanding newer fashions.  But the thing that irks me is that (to my understanding) fashions generally have a "meaning".  There is a reason to dress in a certain way, even if that reason is not practical.  I can get the baseball caps with the big product tags left on (making them look stolen, implying the wearing is a wild one) or the rips in the jeans (making the wearer look as if they don't care too much about traditonal fashion mores).

But what does one leg rolled up mean?  I had once thought it was aping a mannerism of some bike couriers, who I have witnessed with one pant leg rolled up.  But then the correct pant leg to roll up would be the right certainly.  Ugh.  I wanted to grab him, roll that pant leg down and tell him (i) how stupid he looked and (ii) how his stupidity was not even redeemed with underlying purpose - it was a purposeless stupidity.

I don't think it insignificant that I made this observation before I had my morning coffee....

And so it starts....

Post number one.  No real content here.  Just marking territory, as it were.