Future Ben

I am in Kyoto right now. Really I am! this is my second time in this city. It’s the 3rd if you count the time came through just to eat Anago at the Nishiki market.

I am here for an imaging conference, but I am taking the opportunity to stay at a ryokan and absorb the culture as best I can.

Japan is generally a pretty foreign place to the likes of people like me, but the extent the people here go to ameliorate the alienation. Here I am the only white person in this little okonomiyaki place but there is a helpful english menu all the same.

Of course this isn’t remarkable. I am attending an international conference conducted in English. The scandanavian girls who stopped and asked for directions, which I was patently unqualified to give, started in English. If the greatest generation fought and died for anything it was to establish English over German or French as the international language.

I am not entirely comfortable with that fact. I took Spanish and Mandarin and do my best to pick up what Japanese I can, but in the end the native speakers I interact with will be better at English than I will ever be at their languages because they have to be.

And for what honestly. True the US publishes more scientific papers than the rest of the world but we as a culture reach so much farther than we as a people.

Or so the complaint goes. But wait, isn’t that a inherently racist statement? Who are the American people? Certainly not all native English speakers and obviously not all white. It is this truth alone that helps me accept the decades of cultural imperialism. Our only claim to our global language is the sheer number of people who learn our language in order to live in America.

epilouge:
On the flight back I caught myself again. I was one of 10 white people on the plane, but not until I lined up for entry did I realize that 1/4 of the passengers were Asian Americans.

Welcome to the new home of Imagenode and NYCSparkworks! TwinS and Ray needed professional workspace and I needed art and storage. Admittedly I am the financial junior partner on this, but I won’t need the same kind of floorspace those two use. Plus U will contribute to infrastructure as much as I can.

It’s weird that I started in living in that area so many years ago to have a live/work space. In those days all I did was build out my loft. Now when I actually need workspace I live in a little studio in Manhattan

I am on set at a music video. It’s good to know my fire skills are still appreciated. Although I am just a consultant for the dancers. The choreographer has done most of the dance for FischerSpooner so I am in good company.

I am in this weird zone between the crew and the talent. I feel like I should either be warming up or lifting something heavy. Instead I am explaining why frilly collars of straw won’t be good for dancers with torches. (costuming was pretty agreeable to that one)

It’s customary to not ask stupid queations on set, but I don’t think any of the actual musicians are even here. Unless they are crewing their own video. In which case they are truly hardcore.

The ever enlightening site edge.org poses a question to noted thinkers every year. This year’s question is, “What have you changed your mind about? Why?”

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?”

There is some really compelling stuff here. At first I thought everybody would just present whatever idea they were trying to push, but that wasn’t the case. I just finished Aubrey DeGray’s essay, and it had nothing to do with aging. In fact it helped me to solidify some notions I have had about science vs. technology. Do look it over if you have a few spare hours.