1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium white onion, peeled and diced
2 medium carrots, diced
5 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
6 cups vegetable stock (or chicken stock)
1 1/2 cups red lentils, rinsed and picked over
2/3 cup whole-kernel corn
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon curry powder
(optional) pinch each of saffron and cayenne
zest and juice of 1 small lemon
fine sea salt and freshly-cracked black pepper

I found this emailed to myself. I hope it works as a recipe. It may be the same as a recipe I've already made, just from a different source? Not sure. Will not expend brain cycles figuring that out.

Oops, I missed taking notes on two of them! Here they are:

Milk Choco Galaxy

Rocher

The Best Form Is No Form

I don't actually believe this, but... well... I'll be back after processing these thoughts.

Some of what Ellis Hamburger discusses in the Foreword is very immediately relevant to my thoughts on 'transcending form'...

QuoteThe point isn't to remove the ring, or to make photos disappear after they've been seen. The point is to understand how we use communication products . . .

. . . The key is forgetting what we've learned about interfaces, and using our instincts (instead of hot trends like "ephemerality") as guides.

I'm going to read this book a second time!

Dreyfus now enters the realm of telepresence; if indeed human interaction is necessary, and the state of telepresence is now, as he puts it, infra-human, what might telepresence offer us in the future...?

End of chapter review

What are skills? Dreyfus dedicates most of this chapter to answering that question. It reminds me of Mastery, but more concise. Skills are rules that become intuitions... memories and experiences balled up into a fuzzy cloud of responses.

His argument is, roughly, that human interaction is a necessary or at least very common form of investment, reward, pressure, and that these things — not necessarily human interaction — are requirements for developing skills past basic competence. You have to get emotionally invested to get past basic competence.


Also other humans are useful because you can learn a lot from them through observation of them applying their skills.

I first encountered Dreyfus, a process which lead to my reading of this book, via this interview (todo: link) recommended to me by jack.

He speaks about emotional involvement/investment there, but also here in this book.

paraphrasing for now: TO LEARN, ONE MUST BE EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN SUCCESS/FAILURE. (Benner (nurse)'s anecdote, p32) WITHOUT RELATIONSHIPS, WHERE IS THE EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT? "there is still no class before which the student can shine and also risk making a fool of himself" (p33)

brain sparks; parasocial relationships a result of filling some vacuum, wanting a person to pay attention, seeking success/failure feedback; money +/- a similar result of filling some vacuum, rules, wanting to know concretely, was that good or was that bad? feedback, feedback, feedback.

Oh, wonderful. He poses exactly these questions/problems himself.

- "neither side gives us any reason to accept their pronouncements. . . . does learning really require face-to-face engagement, and, if so, why?" (27) -- regarding whether human interaction is or is not necessary to education

- "First, we need to get clear about what skill are and how they are acquired."

Dreyfus, I am so glad we're on the same wavelength.