The Brunch Table

After losing my preferences yet again to the rapacious swap files of OS X, and then waiting for roughly an hour while startup attempted to once more untangle my fscked-up disk, I’ve decided that it’s finally time to rebuild my iBook. Once my backup finishes running, I’m going to reformat my drive. This time, I’m going to try sequestering the virtual memory swap files on a separate 1GB partition using the likes of Swap Cop. Hopefully, this will (a) keep my swap files less fragmented, (b) protect my main partition (with its precious preference files) safe from the devouring swap files, and (c) keep me from tying up too much potential swap space with MP3s and such.

Here goes nothing…

A fair number of the dreams that I can remember these days involve transportation networks. They’re mostly about rail, though highways and gadgetbahnen make occasional appearances.

My pet theory on dreams is that they’re narratives constructed out of concept nodes that are activated as a side-effect of processing and filing the day’s thoughts and memories. (See Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine for a treatment of conscious experience itself as a narrative strung together from sensory inputs.) Often I can take a seemingly-incomprehensible dream, figure out what concepts are at one remove from its literal elements, and discover that it’s really about something that’s actually been on my mind. (Well, it’s possible that I’m just experiencing overactive pattern recognition.)

Now, it’s true that I do think about transportation networks a decent amount, but I wonder if their frequent appearances are boringly literal, or whether they’re somehow helping me puzzle through problems.

Simon Baddeley, one of the regulars on the Carfree Cities mailing list, has written a nice article about the turning point at which the carfree lifestyle movement has arrived. Essentially, there is now ample documentation of the costs and hazards of the car-centric society–it’s time to move on and start creating and demonstrating new ways of life that aren’t burdened with automobiles.

Incidentally, there was recently an entertaining Slashdot free-for-all on the topic. (For those of you new to Slashdot, you can use the “Threshold” menu to pick how much time you want to waste.)