Naked Singularity
bereft of an event horizon
January 2, 2010 at 5:33 am
filed under assortments of colors, learning to learn, the dismal science
I’ve always been drawn to change, fascinated with adaptation, flux, the shifting of shapes. It’s very nice when it comes to some things, like adjusting to new environments, but it also means I keep finding excuses for inconsistency. I find it easier to erase my old projects and start over, rather than building on them in a sort of progression from lesson to lesson.
So in this revamp of nS.net I decided to completely start over and try to figure out where I really wanted to go with this blog. Well, archiving was a definite reason to keep it; I love my LJ, but finding relevant posts months after I’ve written them is a huge pain. Then of course there was the problem of content. Academics? Check. Research interests? Check. Gaming, geeks, and other things that started with a g? Check, check, check!
Except maybe this will be a little more spontaneous too, because I’ve found that while I do love writing full-length posts the effort also tends to take a lot of energy out of me. I actually pondered turning this into something like a tumblelog, but ran into a minor (and, admittedly, pretty shallow) snag: I didn’t like the themes that came with that sort of blog structure. And that was that.
Instead I chose Photon 2, which I gave a couple of tweaks and a color reset based on the Defiant Gravity palette I made at COLOURlovers:
I’ve noticed a shift in myself when it comes to perceptions, images, colors. I’ve grown fonder of minimal designs — like this one, for instance, as opposed to back when I coded my own layouts and used images wherever there was room for them, from list bullet points to headers to entry dividers — but at the same time I’ve also begun taking more risks, favoring bolder colors. It’s a nice play between balance and counter-balance, and I think that maybe, eventually, I might even be able to really develop a style that’s recognizably my own, that speaks as much about my philosophy and beliefs about the nature of life and art and beauty as it speaks in the language of line and color and form. Maybe, if I keep trying, if I keep my eyes open and continue learning.
It’s not as easy as I used to think, learning to learn. Sometimes it takes uncommon willingness, a strange mix of courage and insanity and defiance of everything that says “you can’t”. Throughout my studies, both during my undergrad years and this past year as a grad student, I saw that sometimes, the most useful research emerged as a wild idea that went against just about every current prevailing trends; that a lot of the theories that now influence our thinking first met with resistance, derision, outright dismissal. In some instances learning, and doing more, requires a certain madness. Risk.
And humility, too, which is perhaps the most difficult part of it all, but that should go without saying.
Right now I’m reading papers on evolutionary game theory and the emergence of cooperation. It’s not the sort of thing I’d have thought I’d end up reading, but lack of the familiar territory of equations and carefully defined rules notwithstanding, it’s still rather interesting. What I like about my classes right now is they give me a lot of opportunities to branch out into all sorts of other fields; I got interested in new institutional economics because of my Economic History class, for instance.
Speaking of NIE, I received information about the upcoming Coase Workshop on Institutional Analysis, to be held this year in Moscow, and because I was curious (and in a rather geeky frame of mind) I checked out the application information and some of the participants’ abstracts from previous workshop. Part of my research on agent interactions could potentially pass muster, and the application process didn’t seem too difficult — so it was a tenable idea, up until I brought it up with my parents.
Me: I’m thinking of submitting an application to participate in a workshop on institutional analysis. It’s going to be held in Moscow. I could just try…?
Father: Moscow? What if you get kidnapped?
And the conversation ended with my mother tactfully suggesting that maybe I could wait until a few years later and was more capable of defending myself from the kidnappers and deadly crime syndicates that lurked around European airports. …I’d be a little more bemused, really, if not for how I’ve grown used to my father’s overprotectiveness over the years. In any case, it’s another goal to work toward. It would be nice to attend more conferences as I work on my degree.
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