Refuse to Choose - the problem with Polymaths

Refuse to Choose
By Barbara Sher
Rodale Books  2007

Do you know what a Polymath is? A polymath is the new name for what we used to call a Renaissance Man. A man who knew a lot about a lot of things. Names like Leonardo da Vinci spring to mind.I mean lets face it - women were never considered to be intelligent back then - even through they were.

I am 40 something years old and I still do not have a career. I still do not know what I want to be when I grow up. I am interested in lots of different things. I find it extremely difficult to have to choose just one area and be required to stick to that one area for the rest of my life.

Today I found the answer for what I am. I am a polymath. I am also a generalist. But todays economy (whether depressed or booming) prefers to train humans up to be specialists. I do not like being a specialist.

Today I found a book that describes me and my kind. It's called Refuse to Choose, by Barbara Sher. It has an interesting subtitle Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams.

I also found a review of this book. I haven't read this book yet - but I am putting it on reserve at my library so I can read it ASAP.  Here are some excerpts of this review that I totally agree with. I hope to find a general career I can start working towards. The following comments are some excerpts from the review.

It’s about the types of people Sher calls “scanners” (as opposed to “divers”). People who would rather survey the whole horizon than go diving as deep as they can in one spot. She calls them scanners, I call them polymaths, but they’re very similar.

The main thing I got out of this book was that it’s OK to be a scanner, it’s just how we’re wired and not something we should try to suppress, and in fact it’s a good thing. Which I already knew, of course, but it was nice to see a recognized life coach saying so and talking about her clients who have successfully pursued their diverse interests.


One example of how she shows that scanners are OK: the false stigma of quitting. Many scanners get very frustrated with themselves for not being able to finish what they set out to do. Barbara explains why this is not a sign of failure, but a sign of having goals that are achieved before a project appears to be done. When a bee gets nectar from a flower and then moves on to the next one, do you call it a quitter for not sticking around

And some comments from the Amazon page are as follows - comments that again, I totally agree with.

This is a really good book. You need to read it if you are someone who has so many interests you can't seem to get anything done. If everyone you know says you just never grew up and settled down then you are probably a Scanner. Do you have so many interests the books and papers pile up? Do you constantly find things that interest you and you never seem to be able to finish them? You are almost certainly a Scanner, and you need to hear what Barbara Sher has to say. It can make a big difference.

What I have ALWAYS been is confused. I am not stupid--actually more on the intellectual side. I have varied interests in the Pre-Raphaelites, travel,hockey, making mosaics, growing a garden, politics, writing, being healthy, quirky little English movies etc etc. And instead of picking one career..I have found myself in menial jobs--retail, shelving books at a library, working reservations for a major airline, temp jobs with insurance companies etc etc. And I am still barely over minimum wage, intellegent and having friends wonder what is wrong with me--or asking if I had ADD.
 
For years, I beat myself up because I hopped from job to job because as soon as I mastered a task, I got bored. Every time I fell in love with a new hobby, I tried to make it a career, only to feel boxed in as soon as it began to take off. I thought I was afraid of success or lazy or undisciplined, but none of that was true. Barbara Sher taught me that I have a beautiful mind--like Leonardo da Vinci. Well, maybe not that good, but I have a hungry mind that needs stimulation. I have nothing to be ashamed of.
 
Because I am interested in so many things, this book naturally grabbed my attention. Barbara understands that "scanners" are not just losers or non-commital type but are people wired differently than others. They have great abilities that decades ago would have made them someone like Edison or DaVinci.

These comments come from other people who are just like me.  They describe me (Bibliohistoria) and my life PERFECTLY. I am not alone.

My interests are reasonably wide and somewhat varied. They include - reading, genealogy, politics, science, gymnastics (but no other sports), archaeology, science fiction, paleography, history, geography, bibliography, computers, apologetics, cartography, archives, records management, library science, and any other area of interest you can find mentioned in this blog.  
 
In terms of a career so far, I have recently completed a Diploma in Business Administration. I graduated last year. I have no other educational qualifications. I do make a lot of plans but they never seem to come to pass. I have been out of school for over 25 years. This diploma is quite generalized (which is why I chose it) and not specialised. I did think about doing either a paralegal course or a medical records management course, but did not want to become too specialised. Now my general diploma is a hindrance in obtaining a job as I dont have anything "special'.
 
When I finally get to read this book, I will post a review and my understanding of what I can do to hopefully salvage the next 20 years of my working life.

One final comment  (Source - Hunter Nuttal)

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

I’ve always loved that quote, but I don’t think he took it quite far enough. Let’s try again.

“A human being should be able to make six figures online, write an enthralling novel, design a relational database, mix a perfect margarita, calculate a stock’s annualized return, juggle five balls in the lotus position, nail every shift point in a drag race, throw a murderous left hook, solve Rubik’s Cube while discussing the latest tax laws, do heavy squats without a back brace, stand with their legs straight and touch their palms to the floor, identify a stranger’s Myers-Briggs type, separate fact from fiction in the law of attraction, make a baby feel safe, make a child laugh, make an elderly person feel respected, be one of the guys, and give a girl multiple orgasms. Specialization is for insects."

Lost Empire - Book Review

Lost Empire
by Clive Cussler and Grant Blackwood
G P Putnam and Sons, 2010

I haven't read the first book in this new series from Clive Cussler, the one called Spartan Gold. It's a good thing I haven't. This novel is the second book in the Fargo series starring a treasure hunting couple - Sam and Remi Fargo. This book was not the usual fun. It was very busy and hard to read. Too many things were happening , too many details and at time it was even boring. It is not connected to NUMA - no names from the Numa books or any of Cusslers other books show up at all. No Bell. no Cabrillo. No Austin and certainly no Pitt.

While the premise was good, the story could have been a lot better.

For starters, there were no real descriptions or stories of Sam and Remi Fargo as a couple so it was hard to imagine them. I would love to know how and why a woman was given a name like Remi. I have to assumne that they don't have children as none were mentioned. There were no personal descriptions of them as humans. While there is a brief mention of their backgrounds and how they got into treasure hunting, this description was dry and void of any personal anecdotes.

The story starts out with Sam and Remi scuba diving around Zanzibar, in Tanzania, East Africa. They find a ships bell buried in a sand bar. The bell comes from a ship called the Ophelia. When the Fargos try to bring this bell up to the surface, the enemy comes out, threatening them, trashing their boat and trying to kill them. How could this have happened so fast? This enemy are Mexican. So the next questions is why are the Mexicans so interested in a bell found off the coast of Africa? And why are they willing to kill to cover up whatever is found? 

Underneath the name Ophelia on the bell, are letters that indicate the bell also comes from another ship. These letters spell out the name Shenandoah - a confederate ship that did a lot of work during the civil war destroying and sinking yankee (northern states) shipping. This ship and its activities was traced from the 1860s up the 1880s and then it disappeared. The Fargo's found it. It was eventually found in Indonesia where it was perfectly preserved (just like the Pompeii ruins) by the ashes from the Krakatoa volcano explosion in 1883.

In the background is the Fargos researcher - doing exactly the kind of job that I would love to do. The researcher's name is Selma (I hope she was named after Selma Ruete - the last princess of Zanzibar) who lives back in La Jolla, California and who is brilliant at finding out all the answers.

I found the relentess Mexicans to be a distraction. They were always there at every turn and every find that the Fargo's made. Always trying to kill the Fargos. Their presence does not always make sense.

The Mexicans had been looking for something for 10 years. The Fargos found it in just a few weeks. It turns out that the current President of Mexico (Garza) is the leader of the country's Aztec party and he got into power by bringing back the memory and power of the Aztecs (conveniently forgetting the bloodthirsty sacrifices that they made) as a warrior race of people capable of running their own country once again.

Garza had discovered a secret about the Aztecs. And if the people of Mexico knew this secret, he would lose his power and his job as president.

The Fargos trace the Aztecs from Zanzibar to Madagascar to Indonesia. There they discover that the Aztecs did NOT originate in Mexico. Some 1500 years ago they travelled from Indonesia, via Madagascar (or Malagasy as it used to be called) to Mexico where they settled around 500 CE.

When this news is released to the press as a rumour, Garza's party is very quickly overtuned and Garza himself committs suicide.

As I said, the story idea was very good one. But the execution of the story was done in a rushed and hurried manner. Too many details and not particularly realistic.

There is one more thing I need to mention. The Olmec people of Mexico. The people whose statues look like Africans. Well since the Africans travelled from Africa to MesoAmerica, it stands to reason that Aztecs may have done so as well. Also if Heyerdahl can prove that the Inca traveled across the Pacific in small reed boats then the early Indonesians and early African could easily have travelled across the Atlantic Ocean as well.

An important Anniversary for me today

This is just a quck note to remind myself that when I was younger I didn't want to be married. I was not in any hurry to meet a guy. But I did meet a fellow. Online of all places. We got married 10 years ago today.

Today is my 10th (yes TENTH) wedding anniversary and that we are still married and we are still together. We have one son - who's pictures are scattered through this blog. Neither my husbands name nor my sons names are mentioned in this blog for privacy reasons.

Losing it - Book Review

Losing it - And Getting My Life Back, One Pound at a Time
by Valerie Bertinelli
Free Press (Simon & Schuster) 2008

Valerie Bertinelli has several claims to fame.
1 - she was acting on a hit TV comedy show at the age of just 16  (One Day at a Time)
2 - she married one of the founding members of the famous Van Halen rock group - one of the more famous heavy metal music bands of the 1980s
3 - her son (Wolfgang Van Halen) now plays with his father for Van Halen some 25 years later
4 - while her marriage was falling apart, Valerie comforted herself with eating. Now she has lost weight in public and on TV. She does this while working as a spokesperson for Jenny Craig.

There are also a number of other nuggets of information that I never knew.

I was never a heavy metal music fan although I loved listeing to the music of the 1980s. I preferred pop, disco and rock music. While I know what and who Van Halen and Bon Jovi were, I was never into their music so I never bothered to read up on any of their group members or their history.

Did you know that Edward Van Halen (Eddie) was not born in the USA? His mother was from Indonesia and his father was Dutch. Eddie was born in the Netherlands. Remember Indonesia used to be called the Dutch East Indies. The Van Halens immigrated to the USA in the early 1960s.

Eddie unfortunately could not cope with the pressures of fame and so he began drinking and doing drugs - marijuana and cocaine. While Valerie also experimented with drugs, she never went further than marijuana. Her drug of comfort was food. Slowly the weight piled on. The the comments began. Mostly they were small things where she looked great but her ass could be a bit smaller.

Valeries sitcom TV show One Day at a Time was a hit. I remember that I loved watching it. Valeries's TV sister was played by MacKenzie Phillips - daughter of John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas. Mackenzie also struggled with drug addictions. Mackenzie was eventually fired from the show.

If you want to know what life is really like, backstage of a rock concert and what it is really like to travel on the road with a music band, then you have to read this book.

I really enjoyed it.

Valerie has a new biography out now - a follow up to Losing It. Her new book is called Finding It and was published in October 2009.

Watch - Book Review

Watch
by Robert J Sawyer
Viking (Penguin) Books 2010
Trilogy website
Author's website

This is the second book in the WWW trilogy. I reviewed the first book last year.

This book continues the story of the new conciousness that has arisen on the world wide web,

Caitlyn Decter is no longer blind. Well she still is blind in her right eye, but her left eye has a retinal implant and she can now see in 2 different ways. In realtime - in which she sees the world like you and me. And in cyberspace - where she sees the web as points of lights with the links as lines.

This cyber consiousness makes contact with Caitlyn. The conciousness is given a name - Webmind. And it begins to learn. It reads everything on Wikipedia and in Project Gutenberg. It craves more knowledge.

To speak to Caitlyn, Webmind starts off by sending its answers to her questions online though the Instant Messaging system.  It becomes "bored" with Caitlyns slow responses so while Webmind is trying to chat to Caitlyn, it also decides to learn more by linking to other websites. So far it has only been able to link to one website at atime, even if this does happen in the space of microseconds. Webmind tries over and over again and eventually is able to make two links simultaneously - so he continues to do so. Eventually this causes Webmind to "hang up" or freeze. Caitlyn has to work hard to unjam Webmind. This is the event that brings Webmind to the attention of the government.

On the 20th floor of an office tower in Alexandria, Virginia, there is a new US government agency - an offshoot of the NSA. It is called WATCH, which means Web Activity Threat Containment Headquarters.

When Webmind gets jammed, WATCH becomes very curious about this person online with no IP address and who freezes up online. So they begin by watching and reading everything between Webmind and Caitlyn. They give this unknown online threat a name - Exponential.

At Webmind's insistence, the Japanese scientist - Kuroda - adds more software to Caitlyn's retinal implant and eventually Webmind can see anything that Caitlyn can see. That software includes watching and understanding movies and visual moving pictures (eg anything on TV, youtube or webcams).

Caitlyn is now having to relearn the names of things that she has only ever touched up until now. She must also relearn the colours by linking the names to the actual colours. Caitlyn also learns to read the latin alphabet but she prefers to read braille with her eye (rather than her fingers) as she knows that alphabet best. Caitlyn can talk to Webmind out loud. Webmind can now contact and respond to Caitlyn by sending braille to Caitlyn's retinal inplant.

Halfway through this story a girl in Australia sits in front of a webcam and slashes her wrist. She does so at the urging of others who tell her she is a coward if she does not do it. A few lone voices tell her not to but she refuses to listen. Webmind watches this without understanding. This suicide does make the news.

Webmind tells Caitlyn that he (Webmind calls himself a he, so as to not be called it) watched this and did nothing because he did not know he should have done anything. Caitlyn explains that he should have attempted to communicate with the girl and encourage her to not kill herself. If this happens again, he is do whatever he can to not allow that person to kill themself.

Caitlyn says he shoud do things to make people happy, but only if more than one person is made happy by that event. Do not so whatever you are asked if only that person asking will benefit. That is called being selfish.

Eventually WATCH decides that this Exponential is becoming too much of a threat. in reality - it is an unknown and unknowns must be neutralised. The decision is made at the highest levels to neutralise this threat. So WATCH has agents from the Canadian SIS service sent to Waterloo (in Ontario) to speak to both Caitlyn and Malcolm Decter (Caitlyn's father). They wish to know more about this Webmind and they specifically want to know its source. On which server does it reside?

These agents threaten to void (cancel) Malcolms Decters work permit if they do not tell the agents where Webmind lives and on which servers it resides. Since Webmind lives in cyberspace, he has no hardware and resides on no server.

The Decter family understand that the actions of the agents means that the government wishes to shut Webmind down. The best way to prevent something from being permanently hidden is to make it public. So Webmind needs to become public. What would be the best way to do that?

The answer is SPAM

Webmind removes all the spam emails sent out to some 2 billion email addresses daily. So everyone wakes up one day to just their own daily mail addressed to them that is NOT a spam email. Webmind sends a letter to each of these 2 billion email addresses explaining who he is, what he has done and why.

People respond by asking Webmind to do other things. Webmind deals with all requests and only does whatever is asked of more than just the asker will be made happy. The most common way for this to occurr is when people ask to find missing friends and relatives. Where adopted children and adults ask Webmind to find their mothers and children. Webmind does so but he contacts the mothers and the children first and asks for their permission.

70% of responses are agreeable to being reunited with their friends, relatives and family members who were adopted out

WATCH decides to delete mutant packages at one switching node. Soon 27% of packages are being deleted and this is seriously eroding Webmind's ability to function. Webmind sends a message to Caitlyn. Help I am under attack.

Caitlyn and Webmind together respond by sending all the SPAM that Webmind cleaned up - more than 20 billion SPAM messages - to that one specific switching node - a denial of service attack. It works, as AT and T threatens to take that node offline which will shut down a good portion of the internet. WATCH is forced to abort its attempt to neutralise Webmind.

Caitlyn then asks the question. The government was deleting packages. How did the government know that Webmind was made up of packages?

It turns out that Caitlyn's new boyfriend - a classmate named Matthew who is also a maths geek - had done a google search on various terms after he was told about Webmind and asked to keep it a secret. He searched terms like cellular automata, Conway's Game of Life, cellular automata conciouness, packets, time to live, hop counters.

Since everyone connected with Caitlyn is being watched, (including her class mates at school) his searches were picked up by WATCH and analysed.

In cyberspace, internet activity is routinely sent around the network (the world wide web) in packets. These packets for the most part arrives at the destination safely but some do go missing. This just means that some information never gets to where it is supposed to be and the lack of information shows up as blanks on the receivers screen.

Webmind is made up of these missing and mutant packages.

This was an excellent book and while I did not stay up until 2 am reading it, like I did for the first book, (I am still reading online fan fiction as well), I still enjoyed this book very much. I cannot wait for the third part of this trilogy (called WONDER) to be released next year.

The Lady Queen - Book Review

The Lady Queen
The Notorious Reign of Joanna I - Queen of Naples, Jerusalem and Sicily
by Nancy Goldstone
Walker Publishing 2009
Joanna of Naples - Wikipedia
Genealogies of Italian nobility - scroll down to the bottom for Naples

Called Joanna in English - Giovanna in Italian - Joanna was the queen of Naples & Sicily and the Countess of Provence (in France) in the 1300s. Since this was during the time of the Anti-Popes (1305 - 1377), with the papacy based at Avignon in Provence, Joanna was ruler of the popes for several years. This afforded her excellent protection and was probably the major reason why she was able to rule for so long, at a time when men expected to be the rulers.

Joanna's father was Charles of Calabria, and her mother was Marie of Valois. These were minor players in the royal stakes. Marie's grandfather was King Philippe III of France. Philippe's parents were King Louis IX of France (later Saint Louis) and Marguerite of Provence.

Joanna inherited the throne of Naples from her grandfather - Robert the Wise. Joanna was the first women to rule a country in her own right - but she was still fought over by the kings of Europe because Naples was a major prize.

Joanna was married 4 times - the first time at age 6 to her cousin Andrew (Endre) of Hungary. Andrew was immature, given to extravagance, and mercilessly egged on by his parents to insist on having equal rights with Joanna in ruling Naples. Joanna did not want this at all. In fact she had no intentions of sharing her power with anyone. And eventually, Andrew would be murdered in a spectacular fashion by some Neapolitan aristocrats. The fallout from this would be serious for Joanna, barely twenty years of age, and facing immense odds from forces inside and outside of her kingdom.

And in the years of her reign, they would be many. Her first set of in-laws, the Hungarians, would ruthlessly persecute her, insisting that it was she who arranged for Andrew's murder, if not actually participating in it. There was her sister, Maria, whose husband Charles was made Count of Durazzo (a city on what is now Albania). Charles and Maria constantly stirred up trouble and looked to replace Joanna as Queen.

There were also troubles that no one could have predicted, most devastating being the Black Death that came through Naples on a regular basis. This depopulation not only wrecked a vibrant economy, it also left the country open to invasion. Warfare was something that Joanna would know on a regular basis, and more often than not she chose her next three husbands as much for their military prowess as for their ability to get her with an heir.

Over 4 marrriages, Joanna gave birth to 3 children - but none of them survived to adulthood. They all died as children - her daughter Catherine died at age 15.

Joanna was eventually assassinated on 12 May 1382 by her sister's husband, Charles of Durazzo. Joan was smothered with pillows, in revenge for the method of Duke Andrew's assassination. The kingdom of Naples was left to decades of recurring succession wars.

Giovanni Boccaccio wrote the Decameron - a series of stories that take place during the Black death plague - during this time. Boccaccio even lived in Naples for a while, as well.

The ghost of Andrew, her first husband and his death would always haunt Joanna, and she would go down in history as a woman who was deceitful, lustful, depraved and murderous. This is a myth that the author, Nancy Goldstone, carefully picks apart in her history.

This book was relatively easy to read although some parts of the papal politics became repetitive and boring. Joanna herself was never boring.

Earthquake

I realise this is not book related but my home country of New Zealand was hit by an earthquake 2 days ago (Friday 3rd September - EDT). In NZ it was 0430 on Saturday 4th September. The earthquake rattled Christchurch - the second largest city - and measured 7.1 on the Richter scale. A large number of buildings were damaged. Fortunately no lives were lost.

The last earthquake I lived through was 33 years ago - in 1977. It measured 7.7 (Ruchter scale) and I was in school at the time. I can still remember running out of the classroom and jumping down into the large dicth that ran alongside the buildings. This ditch was a good 3 feet across and I knew I was never going to be able to jump across it. So I jumped down into the ditch and then had to climb up the other side while the ground was shaking underneath me. Very scary.