ARE WE NOT MEN -- Mainly on Masculinity, Learning and "Anti-Social" Media

Last month I spent a marvelous weekend in the company of two of my best friends and their sons. It was a multigenerational, manly weekend, full of beef, beer, boasting, boating and blasting the open road in my friend's Porsche 914.

Manly stuff, including long reminiscent and forward-looking conversations wherein we expressed fears, concerns, hopes for our boys. On the whole, they are like the children of Lake Woebegone, above average lads, and nearly all labor with some degree of academic challenge.


Two speakers at Ted Talks intelligently and eloquently spoke to "boy issues" in academia.



Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, "Why are boys struggling?" He shares some stats (lower graduation rates, greater worries about intimacy and relationships) and suggests a few reasons. He stops short of solutions. He tells the audience that it's their job. And no doubt it is – their job and ours.


So what the heck do we do?

Reflections of a Walker #3

Volt for me and I'll set you free!

(warning: high geekspeak index)


Goodbye, good old friend.
Hello, good new (more gently used) friend.

 Back, last winter, I was stepping into a cab in my trenchcoat, closed the door and heard a sickening crunch. Result, house left. I was heartbroken, for this old friend had accompanied me on all walks, rain and shine for six years. Perhaps it was the striding gods punishing me for abandoning my pedestrian ways.

I know there are tons of fancypants MP3 players out there, most with Apple logos, big flash drives, video, all manners of "Swiss Army" hoohah, but this old school iRiver H320 player still holds more than a candle to them all. Maybe I'm an old school throwback, but the idea of watching a movie on a 3" screen is absurd. Hell, my 27" screen is too small for optimal viewing. Let music players be music players.

This South Korean manufactured playa sports a comfortable 20G drive, room enough for 2800 songs, most ripped at minimum 256k bitrate, decent radio, great recorder ... plug it in USB to your computer and it functions as another agnostic USB drive, no fuss over DRM or bizarre Apple music file structure. (Music, music, which directory is my $$$'ing music in?)

So unlike wetware friends who are irreplaceable, this new old friend (house right) was $60 on Ebay. If you like this oldschool player, just understand that it has a fiercely devoted fanbase (http://www.misticriver.com/) and can be hard to find. I was damned lucky. The one I'd bid on previously topped out at over $200. Once new friend arrived, I dragged and dropped my 18G portable music directory to the new friend, stripped off the old friend's silicon skin and plugged my musician quality Shure SCL4 sound isolating earbuds in and good to go.

Some folks take me to task, asking "is it safe to walk with earbuds in?" I'd ask them, especially if they're city dwellers, if you really need to hear city noise at normal db levels? The headphones' sound is so clean 109db (S/N) on the SCL4 (EC4 replacement), that you don't need to and shouldn't overdrive them for risk of damaging your hearing. Clean, normal volume sound, exterior sound reduced 60-80% and one's own head is a concert hall. One only need pretend you're hearing impaired and pay extra attention when crossing streets.

This iRiver player/recorder sports a 1.8" 20G Toshiba minidrive found in netbooks and mini-laptops, but Toshiba discontinued the more capacious upgrade drives with the old CF interface in favor of the newer ZIF interface. There are converters out there, but there's some question in my mind if it can all be crammed into the tiny space in my H320. So for now, I guess I'm stuck with only 2800 tunes at a time. A quality problem.

What's this have to do with walking? All I can say is it's my life and it's sometimes life needs a soundtrack of one's own choosing. Urban ambience can be interesting but I prefer to roll my playlist when I hit the streets. The aural joy and peace of mind/soul it brings me was well worth the investment.

For earlier Reflections of a Walker posts, just scroll down or visit my FB posts at:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32729666&l=a7efec5c26&id=1338279946
and
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32676077&l=b4c64e24e4&id=1338279946

Happy trails.

Signed the Walking Man.