Ken vs. the City

I’ve always been curious about the nature of beauty. What makes things look good? What makes them attractive? Why do beautiful things make you feel good inside, and why do they sometimes strike such a chord in you that they can change your whole way of looking at the world?

The ancient Greeks turned beauty into a philosophy and called it aesthetics. One of the main views they held was that beauty was based on symmetry. Though symmetry is good, I find the concept of it limiting. Symmetry only applies to objects you can see like people or paintings. What about stories? Or music? Those are things we can’t see, and yet they can be beautiful.

I believe the essence of beauty is simplicity. Symmetry is a form of simplicity, but things that are simple in form can be asymetrical. Things that are simple can be easily understood. Once something is understood, it can be appreciated. There’s no way to appreciate something if you have no idea what it means. Sometimes I read books in which the words and situations are so complicated that I simply can’t see anything appealing about them. It’s only when I’m able to see the simple ideas and concepts that connect the different complicated arms of plot, sub-plot, character, and theme that I’m able to see the beauty of it.

It’s a lot like life itself… complicated on the outside, simple and sweet on the inside. It was only because people realized that the world is ordered and rational, and that behind the facade of relational confusion, egotistical smoke screens, and self-delusional relativism that we in many ways have been able to quantify the threads that hold the world together. Newton simplified physics and mathematics with his laws of motion and calculus. Einstein uncovered the link between energy and mass, and then connected it to Newton’s law of gravitation. Today scientists around the world are working faithfully to discover a unified field theory, nicknamed the “Theory of Everything,” to explain the behavior of all the fundamental forces and elementary particles in the universe. They are working under the impression that one exists.

Even art in these modern times, whose revelations often seem ethereal and inconcrete, points to a greater simplified truth behind the curtain of overwhelming sensory data. Take Jackson Pollock for example. His drip-paintings, abstract to the extreme, appear at first-glance to mean absolutely nothing. Indeed, that’s the message many say he tried to portray. But if his work meant nothing, why did one of his paintings sell for $11.6 million in 2004? I would venture to say that the underlying simplification of one of Pollock’s works is not nothing, but in fact the man himself. Someone payed $11.6 million not because Pollock’s painting was meaningless, but because it was painted by Pollock. He himself and the story of his life is the underlying simplicity.

Chaos is always complex. Order, no matter how complicated it looks on the outside, is always simple. When you dig deep enough into something complicated you will find that the threads you though had been tossed about seemingly at random are all organized and connected to the same rootstock. That will ultimately lead you to the ultimate simplicity: a person. Order always implies intelligence.

I have heard the proponents of Intelligent Design theory say that life is so complex that it could not have come into being if not for an intelligent designer, but I say no! Life is so ordered. Life is so simple. Behind the complicated experience of emotions we call life there is a unified order and simplicity that can only be explained by an intelligent creator.

It is that connection to the divine we see when we look at or experience somthing beautiful. It is not a theory or an idea. It’s a person who has left their mark on something and begs us to follow the breadcrumbs.

The second episode of the Haven Nation is up. I got a chance to interview a screenwriter friend of mine, Brennan Smith.

I mentioned his “best of 2005″ movie picks earlier. He’s got a lot of opinions about movies, and this time he had a lot to say about the art of theme.

Good stuff. Have a listen.

Today was such a beautiful day. I went running along the waterfront. The sun was shining and the water of the East River splashed into the air as it crashed against the edge of the dock. There are some sandy parts, but they’re small and usually filled with junk. The walkway goes right up to the edge of the water, and it’s held up by pillars embedded in the ground, so I guess you can call it a dock even though it’s not made of wood, and it’s not made for tying boats to.

When the weather is nice there are always about a dozen old men out there with their fishing poles. Most of them are Chinese. My grandmother says they actually eat the fish they pull out of the water. I know the river is much cleaner nowadays, but there’s no way you’ll catch me eating fish pulled out of that water. It looks like fun, and I’ve never been much of a fisherman, but one of these days, I’ll try to rangle up a fishing pole and practice some catch-and-release. I don’t think you need a permit.

The view of the East River is awesome. Every waterfront view is, but this route takes you beneathe the spanning arms of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. It’s a little noisy because it’s right under the East Side highway, but on a sunny day like today, a little noise is nothing.

For a few months I’ve been taking the city for granted. Now that I’ve been here for a while it feels like the same old, same old sometimes. But unlike the bustle of the daily grind, the simple things like this remind me that I have moved to a great city. And that with every subway ride I take underground, and every beam of sunlight I see overhead reflected off of the glass-faced skyscrapers, I know that life here can only get more interesting.

I remember the day I got my shiny new Gmail account and discovered the art of tagging. I admit I was a little overzealous and wanted to apply tags to everything. I cursed Windows file folders and blog categories as archaic anachronisms of Web 1.0. But now that the charm of a new way of doing things has worn off, I have seen the error of my thinking.

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If you haven’t used Gmail, del.icio.us, Technorati, Flickr, or any other service that uses tags, here’s the deal. Tagging is a method of organizing data that some people refer to as a “folksonomy,” a combination of the word “folks,” a vernacular for people, and “taxonomy,” which in greek means literally a “law of naming,” and has been used by scientists to refer to the classification of plants and animals.

When you “tag” something, you add a virtual one or two word label to describe that thing’s contents, whether it’s an image, a link, a blog post, or Aunt Patty’s recipe for chicken soup. Most people add multiple labels to describe different aspects of the item. If it’s something that’s online, other people (folks) can come along and describe the item further by adding their tags. Because an item has these short descriptive tags associated with it, it makes it easier to find other things that are related, since they would have the same tag.
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One of the things that drew me to tags was the way it seemed to coincide with the way I think. I have found that my mind doesn’t classify things by abstract categories. There is no file folder in my mind called “book” where I keep all my Shakespeare references. Instead I have a tag called “flower” which may lead me to “Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet,” also tagged with “Romeo and Juliet,” which would lead me to “Claire Danes,” also tagged with “actor,” which would of course inevitably lead me to “Kevin Bacon” in six degrees or less.

On my old Blogger blog there was no category option, so a tagging hack using del.icio.us was the only way to go. Now that I’ve moved over to Wordpress I am faced with the choice of using categories, tags, or both to organize my blog posts. In my examination of the problem, I noticed that even though tags are a fine way to organize things and group them by subjectmatter, they’re simply too abundant to serve effectively as navigational categories. If I use categories as tags, I may end up with a navigational list of maybe 50 or more items. It makes much more sense to me to refrain from using tags as a navigational tool and re-organize everything into maybe 4-6 broad categories.

Tags can still be used to interconnect the individual blog posts, but they have no business cluttering up my site’s navigation system. It then dawned on me that my mind uses both categores and tags together too. Not only are my thoughts interconnected by content, but they are also divided into broad categories like “while at work,” “while at home,” “while writing,” “while praying,” or “while at a party.”

I believe that in order for a web site interface to be intuitive, it needs to correspond with the way people think. People think in tags, but they also think in categories. When the design for this site is done, it should include some of those ideas.

As you can see, the new design for the site is up. I still have to point some of the links in the right direction, and modify some technical parts of the front page, but the main part of the design is done.

When it’s finished, the front page will list the first blog entry, plus updated portfolio information and Flickr photos. It will look something like this:

My screenwriter friend Brennan Smith knows everything there is to know about the art of dramatic storytelling. Even though I don’t always agree with his conclusions, I always find his insights into the art of story fascinating.

Each year he posts his analysis of some of the previous years’ movie titles. Here is his post for 2005. (watch out for spoilers) His insights are always way more interesting than Ebert and that other guy’s.

His picks for 2005:

1. Cinderella Man
2. The Constant Gardener
3. Batman Begins
4. Walk the Line
5. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
6. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit

Read Moreh

The new site design is almost done. I just have to put some finishing touches on in, and figure out a few more wordpress template tag functions.

It’s actually not as difficult as I thought. It’s got a lot of cryptic “php”-looking gobbeldygook in it, and looks completely different from Blogger’s theming system, but it’s actually quite similar. After reading through the documentation, I’m actually surprised at how flexible it is.

Too bad no one’s made a WYSIWYG Wordpress template builder.

I’ve been thinking about designing a logo for Ken vs the City– just something to help people identify me, the site, and related info.

Here’s an interesting piece with some insights on logo design. It’s an interesting read if you’re into designing things.

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Well, since High School I haven’t been much of a programmer, but I do fined uber-technical programming tutorials interesting, even if I can’t understand them. Here’s an incomprehensible tutorial on the most mystifying low-level programming of all: Assembler.

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That’s the title, but the article actually lists 10 “deadly” things to avoid when creating a podcast.

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