Cycling

Dave Rogers and I are having a conversation about cycling.

I’ve been a cyclist all my life really, but in my mid 60’s am now in my most intense period every. I can’t be sure whether I’m faster now than ever before or more fit than ever before since age becomes such a huge factor at this point. In the last few years its become a much bigger focus. I was riding when I had my paper route for the Hudson Dispatch in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In high school I had a Sears 3 speed which I frequently rode over the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan to circle around the Cloisters. I picked up riding again in Medical School when I bought a classic Raleigh Gran Prix which I rode out to the now rather infamous Stone Mountain. During my years here in Baltimore, I’ve ridden on our local roads pretty consistently when family and work responsibilities allowed.

About 3 years ago, when my internist suggested I get a bit more regular cardiovascular exercise to supplement my weight training, I began this latest phase of seeing just how well I could perform on the bike. After starting out with some training plans from Zwift for use on a smart trainer, I ended up with a local coach, Mike Birner and a serious commitment to riding.

This morning, the schedule was for 3 hour ride. I rode with a small group from our local bike club on the flatter terrain west of where I live.

I mentioned having finished the Foundation Trilogy yesterday. For some reason, I’ve been re-reading a few of the classics. This year I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the RIngs trilogy and the original Dune trilogy. They all hold up very well. We don’t seem to read Heinlein anymore. I wonder how Larry Nivea’s Ringworld books would hold up. I was a big fan of Phillip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld books. Some streaming platform will probably try to adapt them at some point I suppose.

I don’t see making a series out of the Foundation books. There’s no villain and no conflict except history itself.

I’m hoping for a Mac Mini from Apple tomorrow that supports my two monitor setup. I really need a replacement for my current mini with a bigger internal hard drive, but the first Apple Silicon version was too limited in monitor support to use.

Last night I had some sad dreams. Old friends and mentors acting totally out of character. Lost items which disappear in greater numbers the harder you look until nothing is left. Interestingly, the few prospective studies of the emotional content of dreams have shown about equal positive and negative emotional valence, but this is biased by recall of dreams from just before awakening. The functions of dreams and sleep continue to be guessed at but seem central to preparing the brain for another round of activity in the waking state.

Dreams are passive creations of the imagination. Awake we have a drive to create things separate from ourselves. Blogs, bookcases and fancy cakes. Is this a way of creating a legacy? Something to outlast ourselves, independent from ourselves? In the end, becoming better versions of ourselves has to be our most important act and our greatest legacy.

I finally got around to watching Marvel’s Black Widow. Not bad but mostly just the usual parade of set pieces including car chase, fighting the invincible robotic bad guy. Felt transitional and not as emotionally deep as the studio’s best.

Also finished Azimov’s Foundation Trilogy this afternoon. Amazing how well it holds up as science fiction written in the 1940s. One reason is that it uses technology gimmicks sparingly, needing faster than light travel between worlds, but leaves vague communication methods and mostly deals in what people say and do. Not at all cinematic like most contemporary sci-fi but does have the modern technique of cutting back and forth between story threads, making it feel modern in that non-linear way. Now I can watch the Apple streaming series without it affecting my view of the original, although I understand the streaming series is very loosely based on the story.

It’s hard for me to place Foundation as written in its time period, although like The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, national power and the importance of the individual are themes central to the stories. Always about people, institutions and making choices.

I added back a link to Amazon for the book just as an affordance for you dear reader if you want a quick way to get it on Amazon or read on Kindle.

Blogging more means reading less. For the most part its just a time constraint. There’s work, physical activity, household needs like shopping and cooking. This morning getting some editing time in on the book manuscript was my priority.

I’ve found the most powerful productivity hack is simply routine and having just a few priorities. Then, I just trust that what needs to get done will get done.

I did read this early this morning in a newsletter:

In Novardok (Yeshiva), they repeated a million times: you are not responsible to ‘finish”. Reb Yisroel Salanter (b. 1809 – d. 1883) said: just “do”, don’t ‘complete”

I’ve found that if you release some of that urge to control and step back a bit, you get way more done with lower stress.

Or as Dave Winer says “Keep Digging”.

Capture Everywhere, Read Everywhere, Write Everywhere

Dave and I chatted on Twitter today. You do that and you drive views to your site. But we don’t want views, we want community and conversation.

I’ve been describing my Drafts to WordPress blogging flow for these daily notes.

Dave wants an app for mobile that would be similar but a flat outline that he can edit and deploy as needed.

I think we agree that Markdown is a fine way to structure plain text documents. In most text editors like BBEdit or Atom, Markdown is recognized as a code syntax and it’s easy to fold and move blocks marked off by Markdown headings. Of course FoldingText was designed to do this in a slightly different way. We eventually got TaskPaper which has been updated more recently but with its own todo oriented markup.

The only mobile app I have that does folding based on Markdown is Editorial but its not kept up with current sync methods like Cloudkit or iCloud folders.

That’s creating structure within a file. I see my nested folders as an outline with the bottom layer being individual files. And in general, I’m fine with one file at a time for reference or writing.

But with this resurgent environment of note taking and blogging, I’m hoping for some new solutions besides the big note taking back linking systems of Obsidian and Notion and Craft which seem so closed to me.

Outlines mostly live on in the form of mindmaps. From David Allen:

I f you’re concerned about your ‘work-life balance’ I’d encourage you to grab a pen and paper and draw a mind map or a list of your Areas of Focus, both personal and professional. Then you may see which parts of your world you have been too focussed on and which deserve more attention. Whenever I feel a sense of imbalance I ‘pop up’ to visit this horizon

Another category that died was the Reader like Pocket and Instapaper. I use Safari’s Reading List now or quick capture to drafts, but that’s bookmarking. What I’d like is an app to open on my iPad that would be like the Kindle app but give me webpages, PDFs, email newsletters and RSS feed articles all integrated. While the ways these reads get to me are different, in the end its all reading. You know we used to have books and we used to have magazines and we used to have newspapers. Now it a torrent from every direction leaking through every crack it can find in the information environment.

Time to read a book now.

Today’s notes edited in Drafts and copied as Markdown into the WordPress app on an iPad. Pretty easy workflow and I end up with the Markdown file right here. Will probably start an archive in DEVONthink just to have a searchable repository with good backup.

Immigration; Where I Get My News

All four of my grandparents came to the US from the economic bleakness of the Pale of Settlement. of the Russian Empire around the turn of the century. She refused to ever talk about where she came from and life before coming to America. But as the grandson of 4 immigrants with an MD, PhD, now pretty well off over 100 years after they arrived, I feel like I have a personal stake in discussions of immigration. My parents and I took full advantage of the opportunity here and I cannot fully express my gratitude to the idea and the reality that is the United States. So it was interesting for me to read a bit about the history of open borders in the US and our current state of affairs. This book review of Open Borders by Bryan Caplan outlines the books arguments to return to the open borders the US had prior to 1920, when all of my grandparents were immigrants at Ellis Island. My ancestors, like those of most other Americans, were brave souls who left behind everything they knew for opportunity for themselves, and, as it turns out, this particular Neurologist.

What goes around, comes around. I can’t stomach the point of view journalism of CNN, MSNBC or Fox. So, as in days of old, NPR is my news source once again. It tends to have depth, but seems to successfully avoid both one side-ism and both side-ism. I believe its because they are not chasing ratings or clicks. Thank you for the public service.

Fitness and Quality of Life

Apple Fitness+ is so compelling, I finally got my wife to at try my previous Apple Watch and see how she likes the service. I continue to find it a game changer for me and personal fitness off the bike.

I think I got Dave Rogers to try it out.

But I do need to add some strength training/core work. I’m reluctant to use the extensive fitness facilities here because of COVID, so Apple Fitness may be something that’ll motivate me

On the bike, the Garmin Variaâ„¢ RTL515 | Bike Radar and Tail Light is a game changer. It’s a radar unit that alerts me to cars approaching from the rear. No more sudden side swipes and comfort in confirmation that the road is clear behind when I need to make a left turn. These technologies made possible by microprocessors are so ubiquitous and so common that I think we’re blind to their magical nature. After every ride, I pause and appreciate how quickly we turn knowledge into valuable technology. And that I have survived another ride on the roads of Baltimore County.

I believe the data is pretty good that we have just a few ways to delay the inevitable decline of growing older. One of these is regular exercise. Enough to cause physiological stress and adaptation from wherever you are now. Similarly, intellectual engagement that stresses capacity promotes adaptation and prevents loss of cognitive ability. Similar to what exercise does for heart, lung, muscle and metabolism. Stress is good when its a stimulus and recovery is promoted by rest- physical and mental. That includes laughing, listening to music, being with friends and family, and realizing that while the effort is in your control, the result is not.

I did place 7 of 13 for my age group (55-64 year old Men) in the Grand Fondo National Series by riding 4 events this year.

My deepest appreciation goes to Dave Rogers and Dave Winer for getting me back to blogging in recent days. Dave Rogers for starting up conversations again which is where our blogging association started from the beginning and Dave Winer for creating a tool in Drummer that promotes casual blogging.

# Drafts, Not Drummer for Now

For now, I won’t be using Drummer since I’ve put together a quick workflow using my own tools without disrupting my ongoing site here. I was there when Dave unleashed the power of editing the internet with his EditThisPage community. I’ve been writing on the web at On Deciding . . . Better ever since, but all of that original content was wiped from the web when Dave shut the service down. I did get a download, but never figured out how to easily get it all back up as an archive.

After that, I wanted to more directly control my content, but learned that these sites are by nature impermanent. I moved from self hosting to now using a great hosted WordPress system.

Opening the WordPress app is really not that different from EditThisPage. There’s a title spot and a blank page to write on. Images, links and emphasis are all easier now and Markdown spares me from HTML pretty much completely.

So I have a nice little system cobbled together this week of capture to Drafts during the day out of all manner of reading and jotting notes. My paper notebooks are still there for capture, but I find myself typing a quick idea into Drafts on my phone because its purposeful. It’s for publishing. I subscribed to Drafts just to be able to append Draft Quick Captures to my daily running note. Edit the note to make it presentable, copy it to the WordPress app, press publish and I’m done. I’ve generally had extra content these few days, so they get rolled over to tomorrow’s Draft.

Public Journaling Promotes Mindfulness

Ironically, I was trying to inspire myself when I wrote Why You Need to Publish Your Notebook – On Deciding . . . Better 3.0. Yet I didn’t take the time to translate my notebooks into public writing. I believe that journaling is good, but public journaling is better.

Public journaling is fun if its as casual as my private bullet journal or my morning notes in the Hobonichi. Even if it’s an internal conversation, riffing on subjects and writing down the ideas makes them more alive and the thoughts more complete. Knowing I want to share things publicly makes me more mindful of what I’m reading, thinking about whether its really interesting or just some text designed to decorate the ads generated by the click.

Promoting Community; The Return of RSS?

Since I know my audience here is small, I can talk to myself more or less without trying to be performative. That is to say, posting on Twitter, Instagram or Flickr always had this motivation contaminated with seeking likes or clicks or favorites or what have you. I really have no personal reason to become internet famous, so I can write for my pleasure and yours, my dear reader.

Blogging itself on website like this got contaminated with SEO, the seeking of hits from Google. I have one post on this site, How BIll Gates Takes Notes – On Deciding . . . Better 3.0 that was picked up by Mark Bernstein, creator of Tinderbox, and eventually found its way to some pages with pretty high readership. The post is both an explanation of the Cornell system and a discussion of the value of note taking in meetings as a means to become an active listener. So every day it gets 4 or 5 reads, but those reads never translate into regular readership here as far as I can tell. That post has great search engine placement but doesn’t make me any friends.

Back to the to the two Daves then, Rogers and WIner. As old school bloggers they seek community and conversation. Before Twitter and search algorithms took over, we had bookmarks and RSS feeds to keep track of activity in our communities. WordPress supports RSS feeds without any effort; it was the shutdown of Google Reader that signaled to many that the RSS era was at an end. There’s word that Google may be bringing RSS directly into Chrome Google, but that’s the mass market. I’m really more interested in whether efforts like Drummer might be able to kindle some communities outside of Twitter and its like for conversation and sharing of ideas. And simple blogging tools and workflows are a necessary component of that potential future.

Some overlap in Scott Young’s reading list with some of my most important reads. My ODB book features James and Lakoff pretty prominently as writers who shaped my approach here. In fact, the book that Scott mentions, Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff was the first of his I read and made the first connection for me between the neural maps of the brain and the semantic versions that seem abstract but are always rooted in the physical world. Our world of words and ideas are metaphors for concrete reality since that reality is all our brain was ever built to deal with. We’ve added this semantic layer of meaning on top, much like an augmented reality. I see a bit of shiny metal but think and associate spoon. And soup. And ice cream. It was Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being which Lakoff wrote with Nunez that really cemented for me this idea that our ideas are all based in metaphors drawn from the physical world.

I’ve stopped bothering with dropping Amazon affiliate links when I discuss books. I’ve never seen enough monetary return to go through the trouble of looking up the link at Amazon. Although it is a nice affordance for a reader who’s thinking about buying the book.

One of my new habits has been to download Kindle samples of interesting books and read the first couple of chapters. Often enough to get the idea with minimal commitment.

Speaking of Amazon, I really think they are hurting themselves with this emphasis on sponsored ads at the top of and throughout organic searches. I know a few people who don’t always realize that many or most of the results are not actually what they searched for. And often are overpriced copies or imitations of the object being sought. Twitter too is polluting my timeline with more and more sponsored, page filling ads. It used to be the occasional click bait. Now its straight ads and topic suggestions. Instagram still seems like a nice place to visit.

An endorsement goes out to Pen Tips from Groningen in the Netherlands. These are conical, silicon tips that fit on the end of the hard plastic of the Apple Pencil. I loved the idea of the Pencil with the iPad, but hate the slippery, bouncy feel of plastic on glass. And I can’t degrade the iPad screen with one of the matte protectors that is said to be a – feel. These Pen Tips provide enough cushion and friction to make using the Pencil practical for me. It’s not the tactile spring of a fountain pen on good paper, but then I would expect these digital tools to every really feel like that.

I actually spent a week or so in Groningen many years ago conducting a clinical trial. The highlight was a day trip to Schiermonnikoog National Park, one of the barrier islands in the North Sea. It’s is a quick ferry ride from the mainland and then one can only bicycle to get around the island. The images were shot with my first DSLR, the Olympus E1.

Another endorsement goes to Apple Fitness. I’ve wound down my summer cycling activity with 3 big rides over the last month and am now it what they like to call “Transition”, being off the bike and doing some cross training. So finally I’ve tried Apples workouts, so far sticking to Pilates, Strength Training and Treadmill. Actually I did try one Yoga workout. These workouts are not dumbed down and by no means easy. They let you set your own intensity, say by picking your own dumbbell weights. They are fast an efficient, going from exercise to exercise without rest over 10 to 30 minutes. You get instruction- verbal and visual plus get to work out at home in a very short period of time. I will be incorporating some of this year round.

While I’m writing here, I make slow halting progress on the book manuscript. I’ve made an editing run through the first three chapters, but its harder to do in short chunks compared to getting out that first full draft. I’m hopeful that winter will bring some time to work on it, but my work life has been busy with taking care of family and cycling being the two big priorities.

The 2022 Hobonichi orders opened last month and for the first time in a few years I didn’t immediately place an order. The Hobonichi has been my daily morning diary for organizing the coming day and I can’t see moving away from it. I just realized that shipping was was equal to the price of of the book itself and it would be better to patronize one of the US shops selling it. So far, only the English version is available and I really prefer the Japanese layout even though the quotes that decorate the bottom of the page are meaningless to me. I’m hoping that Jet Pens or someone else has it soon, but ordering from Japan remains an option.

I logged into Dave Winer’s Drummer Blogging tool and I’m envious of the environment. It’s the equivalent of my casual photography approach. It’s outline based and focused purely on daily posts. I’m reminded of the Bullet Journal approach of simple lines that are todo’s, recording of events, thoughts or lists. I don’t think I want to leave my WordPress setup here, but will take the inspiration to see if I can start casual blogging like my casual photography.

The blogging workflow today is capturing links and thoughts in Drafts using Markdown which will get tidied and uploaded with MarsEdit or the WordPress app if the Markdown works. It’s a little variation from the usual flow aimed at creating a collection of notes that can be quickly edited and posted. Not quite Drummer’s direct writing to the web with paragraph by paragraph permanent links and generation of an RSS feed. This is a bit more like the newsletter approach that so many are using as a substitute or supplement to blogging.

John Scalzi, like me, appreciates how WordPress enables website ownership without technical hassle. While I’d love a blog that lived as an OPML outline like my old Bloxsom site lived in text files, I’ve come to appreciate that these blogs are transient entities. After all, this is ODB 3.0 as the old EditThisPage site hosting was abandoned and the text file system was too simple for the modern web world.

I’m looking at the surviving Link Blogs for inspiration, realizing only now that on a phone, any one of these paragraphs is a screen or two or three of text. And that’s where we read now.

Yes, I did buy a Mac Mini. As a small consumption device for reading and serving streaming music.

COVID-19: Science working in real time.

My real job is Drug Development, so I design and run clinical trials for a living. The mRNA vaccines are a triumph of molecular biology that owe their origins to the Human Genome Project and people like Francis Collins and Craig Venter. People forget or have never learned this history. I was there and have experienced the revolution in medicine we’re currently living through. But a discussion of the vaccine development is for another time.

Today I heard this report on NPR which was a bit different from my understanding regarding spreading of infection by vaccinated individuals. Breakthrough COVID may not be as threatening as scientists thought : NPR. Just like those recently infected may have virus mRNA detectable by nasal swab but be no longer capable of infecting others, vaccination may do this as well, maybe even better. Directly contradicts this from NPR just a few months ago. CDC: Data Shows Vaccinated People Can Spread The Delta Variant : Coronavirus Updates : NPR. Or maybe the truth is that COVID vaccines cut the risk of transmitting Delta — but not for long

This is science. This is where I live day to day. Conflicted evidence and uncertainty. Really tough on the public health authorities asked to provide policy and guidance to the public, to businesses and to government. It’s true we tend to be conservative under conditions of uncertainty like this. But there’s no question that any risk of vaccination is clearly outweighed by the benefit to oneself and to others in your community. And where there’s spread, masking and social distancing are the only tools we have to flatten the curve of exponential spread of infection. Those facts are clear.

We’re learning huge amounts about viral pandemics from these events. Learning about viral mutation through the course of a pandemic. Learning about how this new vaccine technology works in the real world- the right dose, the right schedule and how to monitor for adverse events when a complete new medical treatment is rolled out to hundreds of millions of people in the course of 6 months. Just amazing science and medicine.

Believe me, we’ll not only get through this and the pandemic will end over the next year or so. But our understanding of the events is only just starting. And that’s how science has always worked.

As my contribution to the rebirth of blogging, here’s a few quick thoughts in no particular order:

A note of thanks to Dave Rogers for his appreciation of my intermittent efforts here. Dave’s writing is always both personal and insightful and example of what a public personal journal can aspire to be. I also think of Dave as a model of my ideal reader, curious and educated, but no expert in the many esoteric areas I write about here.

I’m troubled by our inability to fix pharmaceutical pricing in the US. Even though I know that money controls much of our governments policies, this is one of those popular, reasonable and necessary changes that can’t get done becuae of how our politics is controlled by influence rather than public good. And I’ve spent the last 30 years in Drug Development so I know how pricing, reimbursement and rebates obscure the real prices paid and passed to patients.

We’re getting more and more detail on how our expectations shape our perception even at the lowest level of sensory processing. The subjective impression that we’re looking at
“what is” is so powerful! In truth, that experience is a construction patched together from fragmentary input that creates a model of where and who we are in the world. All mechanims that can be revealed in experiments, but that we have no access to and can’t examine in any way.

Another illusion is that decisions are rational because we have subjective access to the process when we are aware of choosing. But the options we imagine are generated subjectively and limited to what we can imagine, the values of different outcome are pure subjective feelings about what we want and the chances of success are subjective guesses. Where’s the rationality in imagination, feelings and guesses?

Note taking apps are proliferating. Everyone agrees that note taking is “a good thing” Have you thought about why? Here’s a now famous example.

Back I n 2003, Rob Howard described a meeting with Bill Gates

The first thing I notice as the meeting starts is that Bill is left-handed. He also didn’t bring a computer in with him, but instead is taking notes on a yellow pad of paper. I had heard this before – Bill takes amazingly detailed notes during meetings. I image he has to, given all the information directed at him. The other thing I noticed during the course of the meeting is how he takes his notes. He doesn’t take notes from top-to-bottom, but rather logically divides the page into quadrants, each reserved for a different thought. For example, it appeared that all his questions were placed at the bottom of the page.

This is an anecdote that continues to be retold whenever the subject of note taking comes up on the web. Perhaps It’s most remarkable that Bill Gates would come into a room with nothing more than a yellow legal pad. And then proceed to take detailed notes. After all as a computer visionary and one of the richest men in the world, Gates could have an assistant take notes. He could ask for a detailed minutes and summaries from all meeting attendees. Or he could sit back as the senior guy in the room and observe the meeting, remaining aloof from the give and take of the project review.

Taking notes during a meeting sends a powerful message. It directly demonstrates that the notetaker is listening and processing the discussion. It shows that what is being said is important enough to record permanently. I make my living providing strategic advice and oversight to drug development teams. I’ve learned to watch for note taking in the meeting as a signal of significant information. When the pens come out, something important has been said. I can gauge my own impact by whether or not anyone writes down what I say.

For the note taker, the act of recording promotes active listening. Without making the effort, it’s all too easy to just follow the flow of presentations and discussion without being intellectually engaged. Synthesizing the information into a set of useful notes requires another stage of processing beyond simple understanding. Certainly it enhances the ability to recall and present the discussion later on. The fact that Gates didn’t have a computer makes him seem almost naked in the room. With nothing besides blank paper in front of him, he had to be focused on the meeting, not scanning and sorting the hundreds of emails he certainly receives in the course of a day.

If the meeting is important enough to be physically present, then it should be important enough to be mentally present as well.

Rob’s other interesting observation was that Gates used a structured note taking system. All we learn is that he divided the page into quadrants and used the bottom area to record questions.

The Cornell System

I’ve never been able to find any more information than this, but I assume that Gates picked up the Cornell system or some variant at some point in his life. Details on the Cornell system can be found at Cornell’s site. and there’s even a pdf generator to produce prepared templates for note taking.

The Cornell system is very simple, but was created to help college students record lectures and study for exams. A vertical line is made about a quarter of the way from the left margin. The large right side is for notes, the smaller left side is for “Cues”, questions based on the notes that can be used to clarify and recall the information in the notes. A bottom area of about 2 inches is for summarizing the notes on the page for easy reference.

I modified the Cornell system for my own use by using the cue area a place to record decisions and next actions. Taking Gate’s lead, I used the bottom for questions to pursue during or after the meeting- often topics or ideas to record later for my own use. I’ll freely admit that this sometimes becomes a distraction from active listening, but it keeps me in the meeting and away from email and social networking.

That takes care of the meeting. Once you’ve captured a few pages of notes, then what? First, even if the notes were never referenced again, the act of taking notes itself has been valuable in and of itself. But most of the time some processing is in order. And that simply means getting what’s useful into the other systems used to keep information available. Gathering next actions and appointments into lists and calendars, for example. Updating project summaries perhaps.

What I’ve personally find most useful is to file the notes in a project folder that comes out of the filing cabinet when I work on the project in the future. This kind of active note taking is a great aid to memory, vividly bringing back the logic and emotion of previous discussions and decision making. There’s the good and the bad, the “I told you so” notes and the “How could we have been so naive” notes.

Using meeting notes to bring the past vividly to mind leads to better decision making that always allowing the past to be a vague shadow that clouds our thinking.