sindylee.com » 2008

I see this truck almost everyday, parked in various locations along El Camino as I drive from Palo Alto to Mountain View. (I’ve always wanted to take a picture of it, but have never had the chance to, so, even though I have no idea who you are, thanks cjanebuy for posting a pic onto Flickr.) The combination of the self-lettering, the accusatory nature of the phrase/motto of “THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU HAVE BECOME A SELFISH PEOPLE, and the strategy here for marketing their message by parking these trucks all over the area and inviting passersby to “come and eat with us” to find out more has all the trappings of a cult, of some type of weird group of fanatics of something. (Not to mention that all interactions are done “anonymously,” participants using only first names.)

I finally bothered to visit the website– www.ideafarm.com– and while I don’t think it’s a cult like The Family International– but it’s definitely an enigma (they also depict IdeaFarm as “IdeaFarm City,” trademarked, of course, and a federal constitutional protectorate of the US.) It’s very Silicon Valley– the “civil and political project funded by the sale of software products and services,” such as the IdeaFarm ™ Piggyback Distributed Operating System (I, like you probably, have never head of this and have no idea of the pros/cons of this OS).

The mission of the project is to “[P]romote unselfish living by creating a compelling economic incentive to live wholesomely connected to other people, to the Earth, and to one’s Higher Power.” The main way to do this is through a yet-to-be-released “zero spam, zero advertisement, zero thought steering, secure email service.” Participants in this project are divided into two groups– the first, composed of non-members, agrees to a) “sign a public declaration of intent to live unselfishly” and b) participate anonymously in weekly community dinners. If you decide to become an actual member, you move up and become part of the second group who agrees to a) “participate regularly in the weekly community dinners,” b) “loan $8 to the organizer for 64 days, and c) pay 1 cent per day.” In turn, you apparently get “nifty” IdeaFarm software products and services plus richer access to the website.

In any case, reviewing the website and information, a few things to note that might raise red flags for you:

For an organization with unselfish living at its core, it is still a “private, for profit entity” and the “owner can dispose of revenue as he sees fit.”
The “owner” or “leader” of the organization is never mentioned or known by his name (not even his first name)– he is only referred to as the “Governing Propietor.” While anonymity is central to their interactions, disclosing the leader’s name (at least first name) seems like an acceptable exception, especially to lend credibility to the whole thing since they claim he is a “libertarian student of political economy, a product of the Ph.D. program in economics at the University of Chicago.”
A stratified system of participation and membership, largely based on financial contributions– Scientology anyone?* To be fair, they do assert that they are not asking for nor will they accept donations– financial contributions are considered “loans.”
Discussion of IdeaFarm and the website will only be done via email.
They’re using a yahoo email address. Weak.

Anyway, so if you see this truck around the Bay Area, now you know a little bit more. Judge for yourself!

* PS to the Scientology folks: please don’t sue me.

Posted in Culture, Flickr/Photos, Politics & Law, Volunteering, Community Service & Activism | No Comments » | Read more..

February 17th, 2008

Where you at?

You might have noticed that I have been MIA for a while now– my last, close-to-substantive post was on January 5. Fittingly, the topic of that post was the lumbar puncture I had had the day before and it was one of the many things with which I’ve been busy. As I may have posted in the the past few months, life has ben filled with visits to the doctor, medical tests, more frequent and increasingly severe headaches/migraines, and general malaise that worsens from time to time. Add to all this to the sudden increase in pain in my wrists and hands (from repetitive stress) and development of numbness and tingling in my hands, all the way through to all the fingers– both being so severe sometimes that they wake me up at night, keep me from falling back to sleep, and make it hard to do everyday tasks, like handwrite or get ready in the mornings, from gripping and turning faucet handles to blow drying my hair. I had some tendonitis from repetitive stress years ago when I first started working, but was able to treat it effectively through physical therapy, stretching and exercise, a more ergonomic work setup, frequent breaks, and the rest of the RSI rigamarole, managing to become relatively free of truly problematic symptoms.

However, the tendonitis suddenly became very severe a few months ago and is now accompanied by numbness and tingling that are certainly more annoying than the pain. The irony is that these “sudden” RSI symptoms started and worsened when I had actually reduced my work hours (only 40 hours per week!)– like most departments at Stanford do for significant cost savings, my office closes for a few weeks at the end of the year and aside from taking the long break (and even managing to avoid doing work despite being on-call), I even left for the break a week early. Since then, I’ve been out of the office more than usual due to illness (it’s largely a crapshoot everyday how I’ll be feeling) and a slightly ridiculous number of doctor and physical therapy appointments. I’m pretty sure I’m being punished for a life of playing piano and typing.

As of now, almost all of my test results are normal and one thing we’re pretty sure about is that it’s NOT lupus. So, for the most part, we’ve managed to rule out a number of things and otherwise, we’re back to the drawing board and I just need to suck it up while we figure things out. At the end of the day, I having basically decided that if I was a superhero, my powers would be tolerance of prescription drugs and the ability to stay relatively high-functioning despite constant pain.

In any case, I’m slowly starting to improve and get back to a somewhat normal life, including maintaining my offline social life and my online presence. Look forward to more frequent posting soon.

Posted in General/Miscellany, Health & Medicine | No Comments » | Read more..

February 15th, 2008