“Pagan”:http://seapagan.org/pagan-hierarchy/pagan-hierarchy.gif” and “geek”:http://www.brunching.com/geekhierarchy.html hierarchies [via “Boing Boing”:http://boingboing.net/2004_02_01_archive.html#107711352171528909].
Give it a chance, it’s remarkably amusing in some strange sort of way.
This morning I saw a reference to an article about activity-based experiences “being the best way to achieve satisfaction”:http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/17/1076779970333.html, [via “Philip Greenspun”:http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2004/02/18#a3776]. This agrees very well with the sort of life I seem to be living at the moment, where a car is so far down my list of priorities as to be almost nonexistent, while a ski trip takes pride of place in my hopes and memories 
And I can’t say that the experience is that bad at all.
“Tim”:http://www.mothy.net/mothblog/ now works for “Clevercactus”:http://www.clevercactus.com/ with “Diego”:http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/002583.html. It won’t be too long before Tim gets to see the positive aspects. Feedster, Technorati, RSS feeds, trackbacks, and it’s all searchable by Google. How can this not be such a huge improvement in the ability to read about what interests us—quickly and efficiently?
And hey Tim, hope you still have time for our trip to Livigno next month 
Congratulations on the job move as well.
Dave Winer “opines”:http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/crimson1/whatIsFriendship on the nature of friendship, and comes up with a definition I can agree with. What it doesn’t explain is how friendship reaches this stage, and how it can leave it.
I do think that real friendship always needs an Event to make it happen—a moment when both people get a glimpse of the person within. This often doesn’t happen, even with people one meets every day. Even with family, and people who are sometimes called friends, but really are acquaintances (still wonderful people to know, don’t get me wrong).
Friendship by its nature can be hard to extend to large numbers of people—it takes a very special person to know a large number of people that well, and care equally much for them all. And the caring is what’s important.
A man was passing with a huge selection of red balloons. A woman said “Oooh I want one.” Another guy said (almost under his breath), “Burst them all.” Interesting difference in perspective there…
Anyway, it is the end of the night here, as Valentine’s Nights go, it… wasn’t so bad I’m happy.
According to “this page from the Economist”:http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=2424049, the prairie vole has a chemical addiction to vasopressin and oxytocin, which causes them to recognize and be rewarded (in a chemical-in-brain sense) for having close relations with a particular recognized female.
bq. Helen Fisher, a researcher at Rutgers University, and the author of a new book on love, suggests it comes in three flavours: lust, romantic love and long-term attachment. There is some overlap but, in essence, these are separate phenomena, with their own emotional and motivational systems, and accompanying chemicals. These systems have evolved to enable, respectively, mating, pair-bonding and parenting.
bq. Because they are independent, these three systems can work simultaneously–with dangerous results. As Dr Fisher explains, “you can feel deep attachment for a long-term spouse, while you feel romantic love for someone else, while you feel the sex drive in situations unrelated to either partner.” This independence means it is possible to love more than one person at a time, a situation that leads to jealousy, adultery and divorce–though also to the possibilities of promiscuity and polygamy, with the likelihood of extra children, and thus a bigger stake in the genetic future, that those behaviours bring. As Dr Fisher observes, “We were not built to be happy but to reproduce.”
bq. And although both men and women express romantic love with the same intensity, and are attracted to partners who are dependable, kind, healthy, smart and educated, there are some notable differences in their choices. Men are more attracted to youth and beauty, while women are more attracted to money, education and position.
I was finding it hard to sleep tonight, and it brought my mind back to the very best way to clear your mind at such times, when I was at home in Kilkenny. I now live in the heart of a major European city, and the stars are mute and dim. But back at home, the constellations burned brightly in the sky, and it was always a wonder and beauty to behold at night. So if I couldn’t sleep, what better way to spend a few minutes than out in the back garden looking for Orion’s Belt or the Plough, or Cassiopeia. Then narrow your eyes somewhat, and the faint glow of the Milky Way comes into view. This was all especially wonderful on a crisp winter night with a smell of frost in the air, then the sky was especially bright, and one could rejoice to be alive.