This is what an automated process does with hit statistics. I'm not sure whether this is a webcrawler, or if this is the result of RSS-feed interactions (if you know, please let me know), but it is far too regular for random visits.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Maintaining maintenance
One of the things I learned as an IT project manager was how much work goes into just keeping software going (as opposed to building or changing it): maintenance is a much more important part of the daily work of IT people than most IT users realize. And that - and the number of things that have been breaking in my house lately - got me thinking about maintenance in other areas of life. So far, I have come up with four main (but not 100% mutually exclusive) categories, each with a different purpose and a different focus or target:
"Classical" maintenance - repairing stuff (clothes, furniture, toys, etc.), and preventive maintenance (shining shoes, painting walls) - is aimed at making sure you can continue to use something, so in a sense, you could argue that the main purpose is economical and/or logistic. This is even true if you include less tangible targets here, like updating information, which you maintain by using it every once in a while, just like you take antique cars out for a spin. And it also applies to relationships (more on that in another entry).
The main purpose of washing and cleaning (your body, clothes, plates, floors, toilets*, etc.) is preventive, in that a certain level of hygiene is necessary to avoid disease, and the main purpose of maintaining order (the house, the paperwork) is efficiency: it is easier to get stuff done if your desk is not too cluttered with paper, or the floor is not covered in toys.
But - as Mrs. Bouquet of Keeping Up Appearances knows very well - all types of maintenance also have a social purpose or aspect, because people judge and classify each other people on the basis of what their garden looks like (well-kept vs. weed central, with or without broken cars, shopping trolleys, etc.), or their house, or their car, etc.
I have always tried to ignore this aspect of maintenance, because I prefer to avoid judging books by their covers, but it is not really possible to separate the social from the economical (or even the hygienic) aspects. Every maintenance choice you make is basically a balancing act between the social, economic and hygienic.
Forty years ago, the length of your hair or whether you shined your shoes was just as important for your future as your skills or diplomas. Luckily, there are still people who continue to think (or at least sing) about these sorts of things (have a listen to the 2005 recording of "Almost cut my hair" by CSN).
Personal note: I need to cut my hair, but I am putting it off because of the look I know I will get from my barber, who thinks I should come by every 2 months, at least. I know his motives are mostly economical, but still ...
*according to a recent article, our toilet seats are a lot cleaner than the rags we use to wipe up the kitchen counter ... looks like we need to fine-tune a bit in this department.
Type
|
Tangibles
|
Relations
|
Knowledge
|
Prevent- ive
|
personal grooming (cutting hair and nails), shining shoes, greasing gears
|
learning how to behave
|
going to school, doing your homework, keeping up-to-date
|
Repair
|
mending clothes, furniture, bikes, cars, etc.
|
apologizing, making amends
|
dispelling falsehoods or incorrect ideas
|
Cleaning
|
clothes, house, car etc.
|
getting rid of false and/or fair weather friends
|
avoiding certain clichés and stereotypes, testing hypothesis (and rejecting the ones that don't fit the data)
|
Order
|
house, office, administration
|
clarifying roles
|
clarifying thoughts and ideas and making them more easily accessible
|
"Classical" maintenance - repairing stuff (clothes, furniture, toys, etc.), and preventive maintenance (shining shoes, painting walls) - is aimed at making sure you can continue to use something, so in a sense, you could argue that the main purpose is economical and/or logistic. This is even true if you include less tangible targets here, like updating information, which you maintain by using it every once in a while, just like you take antique cars out for a spin. And it also applies to relationships (more on that in another entry).
The main purpose of washing and cleaning (your body, clothes, plates, floors, toilets*, etc.) is preventive, in that a certain level of hygiene is necessary to avoid disease, and the main purpose of maintaining order (the house, the paperwork) is efficiency: it is easier to get stuff done if your desk is not too cluttered with paper, or the floor is not covered in toys.
But - as Mrs. Bouquet of Keeping Up Appearances knows very well - all types of maintenance also have a social purpose or aspect, because people judge and classify each other people on the basis of what their garden looks like (well-kept vs. weed central, with or without broken cars, shopping trolleys, etc.), or their house, or their car, etc.
I have always tried to ignore this aspect of maintenance, because I prefer to avoid judging books by their covers, but it is not really possible to separate the social from the economical (or even the hygienic) aspects. Every maintenance choice you make is basically a balancing act between the social, economic and hygienic.
Forty years ago, the length of your hair or whether you shined your shoes was just as important for your future as your skills or diplomas. Luckily, there are still people who continue to think (or at least sing) about these sorts of things (have a listen to the 2005 recording of "Almost cut my hair" by CSN).
Personal note: I need to cut my hair, but I am putting it off because of the look I know I will get from my barber, who thinks I should come by every 2 months, at least. I know his motives are mostly economical, but still ...
*according to a recent article, our toilet seats are a lot cleaner than the rags we use to wipe up the kitchen counter ... looks like we need to fine-tune a bit in this department.
Friday, November 16, 2012
The Neverending Story, or Spam Mach 3
I searched my latest spam message on the web, just to see if anybody else is publishing it.
A small selection of the search results:
A small selection of the search results:
ACTION – Active Communities » Blog Archive » Social Finance ...
31 May 2011 – We're a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your site offered us with valuable info to work on. You have done an ...
spam dump - Cory Doctorow
craphound.com/wpspamdump.txtCached
13 Jul 2012 – I was checking constantly this blog and I am impressed! ... Your web site offered us with valuable information to work on. You have done a formidable job and our whole community will be thankful to you. ..... We are a group of volunteers and starting a new project in a community in the same niche. Your blog ...Com qual roupa você dorme? « Fórum – Ana Maria Braga
anamariabraga.globo.com/home/forum/?p=371Cached
We're a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your website offered us with valuable info to work on. You have done an impressive ...The Pointers
greenpointcricketclub.com/buddy/Cached
We are a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your website offered us with valuable info to work on. You've done a formidable job and our entire community will be grateful to you. Reply · how to make an app said on ... I'm impressed, I have to admit. Seldom do I come across a blog that's both ...Rocking Audience at the Singing Competition | Kolosseum 2012 ...
kolosseum.co.in/.../rocking-audience-at-the-singing-competition/Cached
14 Sep 2012 – We're a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your site provided us with valuable info to work on. You've done an impressive job and our whole community will be grateful to you. Reply ... to take care of by domain flipping cope with almost any offered theory since it advances ...UNM Career Services Blog » Blog Archive » Employment ...
www.career.unm.edu/wordpress/?p=73Cached
We are a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your site offered us with valuable info to work on. You've done an impressive job and our entire community will be grateful to you. Marcelino Filary #. 01.12.2012 16: ...Guestbook - blackpool shotokan karate club
www.blackpoolshotokankarateclub.com/guestbook/Cached
We're a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your site offered us with valuable information to work on. You've done an impressive job and our whole community will be grateful to you.lead-image-miranda-kerr - SourceFed : SourceFed
sourcefednews.com/miranda-kerr...alive/lead-image-miranda-kerr/Cached
1 Nov 2012 – I am thankful that I found this blog , precisely the right info that I was looking for! . Michigan ... We are a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your site offered us with valuable information to work on. You've done an impressive job and our entire community will be grateful to you.318782_292768227490621_1244093289_n - SourceFed ...
sourcefednews.com/.../318782_292768227490621_1244093289_n/Cached
31 Oct 2012 – We are a team of volunteers and starting a new project in a community in the same niche. Your blog provided us beneficial information to work on. You ... I definitely enjoy reading everything that is written on your website. ... You have done an impressive job and our entire community will be thankful to you.HANDSOME'S STORY | LOTL Rescue
lotlrescue.com.au/handsomes-story/Cached
2 Oct 2012 – I've consider your stuff previous to and you're just extremely great. I actually like ... We're a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your web site provided us with valuable information to work on. You've done an impressive job and our whole community will be grateful to you.Wednesday, November 14, 2012
How free is free will?
How free is free will might sound like a very theoretical, philosophical question without much use in real life, but I think it is quite important because much of our behavior is a result of our opinion on this.
To prove my point, you need look only at the extremes: on one end, you have the idea that virtually everything is determined in advance (see for example this cartoon on determinism), and on the other, there is the idea that you control everything (solipsism). The first can lead to a defeatist, fatalist and apathetic attitude where nothing you do matters; the other extreme is even worse. Of course most people are somewhere in between those extremes, but there are still significant differences. Part of the problem is the fact that we do not all agree on what free will is.
For the purposes of this entry, I will define free will as the ability of an organism to intentionally and consciously influence their surroundings. (I acknowledge the existence of "unconscious intentions" - the things that make organisms do without being aware that they are doing them - but you cannot really control what you are not aware of, so that does not count as free will, or at very least is in a grey area).
In my makeshift defintion, you will have noted I used the word "organisms" and not "people". That is because I think free will is not limited to the “pinnacle of creation” (Mankind). I think the amount of free will decreases gradually as you descend through the evolutionary tree: humans have most, apes a little bit less, etc. And I think this because it depends to a great deal on how far, on average, the members of a species are able to see into the future, and how accurate this vision is, i.e. how intelligent they are. And intelligence is directly linked to the way information is stored and processed.
But wait, I hear you saying, there are many different ways to store and process information. Rocks, for example are able to “store” information (e.g. in the form of distinctive scratches) indicating they have been subjected to glacial conditions. But their reactions are passive, and no information is processed. Plants are able to perceive and react to certain stimuli (sunlight, the type and amount of nutrients in the soil), but do not have a nervous system, and have to store the information elsewhere. Worms have a (relatively rudimentary) nervous system, which serves to help them to actively search for and find mates, protection against predators, food, etc. Higher animals have two different (but linked) systems to store and process information: the limbic and the nervous systems.
The limbic system, though essential for survival, is less “intelligent" than the nervous system, because feelings are local and limited in time (feelings cannot “look” much further than the individual's own life span), and because they are associative, and not very accurate (the limbic system is responsible, for example, for an irrational fear of all trees after having had an accident involving a tree – an idea which may be virtually impossible to correct, in spite of a constant stream of proof that not all trees are bad news). The nervous system is “smarter” than the limbic system in that it covers a broader range of information, is capable of storing, processing and retrieving much more detail, makes it (somewhat) easier to correct mistakes, and can look much further than the life-span of the individual, or the local conditions of the individual.
I have driften completely off track here, but it all this digression did yield an interesting maxim:
Free will is to the nervous system what power is to the limbic system.
More on this in another entry.
To prove my point, you need look only at the extremes: on one end, you have the idea that virtually everything is determined in advance (see for example this cartoon on determinism), and on the other, there is the idea that you control everything (solipsism). The first can lead to a defeatist, fatalist and apathetic attitude where nothing you do matters; the other extreme is even worse. Of course most people are somewhere in between those extremes, but there are still significant differences. Part of the problem is the fact that we do not all agree on what free will is.
For the purposes of this entry, I will define free will as the ability of an organism to intentionally and consciously influence their surroundings. (I acknowledge the existence of "unconscious intentions" - the things that make organisms do without being aware that they are doing them - but you cannot really control what you are not aware of, so that does not count as free will, or at very least is in a grey area).
In my makeshift defintion, you will have noted I used the word "organisms" and not "people". That is because I think free will is not limited to the “pinnacle of creation” (Mankind). I think the amount of free will decreases gradually as you descend through the evolutionary tree: humans have most, apes a little bit less, etc. And I think this because it depends to a great deal on how far, on average, the members of a species are able to see into the future, and how accurate this vision is, i.e. how intelligent they are. And intelligence is directly linked to the way information is stored and processed.
But wait, I hear you saying, there are many different ways to store and process information. Rocks, for example are able to “store” information (e.g. in the form of distinctive scratches) indicating they have been subjected to glacial conditions. But their reactions are passive, and no information is processed. Plants are able to perceive and react to certain stimuli (sunlight, the type and amount of nutrients in the soil), but do not have a nervous system, and have to store the information elsewhere. Worms have a (relatively rudimentary) nervous system, which serves to help them to actively search for and find mates, protection against predators, food, etc. Higher animals have two different (but linked) systems to store and process information: the limbic and the nervous systems.
The limbic system, though essential for survival, is less “intelligent" than the nervous system, because feelings are local and limited in time (feelings cannot “look” much further than the individual's own life span), and because they are associative, and not very accurate (the limbic system is responsible, for example, for an irrational fear of all trees after having had an accident involving a tree – an idea which may be virtually impossible to correct, in spite of a constant stream of proof that not all trees are bad news). The nervous system is “smarter” than the limbic system in that it covers a broader range of information, is capable of storing, processing and retrieving much more detail, makes it (somewhat) easier to correct mistakes, and can look much further than the life-span of the individual, or the local conditions of the individual.
I have driften completely off track here, but it all this digression did yield an interesting maxim:
Free will is to the nervous system what power is to the limbic system.
More on this in another entry.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Getting hits (2)
I have been getting so many spammed comments on the entry reproduced below that I have decided to delete it, in the hope that my statistics will return to normal (unlike many men, who don't care if certain female attributes and/or responses are real or not, I want my ego stroked by real readers leaving real comments. Vade retro, spammer, and take your spammer hits with you! I will not be tempted by false pleasures).
Having however being brought up with the maxim "waste not, want not", I cannot in good conscience just throw it away a perfectly good blog entry, so here is the content again.
===========
More on getting hits (ow!)
In response to a previous entry, a friend of mine suggested that in order to get more hits, I should write entries containing lots of oft-used search terms like "free sex" "first-class dating service" "lose weight quick", "how to get what you want", "find the right job", "big prizes" "success guaranteed"etc., and also including them in the (invisible) list of keywords and even the meta-data of the site.
In fact, if it were just about the hit statistics, I would be tempted, but then it would make more sense to include terms like "US Open", "Euro 2012 Football", the names of celebrities like "Matthew Mcconaaughey" (prizes for spelling that name correctly, though), "Katie Holmes" etc.
Even better, according to another friend, would be to create strings combining these search terms in a more or less meaningful way, e.g. "How to find a job taking Matthew Mcconaaughey and/or Katie Holmes to the US Open, on a date" or "big prizes for people who lose weight by having free sex".
Of course, the point is not to get people to hit (on) me, the point is for them to read my musings.
Also, there is a good chance that access to my blog will be restricted because of one little word beginning with and s and ending with an x (hint: it is not a musical instrument).
===========
Now let's see how long the spammers take to find it again ...
Having however being brought up with the maxim "waste not, want not", I cannot in good conscience just throw it away a perfectly good blog entry, so here is the content again.
===========
More on getting hits (ow!)
In response to a previous entry, a friend of mine suggested that in order to get more hits, I should write entries containing lots of oft-used search terms like "free sex" "first-class dating service" "lose weight quick", "how to get what you want", "find the right job", "big prizes" "success guaranteed"etc., and also including them in the (invisible) list of keywords and even the meta-data of the site.
In fact, if it were just about the hit statistics, I would be tempted, but then it would make more sense to include terms like "US Open", "Euro 2012 Football", the names of celebrities like "Matthew Mcconaaughey" (prizes for spelling that name correctly, though), "Katie Holmes" etc.
Even better, according to another friend, would be to create strings combining these search terms in a more or less meaningful way, e.g. "How to find a job taking Matthew Mcconaaughey and/or Katie Holmes to the US Open, on a date" or "big prizes for people who lose weight by having free sex".
Of course, the point is not to get people to hit (on) me, the point is for them to read my musings.
Also, there is a good chance that access to my blog will be restricted because of one little word beginning with and s and ending with an x (hint: it is not a musical instrument).
===========
Now let's see how long the spammers take to find it again ...
Sunday, November 11, 2012
More on rhythms
I found some more stuff on rhythms.
|
Periodicity or
wavelength
|
Inanimate world
|
Animate world
|
|
23 000 years
|
Milankovitch cycles
(see the Wikipedia article)
|
Mass extinctions
|
|
54 years
|
|
Wheat prices
|
|
18 years
|
|
Real estate market
|
|
11 years
|
Sunspots and
magnetic activity
|
|
|
3 years
|
|
Death from
influenza (3 year pattern)
|
|
1 year
|
Seasons, caused by
the Earth's orbit around the Sun
|
All plant growth
(and indirectly all animals)
|
|
1 month
|
Moon’s orbit around
the Earth
|
The menstrual
cycle, emotional cycles
|
|
1 day
|
Rotation of the
Earth around its axis
|
Sleeping and waking
|
|
2,5 hours
|
|
Average sleep cycle
|
|
3 minutes
|
|
Average length of a
popular song (and of the thing that inspires so many popular songs)
|
|
20 seconds
|
|
Growth spurt of the
crocus
|
|
8-9 seconds
|
|
Peristaltic
movement in human digestion
|
|
6 seconds or so
|
|
Adult human
respiration rate
|
|
every few seconds
|
Waves on the shore
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Pylon driver
|
|
every second or
less
|
|
Human heartbeat,
human gait (walking, jogging running), pulsation of a jellyfish
|
|
More than once a
second
|
|
Locomotion of
smaller animals (snakes, inchworms, centipedes)
|
|
Up to 6000 rpms
|
|
Motor engines
|
|
|
|
CPU clock speeds
|
|
Hz
|
radio waves
|
|
|
kiloHz – gigaHz
|
sound waves
|
singing, chirping,
purring
|
|
teraHz and up
|
light waves and
other types of radiotaion (X-rays etc.)
|
|
But there is still more to come, because the reason I started thinking about this was music, which is full of rhythms: you have the basic beat (which comes close to the human heartbeat, usually varying between 60 and 180 beats a minute), but on top of that, you have the rhythmic alternation of verse and refrain (most of which are a multiple of 8, in 4/4 music), and the less regular alternation between tension and relaxation ...
More to come!
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Rhythms, rhyme and reason
True to form, I not only use stream of consciousness as a technique within blog entries, I also use it between entries, although I usually try to filter out the most irrational (and therefore hard to follow) stuff. In The Alien Perspective (2), I mentioned a few types of rhythms people have in their life as a result of how we live. But there are lots more. Here's a quick overview, ordered more or less in order of increasing frequency (or decreasing wavelength) within each category:
- rhythms in the inanimate world (and their effects):
- Milankovitch cycles (23 000 years) (see the Wikipedia article for an explanation), which cause rhythm sedimentation
- sunspots: 11 year cycle (which in turn may be the cause of 11 year cycles of magnetic activity on Earth)
- years and seasons, caused by the Earth's orbit around the Sun (which cause year rings in trees)
- monthly rhythms (tides, the menstrual cycle, emotional cycles) - the Moon around the Earth
- daily (circadian) rhythms (sleeping and waking), caused the rotation of the Earth around its axis
- waves and ripples on the surface of water, seismic waves (earthquakes)
- pulsars, radio waves, sound waves (singing, chirping, purring), light waves and other types of radiation (X-rays etc.)
- life-forms
- growth and development
- death from influenza (3 year pattern)
- spasmodic growth of the crocus (every 20 seconds)
- transport (with the rhythm depending on the number of legs, if any)
- snakes slithering
- inchworms inching
- centipedes and millipedes crawling
- snails snailing (?)
- people walking, jogging, running
- a horse's gait (trot, canter gallop, etc)
- biorhythms (related to internal anatomy)
- the peristaltic movement (primary wave every 8-9 seconds)
- respiration (10-18 breaths a minute, for an adult)
- heartbeat (60-160/minute, depending)
- man-made machines
- lighthouses (like pulsars)
- pylon drivers
- jack hammers
- motor engines (0-6000 rpms)
- CPU clock speeds
- economic rhythms: several patterns (according to Dewey and Dakin, 1947), including a 54 year pattern for wheat prices, and a 18 year rhythm for real estate.
All of these rhythms influence our lives in some way or other (rhythms resulting from walking and from the heartbeat are the basis of most western music today), and they are all superimposed on each other.
Just a thought.
Just a thought.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Blogspam - the floatsam and jetsam of the blogger ocean
Recently, I was fooled into believing someone (or even several people) was/were actually leaving comments on my blog. In fact, I am pretty sure the first two or three were hand-written, precisely for the purpose of getting me to start publishing them. Subsequently, however, I was bombarded with generic messages containing apparently random links, which luckily go directly to my Spam folder.
Here is a sample (with the external links deleted):
I would be interested to know how many other bloggers have been getting these mails, and how they reacted to them.
Here is a sample (with the external links deleted):
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I would be interested to know how many other bloggers have been getting these mails, and how they reacted to them.
Monday, November 5, 2012
The alien persective (2)
If aliens were to observe us from afar, I'm sure they would find several common modes of human transport strange. Walking or cycling still makes sense - you need to get from one place to another somehow - but why move around a ton of steel, just to get 75 kilos of me from one place to another?
And mass public transportation are hardly an improvement. Buses, trains, boats and planes are all more efficient than cars, but wants wants to sacrifice all their private space, just to get from A to B? Unless of course the aliens do the observing are a colonial species, in which case they might very well interpret collective travel options in those terms.
And of course they would be quick to see that lots of humans exhibit migratory behaviour, staying in one spot most of the year, then suddenly flying south for a few short weeks in summer. If they are cold-blooded, they might conclude that we are also cold-blooded: why else would we lie in the sun for hours on end?
And then there are the diurnal rhythms of going to one place (the office) during the day, and to another (the home) at night, just like plankton species that rise to the surface of the sea during the day, then sink into the depths at night (or the other way around). And there is the weekly foraging trip to the supermarket. And the twice yearly trips to the church, and so many other rhythms (see also my entry on all kinds of natural and less natural rhythms) that you will never understand unless you are human, and even then ...
And mass public transportation are hardly an improvement. Buses, trains, boats and planes are all more efficient than cars, but wants wants to sacrifice all their private space, just to get from A to B? Unless of course the aliens do the observing are a colonial species, in which case they might very well interpret collective travel options in those terms.
And of course they would be quick to see that lots of humans exhibit migratory behaviour, staying in one spot most of the year, then suddenly flying south for a few short weeks in summer. If they are cold-blooded, they might conclude that we are also cold-blooded: why else would we lie in the sun for hours on end?
And then there are the diurnal rhythms of going to one place (the office) during the day, and to another (the home) at night, just like plankton species that rise to the surface of the sea during the day, then sink into the depths at night (or the other way around). And there is the weekly foraging trip to the supermarket. And the twice yearly trips to the church, and so many other rhythms (see also my entry on all kinds of natural and less natural rhythms) that you will never understand unless you are human, and even then ...
Saturday, November 3, 2012
The alien perspective
I like the alien perspective, by which I mean trying to put oneself in the shoes of an alien visiting the Earth for the first time. It gives us the possibility of creating some distance between our small, parochial existence, and seeing ourselves from a different point of view and/or in a different light. This can be quite useful, the same wat an out-of-body experience (OBE) can teach us stuff about ourselves.
I had one of those once, a few years back. I was floating a few feet above myself, looking back down at my body - parenthetic thought: why do we always seem to look back at ourselves. Aren't there more interesting things to look at? - and I realised I really needed to work on my weight. Later I realised I had wasted a perfectly good OOB: I could have seen that in a mirror.
But holding up a mirror to ourselves, metaphorically speaking, isn't a bad idea, which is why I would like to propose that we all create and cultivate our own invisible alien. To avoid it getting existentialist crises, you would have to ask it questions once in a while, like "why do people drive on the wrong side of the road in England" and "why learn the capital of Ukraine in school" (this does not apply, obviously, to Ukranian schoolchildren). Of course, you would only be allowed to ask it questions to which you yourself might reasonably be expected to know (or at least find) the answer. It would be pointless to ask you invisible, made-up alien to actually name the capitals of all kinds of far-off countries, if you don't know already the answer. You can and should certainly challenge it to stretch your understanding of things, but it only knows what you yourself know.
Note for U.S. citizens: when you invent your alien, please make sure that it does not go around sticking probes into people when you go abroad. I know that sort of behavior is quite common to aliens in the U.S., but it does not seem to occur anywhere else in the world, and foreigners don't like it any more than you do.
Also, I advise against consulting your invisible alien friend in public: people who don't have one might get jealous, and may make a big a deal about your "talking to yourself". If this happens, don't try to correct them. It is much easier to make them go away by smiling politely and telling them that you have to talk to yourself, because it's the only thing that keeps you sane.
[Note from my id: I think I had too much Halloween candy when I wrote this one]
I had one of those once, a few years back. I was floating a few feet above myself, looking back down at my body - parenthetic thought: why do we always seem to look back at ourselves. Aren't there more interesting things to look at? - and I realised I really needed to work on my weight. Later I realised I had wasted a perfectly good OOB: I could have seen that in a mirror.
But holding up a mirror to ourselves, metaphorically speaking, isn't a bad idea, which is why I would like to propose that we all create and cultivate our own invisible alien. To avoid it getting existentialist crises, you would have to ask it questions once in a while, like "why do people drive on the wrong side of the road in England" and "why learn the capital of Ukraine in school" (this does not apply, obviously, to Ukranian schoolchildren). Of course, you would only be allowed to ask it questions to which you yourself might reasonably be expected to know (or at least find) the answer. It would be pointless to ask you invisible, made-up alien to actually name the capitals of all kinds of far-off countries, if you don't know already the answer. You can and should certainly challenge it to stretch your understanding of things, but it only knows what you yourself know.
Note for U.S. citizens: when you invent your alien, please make sure that it does not go around sticking probes into people when you go abroad. I know that sort of behavior is quite common to aliens in the U.S., but it does not seem to occur anywhere else in the world, and foreigners don't like it any more than you do.
Also, I advise against consulting your invisible alien friend in public: people who don't have one might get jealous, and may make a big a deal about your "talking to yourself". If this happens, don't try to correct them. It is much easier to make them go away by smiling politely and telling them that you have to talk to yourself, because it's the only thing that keeps you sane.
[Note from my id: I think I had too much Halloween candy when I wrote this one]
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