Stewart Brand’s Summaries of the Seminars About Long-term Thinking

September 18, 2011 at 10:23 am

It takes me too long to get into San Francisco to see the seminars hosted by Stewart Brand, but I really enjoy Stewart’s succinct summaries. (Back in the Whole Earth days I was surprised that no one ever commented on the quality of Stewart’s pithy, concise, often witty reviews.) 

On the “Learning to Learn Fast” seminar by Timothy Ferriss last week:

“To acquire ‘the meta-skill of acquiring skills,’ Ferriss recommends approaching any subject with some contrarian analysis: ‘What if I try the opposite of best practices?’  Some conventional wisdom—‘children learn languages faster than adults’ (no they don’t)—can be discarded.  Some conventional techniques can be accelerated radically.  For instance, don’t study Italian in class for a year before your big Italy trip; just book your flight a week early and spend that week cramming the language where it’s spoken.  You can be fluent in any language with mastery of just 1,200 words.…”

Here are 100 of his pared-down summaries of the SALT seminars for three bucks on the Kindle:

https://www.amazon.com/Summaries-Condensed-Long-term-Thinking-ebook/dp/B005I57M4O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1316213727&sr=1-1

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Little Trailer on Street in Oakland

September 17, 2011 at 9:39 pm

Spotted this last week in an east Oakland neighborhood (on the edge of the really tough part of the city). Something about it just looked right. A guy came down the street and asked what I was doing. I told them that I  was working on a book on tiny houses, that I liked the trailer. He said it was owned by a woman and she paid $500 for it. He was wearing a pale jade pendant, and I pulled out my New Zealand jade pendant to compare. He wanted to know when the book was coming out; I said February, so he showed me where he lived (the little place behind that pink house) and I agreed to bring him a copy in February. Gonna get word out every way I can.

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Tiny Homes Book Out of Here Monday

September 16, 2011 at 4:26 pm

Photo of (l.-r.) Rick, David, Lew, me here last week, working on book cover. Today Rick, Lew, and I are going over the pages one last time, and Rick will FTP (send via computer) pages to our printers in Hong Kong on Monday. Our color tests seem to be right on. Next week we get the cover finished (still up in air). With 1,300 photos to choose from, it’s an “embarrassment of riches.” It’s been a long haul, starting 2 years ago, and the last say, 8 months, in production. When the cover goes off, it’ll be a huge burden lifted. (The book looks spectacular!)

I’ll be going to Hong Kong in late October for the press check. In bookstores February 2012.

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Down Home Girl

September 12, 2011 at 3:11 pm

I just ran across this great version of the song. I didn’t know it was written by Jerry Lieber and –not in this case Mike Stoller, but — Artie Butler. A beautiful bit of singing by New Orleans R&B singer Alvin Robinson: https://funky16corners.lunarpages.net/?p=1755.

Then check out the quite different Coasters’ version. The Stones version:

Apparently there are no CDs or compilations of Alvin’s singing — a shame. Lost in time.

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Música de Semana Pasada

September 11, 2011 at 11:55 pm

Forgot to post this last week:

Photo at left from: https://physics.lunet.edu/blues/Mamie_Smith.html

Came into San Francisco on foggy coast at 6:30 this morning. The air was dense with negative ions from the big surf. Deep breaths energizing. As I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, there was a Bach cantata playing; then as I was on Union, heading to Cafe Roma in North Beach, Mamie Smith singing “Crazy Blues,” the first blues song to be recorded, in 1920, which, according to the DJ on BB King’s Bluesville, sold 1 million copies the first year.

Purpose for the trip was to get filmed by Channel 7 news, riding my skateboard. Mike Shumann, sports guy (and ex-49er linebacker) for KGO (ABC) local news, is doing a story on me skating. Plus I like an excuse to come into SF on a Sunday, when much of Golden Gate Park is closed to traffic, and one of the two big downsides of skating — falling on pavement, and cars — is removed. There’s a whole layer of stress removed when you can skate without worrying about cars.

Music du jour; “The Horizontal Bop,” by Bob Seeger and The Silver Bullet Band, pure 100% rock n roll a la say “Hot Legs” by Rod Stewart.

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