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diff --git a/unused/mold.txt b/unused/mold.txt
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+I write things like this all the time. Mostly I delete them, but then I thought, you know, it's been a while since there was a good rant on luxagraf. So I published this one. If you're here for the travel stories, skip this one.
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+A while back I sold the Yellowstone trailer we bought. We decided to go with a motorhome instead and got the Travco. I dislike Craigslist so I started trying to sell the Yellowstone by posting it to Facebook so friends and friends of friends could have a look. 
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+A very nice woman got in touch, she was interested. She had even tried to buy the thing from the guy I bought it off. She was ready to hand me cash. But she wanted to looks at one more time. I said sure.
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+She brought along a friend to check it out too. He was hipstered out in plaid shorts and some kind of ironic hat, but hey, to each their own I guess. That's not what got me.
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+What got me was that he was so afraid of mold he wouldn't even get in the trailer to check out the details. Bear in mind that this is a trailer from 1969 that had, until I bought it, been rotting in the woods of south Georgia, used as a place to sleep on hunting trips (incidentally, it was decked out in frilly stain pillows when I bought it, which makes me wonder about the nature of these hunting trips).
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+The woman was ready to commit, to buy something and restore it herself. She had already told me her big plans for it. But her friend, whose hands I couldn't help noticing, were pearly white with so much as a scratch or dirty fingernail, was afraid of mold. 
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+I almost spoke up when I overheard him call the trailer a biohazard. 
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+I felt like screaming, "it's fucking mold, man, like the black stuff that grows on anything wet."
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+I'd hate to hear what he'd make of India or Indonesia, or even Florida for that matter, half the things in those places are covered in black mold. Mold is something that happens when it's warm and wet. It won't kill you and it certainly isn't a biohazard[^1].
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+For my favorite part of the story we have to go back to the moment hipster douche stepped out of the car... smoking a cigarette. 
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+Why I am telling this story? To make fun of some hipster who caused his friend to miss out on a great deal on a cool project? No, not really. Okay, maybe a little, but the things that's been bothering me for a while is that the world I inhabit -- in other words this is all my own fault -- has become increasingly paranoid about what feels like all the wrong things. Mold is horrifying, cigarettes (or vaporizers) are fine.  
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+Today the woman at the public pool told me they make everyone get out for 30 minutes every time they hear thunder. It made me think about one of my favorite memories, of body surfing off the coast of Zihuatanejo as a recently-downgraded-to-tropical-storm hurricane came ashore. My dad and I watched lighting hitting the ocean on the horizon in between catching waves. Amazingly, I'm still here.
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+And I know the public pool doesn't close down because anyone is actually paranoid about lightning. They close down like that because they're paranoid about getting sued if they didn't. And they're right, I have no doubt they would be sued, lightning or not.
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+We're all worried about the wrong things. The planet is heating up, the seas are rising and we're excited about some fucking gadget or another.
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+What made me angry was that hipster douche pissed on his friends dream of building something because he was worried about things he didn't understand, things he had obviously never researched. The woman backed out. I ended up listing the trailer on Craigslist and a few days later a man who wasn't afraid of mold towed it away and rebuilt it. 
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+And so it goes.
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+[^1]: I'm not saying mold is good. Or that you shouldn't use precautions like a respirator if you're sensitive to it and in a closed space with it. But damn, it's not a long way from a biohazard. Mold might give you a headache, in some rare cases long term exposure is bad for some people, but it's not going to kill you.
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+There is a middle ground which has always left me cold. I am comfortable at the extremes -- everything or nothing. I've been comfortable with steamed towels and fully reclining seat beds in first class, driven 100,000 automobiles and eaten at some of the most expensive restaurants in New York (all of that was on someone else's dime, lest you think I am or ever have been rich, I am not, nor have I ever been). I was comfortable at that extreme, but I've also ridden in the cattle car that is Southwest Airlines and consumed $.39 Tina's burritos three times a day in the squalor of the trailer park I was living in at the time. I was also comfortable with that. More so in fact since any sustained life of luxury must eventually confront the backs on which it is made possible(*Let's not kid ourselves, me eating $.39 burritos in a trailer park in California is still very much luxury.*). The point isn't the things I have done so much as the simple fact that I am most comfortable at extremes. 
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+It's things in the middle that make me uncomfortable, make me want to run for the hills. Business class, Chipolte, suburbs, The Gap. The middle smacks of mediocrity. It's build in to the language -- medium gives us mediocrity (*mediocritatem*); middle, middling. Interestingly, all manner of words surrounding mediocre and middle don't acquire their modern, negative connotations until the late 16c. 
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+It's possible this sort of dualist thinking, this flip-flopping from one extreme to another is a personality flaw of mine. It's also possibly not even mine, but something culturally inherited as it turns out, so much of what we consider ourselves, our beliefs, turn out to be.
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+Some cultures venerate the middle way. The Golden Mean. The Middle Way. Definitions of what exactly is meant by the middle way differ somewhat around China and the rest of Asia. Buddhists see it as the path by which we gain insight by transcending all the various opposing statements about existence. The middle way is the way by which we avoid the pain of life's confusing, seemingly endless duality.
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+In China, where Confucianism has a long storied history, the middle way seems to mean something more like the path on which one finds balance. Sometimes it's not translated as the middle way, but as the Doctrine of the Mean. Ezra Pound liked to call it the "unswerving pivot". 
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+It's possible I'm twisting some possibly suspect translations of ancient texts, themselves culturally tied to the time in which they were composed to fit my own ends(*Hmm, probably I should apply for a job in academia*), but if *all* knowledge is culturally imprisoned then it seems to me that nihilism is the only answer and, while on my bleaker days I find myself feeling a bit nihilistic, by and large I refuse to give in to that line of reasoning. 
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+All of which is spineless qualification of why I think the middle way consist not of actually staying on a middle path, but of balancing one's center between extremes. The farm house to retreat from the city. The midnight burrito snack when the sustenance of [Alinea][1] has long disappeared.
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+To be sure, that's not what Confucius wrote. Nor does it seem to be what the author of The Doctrine of the Mean(*The authorship of the The Doctrine of the Mean is somewhat debatable, though it seems most scholars ascribe it [Zisi, a grandson of Confucius][2].*) meant exactly. From my research it seems that most western scholars (the only ones I can read since I don't read Mandarin) say that the doctrine of the mean means what you would expect -- adhering to moderation, avoiding extremes.
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+You don't have to step so far outside of Western culture to find this celebration of moderation. Stoicism touch on this too in a variety of contexts, suggesting that we avoid becoming accustomed to luxury lest we become incapable of appreciating anything else.
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+If all you drink is $100 bottles of wine, that $2 bottle will taste like shit. But if most of the wine your drink is cheap then the occasional $100 bottle will be a revelation. 
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+Again, that's me, not stoicism which, so far as I know, never turns the watch out for the acclimatizing of luxury idea on its ear to consider the acclimatizing effects of poverty. In other words perhaps we ought to really splash out from time to time so we do not become too inured to self-imposed poverty. 
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+Of course if your poverty is not self-imposed then you have no choice, which is perhaps at least some of the reason any philosophical system concerned with transcendence of daily existence will necessarily to value austerity over luxury -- to do otherwise would be to severely limit your audience(*which isn't to say that I think it's all a conspiracy to keep poor people happy with their lot and less likely to agitate, though certianly there are elements of that in nearly every philophical system since every philosophical system is born out of cultures and civilizations with stratfied power structures and a vested iinterest in maintaining them. The Tao to Ching being one possible exception to that general rule.*). Better to stick with something that will make the greatest number of people feel better about themselves and their lives. Hence the middle way it would seem.
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+But what if the center, the middle way, the point of balance is actually found by hopping back and forth between extremes?
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+I don't know that it is, I only know that I feel comfortable at the extremes, but never either one for too long. 
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+[1]: https://content.alinearestaurant.com/html/index.html
+[2]: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Zhou/personszisi.html
+[3]: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/zhongyong.html
diff --git a/unused/technology.txt b/unused/technology.txt
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+A lot of people assume that because I write for Wired I have some deep abiding love of technology. I don't. In fact, the more I experiment, test and use technology, the less it impresses me and the less I want to do with it. 
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+One thing I have realised about technology though is that it creates its own desire. The more you use technology the more you realise it can do things and through some twisted logic, that seems to make you feel obligated to do them -- perhaps because you fear you're missing out on something if you don't, perhaps because you think what you're doing is somehow worthwhile, perhaps just because you can.
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+Whatever the case there's an underlying theme to technology: it engenders the belief that you need it. The other main selling point of technology is that it connects you.
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+There's nothing wrong with thinking that, but it does threaten something very fundamental -- the ability to be alone.
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+Travel affords us a chance to see things many will only encounter in books, a chance to learn about ourselves and the world around us, but there’s another thing I’ve started to think is equally important — travel gives us a chance to be alone.
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+But technology keeps us connected. I’m not a Luddite, far from it. I love Twitter, I love Facebook and some of my best friends are people I met traveling and have kept in touch with via various websites. I like those connections, tenuous and frail though they may be.
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+But I also like to believe in the notion that I can escape them as well. 
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+Physically escape them. 
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+People love to talk about the ways technology helps us "stay connected" or bridge some percieved communication gap. That might be wonderful for some; me I enjoy being disconnected, I enjoy deliberately severing connections with my friends and family and dropping off the edge of the earth for a few months.
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+You know what happens when I do that?
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+Nothing. Not a damn thing.
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+Everyone is still there when I get back. 
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+While I like the idea of a totally connected world and recognize its inevitability, I think there is also value in having a few dark spots on the map. Even if I’m not there, I think the psychological impact of knowing such places exist is valuable.
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+But forget the obvious, here's what staying in touch really does: it validates our own inflated sense of importance. There is something terrifying about dropping off the edge of the earth and realizing that by and large the world does not need you. 
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+By posting to Facebook, Twittering or blogging we in some way validate our existance to ourselves. It's reassuring to know that other people like to hear from us, never mind whether or not they *need* to hear from us.
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+The uncomfortable truth is that most of us can be wiped off the face of the earth without more than a dozen people really missing us. That's not meant to be callous. I'm not saying no one will miss you when you're gone. Just that very few will. Deal with it.
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+The same goes with the much touted "making connections"
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+Yes, I travel with a laptop, I use it to store photos, occasionally to write things. I sometimes go weeks without opening it. I deliberately hacked together a laptop setup that's an utter pain to connect to wifi, consequently I never use it online, no e-mail, no blog reading, nothing, it's a lightweight typewriter.
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+I really don't understand the travelers that hunt out wifi, i don't even really understand people that blog about their travels. I do it because I can't help writing, I have no idea why normal people do it. 
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+Rolf Pott's recently suggested that using Twitter while you're traveling is not a good idea. People who use Twitter naturally reacted about the same way I do when people say that I shouldn't smoke -- defensively, angerly. 
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+I write for Wired.com. I use Twitter every day, both for work and for fun. It's likee an RSS feed that updates much more quickly than RSS feeds. In theory I should disagree with Rolf, but I don't. In fact I think he's absolutely right (just like the people who say I should quit smoking). 
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+The Twitter fans argue that Twitter offers a way stay in touch with friends and loved ones, that it can provide valuable insight from locals.
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+Bullshit. 
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+Twitter, Facebook and the rest are an entertaining distraction, a mildly amusing waste of time. If you seriously think they're anything more than that you need to unplug, take a break, spend some time in the sunshine. 
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+As for recommendations, try walking the streets and asking strangers
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+Here's a litmus test for you, 
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+Between my own account and the vagablogging twitter account I keep tabs on some 200 people writing about travel related stuff on Twitter. It's the single biggest echo chamber I have access to (there are some notable exceptions: worldhum, gadling, 
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+And Potts and I aren't alone, Arthur Frommer called social networking sites "absurd... they're a waste of the time for a lot of people who should be reading." Zing.