Assorted Links

1.) It's apparently possible to "try too hard" in learning a language.

"The findings support a theory of language acquisition that suggests that some parts of language are learned through procedural memory, while others are learned through declarative memory. Under this theory, declarative memory, which stores knowledge and facts, would be more useful for learning vocabulary and certain rules of grammar. Procedural memory, which guides tasks we perform without conscious awareness of how we learned them, would be more useful for learning subtle rules related to language morphology. 

"It's likely to be the procedural memory system that's really important for learning these difficult morphological aspects of language. In fact, when you use the declarative memory system, it doesn't help you, it harms you," Finn says."

2.) Talent vs. Training in Runners: More support for the idea that one can't teach speed. The charts are illuminating, and worth a gander.

3.) Thomas Friedman asks, "What is News?"

4.) A great youtube channel on life in Japan: Stumbled upon this earlier in the week, full of fascinating reporting.

5.) The Great Instability: on the changing economics of the family

Assorted Links

1.) Tim Ferriss and Gabriel Wyner discuss how to learn a foreign language

2.) Another breakthrough in solar-energy efficiency

3.) The rapid growth of Airbnb

'“There used to be a romanticism about ownership, because it meant you were free, you were empowered,” Chesky answered. “I think now, for the younger generation, ownership is viewed as a burden. Young people will only want to own what they want responsibility for. And a lot of people my age don’t want responsibility for a car and a house and to have a lot of stuff everywhere. What I want to own is my reputation, because in this hyperconnected world, reputation will give you access to all kinds of things now. ... Your reputation now is like having a giant key that will allow you to open more and more doors. [Young people] today don’t want to own those doors, but they will want the key that unlocks them” — in order to rent a spare room, teach a skill, drive people or be driven.'

4.) Misconceptions about lactate, lactate-threshold, and training

"A typical training mistake that many athletes and coaches do is training at “lactate threshold” in order to improve lactate clearance capacity. This is not correct as we know that during exercise lactate is mainly produced by glycolytic fibers (fast twitch) which are the ones recruited at “lactate threshold”. However, lactate is mainly cleared by adjacent slow twitch fibers that have a very high mitochondrial capacity and a much higher amount of mLDH enzymes and MCT-1 transporters. Therefore to improve lactate clearance capacity, and although totally counterintuitive, it is key to train those slow twitch muscle fibers to stimulate mitochondrial growth and function as well as increase MCT-1 and mLDH. Training at lactate threshold is essential to improve glycolytic fibers and their machinery (our “Turbo”) and to upregulate the number and function of glycolytic enzymes as well as to increase the number of MCT-4 transporters necessary to transport lactate away from fast twitch fibers to then be cleared by slow twitch fibers. Spending too much time at lactate threshold is very tasking as well, as it is a high effort and can lead to overtraining which is something we constantly observe in our lab."

5.) From August 2010: Japan and the Ancient Art of Shrugging

30-day Novel Challenge: The Conclusion

Yesterday, the 30-day novel challenge I began last month ended. A short summary of the tale would state that I managed about 16,000 words, starting well and fading around half-way. In the end I became a bit frustrated with the whole process, and wrote nothing the last five days of the challenge.

(For those who don't remember, the original goal involved writing a 50,000-word novel in 30-days)

Taking time away from writing helped I think, and with a clearer head than I had a few days ago, I'd like to share some of my "findings" from the experience.

Scheduling 

First, as mentioned in the post from the half-way point, I scheduled the challenge during a high period of distraction for me, beginning right with the World Cup and passing through the 4th of July holiday, a race, and a busy stretch at work. I'll not say these alone prevented me from finishing the challenge, but they did occupy my attention to varying degrees, and made it more difficult  to sit down and work through knots that arose in the story. What's more, the need to write could occasionally get in the way of enjoying other experiences, drawing attention away from the moment and toward the abstract notion called "the story". This was unfortunate, and a lesson worth learning. Writing is a lovely exercise, but not at the expense of enjoying life.

Now it must be said, there will likely be times when deadlines pay no mind to one's personal schedule, and care not a fig that the next month is full of other preoccupations for you. If a project comes due at a certain time, then all distractions aside, the project needs to get done. We don't always get to pick the date, or interval of time, when an important (and consuming) task comes along. Sometimes it seems we must be able to bring ourselves together no matter what the time of year. In that respect, this challenge was a helpful exercise in working on a difficult project through a busy stretch. I wouldn't have planned it that way, but so it went.

Creating a Story

With the challenge behind me, one thing at least seems clear: if you're going to write a story in 30-days, it should either be meticulously thought-out, or blended together one whim at a time. My own approach fell somewhere in the middle, and in this instance ended with the negative aspects of both methods. I had a fairly rigid notion of how I wanted the story to go, but had not sufficiently planned how to get from one set of scenes to the next. Does this idea,which sounds great in my head, actually work in the context of a written text? To my dismay, the translation from thought to text proved, in many cases, less than ideal.

One way to get around this problem is to abandon all notions of what the story "should" be, and let whims and fancies be your guide. I actually find this approach liberating at times, because it tends to expand one's idea of the possible, leaving the mind freer to think about old problems in new ways. Alas, during this particular challenge I had a very fixed idea of the kind of story I wanted to tell, without a very fixed idea of how to get from beginning to end. Ultimately this inflexibility-without-a-plan meant that when the original idea hit a snag, I was ill-prepared to develop a new one, or modify the old.

Conclusions

This was a very useful experience for me, even if the desired product didn't pan out. The challenge stretched my ability to think creatively and write under pressure. That I failed to deliver in this controlled setting is only part of the story, and to my mind at least, only relevant to the extent it revealed where improvement is most needed. Success has value and is certainly desirable; but a healthy dose of failure, taken constructively, is perhaps where and how we learn to do better next time. I suspect we only fail completely when we give-up completely--that we become so discouraged as to never try again. In that spirit, I intend to keep working on writing, and at some point in the future, re-attempt the 30-day novel challenge.

Thanks for sharing the journey with me :)

Assorted links

1.) An essay by Joan Didion on "Self-Respect" (1961).

"Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception."

2.) New indoor farm in Japan.

3.) Book review from The Economist of Clive Finlayson's, "The Improbable Primate: How Water Shaped Human Evolution." An interesting theory, echoing a common refrain of survivalists everywhere--you'll die of thirst long before you'll die of hunger.

4.) Dylan Matthews interviews Morten Jerven about the short-comings of economic statistics on poor countries. In short, it's hard to collect, and easy to think we know more than we do.

5.) A young engineer's idea for clearing plastic from the world's oceans.

6.) The power of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunamis (video). 

I've lately been reading David Pilling's book, "Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival" (2014), (see review here), an excellent work that deconstructs modern Japan within the context of the 90's asset bubble, and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear disaster. Not even Mr. Pilling's remarkable account could prepare me for footage of the actual tsunami. Truly astounding.

30-Day Novel Challenge: Half-way Update

Phew! We're now 15-days into our 30-day novel challenge, and the results are something of a mixed bag.

On the positive side, I've managed to write way more in two weeks than I frankly thought possible, with a current word-count of 15,296. In addition, I've gotten a lot of practice establishing scenes, playing with dialogue, and fleshing out the primary arc of the story. As I've mentioned before, getting to the middle and end of stories has long been a difficulty for me, so having made progress on that front is a real step forward.

On the negative side, to reach the 50,000-word goal of the challenge, I should be at 25,000 words at this, the half-way point. Clearly I've fallen behind, missing some days, and/or averaging less than the 1,667 words required to reach the goal.

After some reflection, I don't really mind the miss. Sure, it doesn't feel great to be so far behind, but there are worse outcomes to such an experiment. And it could be that the next 15-days are much more productive than the previous ones. I doubt this will happen to an appreciable extent, but it might. One thing I've learned about 30-day writing challenges is that which 30-day stretch you pick can matter a great deal. I happened to pick one right in the middle of the World Cup, a house-sitting gig, and a major holiday. While not excuses, these other interests/commitments do make voluminous writing more challenging.

I also keep running up against my own desire to edit and rework material--a big no-no if this project will ever reach the end. Despite lapses, I've managed to control this urge with some success, plowing on despite misgivings or second-thoughts about characters, what they just said, and the like. There are going to be a lot of duds this go-around, and if anything, the more that find their way into this draft, the better the next draft will be. I've heard it said that first-draft are your chance to try crazy things--to push ideas to their extreme, to the point of absurdity if needs be. We go at a first-draft like a kid goes at a stack of birthday presents, ripping and tearing with only the barest regard for the end goal--getting at the goodies inside. As one of those kids who took pains not to tear wrapping paper growing up, I'm not a natural at this unbounded form of enthusiasm. But I believe a less-restrained approach could help matters in the second half of this challenge, setting aside our qualms and going at the story with some real energy. And while I may or may not reach the 50,000-word goal, the final result may prove surprising.

Onward we go!

Assorted Links

1. Is sectarian fighting inevitable in the Middle East? Thomas Friedman says no.

2. Big changes could be coming to Japan. Would not have guessed the average age of a Japanese farmer is seventy.

3. Interesting interview with Arata Fujiwara, the other so-called "indie" star in Japanese running.

4. Joseph Stiglizt believes, "inequality is not inevitable."

"If it is not the inexorable laws of economics that have led to America’s great divide, what is it? The straightforward answer: our policies and our politics. People get tired of hearing about Scandinavian success stories, but the fact of the matter is that Sweden, Finland and Norway have all succeeded in having about as much or faster growth in per capita incomes than the United States and with far greater equality."

5. More than two-thirds of American youths not ineligible for military service: And not all for reasons you might think.

The 30-day Novel Challenge

One of the hardest things I find about writing isn't starting but finishing (har-har ;)...). I struggle in other areas, too, but the lack of finishing is probably the most detrimental to my writing development. Elements like pacing, dialogue, plot, character-development, and grammar can all be practiced, honed, and improved. But without assembling drafts that have a beginning, middle, and end, we never really get a chance to practice the art and craft of story-telling broadly understood.

While I know little and less and about chess, I've heard that skilled players divide a match into opening- game, middle-game, and end-game. Some players are masters at opening-game and middle-game, but lose confidence when end-game arrives. Others are the opposite, growing stronger as the match develops.

 I think in writing I am best (but by no means great) at opening-game. I enjoy building a world and characters to populate it. I like following characters through their day, meeting their friends and seeing places they often visit--school, home, a local park; in short, getting to know them on a basic level of acquaintance. Excitement rises when their routine is disrupted, or some challenge comes into their lives requiring a bit of ingenuity and growth so solve. That can be good fun for a writer, if not always for the character.

As the story enters middle-game and end-game, I find the going harder. They're both different from open-game, so far as I can tell, and present different challenges. I struggle here for a number of reasons, but I suspect the most important is because I have so little experience working through them.

If all we study are openings, we'll never give ourselves the chance to sift through the complexities of middle and end.

For this reason, I decided I would give the National Novel Writing Month challenge a try. The idea of the challenge is to write 50,000-words of a novel during the 30-days of November. The time-frame is kept deliberately short as a way of keeping writers like me from bogging down early and throwing their drafts away. Quantity is stressed over quality, with the understanding that a finished draft is more useful than a polished opening-third of the same story one has been trying to tell for a decade. I agree with these premises, but having the itch to write at this moment, decided to start the 30-day challenge right away rather than wait until November.

 I'm about a week in now, and so far it's going well. The hardest part has been putting my "perfectionist" tendencies to the side, focusing instead on moving the story forward rather than correcting every minor detail in the opening sections; that can come later, when the middle-game and end-game have at least been given a first showing. Even if it turns out to be a bad showing, it will be worth the practice I expect (consider it an "investment in loss").

I'll try and keep the blog updated through the course of this project, which should conclude on 16 July. I admit the demands of writing a 50,000-word story in 30-days may limit what I have to say here, but I will try.

Wish me luck!