The Aspiring Dr. Professor

More on the Troll

2010-12-13T17:35:00.001-05:00

On both of the forums I'm a regular at, there's been a troll lately. I would never dare to say this to either of them because it's not good to feed the trolls, but they're not bad. One alternates inflammatory posts with posts that masquerade as earnest argument. The other does the same, except instead of earnest arguments, they're content posts about liking certain games.

So, two things.

1.

One is pretty much exclusively ad hominem, while the other occasionally makes it up to contradiction before going down the the next two. The second strategy is more useful, since they can then masquerade as poor or disinterested arguers rather than true trolls.

2. A definition of trolling by Judith Donath:
Trolling is a game about identity deception, albeit one that is played without the consent of most of the players. The troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group's common interests and concerns; the newsgroups members, if they are cognizant of trolls and other identity deceptions, attempt to both distinguish real from trolling postings, and upon judging a poster a troll, make the offending poster leave the group. Their success at the former depends on how well they — and the troll — understand identity cues; their success at the latter depends on whether the troll's enjoyment is sufficiently diminished or outweighed by the costs imposed by the group.

Trolls can be costly in several ways. A troll can disrupt the discussion on a newsgroup, disseminate bad advice, and damage the feeling of trust in the newsgroup community. Furthermore, in a group that has become sensitized to trolling — where the rate of deception is high — many honestly naïve questions may be quickly rejected as trollings. This can be quite off-putting to the new user who upon venturing a first posting is immediately bombarded with angry accusations. Even if the accusation is unfounded, being branded a troll is quite damaging to one's online reputation.

I can't wait until I teach English 101 again. Seriously, they're writing their own lessons for me.

Ye Troll's Guide to Rhetorical Argument

2010-11-05T10:37:00.000-04:00

This is inspired by a debate I've been having with a friend. These are the ways that she makes points. I'm not a very argumentative person, unless an opinion strikes me as tragically wrong. But then I try, and these are the ways that she responds.

1. Distraction -
Someone always says something that can be bent or twisted into favor of your argument. Ignore all of the good points that someone makes, construct a strawman out of the most objectionable remnant, and then respond to the strawman. Bonus points for a strawman that also happens to be true.

Ex.
B: "... besides, there are many Klingons in support of the Romulans in this instance, so it can't be incursive."
A: "But, you see, just because a Klingon says that the Romulans are not invading the system does not make it so. There are many instances where Klingons can be swayed by Romulan rhetoric or riches. Besides, we both know what the Enterprise found. (Blah blah blah discussion of findings)"
B: "Just because a human says that the Romulans invaded the system does not make it so."

But... I wasn't making that argument.

2. Aspersions of credible sources -
After linking to a source that people would generally agree had at least some truth in it, you must regard it as a lie. Wholeheartedly. Refer to no specifics in the article, as those are traction for the interlocutor to rebuff your aspersions. If you would be tempted to rebuff it even a little bit, call it a lie. There is no room for ambiguity.

Ex.
A: Well, okay, but there's been an interesting article written about the event by (famous political figure). I don't fully agree with it myself, but I think that the general observations hold some water.
B: LIES.

3. Discredit the reader -
So they're still not agreeing with you? Well, that must mean that they aren't well-read or researched. So, first, reflect on how well-read you are. Wait, do you see what I did there? Hah, a joke! Why would I ever ask you to reflect on your own argument?

Ex.
B: You are the perfect example of Federation ignorance, being unable to read or do research sufficiently on galactic issues. Stop spouting your Federation lies.

4. Cite a book you've read -
Oh, it doesn't matter whether it's the only one you've read or not. Cliffnotes are acceptable, as is the Wikipedia article. What matters is that you agree fervently with it. Credibility optional.

Ex.
B:If I might recommend, you should take a look at Romulus: The Last Best Hope. You'd change your mind. Romulus has done so much to advance the interests and liberties of everyone in the sector.

5. Bias is whatever you aren't -
You are unbiased. Everyone else is biased. If someone calls you biased, call out their bias to refute them. Feel free to call out their bias first, to set them at the defensive. Never fight directly the charge that you're biased. After all, they're biased to say such a thing.

Ex.
A: You really don't see the bias in Romulus?
B: You don't see the bias in A People's History of the Federation?
A: I do. But you're biased even compared to pretty credible centrist sources, like A Federation Pageant.
B: More Federation lies, I see. Why don't you just admit you're biased?

6. Make an exclamation of dismay -
Because all but the best arguers will worry about dismaying the other side. Bonus if you mimic the exact dismay that the other person was already thinking about you.

Ex.
B: Oh! Why are you siding with such xenophobic hounds like the Vulcans? I really thought better of you!

7. The bandwagon always sojourns towards the right place -
This can be anything from an informal poll to a psychological study, but let's face it, you'll probably skew towards the more informal, because credibility doesn't matter. A majority is a mandate. A mandate is the argument won!

Ex.
B: Well, most people in this sector would disagree with you, given the recent poll issued on the Federation net.

Hating something, versus hating doing it

2010-09-26T20:56:00.000-04:00

So I recently had a debate with my girlfriend. I forget exactly what we were talking about, but it led her to say, "I hate science."

Hate science? Hate the subject that undergirds our technological progress? The subject that saves so many lives? The subject that makes sense of the observable phenomena of the universe? I don't understand how anyone can hate any one subject in itself, unless what it does is absolutely reprehensible. While many dubious advances have been made under the umbra of science, science's overall virtue is unquestioned.

So I stammered. "Hate science? It's only the subject that keeps everything going."

Then a misunderstanding started. She wanted to insist that she was justified for hating the subject, because she's always been terrible at it, in a family where her brother and her father both excel in it. The resulting disappointed expectations crushed her.

"Okay," I said. "So you hate doing it then."

This is partly what she meant, and she acknowledged it. But we went in circles for a while longer, because she wanted to insist that she was justified in hating it, and was in some disbelief that I would insist on making such a paltry division between hating a subject and hating doing it. She didn't say this, but she must've thought that the metonomy ought to hold between the two. She likes reading some science articles. She just hates "science" the academic subject, and by that she means doing it.

I, however, insisted that she could still love a subject, even if she couldn't do it well.

At one point she asked me, "Haven't you ever failed at something so many times that you just had to hate it?" I paused for nearly half a minute, trying to think, and then admitted, "I can't recall failing that hard before." I really couldn't. Oh, I've failed at doing things. But I've generally figured them out. If not, it's been sufficiently unimportant that I could just respect it from afar.

Eventually we settled down, but it got me to thinking. Why was I insisting so hard on this seemingly arbitrary distinction? Was I being an ass? Was I being Aristotle?

I think there is something to the distinction. I also think I have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, because it's a distinction not a lot of people make. It's also a distinction that enables me to like and enjoy so many things I otherwise wouldn't.

So, to break it down Aristotelian style, there are at least four categories of preference for an object, if one can either: (a) like it or not like it; (b) like doing it or not like doing it.

I could:
1. Like it and like doing it.
2. Like it and hate doing it.
3. Hate it and like doing it.
4. Hate it and hate doing it.

I ignore all the cases where I would be neutral in one or the other case, since I don't think those are significant enough for an impromptu musing. So, they are named. What can go under them?

What are some examples of the above?
1. This would be the ideal profession or pursuit. This can be a hobby too. For me, this is any number of things, but most importantly to my personal choices, it is English literature. I like it, I like reading it, and I like writing about it.
2. Sometimes this can be the necessary burden. Other times, this is the subject we respect from afar, the thing where, if we meet someone at a party that does it, we go, "Oh," and are appropriately impressed. This would be science in my girlfriend's case. In mine... I've never liked doing exercise much, but I do value it in itself.
3. In many cases this is a sin or a transgression that we nonetheless like doing. Oftentimes this has to do with defying our own restrictions (like eating a cake while fasting), or the restrictions of society (stealing, in the case of a repentant kleptomaniac). Sometimes this leads into other distinctions; if I hate mowing the grass before I start, but like mowing it once I've started, then I've hated the idea of it but liked doing it.
4. This would be the thing that is generally loathed.

I've run out of steam, but I think this distinction is important to consider. There are others, like the distinctions between science, mowing the grass, and murder. But, sloppy as it is, it's a start.

Teaching Introductions: The Inverted Pyramid

2010-09-13T17:17:00.001-04:00

As I've been reading over the first major writing assignment, I'm realizing something. Well, after I wrote that sentence, two things.

A. People often write their most horrible sentences because they think it fits a proper form.
B. People have trouble with choosing an appropriate scale of generality/specificity in the introduction.

The two are related. In many high schools, students learn how to write an introduction by using an inverted pyramid: they progress from an observation of general interest towards a particular point, the thesis statement. It is rigid, and only sometimes works outside of the expository essay genre. But it can be used well, if the initial appeal and the progression are both appropriate fits for the audience involved.

But it is difficult to measure such scale for a student who has only learned one way to introduce their formal writing, and who has furthermore not had enough experience in writing. In those cases, the feeling for fitting generality and audience is off. In an informative paper about how Google functions, the first sentence will describe how the internet functions. In an analytical paper studying the way gender is used in briefs on internet policy and privacy, the first sentence will allude to the simpler time of the 80s. Also, in an effort to supply the right beginning, outright errors will present themselves, like the well-known cop-out, "Since the beginning of time..."

No.

What it took me a long time to learn about the inverted paragraph structure, and what directly helped me with the scale problem, was that even the first sentence is focused. It is intentional. It refers to categories I'll later be using. There's got to be a hook and some logic that's relevant and accessible to my audience. Summarily, it has to have the context of both the reader and the rest of the paper to really be written effectively. With all that in mind, it should be one of the last, if not the last sentence written.

Subsequently, I now know that there are a variety of ways of starting a paper. Sometimes, starting with some topical facts or an anecdote can be more useful. Sometimes, starting with the thesis statement itself is a good move. After a while it's easy to know what to use based on the genre and audience. Sometimes I still write an introduction in a couple of different styles, just to see which way works best.

I've periodically left days open to work on these things in the schedule. Looks like this will be one of the sessions.

Can one impart all of this in an hour's time? No. But I think that the key here is experimentation. Flex the writing. Have a few forms in mind, and try them out to see which best accomplishes an introduction to the paper for the intended audience. This should be the most naturally sounding part of a paper; yet, to be a good one, it often takes the most work. My approach will be some combination of explaining the forms, studying bad examples, and modeling good habits in revision.

Social Reform and Folk Dancing

2009-12-14T13:44:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm done with my last paper, I've been looking at random papers and books in the archive. I'm about to go look at the Book of Kells (squee!), but until then, here's an excerpt from The English Folk Dance Society's journal, which had two issues in 1914-1915:

If it appears to you, therefore, as certainly as it appears to me, in watching
country people dancing, that their Folk Dance is genuine self-expression,
our part in the movement must be clear. We cannot stand aside from a
distribution, as it were, of keys to a spiritual kingdom. God knows there are
people now in the coun-try
to whom any life of the spirit is denied for want
of decent housing and clothing and food. None the less the prevailing
starvation of the countryside to-day is starvation of soul. Many causes have
brought this about, not the smallest among them being the unimaginative
sabbatarianism of Wilberforce and his friends, which, arising in a class
possessing abundant diversions, stultified the labourer's only playtime.
These men's eyes-the eyes of our grandfathers among these sabbatarians-
were set upon the noblest ends. Only they did not understand the winding
ways of the spirit. Their thoughts were too short-cut and too business-like.
So, on the heels of their belittling of human instincts, followed, in our fathers'
youth, an arrogant, individualistic materialism. To my mind the Country
Dancing movement is one of the signs that our grandfathers', our fathers',
and our own, thoughts have come the full circle-encompassed a truth, the
separate sides of which Puritan piety and reactionary atheism attempted
to grasp.
"We feel we are nothing-for all is Thou and in Thee;
We feel we are something-that also has come from Thee" (3).

There's far more than that, about finding some way to prevent the loss of hard-working peasants to the metropolitan areas like Manchester and London. But I found it interesting how they justified folk dancing in these terms.

Play and Paradox

2009-12-10T18:29:00.000-05:00

Play: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112002391.html

Favorite quote: "That proficiency is measured on tests, but the far-reaching effects of play don't show up in answers to multiple-choice questions. They show up in life."

I'm quite critical of systems of evaluation that make test taking high-stakes to the point where they determine school funding. Where the test ought to be a suitable evaluation of a student's skills from which a teacher can determine whether they need to change their teaching habits, they become an end in themselves, as teachers teach to the test. They are forced to teach in an even more rigid fashion if they do not improve the students. There is no room for variation. The better ones hope that a student learns something incidentally through the process, but learning as an activity takes a sideline to the demonstration of it in a single number.

Cheating, in such a field, actually seems natural. If a teacher is already teaching to the test, why not just teach the test and cut out the last little room for substantial skill-building. No, it does not quite make sense in the long-term, since if you want to train a generation of good test-makers, better to teach them strategies for taking such tests, so that they can adapt without the added effort.

Play seems like one way out of the narrowing attention in the classrooms. Montessori goes to public school. I could write more, but I still have the paradox part to get to.

I post the most when I have the least time to post. ;)

Back to work!

I Want to Remember This Later - "The Bard" by Thomas Gray.

2009-10-18T14:52:00.001-04:00

Just an excerpt, but for some reason I like the image. This is the description of the bard, who's having a musical showdown with the army of Edward I.

"On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air)
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre."

Grandma's Next to My Bed

2009-10-12T23:02:00.000-04:00

I can't remember what I was dreaming last night, but I dreamed that I was woken up by Grandma speaking next to my bed. I squinted over there and thought I saw her. Then I really woke up. It was weird. I felt angry (what's grandma doing watching me sleep?), guilty (why am I mad at her? she just wanted to visit), disbelief, (you're acting like you actually saw her), freaked out (what the hell is up with my dreams?), and finally vacillated between shock (whaaa?) and laughter (this is what stress does to you).

Board games based off of books that I've found

2009-10-04T20:38:00.000-04:00

For those that prefer reading rules to reading books!*

Hamlet!
Pride and Prejudice
Tales of the Arabian Nights
Dune
Around the World in 80 Days
The Name of the Rose
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Genji
John Carter: Warlord of Mars
Star Viking
The Hunt for Red October
The Golden Compass
Dragonriders of Pern
Don Quixote
Hitchhiker's Quest for the Galaxy
I Say, Holmes!
Redwall
The Little Engline That Could.

*Note - these are not a substitute for reading, except maybe in the case of John Carter: Warlord of Mars.

I love a professor who can admit that he assigned a work which sucked.

2009-09-28T18:36:00.000-04:00

Take that, James Beattie! Your poetry is horrible - go back to speaking against slavery in a time when such opinions weren't exactly popular.

No, I'm really enjoying the medievalist class, because we read some wonderful critical books that are so good that they are easily understandable but sharp. (Chris Brooks, The Gothic Revival - I highly recommend it. Look it up!) And then we read some really good literature. And some crappy literature. And even some crappy poems by what are considered good poets. (Blake's "Imitation of Spenser.")

Choosing Optics

2009-09-27T17:21:00.000-04:00

I went on a date yesterday. It was really fun, talked about the Dewey Decimal system, and so on... but I cannot see myself dating someone who dislikes Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. It should seem funny, perhaps, since there are so many preferences I wouldn't require a love interest to have, but two which might seem shallow would be somehow required. I guess it's because they are, even now, quite dear to me, like good friends almost. They're familiar refuges, part of my accustomed lexicon even. When I speak of a dwarf, I mean a Tolkien dwarf, when I think of Yavanna and someone in the same instance, it is a high compliment, and when I'm talking about little fuzzy things, chances are equal I'm talking about a Jawa or an Ewok (or even a dwarf, come to think of it, or a hobbit if you count their feet). They amuse me and move me. Is this a petty want? Perhaps. But it is mine.

But with one exception, each successive date has been better, as I better learn what I want. And with each time, though I worry for a brief time that I might be overinvesting myself in dating, I realize again that it's okay. I don't have to look that hard, and I'm happy if I don't. Because being happy at the start is the most important thing of all. And as I'm realizing, I enjoy just meeting people more than the contrived date, where there's no middle ground of compromise. I'd been fortunate before, with Leslie, and Mary, that I'd known them before we dated, and that it had gone so smoothly. More and more, I'm looking at this as an opportunity to socialize with interesting people. I want a relationship, but that's high on the list of Maslow's hierarchy for me. I'm good without.

So... my want is sort of a choosing optic. It's a pun on a relation that doesn't exist, since "optics" and "opt" have different Latin word roots. It's the ability to see what I want, to choose the right lens with which to look at what happens. It's not infallible. Sometimes meeting new people can be a rough process, when one is looking for something more from an engagement than the other. So (despite the etymological separateness) having eyes for each other is just like wanting each other in the same way. Above my individual wants, that's what I look for. Beyond what I look for in an individual, that's what I want.

Words and Phrases for Desire

2009-09-12T19:55:00.000-04:00

A friend told me about a lesson she did on Wednesday. She was teaching levels of diction, and so she had her students come up with high, medium, and low words for drunkenness. An example: inebriated, drunk, sloshed. I'm doing the same with desire.

Yearn / Hunger / Hanker
Pine / Long / Jones
Partial to / Want / Have the hots for
Fancy / Wish / Lust
Desiderate / Hope / Crave

Being a Vampire Is Serious Business

2009-09-02T19:47:00.000-04:00

Perhaps I'm a big old party pooper, but here are the rules of vampirism, as I interpret them.

1. You can't go out in daylight. It's forbidden. You get dusted if you do. That is, you turn into dust, and then a matronly old street sweeper sweeps you up.
2. Sure, you have powers of compulsion, and grave charisma, but that doesn't make you unspeakably beautiful, handsome, or sparkly. It's edgier than that, for lack of a better term. You're the beauty we dare not call beautiful, but are drawn to nonetheless.
3. You thirst for blood. Human blood. How you get it is your concern, but there you go. Human. That other stuff just doesn't cut it.
4. Perhaps the most important thing. You're soulless. There is a hole within you, but no whole. You can desire, but you cannot love. Or, put another way, you can approximate love, but that is a love that is never satisfied, that always needs more. There is no contentment, in other words. It's not that I think a vampire is a heartless human being. A vampire isn't a human being and is heartless from the start. It can even care for others, but it cannot do the whole undying love thing. In that sense, it's sort of like Data.
5. Because of that lack, there is desire, but it can never be filled. So you feed.
6. Never cook with garlic.
7. Stay away from wooden stakes.
8. Sucking blood is partly a euphemism for sex. Both will probably go on. But bleeding out the carotid artery is not hot.
9. You can turn into a bat! For all your prettiness and allure, remember that you are akin to one of the goofiest looking animals out there.

Ah, reassuring prose.

2009-09-01T15:54:00.004-04:00

Like this gem, from a message sent to all of us today from the University president. It's vague and reassuring, quite a pretty piece of writing.

"During the period of orientation for new students and the beginning of undergraduate classes, I had the opportunity to witness in an unexpectedly personal way the human dimensions of Emory."

What does it mean that the author witnessed the human dimensions of Emory in an "unexpectedly personal way?" What is a "human dimension?" Are there impersonal human dimensions? Did he take the opportunity of witnessing these human dimensions? And, if you did witness it, how passive is that?

Look at how much I can cut this down.

"During orientation and the start of classes, I met (was privileged to meet) the marvelous staff, students, and parents of Emory."

17 words, versus 30. A 43% reduction in mass. Look what happens when you cut down those prepositions. It's more direct, more cordial, and actually means something. Of course he writes in the softer style because it can sound pleasant without offending. His job is to reassure the reader. But I'd prefer a more friendly, direct style than that for my reassurance. There is sin in being too styled.

Note to self, re: beer

2009-08-29T02:37:00.003-04:00

Duchesse de Bourgoyne is a great beer. A red beer! It's a little bit pricey, but it has a combination of a few red fruits and a smooth richness... no, I'm no good at describing. It's good. Thank you Porter's for having a unique draught selection.

http://www.specialtybeer.com/beer,index,duchesse_de_bourgogne.html

After several hours of reading essays on Romantic poetry...

2009-08-28T13:54:00.002-04:00

I know why I couldn't study the stuff formally. I'm somewhere between shouting hallelujah from the treetops and strangling the authors for snobby pretension. I can hardly read them with a straight face. It didn't help I was reading next to a mirror wall.

One brief, brief observation. If you're going to quote a full page of French, offering a translation would help. Lacking that, offering some citational direction more specific than, "This is the letter where Mr. Wigglesbottom talked to his glass of Chardonnay" would prove useful. (A fabricated example, since I don't want to go looking for it.) I was actually able to read most of it, but only because Rousseau apparently tends to write in big words with English analogues.

Day 1 of 3 of Teaching Assistant Training

2009-08-19T20:01:00.002-04:00

7:15 - Arrive on campus. Frantically check the mailbox I haven't checked in over two weeks. Find an abundance of air particles.

7:30 - Actually check e-mail and other internet things. I'm a half hour early, but with Atlanta traffic, you don't want to gamble on time or the universe.

7:55 - Head over to where they're doing the initial orientation. I have a second breakfast of fruit and a dismal chicken biscuit. Awkward conversation with a pharmacology student, neither of us being awake or extroverted enough to talk to each other.

8:05 - See Tina, Brent, and others I know. Socialize with them a bit, grab information packets, discover amazing coincidences in schedules for the next couple of days, ask about each other's summers (or past few weeks), and other drills.

8:20 - Get herded into an auditorium. Introductions from the staff. "Discussion" of ethical dilemmas while teaching, consisting of a lecture. The day-long yawning commences.

9:30 - My first class, on technology in the classroom. Somewhat useful, since I've never actually edited Blackboard before, but also, a lot of it was, "If you need help, come see us!" At least they had good taste in music.

10:30 - Copyright issues! Perhaps my favorite class of the day, since this sort of stuff fascinates me. What can you use in the classroom? What constitutes fair use? What does copyright mean? Some time I want to assign a brief bit of a video game for class, if it can be made relevant, and so I could dive into the sticky widgets.

11:30 - Lunch! Pasta-type dishes, so it was pretty good. They didn't give us enough food initially, but luckily I got my food first, so I didn't have to wait for the second wave. They talked about health issues, counseling, and so on. Useful in information, though I wonder why, whenever sensitive emotional issues come up, the person on an informational DVD wears a sweater. It didn't even fit right!

1:15 - Grading and Syllabi! The professor who gave this presentation was meek. But he had lots of good ideas and observations, an open-minded old guard who put teaching first. He asked for our feedback the right amount. Overall, good.

2:30 - Strategies for engaging attention. These professors' strategies were to constantly ask us our best and worst classroom experiences, and questions about them, as well as explanations of what worked and didn't work. Useful, in the sense that they were able to succinctly list what we already know in some form. It got better, even though at first I feared that they were just winging it and stalling because they didn't come prepared.

3:45 - Diversity, the last class of the day. Three presentations, all useful. "You make stereotypes anyway, and I'll be funny about them, but you should be aware you make them," "Diversity happens in all of these different ways, and you ought to be aware of them," and "Be willing to talk about diversity when it comes up, while keeping your class on the material."

5 - Get charged $10 for parking, because apparently there's a difference between parking in the parking lot and the connected parking deck, where apparently we were supposed to park for free. Shake fist as I drive off.

I probably won't go into so much detail for my other two days. If I do, just for my benefit. Overall, I learned a lot. Sitting in classrooms for over 8 hours in a row is not my idea of fun, but at least it was somewhat useful.

And the time signature says I started that post on August 1st.

2009-08-09T15:15:00.002-04:00

I've since been sidetracked. Mainly by Latin finals. Also by excursions.

One question, since it's easier to post this here than search up Diana's e-mail. There was one verb form on the test I could not get. Amavere. See, I tried conjugating perfect forms: amavi, amavisti, amavit, amavimus, amavistis, amaverunt. Amaveram, amaveras, amaverat, amaveramus, amaveratis, amaverant. Amavero, amaveris, amaverit, amaverimus, amaveritis, amaverint. I played with the subjunctive ones too. It couldn't be passive, because passive perfects are periphrastic. I don't see where you can get the -avere ending, unless it's some weird shortened version of one of the third person plurals or singulars.

Actually, that's probably it. Drat, several days late too. I guess I just needed to type it out. I'll look it up later. >_>

I had a really fun day on Friday. Antique shopping, balloons, baguette, sushi, cheesy glow-in-the-dark, a roof, canned pumpkin, and a tea cup with legs kind of fun.

Moved! A Chronicle

2009-08-01T10:14:00.004-04:00

So I moved on Friday. I'd been packing and sending things over to the new apartment all week. But Friday was the big 16 hour workday. Here's how it broke down.

7:45 - Wake up. This is odd, since I've only had 5 hours of sleep and the alarm goes off in an hour. Then I remember that the curtains were taken down last night. At the light of dawn at the fifth day, look to the east?

8-9:30 - Fuss about. Packing, cleaning out the refrigerator and freezer, taking out the trash. I left most of my cinder block and wood shelving by the dumpster, either to be reused or thrown away, depending ont he people that happened by. No time to do anything more.

9:30-10:15 - Find my way to the U-Haul place. I know the way, but construction knocks out the most convenient bridge across the interstate in Midtown. After some driving, I track it down. After a brief paperwork interlude, I'm off with my truck.

10:30 - I'm on time! Where is everyone?

10:35 - Brent arrives. We begin work.

10:45 - Maureen calls. She, Lynn, and Su are at the other 1429 B. They entered the wrong entrance and are at the other side of the apartment complex. D'oh!

10:50 - They arrive. We continue.

10:52 - It begins to rain hard. Thank goodness the beds were in!

11:20 - Drenched to the bone, we finish with the last of the stuff and caravan over to my new place.

11:50 - Arrival. The sun is shining. It's also raining still, though not as hard. This is a good thing, since the walk to the apartment from the road is further. Greeted by Jennifer and Jeremy. Partition of tasks.

12:30 - We get everything off-loaded just as Jen comes in. Pizza for lunch! Savage pizza nom nom mmmm.

1:10 - We all part our separate ways, as I go to return the U-Haul.

2:10 - I tried to return the U-Haul, but forgot to replace the gas I used. After a fill-up and an awkward encounter with an obstinate trucker at a 3-way stop sign who made me back up over 75 feet to let him turn (clause upon clause), I get my car.

2:40 - Home! Or, that is, old home. I still need to clean. I whip up a bucket of vinegar and water.

4:30 - Finally done vacuuming, scrubbing, and cleaning. I go to throw away trash and check out.

5:00 - They nab someone available for a checkout inspection, since I want to make sure I'm not overcharged. We have a conversation about the DeKalb county farmer's market nearby (must check it out). They charge me $0! Apparently the hole in the ceiling wasn't a big deal.

5:10 - Impulsive stop for a Coke ICEE, which they sell for significantly less than a dollar. Laden with sweet, cool, refreshing caffeinated ice/syrup puree, I give myself a brain freeze on the way to my new home.

5:45 - Finally get back here! They offer to feed me for dinner, which is quite gracious. Some pork tenderloin and applesauce later (I refused the potato salad), I'm read to work.

6:20 - Oh. Oh my. My room currently looks like a slurple Pinkerdragess, that most fearsome of under-the-bed creatures. Luckily its Barbie Malibu-pink eyes do not glow from under any sleeping surface, since they're currently against the wall. I begin to clear space.

8 - I take a break by tackling the kitchen instead. It's a relatively easy job, since I have enough cooking supplies to be functional, but only brought a few plates and cups since they would already be furnished here. I find a place for the big box of silverware I still haven't found an opportunity to use. It might also be called a brick of metal.

10 - My first big victory of the night. I have finally cleared enough space (mostly by putting things on shelves in the closet) to put the bed in. Suddenly it looks more like a room. After sleep, of course, comes the internet, so I get my computer hooked up next. Besides, it's better to pick up when you have some music playing.

1 - Exhaustion point reached. There is a crater-sized spot in the floor where space has been cleared, approximately around my pappasan chair. Books and DVDs mainly strew the floor, along with all of the knickknacks that tend to gather after you're living in a larger apartment with someone else. (Four trashcans, lots of lightbulbs, an excess lamp or two, extension cords, and so on.) I collapse on my bed, with the new black sheets I bought, and fall into an evil slumber.

That Saturday was also a busy day. A slightly less detailed breakdown:

7 - I'm up! Why am I up? Sun! Through the window! On the fifth day, at first light, look to the east! It's south, but enough light still gets in. I feel perfectly awake though, so I get up.

8 - After a breakfast of Life, I'm back at it. A little more lazily though.

8:30 - I probably stopped and got on the internet by then.

8:41 - Oh! So that's when I'm helping my professor move today. *flexes*

10:20 - I leave to help Dr. A move. I figure out a route down a road I've never been before. There are some interesting places, one extremely eerie shopping mall where the only thing still open is a hair salon, and about two Checkers. (Noted for future reference.)

11:02 - After getting lost due to poorly marked roads, I get there. I'm asqued to call the professor by her first name, Monique. The ice is broken! Jenny is also there, and Brent arrives a minute later. Note to self - I could never do plaid long shorts. We are set to laboring, emptying Monique's pod.

12:30 - After emptying that out and some things she'd kept stored in her garage, they set to asking about lunch and unpacking. Brent and I are sent out to Ria's, a nearby breakfast/brunch/lunch place with a beautiful outdoor area covered by canvas, complete with fountain and wall graffiti. He has a sandwich, and I get beef brisquet, which is served in tomato broth with cooked eggs floating in it. The most bizarre breakfast dish I've ever had, but it was good, especially with the baguette for dipping.

1:10 - We make it back with their lunches. They eat and we talk. Then the matter of payment comes up, and though we try to argue, we get overpaid. We finally cannot refuse, the check has been written, and there is gratitude all around.

1:40 - After a bit more help rearranging, I leave to go grocery shopping. There's a Wal-mart nearby the apartment. It's fine, except that beggars tend to roam around in the parking lots. I suddenly feel tired. The uneven rest has finally worn off.

After that I got back, unpacked some more, took a nap (almost never happens!!), ate a bit of dinner, watched movies with Jeremy, Jen, Marc, and their friends, and finally fell asleep. Loooong day.

So yes. I'm moved. It's great. If you want my address, just ask and I'll e-mail it.

Fun With Suffixes

2009-07-17T14:56:00.002-04:00

Some English suffixes that I haven't thought about in a while.

-agogue : has to do with leadership or leading. Hence pedagogue, teacher. Or Aragog, the leader of the spiders in Harry Potter.

-mancy : some form of magic or divination. Necromancy, aquamancy, technomancy, amoramancy, cenamancy. Now I'm just making them up.

-rrhea : flowing. Logorrhea, rhinorrhea, gonorrhea, leukorrhea, amongst other flows. Carries a negative connotation.

-blast : an immature cell or tissue. Osteoblast, cnidoblast, neuroblast, xenoblast, Scottoblast. Just remember this basic rule: If you're having a blast, you're probably immature.

-drome : racecourse, field, or some sort of running activity. Aerodrome, hippodrome (not Hungry Hungry Hippos), velodrome, and even palindrome.

-oid : like, but not the same. Trapezoid, android, asteroid, humanoid, steroid. Thankfully unrelated to hemorrhoid.

-phore : bearer or carrier. Electrophoresis, semaphore, phosphorescent, euphoria.

-th : outside of numbering and archaic verb forms, forms nouns from adjectives and verbs. Growth (grow), death (die), filth (foul; gets redone as adjective filthy), strength (strong), dearth (dear, though the sense has migrated).

Why the Aliens Don't Care (Or Why They Might)

2009-06-30T15:16:00.002-04:00

For all that science-fiction does, whether it's great action, cool concepts, sleek environments, or probing social commentary, sometimes it can be rather lacking. Even when I first saw Independence Day, amidst the then-cool lines ("Is this glass bulletproof?") and the poignant image of Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith sharing a fag, there was the unsettling thought that the entire premise to the story was improbable. In one of the explanatory expositions in the movie, someone explains that the aliens go from planet to planet, destroying all life on the planet before harvesting its natural resources. Why? What does it need from Earth that it cannot get elsewhere? I wasn't sure, and I'm still not.

For any element or material that I can think of, they can be found on countless other worlds or asteroids that do not have life. For carbon-based compounds that result from life processes, such as crude oil and coal, they wouldn't be needed for energy, because the energy needed to cross the stars would be too high to rely on fossil fuels. It would be unlikely they would be needed to synthesize plastics or other materials, as a civilization with enough energy to cross the stars would likely have enough energy to synthesize materials akin to, if not better than, plastic. Aliens also would not likely seize us to be slaves, because if they can travel between stars, they are probably advanced enough that everything is automated. So, sorry ID4, and countless other movies (like Signs), I cannot take your basic premise.

There are several alien behaviors that seem likely, and several more that seem less likely but I'm willing to accept with reservations. Of course an alien civilization need not think in the same way, but I find I am making fewer assumptions than the more literally human-centered counterparts in Hollywood, conspiracy theories, and elsewhere.

Space is vast. Its vastness is inconceivable except in numbers, and even then is rather daunting. For the comfortable little space that the planets of our solar system rest in, and the larger Oort cloud where matter whirls about in long orbits, there is far more that is between us and any other star. There are still things out there, like bits of matter, stray extrasolar asteroids, and a lot of radiation. Then, that being set aside, there are many stars, and we are discovering that there are many planets. For a galaxy about 100,000 light years wide and 1,000 light years thick (our little dinner plate), there are over 200 billion stars. There are perhaps 100 billion galaxies. These are all interspersed in several tens of billion light years. Unless the space out there is teeming with life that we somehow have been unable to see, there is lots of room for everyone at present, and there needn't be concern for our solar system, let alone our planet, because someone needs something from the occasional planet that has life.

If they did come around anyway though, there could be a few reasons for it. The Star Trek excuse, as I call it, is to explore and observe. Life might well be curious about other life for any number of reasons, both scientific and ethical. They might do so from afar, monitoring our broadcasts and bugging our houses; they might do so close up, occasionally seizing a few people at a time; they might even do so by subtly changing the values of our civilization so that, while our lives would not be negatively impaired, they might observe what they want. I don't think the methods, or even their methodology, could be presumed, but I would like to think that anyone capable of traveling between stars would know the value of conserving life, and its similarities of conserving energy. I don't think this one is worth worrying about, any more than we worry about God or Satan interfering in our lives. They might and they might not (though I think not), but even if they do, we can't live life basing our decisions on apparitions that have nothing to do with what we immediately interact with.

Other reasons we can think of, and are perfectly human, and thus we cannot judge their likelihood on any other scale than practicality. Perhaps they just like killing other things. Maybe they like destroying other planets. Perhaps they just don't care to take the little bit of extra effort to manufacture that one amino acid that we happen to have. Perhaps they think in terms of conquering and making vassals of other sentients. Perhaps they want to spread their code of conduct to us, trading in exchange their technologies in order to create harmony in the stars. My problem is not with the premise, but with the practical question: why care about us? We are humans. If life is out there in any probability, there is lots of other life out there. If it is possible to travel between the stars, many probably do it. But they can get everything they want without wasting the energy to come here.

It makes for a decent story sometimes, and I'll suspend disbelief if the other parts of the story (action, humor, etc.) are good enough. But I wish that someone could really surprise me with a plausible premise for aliens to come here. It'd blow my mind.

Easy in Translation

2009-06-22T14:01:00.002-04:00

1. As with French, the main word that means easy in Latin is facilis. We have the word as "facile," which is a word that is well-known but not often used except in its bureaurcratized uses "facility" and "facilitate," the terms appropriately nouned and verbed. (Ow. Ow. Ow.)

So I got curious. Where does English get its words for easiness from? After some brainstorming and an OED, this is what I've found.

Easy is from the Old French verb aiser or aisier, to put at ease. This verb may well be from the late Latin asia/asium, but at that point the etymology is obscure. I know it was around in Middle English.
Cinch is from Spanish (ooooh) cinga, and refers to the saddle-girth. Cinch soon came to mean colloquially a sure hold or a sure thing from the late 19th century onward. It's sure to happen, so it's a cinch, and it's easy.
Evident, obvious are both from Latin. Ex + vident means "seeing out," while ob + via is "in the way." They're out there, and they're too easy to miss.
Manageable, through Italian or Spanish, and perhaps back to the Latin manus, meaning hand. So if something is manageable, it can be handled. Manageable though is less easy than "easy," having a weaker sense of ease or desirability.
Simple is from the Latin, basically the same word over again. It can mean easy, in a few different ways. Probably better to call someone easy-going than simple-going though.
Basic is again from the Latin, and it denotes a foundation or (with -ic) a fundamental part. Probably means easy in reference to a student learning the basics of a subject first, which will inevitably be easier than what comes afterward. It's something that should be known, and is thus judged easy. If someone has to explain something by saying, "Well, basically," they're appealing to what should be easier to know. And so on.
Trifle comes from the Old French, but it's unclear where before that, whether it is Latinate, Gothic, or what not. It's apparently similar to the word truffle, but I don't know how.

There are others. Too many of them come from Latin; I'll have to search for what the Anglo-Saxon equivalents were, because those don't seem to have survived, or have melded into the other forms.

What Anglo-Saxon turns up, from here: http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm

"easy [] 1. adj íeðelic; íeðe pleasant; léoht trifling; ~-going léohtmód; ~ to believe? léafléoht; 2. ~ly adv íeðelíce; 3. make ~ wv/t1b líhtan¹ relieve"

Iethelic, leoht... leoht is probably something that got transformed into light, in the sense of getting a little light (trifling) reading done. Light is a word that goes off into the Germanic tongues rather than anything Latinate.

Micro-story

2009-06-21T19:32:00.003-04:00

A snowflake fell from the sky. This alarmed me, because it was the middle of the summer. More importantly, there was a roof over me.

A scoop of vanilla fell on my head, the net of what would turn out to be a series of desserts over the next few hours. At first I called maitenance, but they thought I was drunk and said that they could come by after they put this A/C unit in. Stay cool, they offered with a laugh.

Then I set out buckets where an ice cream sandwich had fallen before, but the orange sherbet would always fall onto my forehead anyway. Then a chocolate sundae would follow me, raining fudge and bananas.

So, c'est la vie. I went for a walk.

The children called me their messiah. A messiah of ice cream.

Nigh Unplayable

2009-06-21T13:05:00.002-04:00

So, after over a month of hiatus, I tried playing SimCity Societies. I've liked all of the SimCity games so far, and when I initially bught it I got it with SimCity 4, which I like.

SimCity Societies, rather than being a city-building simulation, has been described as a societal simulation. A societal simulation, rather than emphasizing zones, service coverage, and a population described solely through statistics, it emphasizes how buildings are used, what jobs are available, what forms of recreation are available, and so on. Instead of zones, the player seelcts specific buildings with different values. Cottages are more pleasing but house less people; condos less pleasing but more people. Some jobs emphasize artistic ability, while some venues rely on there already being an interest in book smarts in the city. Overall, a pretty cool idea.

However, there is a problem. The game speed, at levels faster than normal, goes faster than the Sims in the game move. The people move too, but not fast enough to keep up the pace. If I wanted to go on fastest to burn through a few days quickly, a Sim might have enough time to walk between home and work and get no sleep. They're unhappy, they don't work, and I get no money.

I've tried playing this game along another, so I don't have to sit there staring at the screen waiting for another workday to pass (it goes at probably a day every couple of minutes). But then I just feel like I'm not really playing. If it weren't for this, I would really enjoy it.

I made lamb for the first time today...

2009-06-19T19:42:00.003-04:00

It was delicious. I've had it before, but never where I've been in control. I pan-cooked it. With some blueberries and some leafy greens, it was pretty tasty.

Have a poet in your pocket - the modern version.

2009-06-16T13:36:00.002-04:00

“You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.” John Adams.

Outside of the store whose clear glass windows were marked only by an ubiquitous frosted-white quill, the crowds lined up. There were two lines, each extending in opposite directions up and down the second floor of the mall. One security guard was stationed at the door, a broad man if not a tall one. Another, a tall woman with a severe ponytail, patrolled up and down the lines in fifteen-minute intervals, which basically amounted to walking around the inside and the outside of the mall. Luckily, the crowds were well-behaved and complacent, some chatting or texting, others reading or simply standing around.
The buzz had traveled from person to person, though the many billboards, a sizable internet presence, and several flash mobs didn’t hurt its progression either. It was the new model coming out, promising new features and upgrades to the already sleek performance. No one knew what it looked like. A few claimed it was going to be like a Kindle with video, while others said it would be an iPhone with more text. Most said with fierce loyalty that, if anything, those other toys were only derived from the light of the Poeta.
Some still twiddled with their older models as they waited. It was flat, nearly paper-thin, and came in models from transparent, through notebook paper, to the premium vellum model. They could type in a word, a phrase, a stanza, and words would pour out, waxing (per the name) poetic on the subject. Some experts initially called it a random word generator, but unlike those clunky artifacts, these made sense from start to finish. And it was not limited to poetry. By adjusting a few simple options, it could turn out prose of any sort or variety, dividable by genres ranging from romance novel to business report. So far the machines hadn’t been able to reproduce an individual author’s voice, but even more marvelously, it was a new voice whose only distinguishing characteristic was a tendency toward propriety. Its rap was renowned for its stilting hilarity, which spawned a new genre of its own. So it was a marvelous product, but its fans wanted to see what would change. And some just wanted to see what the big deal was.
A salesperson pushed a button, the doors opened, and the first fifteen people were let in. Each was met by a crisp, clean-cut man or woman standing next to a clear podium. The boxes were already below and behind each podium, and they gingerly asked questions to ascertain a best fit for their client: “What will you be using this for?” “Do you know any other languages?” “Would you carry yours in a purse or a pocket?” There were no questions about price. The cost was immaterial.
The first to get one was Sandy, 32, a single mother of a seven year old. She had driven from Tallahassee, FL to Miami just to make one of the premium outlets. The child was at home with a babysitter. Sandy wore a lime green t-shirt, tights, and sandals, the combination being quite in vogue and quite unstylish. She smiled with anticipation as she got asked the different questions, answered that she would like to do a trade-in, gave over her vellum sheet with the authentic-looking bookworm holes, and waited as the salesperson dug underneath the podium.
When the well-manicured hand came up, it was holding a little person in the palm. The salesperson smiled immaculately and set it down. Sandy saw a miniature version of Edgar Allen Poe, but all she knew as that she would be combing that hair when she got home. The salesperson demonstrated the controls, all voice-command. Soon the Edgar Allen Poe model was giving a spirited criticism of socialist health care. Sandy then tried a command of her own, and after seeming to listen the little Poe began to sing a pop hit, doing the accompaniment in falsetto. In the few minutes that they tried different genres, every one sounded a little like Edgar Allen Poe, but the genres were too disparate for him to manage more than the occasional bleak sentence, an ending sigh which sounded like "Nevermore."
When Sandy bought him with her debit card, she got a free chamois bag to keep him in. She happily placed the bag with Poe in it in her sack and walked out. She could hardly wait!

It Didn't Really Even Make Sense at the Time

2009-06-15T15:07:00.003-04:00

I just tried to write a short story. I don't think I quite succeeded. I started with an idea, but it had no end. It even had no middle. I just went from paragraph to paragraph, relying on whatever images came to mind. It didn't start as a dream, but it felt like one. It also feels a bit like a faerie tale whose moral is, "Expect nothing," and "Be careful you don't wish you lived in interesting times." A faerie tale that starts in the middle, after the person's already made the fateful bargain that they'll regret, anything for a wish.

Since I'm talking about it, I may as well post it.

Across the windswept street, along the white lines blurred under the water, Joseph ran. Drops blurred his glasses. His white dress shirt soaked against his long chest and paunch. Splashes followed his heavy feet like mines exploding in hostile waters. He reached the other side just as a red light turned green, and several cars drove by him, sending up a synchronous dance of grey water from the pools near the gutter.
Joseph had had worse days, but they weren’t coming to his mind. Partly that was because he hadn’t had a worse day in quite a long time. Partly it was because all the bad days just blended together lately in a fugue. And partly it was because his mind was singlehandedly on correcting the mistake, making it, if not better, no worse.
He was on the right block, he knew, but he’d never been to the office before, and the Google Street View did not display any obvious signs saying, “Luminate Services.” But he had a number, and he followed them the best he could past a mid-line boutique, a hairdresser’s, a subshop, a couple of nondescript store fronts, a parking lot. Then, just as he was muttering what he had to ask for once more, there was a long wall of steel and darkened glass, and a single revolving door marked off with slightly faded brass.
Joseph ran up and through, hitting himself against the also-dark glass as the door didn’t give way. He pushed again. After the third time, and stopping to rub his bruised chin, he noticed a sign, just below his eyelevel. “Perhaps you should push the other way,” it suggested in cursive which curled about and back into itself. A helpful arrow was below that. He wiped the water off of his glasses onto his shirt, tried using his equally wet hand, and finally gave up and looked close, squinting. Then he pushed the other way, and the door turned.
As he hurried in, saw the stairs and the sign above them marking where he was going with an arrow, and rushed toward them, Joseph didn’t notice the cherry-soda-brown-lacquered wall panels, the white marble floor cut in three-foot squares, the high ceiling with art-deco arches, the wall lamps suffusing the room in a golden glow, the desk with a brass-framed monitor and keyboard, or the woman currently staring at him from behind it. But he did hear her bellow, “Not so fast!”
Whoops, I guess I should mention an appointment, Joseph thought, so he stepped over to the desk, where the middle-aged woman was already looking back at her computer, typing away. “I… I have an appointment,” he offers, his voice wavering. “My name’s – “
“What is this?” She then asks, looking up from the screen and standing back up. The queen’s English lends her words formality, but something else lends them authority. Joseph pauses, silent with his mouth half-open. Then she clicks her tongue. “Ah. I just wanted you to walk slower. You are expected, Mr. Trau. Go the way you were going, but with decorum. Up the stairs, first door on your left.”
Joseph opened his mouth to say thanks, and something came out, but he didn’t hear it, and she didn’t correct him. He walked to the stairs, muttering softly in cadence with his steps. “Walk in… give them… ask them… offer up…” He wiped his wet hair from his eyes, reached the top of the stairs, and tapped on the left door with his knuckle. After no answer for a few moments, he hit the wood grain with his forehead. “Come in,” a light voice echoed from within.
Joseph opened the door and walked in, shutting the door behind him. Then he looked around. And gasped.
He was stepping on golden leaves. The light filtered through from somewhere on high, yellow from the leaves but also vaguely incandescent, and a slight spectral aura infused each shape, rainbow-like. The trees – and these were tall like an elm, sloped gracefully upward, each silver bough holding a dazzling number of ruby, gold, and amber leaves. Small birds flitted from bough to bough in blurs, singing and twittering their autumn songs.
In the middle of a grove fully illuminated by a round halo of light, Joseph saw a hunched over figure, brown and craggly like no person he had ever seen. Dryad and ent came to his mind simultaneously, but he was unsure. Was this the person he had called on the phone? How elaborate the decorations were.
Nonetheless, he still had his plan. He walked forward, stepping across the plain without care to his step. He entered the halo and his eyes watered; he had to cover them. The creature looked up with moss-green eyes. Joseph flinched, and looked at it as if looking for the strings or the puppet hand. From his back pocket Joseph pulled out a box, setting it down in front of him. “It’s not worth it. You sent it to me in the mail, but I change my mind. I don’t understand what’s inside. I thought it would just happen. Why is it in a box, and why’s it so small?”
“Hmm.” The figure, not really covered by bark or skin, wrung his shoulders freely, a motion which unnerved him. He thought the high-pitched voice was a woman over the phone, and now he didn’t know. “It is in a box because it can be in a box. And it’s small so that it can fit in the box. Were you expecting something large and unboxed?”
“I…” Joseph pauses and looks down at the box. “I thought the change was big, so the cause would be big.”
“That is material.”
“Immaterial? You mean, irrelevant?”
“No, material and irrelevant.” With a lilting patience in its tone the creature explains. “Size is tangible. This… defies size. Defies expectation. That is the only way there can be a change, because if you expect it, you don’t really change. You just become what you were going to become, like a tree free to grow.” The creature bends down to pick up the box. Then he frowns at something, looking closely at it. “Did you open the box?”
“I did, but I didn’t look. It was musty. Then I sneezed. And I closed the box. What does that - ”
The creature interrupts, speaking over him until he goes silent and continuing on without a beat. “Seeds! Seeds! Take these materials – small as hope, large as change! And of course you wouldn’t know them. They’re already spread now, and you cannot stop them. They will grow wherever you scattered them. They will grow from your nose. You cannot return it! It is too late.”
“Wh – what will they do?” Joseph asks, touching each nostril tentatively between finger and thumb.
“What did you want to change?” The creature asks in return, folding its arms impossibly behind it, both forearm and upper arm behind its neck.
“Everything. I wanted my kid back. I wanted my old job back. I wanted my apartment back. I wanted to feel good about life again.” But he swings his arms at everything around him. “But I got too much. I don’t want the dust, whatever was in the box, the things I’ve been seeing. I return it. I’ll pay for the seeds.”
The creature smiles, or at least appears to, its mouth opening wide and contorting in silent laughter. The light began to brighten, and Joseph covered his eyes. Just as he was blind, and a ringing grew too loud in his ears, he heard the creature’s voice, “There are no returns.”

Joseph awoke. His daughter was there, the toddler curled up next to him, as if she had sought shelter from a storm. He sat up in his bed. The window to outside cast red and yellow against the wall. Across the studio, on the computer, the window was up with the spreadsheets he had worked with for so long. Data and functions from here to the rainbow. A message was on his screen, an e-mail from his boss welcoming him back, giving him the project for the week. He sat down to work with a vague sense of relief.

The more he worked, the better he felt. He just needed something to do, he knew. He just needed to feel fulfilled. He glanced at the clock. The time was exactly the same as the last time he checked, except that it was AM instead of PM. He heard some clattering from a distance, but ignored it. He had to finish up. He didn’t even feel tired.

Four days later, there was a 911 call from a three-year old girl. She didn’t make much sense, only said, “Dad’s gone. He's a tree.” When the paramedics and the police arrived, they found a man, face down on the keyboard. The last twenty thousand characters typed, still flowing right on the screen, were a series of b’s. They flipped him up and back.
A silver sprout was beginning to grow from his nose. A golden leaf glimmered.

Sci-fi Con

2009-06-14T09:33:00.002-04:00

So yesterday I really needed to go out. There was a Steampunk festival in Decatur, but I opted instead to drive a bit further and go up to a sci-fi convention in Marietta.

It was pretty small. They had two panel rooms, a movie room, an anime room, a gaming room, and the dealer's floor. I only stuck around for a few hours, but I did end up buying some stuff, including:
A book of questionable quality (I live dangerously through my books).
A children's book about a squid pirate.
A 1910 gas lamp.
A brass pocket watch.
A prop steampunk gun, made out of brass and wood.

The last three all have a common theme, all being made to look old. I figured, what the hell. :)

Targeted Randomness

2009-06-11T21:34:00.002-04:00

1. Does it take longer to fall down an up escalator? Of course the gravitational constant is the same, but you would fall down more stairs than a staircase of the same height, perhaps prolonging the fall since each step would slow the descent.

2. For a change, based on a hint from The Splendid Table, I've been cooking the past couple of days with brown butter. It's just salted butter cooked on low to medium for about five minutes. I can't say I've noticed a radical difference from normal butter, because before that I wasn't using much butter at all and thus have no basis of judgment. Nonetheless, it does end up very tasty with steaks and as a spread for garlic bread.

3. Every day, I leave Latin going to Wikipedia or the Oxford English Dictionary looking up words. A lot of them are analogues to vocabulary words. After learning oppugnō, derived from the prefix ob- and the verb pugnō, I searched for other words that might use the ob- prefix, which can mean, "in the direction of, towards, against, in the way of, in front of, in view of, on account of." Oblong thus is the direction favoring the long side. Object would be to throw in the way of (ject being from the Latin iacere). Some, like obsolete, the OED doesn't decipher beyond the Latin, which has the two together. I can only presume that it has some common form with "solent," usual or customary, which according to the OED takes from the Latin solere, to be wont. So maybe it can mean, "On account of being usual?" That is, something is obsolete when it's used so often that it is worn down, old, or outdated?

4. Latin was disconcerting at first for a few reasons. One, nominative pronouns aren't commonly used, as the subject of the sentence is incorporated with the verb. Sum simply means, "I am." I could say, Vir validus est, where "Vir" is in the nominative, but it would simply mean, "He is a healthy man." There also aren't any articles, and sometimes prepositions like to disappear, leaving only the noun ending to indicate possible prepositions for translation. Then I realized the system is quite efficient.

5. I spent two hours yesterday trying to figure out how to figure out a square root from a medieval text. It appears to be like the modern method, which is like long division with some catches. However, the directions are bewilderingly vague, and I can't piece together what to do from the examples. One step says approximately, "Now, go to the next digit before the double..." Which direction is that? It's especially confusing because explanations seems to switch inadvertently between left-to-right numbering (the Latin numbering system) and right-to-left numbering (the Arabic system). So I might be thrown by the next, even if there wasn't that countermanding "before."

Height

2009-05-20T16:24:00.002-04:00

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104183551&ps=bb4

So apparently being short means that you live closer to the present, based on the lesser time it takes for a person to get feedback from nerves and synchronize them all.

I don't view it as a disadvantage for tall people. Rather, I am time-travelling, and I'll feel you a tenth of a second in the future.

Today, Latin retaught me the predicate nominative. In Latin, the nouns conjugate - the proper term is declension, but the idea is similar. Depending on whether the noun is being used as a nominative, generative (possessive), dative (indirect object), accusative (direct object), ablative (various things like location and instrumentality), or vocative, it has slightly different endings. I'd assumed that the nominative would always be the subject, or subject-like. I was running into sentences where two words, one before and one after the verb, would both appear to be the nominative. "Regina est femina." The queen is a woman? Or the woman is a queen? Or both? Then I looked in the book where it explained that the nominative can be a predicate. In the case the verb, rather than describing an action on a direct object, describes the subject. Oy, I'd forgotten more than I thought about these grammar things.

Of course, except for the order of the words (which can only be trusted to a certain degree), I don't yet know whether the predicate nominative is just the one with less emphasis, or what. I'll ask tomorrow.

A Little Latin and a Little Cooking

2009-05-19T17:52:00.004-04:00

Sounds like I'm becoming my sister. We'll wait for me to run a half-marathon.

I had my first day of Latin today. It will be amusing. The first chapter uses the method of throwing every verb tense at you, and then stepping back and breaking it down. It's sort of like putting a kid in a snowstorm, and then handing them, one by one, all the tools they need to build an igloo and a fire. I'm okay with that.

Fun fact I did not realize consciously before: nauta (M) means sailor. So astronauts are star sailors. Does that make the nautilus a sort of nonhuman sailor of its own?

And for dinner the past couple of times I have been trying something which suits me rather well, because it's simple and, to me, tasty. What I've been doing is just putting sliced mushrooms in a single layer in a shallow baking pan. I buy them presliced, because they're the same price as the whole ones. I then sprinkle whatever herbs and spices I want on them. In my case, I've been using some garlic and herb chicken seasoning that turned out to be not so good on chicken. Here, it really works. I stick it in the oven at 325 for however long... say, about ten minutes, let cool for a minute, serve, and enjoy! The mushrooms end up slightly juicy, like they've been sauteed. I could probably refine it, pretoss the mushrooms with the herbs, and have less herb-bits left over on the pan. But other than that...

Mischief

2009-05-14T19:06:00.004-04:00

I have adapted a passage from a book, changing key nouns and adjectives, and changed it into a different genre. Try to identify the original passage and the book from which I have taken it. It will be at the start of a book, the first paragraph.

"The family of Dirkhelm had been long settled in Normandy. Their castle was large, and their battlements were atop Norland Hill, in the centre of the hill, where for many generations they had lived in so grand a manner as to engage the awe and respect of their surrounding lords. The late owner of this castle was a sturdy man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life had a constant companion and advisor in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his fortress; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his walls the family of his nephew, Henry Dirkhelm, the legal inheritor of the Norland battlements, and the person to whom he intended to leave the rule. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old lord's days were comfortably spent. His gift-due to them all increased. The constant advisement of both Dirkwoods according to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from duty, but to ingrained affiliance, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the uprightness of the children added relish to his existence."

A few thoughts

2009-05-12T08:24:00.002-04:00

1. So a Christian school does not want their students to dance. One of the students dances at a public school prom. He gets suspended from the school.
a. The ostensible purpose of the policy is to prevent lustful influences. Rather than training the students to deal with lust in an appropriate manner, they put gendered contact under the same category as rebellion (rock music). As with many restrictions, the underlying goal is control, inside and outside the school.
b. The stricter rule does not the better person make, necessarily. Some people cleave unto rules as a pinprick of sense in a balloon of a world, internalizing them. Some people cleave to the group, but disregard the rules, finding ways to get their rock music, handholding, and "worse." Then some people exist in some intermediary state, confused by the rules but not knowing how to resist them simply because they don't know anything else except through a TV. There is naivete, and there is social impairment.
c. And of course part of me scoffs at the pretension of such rules. There were some hardline Church members in the medieval period that might've rather people didn't dance or marry or have sex ever. But they were smarter, because they realized that people do things beyond their control, and the choice is not between preventing and allowing, but between excluding and
accepting. The people would find a way to do what they want anyhow. So they incorporate some of the pagan holidays, help administer wedding vows, develop songs, allow a Virgin Mary cult for those who incline toward a goddess, and hold festivals wherein some people dance. The greater power does not waste time preventing in vain, but accepts enough that they can afford to exclude stickier practices like actually worshipping other gods.
2. Two people get married. The state figures out that one of the people, professing to be female, was born male. Their marriage is declared void.
a. If someone really feels like being a male or a female, why should I bother convincing him/her otherwise? Yes, they might have one X and one Y chromosome, or two X chromosomes, or even two X and one Y or any other fun combinations. These chromosomes do not always correspond to the parts people have, as an XY embryo which does not generate or recognize its own testosterone will develop into a female, for example. Finally, with modern medical technology, we have the ability to change those parts and supplement the change with hormonal infusions. Whether we may like it or not, the man who thinks he is a woman can get all the equipment to make herself so.
b. We're very ill-equipped to handle transsexual issues. In the newspaper article describing the officers determining the person's sex, they have male officers pat down where they suspect a penis, and female officers pat down the breasts. The disparity does not seem geared to the comfort of the person being patted down (why would the switch matter) so much as the people doing the patting, who wouldn't want to feel a contradiction. (There's a good article on the subject about a gender-switcher from the seventeenth century. I can't find it now though.)
c. We want to be able to know that a person is this or that, one or the other. Thus anything that contradicts easy identification is bewildering, like Pat from SNL. We fix the easiest practical way of telling someone's sex. Clothes normally suffice even today, supplemented by ideas about a person's body (are there breasts? hips? facial hair?). If such markers can change, then one cannot tell with certainty. Why do we have to know, and why is the risk of getting it wrong so horrible?
d. One reason why they do need to know is because there is a little amendment which was added a couple of years back about homosexual marriage in Tennessee. In order to judge same-sex marriage, there must be a standard concerning sex. If that standard is dismantled, then the law is weakened.
e. It also stands as a challenge to gender. If women do one thing and men do another contrary to one another, then if anyone is able to change their behavior, what does that mean for the old absolutes? I don't think gender is a bad thing except when people use it to make incorrect and offensive conclusions. Most people act mostly like some form of their apparent genders, myself included. But it shouldn't be some great excluder, whether in household chores or hobbies. My acting differently should not make another suspicious that I'm gender-confused, and such gender-confusion should not convince them that I might be homosexual.
3. I like cookies.

Poet, wizard, or Jedi?

2009-05-05T12:30:00.003-04:00

To continue the trend of editorial snippets in authors' works, I ran across a fantastic introduction today as I was wandering through the library. I was looking for an edition of Swinburne's poetry to get a little taste of. Needless to say, I was drawn in by the equally potent prose of the introduction. Drawn into fits of laughter.

From Introduction, Selections from the Poetical Works of A.C. Swinburne from the Latest English Edition of His Works. Ed. R.H. Stoddard. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, 1884.

“The great gift of poetry – the greatest which Heaven has conferred upon mankind and the one which, if well balanced and wisely exercised, confers the greatest pleasure on mankind – is a dangerous gift to its possessor. It separates him from his fellows, whose pursuits are of material and not spiritual things; and it creates for him a life in which they have no share. A law unto itself, it is lawlessness to them.”

“The consciousness of great powers is a misfortune to all but the greatest minds, for these alone distinguish between their use and abuse.”

“Power for power’s sake is not poetry. Byron never learned the truth; but the young Keats – the manikin whom he wished somebody would flay alive – knew it instinctively. Hear him: - (cites some poetry).”

(Now I really want to cite someone in a paper by going, “Hear him: - .”

“As we define poetry, which is not to be defined, so we divide the poets into schools, which, strictly speaking, are not schools.”

“But the fervor, the force, the elemental energy of the old masters is not theirs. They are fettered by poetic traditions.”

“If he believes in the old order of things, it is a destructive force, and he condemns it: if he believes in a new order of things, it is a reconstructive force, and he applauds it. But whatever he believes, he recognizes the force. “

“The glory of Scott was the last red tints of a setting sun, and the glory of Wordsworth the first mild radiance of a rising moon, when Byron came like a comet and paled their ineffectual fires. It was neither moonrise nor sunset when Swinburne came, but the full splendor of noontide, - the noontide of which the genius of Tennyson was the golden light, and the genius of Browning the concourse of circumambient clouds. Between the fleeting shadow of these clouds and the girdling spaces of sunshine he stepped forth, - a slight figure in the garments of the Greek priesthood, - youthful but for the grave, far-off look in his eyes, and passionate but for the cold severity of his mien. Young priest of an old religion, he rekindled the fire upon its antique altar, and restored the worship of its imperious gods.”

“[Blank verse] is an instrument upon which he was the first to play, and whose volume of sound no hand save his could evoke and control. One needs to be a poet in order to comprehend the difficulties it overcomes, and the triumphs it achieves, - the art, in short, of which it is so magnificent an example. But one need not be a poet in order to feel its solemnity, its grandeur, its greatness, and the weight of the stern, dark thought with which it is charged.”

“The combinations of sound which run so strangely through Swinburne’s poetry, and which cannot but end, one would thing, in the harshest discords, become, in his hands, rivers of sonorous music, which rush and roar along their several ways until they reach the sea, and are swallowed up in its long, tumultuous, endless harmony.”

“One of his defects, perhaps his prime defect, is the brilliancy and force of his vocabulary. No poet ever excelled him in the profusion with which he throws off rich and picturesque and spirited words: he is a perfect master of epithets. His pages are luminous mists of language, the exact meaning of which, and their bearing upon the matter in hand, it is generally difficult to discover, they are so bravely put forth, and with such sonorous pomps of sound.”

(Sorry, Swinburne, you’re just too brilliant.)

Author Inserts

2009-05-01T20:14:00.002-04:00

So, according to certain schools of literary theory, you're supposed to either ignore the author completely, or stand at a remove from them. High fives, if they're really great authors, are generally the limit of appreciation one would express for the author. Otherwise, it's all about the work and (recently) its cultural significance.

However, I love author inserts, and I wish more books had them. It's how I fall in love with the author. It's a platonic love, one that's like, "I wish I could meet you. You're fantastic. I enjoyed your book, and even though some crabby people write books, I think the reason why this one is good is your awesomeness."

In books, these come in two forms. First, on the dust jacket will be a brief biographical blurb which was probably written by an editor. "Jesus R. Winchesterson enjoys long walks on the beach, pickles, and duck feathers. He wrote Moulin Rouge: The Space Opera and Reversing Entropy Through Spandex. Jesus lives in Muster, Nebraska with his dog Wuster Jackson and 3.5 potted plants." Then there's a more personal acknowledgements page in the front, where they thank everyone, like the graduate student that gave them that one idea, the coffee shop they always wrote in, their editor, the brats-that-wouldn't-shut-up-but-I-love-them-anyway, and the spouse who magically makes it all possible. I don't need any more than that. It's enough.

But they don't do the whole thing with older authors. Partly it is because they never really wrote a formal acknowledgements page, it being an invention of modern publishing. They just said in the work, "Virgil, Ovid, Omer, Boece, and Stace / Were really great writers who inspired me / It's the truth and I'll write more now kthxbai" (somewhere in Troilus and Criseyde, paraphrased). Then there are little things like sometimes not knowing the full biography, or not knowing how sure they can be about the biography. But those are little things. Certainly in many cases one can put something on the back sleeve of a dust jacket, or the back page of a book.

"Chaucer was born in the early 1340s. After a stint as a household servant in a duchess's household, including wartime service, he served as the king's servant. On ambassadorial duties, he has been to Italy, France, Spain, and the Low Country. He has also served in the port of London. Currently he is serving as Clerk to the King's Estate, and receives a jug of wine a day from the king for miscellaneous services rendered. During this career, he has found time to write translations, dream visions, and most recently the romance Troilus and Criseyde. He lives in an apartment in London with his wife Philippa and two children."

A few random thoughts while working on a paper

2009-05-01T12:28:00.003-04:00

1. The medieval writers really knew how to ask how to get out of jail. Typically, after writing a few hundred or thousand lines, or even a whole book like Sir Thomas Malory did, they will say, "Oh, and pray for me who's in jail." Sometimes the entire story is about being in jail, as with Boethius's Consolatio Philosophiae. And sometimes the story incorporates some fugitive tinge, as the hunter who kills the deer hunkers down and hopes the king's men don't find him poaching. I don't know what to make of it.

2. Writing about video games is not nearly as fun as playing them. It's not bad, mind you... and I have lots of things to say, but it's like speaking something I love in a different language, there's something incongruous to it. This is one reason why I'm a medievalist, because I find I can talk about old poems without getting bogged down in sentences like, "Thus, a complex mathematical system simulates a dynamic environment through these functional systems."

3. The irony about complaing about a forgetful professor in a student evaluation is that the odds are s/he will forget the student evalutation forms.

4. I'd better stop procrastinating and get back to work.

A Summer Reading List?

2009-04-29T18:07:00.003-04:00

It turns out, besides Latin this summer and possible jobs, I will have a bit more free time this summer. Rather than doing anything different from what I normally do, I will read, somewhat for fun, and somewhat for school. It's good when I can dovetail the two together. This is just a tentative list, so I don't forget.

Fiction
Selections from Chaucer I have not read (a few Canterbury Tales, a few short poems)
Selections from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
William Langland, Piers Plowman. (Or an equivalent-length medieval poem)
Chaim Potok, The Chosen
Algernon Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse or Poems and Ballads I
Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed
Patricia McKillip (fantasy author who spins a good story, quite possibly the best novel writer on this list)
Charles Stross (sci-fi author, writes a lot about games/Lovecraft mythos/British spy stories, among other things)
Vernor Vinge (sci-fi author, writes a lot of stories in a world where everything is mediated by technology)

Nonfiction
Glimp and Warren, The Arts of Calculation: Quantifying Thought in Early Modern Europe
Passmore and Carter, The English Loathly Lady Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs
Karma Lochrie, Heterosyncrasies
Carolyn Dinshaw, Getting Medieval
John Bugge, Virginitas: An Essay in the History of a Medieval Ideal
William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity
Something by Eve Sedgwick
Something by Stephen Greenblatt

And that should be quite enough, considering the number of times I'll read something randomly.

Funny conversations on Omegle.

2009-04-04T08:44:00.003-04:00

Omegle is a random chat service. One of three things happens:
1. a/s/l, or some variation thereof.
2. Randomness.
3. Random trolling.

Here are a couple of the more amusing exchanges I've had:

Stranger: I wanna rock'n roll all night, and party everiday \o/

You: Put your hand inside the puppet head
(They disconnected)

You: Hello...copter!

Stranger: roflcopter

You: roflroflroflrofl... enemy combatants cited!

Stranger: fire the lols

You: LOOOOOOOL BLMAO!

You: Target has been lmaonated.

Stranger: ftw

You: Victoire!

Things I Want to Be the Next Time I Grow Up

2009-04-01T19:52:00.002-04:00

I'm happy with where I'm at, and if I can find a job, I'll be happy with where I'll be. I'll even be happy with my back-up plans if I can't find a job as a professor. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean I
don't dream sometimes. I started out college wanting to be several things. Some I couldn't realistically do even within college, so those were easier to exclude. Others were harder to let go of, and some I might still become, assuming we live as long as our grandparents (the verdict's still out on whether we die young from terrible life decisions or figure out how to extend life indefinitely). But if I had a hundred or two hundred lifetimes, and knew enough not to choose the same thing each time, here are some of the things I'd choose.

First, for the grand tour of the academy:
Mathematics, with maybe one lifetime each for pure mathematics and applied mathematics.
Physics.
Biology.
Chemistry, to round out the sciences.
Classicist.
Philosopher.
Historian.

Then I'd start to drift from the academy, though I might still be associated with it:
Archaeologist.
Cultural Anthropologist.
Linguist.
Economist.

Then I'd start thinking in terms of design:
Architect.
Graphics designer.
Game designer.
Web designer.
Software architect.
Computer designer.
Fashion designer.
Engineer (perhaps two or three lives for different focuses).
Electrician.
Carpenter.
Sculptor.
Calligrapher.
Chef.

Then I would fulfill some public jobs:
Firefighter.
Park ranger.
Police officer.
Public defender/judge.
Senator.
Diplomat.
UN Translator.
Teacher.

Then I would go into business for a lifetime or two, just to see:
International Representative
Logistical Manager

Then I could perform:
Actor.
Puppeteer.
Musician.
Dancer.

Then I could drive things:
Truck driver.
Airline pilot.
Military pilot.
Astronaut.

Then I could heal people:
Pediatrician.
Another kind of doctor.
Physical trainer.
Speech pathologist.
Pharmacist.
Spirit healer.

And then the ideas start varying rapidly:
Rabbi.
Environmental advocate.
Shaker.
Hermit.
Martial artist.
Riddler.

The Clerk's Tale

2009-03-27T11:24:00.002-04:00

Lord Walter likes being single and hunting.
People plead to lord that he marry a worthy woman and have kids before he dies.
There's a poor woman, Griselda, he's seen when he's gone hunting.
He asks her father for her hand, and then asks her to submit to him. She does.
They marry.
She has a daughter.

Lord Walter wants to test Griselda's faithfulness.
He tells her the other nobles don't like her.
She submits.
His sergeant takes her daughter away, presumably to be killed.
Griselda prays she get a burial so her body doesn't get ripped to shreds by wild animals.
Sergeant feigns not hearing.
Daughter secretly sent to Lord Walter's sister.

Griselda has a son.
Lord Walter wants to test her.
He tells her that the nobles aren't happy about her having a lowly heir.
She submits.
His sergeant takes her son away, presumably to be killed.
Griselda prays he get a burial so his body doesn't get ripped to shreds by wild animals.
Sergeant feigns not hearing.
Son secretly sent to Lord Walter's sister.
People are pissed.

Lord Walter wants to test Griselda some more.
He says the people want him to marry again, and the Pope orders it.
She submits, save that she at least get to wear her smock when she's sent home.
She pledges her future chastity.
She walks home in smock.
People cry.
Father says, "I told you so."

Lord Walter orders his daughter and son to be brought back from sister's place.
He makes plans to marry the twelve year old daughter.
She arrives.
Festivities are planned.
Lord Walter goes to Griselda's house.
He asks her if she would be so kind to prepare the wedding chamber, since she knows so well how he likes it.
She says she would be happy to.

People are happy because new wife will be more beautiful than old one. (Fickle people.)

Lord Walter brings son, daughter, and Griselda into a room together.
Griselda wishes Lord Walter all the happiness in the world.
He says the test is over.
He points out her son.
He points out her daughter.
She ~~hits him~~ rejoices.
Everyone's happy.
Daughter isn't scarred by the experience.
The people forgive everything.

Chaucer can be very weird.

Do I Get Extra Points for Doing It Thrice?

2009-03-10T15:41:00.002-04:00

I did my taxes today.

It was quite a numerical adventure. First I filled out the necessary information: player's name, character's name, identification number, place of residence, ship identification number, all that. Then I put in my basic stats, as they read on the W-2s. The numbers put me firmly in half-elf space swashbuckler class.

After this, I was asked to do some permutations with the numbers. Multiplying the constitution (line 16) by .4 gave me a tentative HP, which would be my HP if the number of deductions was less than my AC, which is determined by factoring in the average of Strength and Dexterity and subtracting by ten.

Then comes determining hit ratio, number of magic spells, skills (such as piloting the Millennium Falcon and Serenity with only one hand at the same time), and the amount of starting gold. For the last one, the calculation is relatively simple - add lines 15 (intelligence), 17 (charisma), put them in a second order differential equation, perform a Laplace transformation, solve for initial values equal to zero, and then realize that what you wrote in line 15 is incorrect, thus forcing you to do the whole process over again.

I think I have a pretty good character.

Substance!

2009-03-01T18:15:00.004-05:00

That is, if substance can consist of shiny pictures.

I filled up my camera memory for the first time today, and emptied it into my computer. What was the occasion of filling up the memory? Snow! Yes, contrary to my sarcastic comments to various people about the chances of snow here, it did snow. After raining all morning, it fell, and fell, and fell... for five or six hours in all during the day. It even fell during a brief thunderstorm (thundersnow?). At first it wasn't sticking, but then it collected on the roof, and then on large parts of the ground, sometimes over an inch thick! Going to the library today was already ruined, and I'd done what work I could from home, and so I decided to hitch up and take a walk around the complex, snapping pictures. Those pictures are linked to below.

I also uploaded other pictures I took that I like. There are a few of Leslie (including one where I inadvertently chop her forehead off - except for that, it's a nice picture), one of a reverse-icicle in the ice tray, a few from Christmas, and a lot featuring Legos. I downloaded Picasa to get them online.

Other than that, if you're curious about the Rushdie course, he gave a lecture last Sunday that gave his broad thoughts on film adaptions of novels. If you saw in the media reports of him rejecting Slumdog Millionaire, it was from this lecture taken out of context. I couldn't be there, but I have read this handy report in the Guardian which I'm assured follows the lecture decently well: Rushdie . It's a bit long. He says hasty words about, amongst other things, Tolkien (he prefers Jackson's adaption), but it's still interesting.

Other than that, does anyone know anything about King Thoas?

Albums:

Christmas

Misc

Legos

Snow

Eating Noises

2009-02-26T22:24:00.004-05:00

Nom nom
Munch munch
Crunch crunch
Yomp yom
Chomp chomp
Rom crom
Aump aump
Hahm hahm
Mmmyaom
Slllllurrrp
Schlomp schlomp
SLCHELEVHCEHE

Help me think of more!

The Art of Courtly Love, by Andreas Capellanus

2009-02-24T23:13:00.003-05:00

I mentioned earlier that I'd bought the book. It's been coming up recently in Chaucer class, so I decided to read it in full.

It's one of those landmark works that anyone writing on love for three hundred years were influenced by it in some way. Nearly every romance that comes after can be read in its general terms. It's a 12th century text, written in Latin for a French court audience that was in the midst of a culture of love. Capellanus describes different features of love at length, nearly always from the perspective of the male lover. Thus far it's interesting.

This text has been brought up in every medieval literature class I have ever taken. Nearly all of them gave out a handout of the same page from the book, one summarizing the laws that Capellanus treats at length. I'll post them here, to give some idea of what "courtly love" could mean.

1. Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.
2. He who is not jealous can not love.
3. No one can be bound by a double love.
4. It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.
5. That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish.
6. Boys do not love until they have reached the age of maturity.
7. When a lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor.
8. No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons.
9. No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love.
10. Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice.
11. It is not proper to love any woman whom one would be ashamed to seek to marry.
12. A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved.
13. When made public love rarely endures.
14. The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
15. Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
16. When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved, his heart palpitates.
17. A new love puts to flight an old one.
18. Good character alone makes any man worthy of love.
19. If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.
20. A man in love is always apprehensive.
21. Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
22. Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved.
23. He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sleeps very little.
24. Every act of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved.
25. A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved.
26. Love can deny nothing to love.
27. A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.
28. A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved.
29. A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love.
30. A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved.
31. Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women.

You can see why it got used in so many love-plots and stories. The rules privilege jealousy, honor secrecy, demand sole adherence, encourage flights of passion (excepting 29), and imply from the start extra-marital affairs. They're different rules for a time where marriage was done for concerns that had nothing to do with love, and love could be sentimentalized without it seeming soft or effeminate.

A Small Detail I Hadn't Noticed Before

2009-02-13T23:26:00.003-05:00

I was looking for something in Le Morte Darthur, one of my favorite quotes. Arthur's old sword (the Sword in the Stone) has broken, and he received a new one, with Merlin's guidance, from the Lady of the Lake. Afterward, Merlin gives some sage advice:

"Than seyde Merlion, "Whethir lyke ye bettir the swerde othir the scawberde?" "I lyke bettir the swerde," seyde Arthure. "Ye ar the more unwyse, for the scawberde ys worth ten of the swerde; for whyles ye have the scawberde uppon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded. Therefore kepe well the scawberde allweyes with you."

I always thought it was funny because, whenever anyone thinks of Arthur, they think most often of his sword, Excalibur, and not the sheath that comes with it. The sheath is an accessory at most, and since we all too often imagine Arthur in battle, with the sword in his hands, the sheath disappears. To be fair, the sheath disappears early on in Arthur's reign because Morgan, angry that Arthur killed her paramour Sir Accolon (who was trying to trick Arthur on Morgan's behalf), tosses the sheath in the pond. I had forgotten how exactly it happened though. It went like so:

And than she alyght of hir horse and thought for to stele away Excaliber, his swerde. And she wente streyte unto his chambir - and no man durste disobey hir commaundement - and there she found Arthur aslepe on his bedde, and Excalyber in his ryght honde, naked.

1. Arthur didn't heed Merlin's advice - he sleeps with the sword, and not the scabbard.
2. Why is he sleeping with a naked Excalibur? Isn't that dangerous? What if he rolls over the wrong way? This sword slices through steel like butter. He'd better be careful.
2a. It's even worse if you read it as Arthur being naked.
2b. In fact, the entire scene begs for minds in the gutter. I'll let you fill in the blanks.
3. And, at least at first, Morgan commits the same mistake we all do. She only thinks of taking away Excalibur at first, and does far more harm by taking away the scabbard, the second option.
To end the story, Morgan takes the scabbard, Arthur awakens and chases her, she throws the scabbard into the lake and turns into a pile of boulders, Arthur looks cursorily around for the scabbard, and then he leaves. The scabbard hardly gets mentioned for the remaining 6/7ths of the book.

It's too easy to think of Arthur in supernatural terms as this messianic figure who led wisely, virtuously, and will come again. He is that, much of the time. But sometimes, Arthur's no better than any other knight.*

*In the medieval period, whether Arthur was a dolt or a powerful king depended on whether the story's origin was French/Continental or English. The French made Arthur into a weak king and featured strong knights like Lancelot. The English made Arthur into a strong king and emphasized their own local heroes, like Sir Kay and Gawain. As time went on, the two versions merged. Sir Thomas Malory dabbles on both sides of the channel.

It was freezing three days ago...

2009-02-08T19:32:00.002-05:00

And now it's felt good outside all day. I even studied out there for a while. In the grass. Without huddling up for warmth.

Then of course I had to go inside and type up several pages of paper. But I feel so much better for having the sunlight. I'm like Birdman.

Paperback Igloo

2009-02-07T17:51:00.003-05:00

Last semester, I had given up my search for a good used bookstore. The best I could find was Eagle Eye, which was decent, but didn't have enough selections or a very open trade-in policy. It was fun to go to sometimes, but not so compelling that I walked out with an armful of books.

Last week, I heard news of renewed hope from a gaming friend, Yunus. It was The Book Nook, nestled closely next to a Papa Johns pizza surrounded by an intersection and apartment complexes, an island in orange construction tape. I mentioned it to Leslie, but we didn't make it before she left.

Today, needing to get out for a while, I ran a few errands, stopped at a few stores, and then went there. I was afraid, even though Yunus would know what he was talking about. Initially I walked in and looked around. The inside front of the store looked more like a comic book shop that happened to sell old VHSes, with a few books in the back. I walked through the old movies, a little dumbfounded and disappointed, even though the titles themselves were pretty hard to find. Then I rounded the corner and looked at the DVDs they had. I picked through them a bit. Then I rounded the corner of that wall.

There were the books. Paperback and hardback bundles of joy, all crammed tightly in very basic wooden bookshelves, organized by genre and alphabetically, as high as I could reach, across several rows in a space that was much larger than it initially appeared. I may've danced. They had lots of science fiction, including two copies of an unofficial guide to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings written in 1969, several copies of books I'd been keeping an eye out for, books with interesting covers, old editions of books, and many, many more books I had never heard of.

I'd resolved myself against buying any fiction, since I'd been planning out my reading. Like McKay's, though, I couldn't resist getting a couple of morsels. They had a really good translation of Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, as well as one for Andreas Capellanus's The Art of Courtly Love, both very important medieval works. Then I got a book of poetry.

And finally, a poorly conceived attempt at a found poem, from a quote in this article. Found poetry is interesting because when it's good, it's good by a combination of sheer accident and artful arrangement. Mostly, it's terrible and should scarce be called poetry. Nonetheless, it's a game to see if anything can come out of it at all. I just did this because I wanted to see if I could make anything out of a random article.

It's a pretty amazing
experience
to witness.

People who don't live here
could never understand.
We live in an open country
where trees can burn up quickly,
and so people have to make
very quick decisions.

Fire is part of our lives,
part of what we do.

But it is still
extremely
frightful.

For some found poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, look here. It's amusing, anyway.

Thoughts on Superbowl Commercials

2009-02-01T19:46:00.006-05:00

Campfield just now got me into watching the Superbowl commercials. I have a few choice reflections:

No one ever sends me flowers, even if they are in a box. That's okay though, because I prefer edible things to be in boxes. Preferably chocolate. This month, February 15th's the day.

Also, the advertisers make themselves look good by comparing their bouquet of flowers to flowers in a box. There's so many places where you can get a bouquet of flowers (starting with Wal-mart) that it's understandable why they made the move. Sneaky advertisers.

I would be utterly freaked out to be in a crowd that large surrounding a football people. Just... people everywhere. All the sweat. The jostling bodies. No way out. Thank you, CG, for giving me daymares.
How old is Bruce Springsteen? (Wikipedia says 59.)
Hah. Guys doing ballet. What a joke (the ballet, that is - it's not even good). I guess I'm supposed to be glad they can just jam now thanks to the fruit drink.
Three football-themed commercials in a row. I guess that's what the viewers have in common. Though admittedly the Heroes commercial was pretty cool.
Bruce Springsteen used his guitar like a hula hoop around his shoulder and side.
The Georgia Lottery commercial made people look too much like jello, moving around. I also noticed that with a couple of other commercials, like the ballet one. Too much CG?
How many commercials feature people with super powers? Really!
Transformers!
I recognize the nearly naked guy in the one commercial! He's Vork from The Guild! That doesn't make his near-nakedness better.
I don't want to try Conan.
I can trade in my gold for cash?! Why is it that only black people and the old white guy have gold?
You're not allowed to use the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz to sell your products!
I don't "feel all right" with this commercial.
You'd think we'd have gotten over MacGuyver by now. Glad to know some things never die.
Ooooh, The Office. Okay.
So, wait. Who's playing in this Superbowl? I just know that it's yellow/green and red.

Oooh. Touchdown. We'll show it at every conceivable angle and repeat the issue of "both feet down" ten times.

OMG STAR TREK YES... I saw this online during the few seconds of the game, but it was shown during the game. The one choice I'm not sure about is McCoy.
I forgot all about Puppybowl...
Why are these bullets flowers?
Talking babies also scare me.

Month!

2009-01-28T17:14:00.002-05:00

More than a month, actually. What have I been doing?

Well, as far as writing goes, I did write an article for every letter of the alphabet. Some topical, most autobiographical, more as an exercise than anything else. I don't think, right now, I'd like to post all of them here, but I'll post a few; they should appear below shortly after this post.

I spent time at home, spent time at Leslie's home, spent New Year's Eve with friends, and then came back and enjoyed a little quiet. Finally, school started again. This semester I'm taking the following:

1. Chaucer. He's a big, important figure in English, I'd say. Even in the century after he wrote (he died in 1400) he was proclaimed to be the best English writer ever. So the class is setting out to read all of Chaucer's major works in chronological order, a biography on him, and lots of secondary sourcework. There are 5 students in the class, including one that joined us for the first time today. It's a cozy group. The professor knows what he's talking about, and isn't averse to occasionally going off on tangential subjects. The discussion is refreshing, though like any class we're not always right, and don't always have an immediate answer to the professor's questions.

2. Simulation/simulacra. Simulacra are what Plato calls evil copies. Copies are already derivative and degraded from an original ideal. Simulacra are entities that no longer resemble the original idea, that are too far removed from the original to be identified with something. He used it to speak against things like, for instance, drama, which is far removed from the real. So far we've only read one thinker in the class (Deleuze), but his big schtick is overturning Plato's order, that what distinguishes copies is not their similarity to an ideal, but their difference from it. One resulting claim is that simulation can produce its own sense and be as real as anything else. We go on talking along those lines throughout the course, studying technology, the military, game theory, and other things; what I look forward to most is when we talk about artifical intelligence. The people are good, but here I feel most underwater.

3. Histories of Sexuality. It doesn't get more specific than the title. We're going from African diaspora fiction to medieval fiction, studying representations of history and sexuality in different works. Sexuality here doesn't just imply sexual acts, but understandings of sex, gender, and sexual orientation. With certain people, I tend to trail off by the time I mention this one. There are more people in this class, and the professor sometimes likes taking long asides, but he has a challenging intensity that makes us talk more. It's good.

So, overall, I'm pleased. I have one more class that starts in February with a famous novelist whose books I haven't read. Since I'd rather remain anonymous, let's just say his name is Sir Fish Speeddeath.

C is for Commodore

2009-01-14T15:38:00.002-05:00

I can't remember the exact year. It was Christmas of 1988 maybe; I think I was three. Maybe four. To my appearance now, it has been a fixture in my life for nearly as long as I can remember. Maybe even my association with Christmas comes with a lost memory of a box opening, because boxes normally open then. Let's say, then, I was young.

What matters anyway is not how it came, but that it was there. The Commodore 128 personal computer. You can see screenshots of the start-up screen online, I'm sure: the 128 screen was monochromatic green, while the 64 screen was rendered in pleasing blues. The command prompt was ready, and the information at the top detailed the capacities of the system. A clue: the number of the system detailed how much RAM it had. In kilobytes. It was a scant, scant measure indeed.

So, there was a computer. That's nothing remarkable, maybe, except that my technological infusion began young and has continued until today, when I spend a decent portion of every day on one. Yes, it was a gateway. But what would it have been a gateway to for a four year old?

Games. Electronic games. I'd seen the tabletop versions of Pacman and Donkey Kong at Pizza Hut, but they were always busy with enthusiastic people and I could never get to play. I saw the whirring lights, the figures running up and down to the beck of a controller while all around the music was accentuated by beeping sounds.

And did we get games! Some were from Q-Link (a service I knew nothing about), some from the bargain bin at the store, some came through a subscription service called "Loadstar," and many were from Dad's friend Dave, who was bearded, bespectacled, and friendly. In the early days, I didn't get to play very much, because I didn't know how to load the games, and my loading them depended on the graciousness of my older sisters, about 7 and 9 years old. Finally one of them wisened up and one day taught me how to type in the command. I still remember it now. LOAD"*",8,1. "*" would bring up the default mounted image on the floppy disk (which, back then, was actually floppy). Many times you could type in a particular name to load a particular game on the disk. Even after I learned how to do this, I never played more than an hour a day, since there was preschool, playing outside, and so many other things to do. Plus, other people wanted to play. Nonetheless, multiply the time I spent per day on it over seven or so years, and it's clear I spent a lot of time playing.

There was a huge assortment of games, playable on the joystick or the keyboard (there was a mouse, but no interface to use the mouse with). There were arcade ports as varied as Donkey Kong, Space Harrier, Gyruss, Pole Position, Burger Time, Bubble Bobble, Paperboy - platformers, shooters, racing games, and anything in between. Then there were the text games like Zork, The Wishbringer, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. When I learned how to read, these Infocom adventures provided a sort of futile amusement; they were difficult for adults, and for me provided some early advanced reading and wandering. Even when I was older, I still died frequently and quickly in them. There were games that (to my appearance) were originally intended for computers, like Winter Games, Boulder Dash, Monopoly, and Impossible Mission, all of which provided instant amusement. Winter Games especially was funny; when I got the person ski-jumping to land on their head, there was this weird sound that I have always since associated with either cursing or brain injury. There were the games that frightened the crap out of me, like Beyond the Forbidden Forest where the character would be walking along a dead forest and suddenly... it was different every time! A monster would come from the ground and eat you, some flying creatures would eat you... and all I had was a bow I couldn't use right. Those games were very short.

I played my first RPG (role-playing game), Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus, that way. The character stats were randomly generated, though I think one could pick the class and race. In battle, the status of characters' bodies was shown, including whether they had lost any limbs. When I didn't die quickly, my party would have its share of one-armed fighters and one-legged magicians. It was advanced for its time, but not the greatest; I've played and loved many RPGs since, but that trend probably didn't start here.

Then there was the edutainment, either a Fisher-Price game where I had to drive a bus around and pick up different people before time ran out or a Sesame Street game. I forget whether there was anything actually educational in either of them; rather, they held themselves more faithfully to their status as a game for kids.

And finally there were the programs that came along with it. I used a primitive text editor for making and printing my own newspaper layouts (with outrageous stories), I used a hurricane mapper to graph out the most outrageous and fantastic hurricane trajectories and strengths (one being blasted out of Mexico by a thermonuclear device). I played a trivia game and, through trial and error, learned a lot about environmentalism. There was a very primitive paint program where I would make a few futile scribbles and then wonder how people managed to render them.

There were so many games going on that I've only scratched the surface; there were hundreds. We weren't rich, but the games were inexpensive (because they were old) and, as I mentioned, my parents had friends. I'd play alone, I'd play with my sisters, I'd play with friends, and I'd watch other people play. Sometimes my sisters and I, playing pretend, would make a menu up and type it out on the screen. When I was scared to be alone in the den, the big exception was when the Commodore was on, the lights were bright, and I could hear something from the speakers. My first paper for school, on the wombat, was typed up in the word processor. It was a big deal typing it up at that point, without any of the standardization that would come in only a couple of years with the spreading popularity of advanced word processors into schools. (And yes, font choice was advanced compared to what mine was.) It wasn't the center of my life, but it was important.

The end of the Commodore era came rather suddenly. By the fifth grade, 1996, I had a Sega Genesis and played it a lot. I could make a list of the games from that era I'm still nostalgic about. I probably played it more than I did the Commodore, but the Commdore had over ten times the games and had some classics besides; I couldn't help going back frequently to pay homage. That's imposing a half-truth; I knew the Commodore was old, perhaps, and knew we hadn't gotten any new games for it recently, but there was no sense in me of it having been passed by or made obsolete, part of an irrevocable past. I didn't pay homage, but rather played and enjoyed as I always did these familiar companions that I would play cyclically.

Then one day that changed. I got home one December afternoon. Dad was home early, and of course Katie and Diana were home. I saw cow-print boxes with the words "Gateway" on them. In place of the Commodore was a new computer, with a larger monitor. The computer was larger too and stood up, rather than sitting flat under the monitor. There was a sleek, round mouse, a keyboard, but no joystick (we would soon get one). Dad was showing my sisters how to use the new computer. It had Myst, which Diana was tentatively playing (it's like at school, she said), and Monopoly like the old one my sisters and I played but with shinier graphics. Soon we would get the Internet and AOL. An era was beginning.

In contrast, the old computer, dear old Commodore, was put in its original box, shuffled off to the storage room between the den and the garage, to sit in darkness. The games were gone. They could no longer be played. A couple of instruction manuals kicked around for a while, reminders of the games, so recently friends, that had been lost. I would play those games again. One time, briefly, we hooked up the Commodore again for nostalgia's sake. For a few weeks I played the games. Then the disk drive closing mechanism broke. Now the games are available via emulation, but finding the games, getting the emulators to work, and mapping out the joystick to the keys isn't the same experience. An era was ending.

The change was necessary; the games I would play, the websites I would visit, the chat rooms I would chat in during the next few years became important too, and I can say that I wish there were more letters in the alphabet so I could talk about them all. But that doesn't make the past less important, even remembered through the skewing influence of nostalgia.

My Commodore introduced me to computers, to command prompts, to video games.

And I miss it.

Y is for You're Trying Too Hard

2009-01-12T10:18:00.001-05:00

... but I still like the Xenosaga series anyway for cramming itself as full of allusions (especially religious ones) as it can.

First, religious and philosophical allusions in Japanese RPGs and anime is nothing new. Neon Genesis Evangelion took it to a ridiculous level, starting with its title.

Here's a small, non-inclusive catalogue.

The titles of the three games: Der Wille zur Macht, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, and Also sprach Zarathustra. All of the titles from books by Nietzsche.

Earth: Lost Jerusalem (it's lost)

Orthodox Christianity resemblance in dress/setting: Ormus (including a Patriarch!)

Characters: Albedo, Rubedo, and Nigredo. All three are Jungian terms for human individuation.

Characters: (color) Testament.

Character: The android KOS-MOS. Kosmos. Universe, order, and harmony.

Character: chaos. Besides the obvious, is also called Yeshua.

Character: Abel. Yeah, that one.

Character: Nephilim. One of the more appropriate namings - she is rather ethereal.

Character: Ziggurat 8, nicknamed Ziggy. Nice way to tie in Mesopotamian architecture.

Character: Canaan, a Realian government agent.

E.S. Units: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin and Dinah. Joseph's sons.

Ships: Woglinde, Dammerung. From Wagner operas.

Key Item: The Zohar, a monolithic artifact from Earth. Also has inscribed on it "bereshith." Hint: the start of the book of Genesis.

Key Item: Proto Omega... "Omega" being a symbol because that's really cool. Other things with Omega include Ω Universitas, Ω ID, Ω Res Novae, Ω Metempsychosis,
and Ω Metempsychosis.

Key Item: Vessels of Anima.

Group: Salvator faction - after the saint?

Place: Proto Merkabah, a giant ship they have to destroy.

Place: Labyrinthos.

Species: Gnosis. Sort of like spirits, I guess.

Gnosis: Abel's Ark - basically a really really huge intergalactic interdimensional creature.

Computer: Zarathustra. It's also a major boss in one of the games.

And that's only the start. The games are really great, especially the third one, but the only game that I've seen have even more ridiculous allusions is Xenogears: the game that would later come to spawn this trilogy.

X is for X-Men

2009-01-11T19:06:00.003-05:00

I know a lot about the X-Men.

I've read a few comics. They weren't that easy to get a hold of, and once I had money, I wasn't that interested. There was too much going on in those storylines, and my comic attention was pretty much burnt out between my old Sonic comics and the manga I started buying.

However, I entered into X-Men every other way I could. When I got my Sega Genesis for Christmas one year, X-Men was one of the games that came with it. There was Gambit, who used a really cool staff and shot flaming cards at the enemy. I knew that he was Cajun, which was cool. ("Cajun" to me meant he talked funny, but not quite Southern-funny.) Then there was Wolverine, who was short and couldn't jump well but made up for it with adamantine claws. Then there was Nightcrawler, some random tail-panther blue guy who could teleport in a pink blur, though the teleportation was really difficult to control and used up tons of power. Finally, there was Cyclops. He was my favorite, because he could jump high, was blue, and shot lasers out of his eyes. They also had support characters (Rogue, Storm, etc.) as power ups, which would come in and attack Juggernaut and those difficult boss characters; they were really useful. I could never beat the game without cheating, but I loved it nonetheless.

Then there was the cartoon TV series that showed on Saturday mornings and sometimes on weekday afternoons. I didn't get to always see it, but I could follow the storylines pretty well. There were sometimes crossovers with Spiderman, which I liked just as much.

When I went to a flea market in 1994 or 1995, I saw a card dealer. He had a bunch of X-Men collectible cards. I bought them and got to know the histories of Magneto, Professor X, and others.

And then, in fourth grade, I ran across some young adult X-Men novels and devoured them. They were pretty decent at the time, even though in the cover artwork Cyclops's flaccid rear end made it look like he had diarrhea.

From this early spattering of influences, they grew on me. I thought I knew all about them. They were a hero ensemble, not singular like Superman, Batman, or Spiderman (and I liked them all). There's just something about mutants with superpowers that is... cool. Their powers were awe-inspiring, ranging between telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, pyrotechnics, super strength, controlling the weather, being able to absorb other people's powers, and shooting laser beams (out the eyes!). They're outcasts, sometimes socially dysfunctional, but they band together anyway, using a combination of science and their powers to help save the day from evil mutants. And even the evil mutants were sometimes not evil by choice, like Magneto, a survivor of the Jewish holocaust, had seen too many horrors to not be affected by them. It was deep and shiny at the same time. It might be one reason why I now like epic poetry so much.

In the ensuing years, I would see the movies (though not always when they first came out). I would be disappointed when they made Cyclops out to be more prickish rather than the confident leader that he was in my mind. I would read the Wikipedia articles on the X-Men in detail. Jean Grey would confirm herself as my favorite character, but so would Professor X and Magneto. I don't feign to know so much about it anymore, but I love it anyhow.

W is for Winter

2009-01-11T18:39:00.003-05:00

For a long time, during my childhood, I would look forward to winter. It wasn't my favorite season, as I tended to favor whatever season it happened to be. I lived, as I did for nearly all of my life, in Tennessee. The woods around my Mamaw and Papaw's house were largely made up of deciduous trees, bushes, poison ivy, and bugs. In the summer, they were thick with brush, thickets of thorn, ticks, and poison ivy. Quickly I learned how little I liked being scratched, bitten, and itchy.

In the winter, all that was gone. The malignant wildlife settled down into a cozy slumber. The animals I liked - rabbits, squirrels, and deer - were still around. Even though I would sometimes help my papaw hunt two out of three of them and liked the taste of them (especially deer), I considered them interesting and wouldn't have hurt any of them. I could see further in the woods without all of the greenery, each trunk a grey pillar to dance around, hide behind, and climb upon. The dead trees, laid down onto the ground, normally arched and twisted in interesting ways, so that they were challenging ballancing beams. The ground was littered with leaves that hadn't yet decomposed, still relatively crisp and fresh for kicking around. It was easier to find dead wood to use as sticks, which would quickly become swords to fight imaginary opponents off with. I used to pretend a lot, and the woods were the best place to do it. And on occasions when I got tired of my younger cousins, I knew enough to hide there indefinitely. It was my playground during winter as it couldn't be any other time of the year.

The biting cold was also refreshing. I could really feel the warmth of the sun on my cheeks when it was out, and it tickled pleasantly. It wasn't too cold normally, so that there was no problem with leaving my face free. For a while I wondered that my cheeks and ears didn't stay red permanently because I spent so much time outside. I could see my breath, moist puffs like a steam engine. I knew that it would be hot eventually; I liked hot weather too, but I was all the more determined to enjoy this novelty. And, it being Tennessee, there would be breaks, occasions where I could wear short sleeves and remember how it feels to not be cold at all outside.

I needn't mention snow, except to say that when good snows came, it was a special time filled with snowmen, snowball fights, and sledding interspersed with drying clothes and drinking hot chocolate.

And of course there are the holidays, especially Chrismas and New Year's Day. That meant time off from school, which meant more time to play. Peace and harmony for all entered into it too.

So, honeysuckle would come. The dazzling green of newly leafed trees would emerge and settle into more mature shades with time. The birds would return. Even now, winter isn't negative for me, because any death that comes with it implies a renewal. The child in me assents to that judgment.

Q is for Quizzes

2009-01-09T10:25:00.002-05:00

I like games. That was letter G. Then, I dealt with the games that were intended to be games, complete with colorful boxes, fanciful concepts, and fraught with imaginary money/cards/pieces/timers/props.

I consider quizzes, tests, and their ilk to be games as well. They ... amuse me.

In elementary school, the tests were an easy demonstration of my abilities. I would race others trying to finish the multiplication facts first. In spelling tests, where races were impossible, it was about accuracy. Science and social studies were both easy, being only facts. I had a little difficulty with reading tests, because they didn't always ask about facts, but for interpretation. Even there, I liked them though because they were challenging, and we got to read stuff.

In state standardized testing, I found a new love. I learned how to guess. Of course, in first and second grade the questions were absurdly easy ("What does the Earth look like?" to a kid that inhaled astronomy books like candy). But there were some that I might not know. I felt special because I knew how to narrow down the choices, and I knew enough to do so meaningfully.

Even as middle and high school came on and the tests became more written and less multiple choice, the mode was the easiest way I had of demonstrating I knew the material. I could speak, but unless it was premeditated I might not express myself clearly. On paper, I had the time and the focus to give a properly phrased proper answer. It was about demonstrating my abilities, which is another word for showing off.

Then there were the big standardized tests. I got a chance to take the ACT in the 7th grade, scored decently, and took it again in the 10th grade. I did pretty well, and decided not to take it again. It wasn't because I didn't love the test format; no, educated guessing there was applied to levels that I'd never used it before. It was because it cost money, and I wasn't the one paying for it. I could've asked, and my parents could've given easily, but I was shy about asking for it, because I'd already done well.

AP tests were great because they were subject-based, but more difficult than the ACT. For me, I wanted the challenge; if it wasn't there, I felt like I was wasting my time. The multiple choice was beautiful, and the essays, once I knew how to write them, just flowed. The topics were amazing... it was like I was being given 90 minutes to write on my heart's desire. If I recall correctly, an essay question for the AP English exam was on Emily Dickenson and Robert Frost, who at the time were two of my favorite poets. I did fail the AP Calculus exam, but if anything it just made me more willing to take Calculus in college. (To be fair, I had no Calculus teacher.)

Then college. Still loved tests. Math tests were the best, because it was just me, a pencil, and paper against the problem, where I would cut my wits against it. One professor, a British man who was only personable in class, would say things like, "Generally, if I can do the test in 15 minutes, it's a good 60 minute test for you." I felt pride when I did the test in 25 minutes. I was still a show-off.

Finally, the GREs came. These would be the last major test I would take. (The forthcoming Oral Exams, which I await with dread apprehension, don't count.) The tests were a dream for me. I went in one summer morning, about a month after my last exam. First there was the written part, where they can give you any topic to write on and any argument or two to analyze/criticize. Talk about fun, it was just like writing in my journal. Then I started the quantitative. The test gave immediate feedback about how well I was doing in the difficulty of questions, and the questions uniformly got harder and harder. Finally I was out of my depth but swimming anyhow, making best guesses after spending a certain amount of time on each question. Then the qualitative, which was more difficult and perhaps more fretful, but I still had some fun with it too.

And the subject test for English was icing on that delicious, delicious cake. Even if there were some questions I didn't have a clue about.

I guess what I'm trying to express with this... oh dear, it must appear like a catalogue of self-congratulatory victories... is that quizzes and tests are for me like trivia. By being able to demonstrate knowledge in a certain area, I feel rewarded - self-rewarded - because I can know I know something. And when I get something right I don't know, I learn the right answer and experience the thrill, like in trivia, of beating the system.

K is for Knights

2009-01-07T11:15:00.002-05:00

Kuh-Nig-Hets

You may think that, as a child, I looked up to knighthood as the flower of everything awesome, even making flowers look cooler in the process. Maybe I pretended to joust unknown enemies, save ladies, and unmask evil.

No. First off, saving ladies wasn't in my interests when I was little; they could save themselves if they needed it, and I was pretty gender neutral anyway about who I saved. (Gender neutral rescues: see Indiana Jones's dad, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Captain Picard, Jean Grey, etc.) Second, jousting is such an inefficient mode of settling affairs when you have guns, a bullwhip, lasers, and superpowers. (Generally two at a time.) Third, I already knew what the evil was. It was Nazis.

My pretend-scape consisted of a conglomeration of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Star Trek, X-men, and every other bit of science fiction I could get my hands on. It was awesome. Knights, in contrast, didn't hold up well. Swords were cool, armor was cool, reading about them was cool, but it wasn't what I saw myself as. Arguably, I had some chivalry going on, but more properly speaking it was a combination of good superhero ethos and Boy Scouts (which has oblique ties to Arthurian themes). Knights, at best, resembled those people in First Knight, which Mom took me to the theater to see. (I still wonder about that choice.)

I started playing video game RPGs in middle school, which often featured lots of swords and medieval themes. I first ran into King Arthur and Shakespeare at that time, and both had knights. I began to like them, but it never was truly internalized. At most, my already nascent disposition to do good was kindled, and I grew a slight fondness for medieval fairs.

The flirtation lasted for a long time. All through high school, they were one of many interests. (I loved - and still love - way too many things for me to devote attention to all of them.) The shift increasingly toward knights was gradual, and not met by a decreasing attention to my pretend-scape. Romantic poetry pricked my thumb, and I was carried away by La Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Lady of Shallot. Other poetry followed. A math professor called me a Renaissance man, which to me is an upmost compliment and close to knights. Cyrano de Bergerac, though not a sir, may as well have been one. In Western Civilization I, we spent an entire half-semester on the medieval period, and though the topic of choice was historiography (what a semester!) I read plenty about knights. I read plenty of fantasy with knights in it, saw plenty of movies with them. Exposure creeped on and on, and it stuck with me. As late as my sophomore year of high school, it was still latent. I still planned to study the twentieth century, and I knew that meant (post-)modernism. I wanted to dance with Sylvia Plath late into the night. I could prick my finger with Neil Gaiman. Jack Kerouac wouldn't be beyond my abilities. And I could delve into science-fiction or fantasy on occasion. It was a plan.

Then as a requirement I took British Culture to 1660, an English course taught by the professor that would become my thesis advisor and one of my favorite professors. For me, it started as a fun requirement. We read Beowulf all the way through. I'd only read it in parts. I loved it. Then we read Middle English poems with knights and ladies, allegories, fairies, and so on. I loved it more. Then we read parts of Le Morte Darthur. It was a strange little book, obviously written by an amateur who nonetheless had such a love for his subject that I was caught up with its energy. I loved the archaicisms, the fights, the occasional tenuous continuity. The knights were good, but not perfect. They were priveleged, but they were human. And I truly loved them then, loved them for what they could be, and could live with what they were. We read I Henry IV after that, and enough otherwise to get me smitten with the Renaissance. But I am writing about knights.

After that, I couldn't get enough. I wrote on Le Morte Darthur for a Feminist Literary Theory course. I took a class on Women Writers in Early English Literature. I loved the knights where they came up (especially in Marie de France), and grew to love new things as well in medieval spirit visions, the querelle des femmes, and so on. And so on. And so on.

Today, I can't imagine myself without knights or ladies at least sometimes running around in my head, both errantly and critically. They are unfortunately gendered and flawed as an ideal and a historical reality, but I'm smitten anyhow with the entire deal: the armor, the sword, the shield, the lance, the quest, the castle, the joust, the ethos, and all the thematic potentials that arise. It's one reason why I'm a medievalist. But I couldn't have imagined it ten or even five years ago.

J is for Juice

2009-01-07T10:46:00.002-05:00

When video games are translated into English and ported over from Japan, oftentimes they'll hide the fact that the characters are drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes to get a lower rating from the ESRB. Since cigarettes are mainly just unmentionables in cutscenes, they can be removed entirely. But alcohol has some import to the story, and gets mentioned in such a way that it can't be erased so easily. What, then, do they change to?

My favorite is juice. Rich with sugar, it surely explains the slurred speech and reactions of the people under its influence. Guild member fence guy, there's no harm in losing a drinking match to Kyle when you're drinking juice! And that time earlier when Kyle had slurred speech and everything? He's just resting off a bad break-up, possibly aided by juice! I bet that exotic tropical fruit berry beverage feels quite refreshing in between acts of air piracy, Vyse! It's cool how they made this cafe look just like a bar, complete with an evil hallucinatory device hiding in the back room!

I can halfway understand why they censor beer and liquor. In RPG settings the heroes and heroines are mainly 15, 16, 17, or 18 years old. (The one aged over twenty is an old fogey.) They can't be drinking that young. A common joke for the younger ones is them walking into a bar and being offered milk or juice because they're too young to drink ... coffee. (Remember, the bar's a cafe, a restaurant, a soda fountain, a watering hole, anything but a bar.) Sometimes though they get the real stuff... that is, the real juice... and it tastes great.

So we tend to censor alcohol use. The Japanese, however, don't. And as a culture, they aren't that lax. Why then are we so tense and uptight about it? I'm not sure about alcohol use in Japan, but here we turn it into a taboo, which transforms into a fetish, which becomes a forbidden concoction and unofficial rite of passage. Teens look up to it. We turn toward it unceasingly. It's the adult drink, the drink of choice at parties, dinners, and Emory University meetings. That's fine. I just wonder whether we would have less alcohol problems (overdrinking, alcoholics, etc.) if we stopped trying to edit alcohol out of everything children will touch. They will see it, whether it's in their parents drinking, their friends drinking, drinking in movies, beer commercials, or whatever. Video games don't warrant any special sort of censorship in that regard.

I don't care whether we drink less, but I want us to drink better. As for myself, I'm not a heavy drinker. Loving sugar more than alcohol (and arguably spazzing out with it more) I wouldn't mind having a party running on juice. Maybe those video game characters have something going there. Buster Bluth would be proud of me. Let's go for it.

H is for Hands

2009-01-06T10:08:00.003-05:00

Cold hands = warm heart
Rough hands = lots of work
Smooth hands = affluence
Long fingernails = affluence in old China
Wrinkled hands = bath OR old age
Warm hands = cordiality
Wet hands = nervousness
Clammy hands = nervousness OR heart attack OR cold room
Greasy palms = keeps the economy moving
Fist and sickle = workers unite
Fist = rock
Raised fist = fourth down
Straight arm fist = freeze
Fist against table = damn OR call to order OR making a speech
Fig fist = screw you OR got your nose OR Goddess
Raise a hand = pick me OR hi OR high-five
Fist pound = yo, we did it!
Hands folded open = a book
With a strong hand and an outstretched arm = how Pentateuch God tells you off

Hands are a major focal point for gestures. They can move and articulate with fine enough motions to have an alphabet, a vocabulary, an entire language. They enable us to write, type, draw, touch, caress, slap, flick, punch, pick up, toss, throw, and otherwise manipulate or experience objects. They are indispensible, and I hardly know what I'd do without them.

I try to use them responsibly. I try not to hit others or flick people off. Part of living with any body part is learning how anger can animate as compulsively as my will. Hands are a key to verbal language, yes, but they also hide the language of a person's psyche behind it. They can be read, and people can see all the insecurities beneath. And I'm too much like Adam and Eve to want to appear naked before others.

V is for Vittles

2009-01-05T10:24:00.003-05:00

Rules for feeding James:

Negative:
1. Condiments are generally not welcome. This includes mustard, ketchup, mayo, and nearly all salad dressings.
1a. If you choose to subject me to condiments anyway, keep them light. Remember, condiments complement. (That's at both fast food chains and the restaurants who think that a salad should be drenched with dressing. No.)
1b. Barbecue sauce and many kinds of marinades are not included. Generally, if it complements a meat, it's okay.
2. Nothing pickled, including pickles. They are unclean.
3. I can't stomach cucumbers. Don't even try.
3a. To a lesser extent, raw tomatoes and olives are objectionable.
4. Cottage cheese is a no.
5. In fact, if the food has more than three substantial ingredients (fruit/vegetable/dairy), then the chances I will enjoy it drop precipitously.
5a. Example: my favorite lunch from when I was a little kid until now is the cheese sandwich. Cheese + bread. Grilling optional. Don't OD on the cheese.
6. Casseroles are, for the most part, unclean. The exception is a breakfast casserole.
7. No coconut. This isn't Gilligan's Island.
8. I can't comprehend Mexican food. On good days I can tolerate it. But I don't choose Mexican out of choice ever. Forgive me.
9. No gravy. If it's necessary (as in goulash), then I'll eat the minimum amount required.

Positive:
1. Bread and meat, done without ornamentation, are already awesome.
1a. Consequently, pizzas should have only meat or mushrooms. Other ingredients are acceptable, provided that negative rule 5 is followed.
2. If a seven year old likes it, chances are that I do. I was one picky little snot when I was seven.
3. If you fix it, and it isn't made of entirely unspeakable ingredients, I will try it.
3a. If it is made of unspeakable ingredients, I will politely decline. Forgive me if my face contorts.
4. Chocolate = yes. Dark chocolate = more yes.
5. Slightly burnt is fine by me. It adds flavor.
6. You needn't fear comparison to my cooking. I can cook meat and vegetables (and the meat, I must admit, is good even if the apartment gets a little smoky each time I make it). I don't make the fancy dishes because I don't have the time.
7. If we're doing fast food, the place had better have chicken tenders/nuggets. Unadorned crispy bits of processed chicken (real chicken? who knows?). Mmmmmmm.
8. I like most sauces, but if I eat my spaghetti plain, I'm enjoying the flavor of pasta unadorned, and not rejecting the sauce.
9. Simplicity is a dish best served to me.

There are more, but that's a start. I really am remorseful that my tongue is so picky. It's not me being intentionally difficult. I really can't bear the taste of the things I list. When I have a decent-sized space, I'd like to hold a dinner party for people... my first, since I've never had the space before. I'm most remorseful because the pickiness affects the company just as much as the food. So, in advance, I apologize.

I is for Isaac Asimov

2009-01-02T12:22:00.003-05:00

Isaac Asimov is one of my favorite authors. (He is also, incidentally, one of my favorite people.)

I remember in elementary school hearing that he had died. It was 1992. Garfield, earlier that year, had celebrated Isaac Asimov's birthday. It didn't mean much to me.

A few years later, I came across a short story collection of his that Mom kept around the house, "Nine Tomorrows." I read some of the stories, but remember little about them. What I do remember was reading a snippet of one of the longer short stories in PASS (a gifted class that took the place of Reading) in sixth grade. I was impressed.

The story is of a young boy in a society a billion years in the future. Education (and subsequent careers) are highly structured, and everyone learns by having a computer automatically feed people all the information they'd ever need directly. First, at a young age, they learn how to read. Then, at 18, the computer judges what career they'd be best for and, accordingly, they receive appropriate information. He learns to read and, on a whim, decides to obtain books on a field he's interested in (I think it's quantum mechanics). He thinks it'll give him an edge, but no one else understands. When he gets there on the 18th birthday, they can't take him in. It turns out he has a brain different from the others. One of only thousands in an entire empire, he becomes an innovator, one who invents. Perfectly normal snippet, and interesting for the time. But the story went on from there.

The boy (called that now out of convenience) learns for a few years, but learns enough to grow rather dissatisfied with the societal order. He decides to go to an intellectual Olympics, a place where prospective employers choose employees. While there, he sees his old friend struggling with a chemistry presentation. He loses. When they talk later, it turns out that the methods he was imprinted with have proven obsolete. He can't be imprinted again. He can't get a job. The hero decides to try and teach him, but soon authorities learn about this.

I won't ruin the end because I can't remember it, but it had many things I love about Asimov: science, discordian social orders, advanced technologies, human heroes, rather cerebral discussions, and a setting eerie in its familiarity. I was hooked, and in the proceeding years I would buy nearly all of his novels, several short story collections, a small bit of his nonfiction, and (most recently) a rare short story compendium with a female cyborg on the back cover.

"Rather cerebral" might have caught your eye as sounding rather boring. For me at least, Asimov manages to make his dialogues sound rather natural and plainspoken. Because the stories use speculative science fiction and often involve government agents, pilots, and scientists, it can also end up being technical, political, sociological, or academic. I'm cool with that. Then, one way to describe the arc of his stories is a repeating series: description, dialogue, action. Some stories err on the side of dialogue. For me, Asimov's style is one that's refreshingly unadorned.

As a science fiction writer, his ideas have always been fresh and ingenius. He made robots into human-like entities when the usual trend was to make them monsters. He's explored several different implications of time-travel, from its use as a universal monitoring device to their ability to change time (or, paradoxically, to enable time to be as it is). I could go on and on.

He's also an ingenius person. I'd recommend his autobiographical letters, "I, Asimov." For more, there's always "It's Been a Good Life." In them is a man with a sharp memory, witty intellect, several quirks, and a generalist interest in everything. He has a PhD in chemistry, but left a university position because (first) his interests were in teaching instead of the original research that was so encouraged and (second) because he was getting paid more to write. He's written and edited tons of nonfiction books, subjects ranging between limericks, the Bible, science, history, and miscellaneous trivia. Now, he's not a flawless man. It's obvious that he's proud and boisterous and sometimes makes poor decisions despite the veneer he puts on them. Nonetheless, he's a true renaissance man, and I admire him.

Perhaps I should admire a famous medievalist (and I do: Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, amongst others). Perhaps I should admire a prominent literary theorist instead (I like several). Asimov and I have roots. I liked Asimov when I wanted to be a scientist. He's been with me for a long while now. Now that I have chosen to study literature instead, I only like him more. His ideas inspire me. His stories are interesting, and occasionally (as in The Ugly Little Boy) fill my soul. He helped form my ethical compass, my appreciation of science, my love of computers, my environmental awareness, and my positivism. I owe all this to a man I first met through a Garfield comic.

G is for Games

2008-12-26T22:09:00.004-05:00

Who knows when it started? Hi Ho Cherry-O? A version of Monopoly on the Commodore 64? An old version of Life? Clue? Scrabble? Old Maid? Pool? Wherever the root, I caught a game bug.

The games I mean are two or more players. The material medium involves boards, cards, tiles, dice, and various instructions. The rules are generally variations trying to get a particular result by chance and playing against different actions to gain the maximal probability of an arbitrarily determined victory. All that is to say that games mix skills and luck. I can pick the rules apart in any number of different ways, display the beautiful logics of different games, and love them for it.

However, with games formalism depicts only a part of the whole. In the mechanics other players are implied; around game tables, they are actually there. They act as sociable ways to get to know people, as I get to know how the other person chooses and how those choices differ from my choices. It creates an implicit oath where adherence to the rules and to fair play encourage trust. When a fellow enthusiast for the same kind of games becomes apparent, it becomes a point of common interest. When the games require actual talking, as in trivia or party games, the game acts as a conversation prompter. Thus, the island of formal rules transforms into a metropolis of interactions.

I have been a restrained person for a long time. Sometimes I find silence more comfortable than talking. In games, I don't have to worry about making the other uncomfortable if I don't have to talk, and it becomes a zone of low-level communication anyhow. If it's a good game, it will soon lead to other conversations, more utterances. Some of my best friends in the past have come from games and sports. And I miss the opportunities to play with lots of different people that I had before. Perhaps I'll find them gradually.

A is for Android

2008-12-23T13:58:00.005-05:00

(Part of my inspiration is the introduction to a short story collection Isaac Asimov put together in 1990, Robot Dreams. I read it the other day and was inspired. If I unconsciously mimic the tone, it is in admiration.)

The android is an interesting thought experiment.

A robot is a being made of artificial parts, the most distinguishable being metal, though plastic and organic parts can be used. It is a machine made to resemble the human in shape, whether that is in the mere existence of arms, a head, and legs, or in the specific features like a spark of life in a human's eyes. It also has a computer or other device that can perform processes that only the human mind can perform, including an understanding of language and self-awareness. Since the golems in Hephaestus's workshop and before, we have conjured them up, and after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein they became separated from traditional folklore, finding a home in science fiction.

The term "robot" has been around since the early twentieth century; it first came to prominence when it was used in a Czech play about artificial human slaves, R.U.R., by Karel Čapek. The early pulp science fiction adapted the robot as a potential monster figure; effective presentations of such a drone are in The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Matrix. However, there were some authors that saw the potential that robots had, and adapted them accordingly.

Isaac Asimov is my favorite of these. He didn't think that we would be automatically so careless to create robots that would usurp humanity. Without erasing their dangers, he described three laws of robotics for his short stories and novels that would be hardwired into robots to prevent their rebellion and assuage social fears. The first law is that they will not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow human beings to come to harm. They must compulsively act to preserve human life. The second law is that they will obey any human order, so long as it doesn't disobey the first law. The third law is that the robot has the right to preserve its own life, so long as it doesn't interfere with the first two laws. These rules cannot be disobeyed.

There are many funny little implications to these different rules, and Asimov meticulously explores many of them: humans unable to keep from harming themselves become governed by the robots; a robot accidentally gains an unconscious and express in his dreams a desire to usurp the second law; scientists have to try to find a robot that took the phrase "get lost" literally. It goes on and on. The stories aren't perfect, of course, but they are good thought experiments.

Now, the android. The android is a robot, but in my mind, the reverse is not true. The robot is a distinct creature, and its similarities to humans are secondary to its capacities and uses. The android is made to better resemble the human, often imperceptibly, and they often mentally desire to be human.

We love flattering ourselves with the idea that a robot would like to be human. What does that mean? Philosophers have given their answers for ages. For androids, they often desire to feel emotions, to possess human intuition, to hold beliefs, and have other human qualities that we take for granted. Asimov made a couple of these "humaniform robots," among them Stephen Byerley, the Bicentennial Man, and R. Daneel Olivauw. Because they so closely resemble human beings, have a basic hardwired moral compass (particularly in the implications of the first law), and are unlikely to encounter the second law (not appearing as robots, it is unlikely that anyone will give them a forceful order), they appear exactly as an outstanding human being, and the line between humanity and the android often gets confused.

My favorite android is Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He doesn't have the appearance of a full human; his shiny albino exterior and yellow eyes distinguish him as different, and it's easy enough to pull away a cranial plate to display the hardware beneath. Yet he still wants to be human, and there are several layers to this endeavor. The first emerges in humor. He is talkative and inquisitive, asking a lot of questions that are inane to a six year old. He has difficulty detecting sarcasm, and will if allowed talk on and on about a subject, much to his audience's consternation. Idioms are difficult to catch, but when he learns them he exclaims, "Ah!" and explains the idiom. He has trouble catching bluffs in poker. He doesn't use contractions. His misunderstandings of human nuance creates a verbal slapstick that is fun and quirky.

Second, he can imitate (and even technically outperform) anything. He can be a master violinist, tapdancer, actor, scientist, logician, and painter, knowing every great mind and great movement in a vast array of subjects. But they're all just data. They lack the nervous energy, the spontaneity, the creativity, and the error that human masters have. He can create an ode to his cat Spot that is perfectly metrical but sounds like a robotic George Bernard Shaw. He tries to learn how to produce something more full of feeling.

Third, he has an immaculate ethical compass. Data has kept the substance of the three laws of robotics, but within them he demonstrates a great amount of free will. He steps in to help his fellow crewmates without fear, performs orders thoughtfully with considerable initiative, and respects other thinking machines and lifeforms. As a lover, though he feels no emotion, he shows considerate care and attention. As a father to an android he constructed, he takes care in teaching her and, when she dies, he feels the closest to grief that he can. As a friend, especially to Geordi, he listens intently and presents his concerns.

With all of these combined, there are several points in the series when he is a better human being than anyone else, with a combined humility, ability, and action that far surpass anyone else's. But he can't enjoy it. He can't feel it. He can't have the human parts that would make him better and worse than he is.

The android marks what humanity is and what humanity isn't. We can't set aside our feelings, not completely. We have flawed logics that, at best, operate under a mixture of intuitivity and rigorous training. We are not so good to our fellow beings as we would like but have trouble being ruthless at the same time. We have flimsy, weak bodies that can't withstand a change of atmosphere, temperature, light, or sound without some loss of efficiency. We must eat. We must sleep. We want to love and feel loved, and would often rather be loved for the wrong reason than not loved at all. Being a human is no easy thing. But that's precisely what the android wants. They see the value in our struggle, and perhaps in their benevolent manufacture they can do good more often, rather than succumbing to our flaws.

When I said that the android was an interesting thought experiment, that was part of it. There are more specific ways that the android can be thought of though. For example, in the episode "Measure of a Man," Data goes on trial because a scientist wants to dismantle him for an experiment. The issue is whether Data, as a robot, is a mere machine with no rights at all, or a thinking being who requires the protective rights that organic sentient creatures possess. What results is this dialogue between Captain Picard (Data's defense) and his confidante Guinan:

"Consider that in the history of many worlds there have always been disposable creatures. They do the dirty work. They do the work that no one else wants to do, because it's too difficult or too hazardous. And an army of Datas, all disposable? You don't have to think about their welfare; you don't think about how they feel. Whole generations of disposable people."
"You're talking about slavery."
"I think that's a little harsh."
"I don't think that's a little harsh, I think that's the truth. But that's a truth that we have obscured behind a... comfortable, easy euphemism. 'Property.' But that's not the issue at all, is it?"

Another discourse on slavery is evident in Blade Runner with the Replicants who appear and even seem to feel as humans do but nevertheless are confined to a four-year lifetime and compulsory labor off the Earth.

A similar issue is one where we create androids that realize that they are superior to us. Might they render us slaves instead? Lore, Data's brother, was of that mindset.

There are other issues that can become relevant through the android. Why, when we imagine robots taking on humaniform characteristics, do we automatically assume that the default human shape and voice should be male? Can't it be female? Something in between? We invest the android with a sex and gender, despite the appearance of its own neutrality, and it tends to be the one we treat as the default in the language - he, male, man. When female androids are made, they often get treated as special, gendered. Why are these dynamics the only ones we can think of?

Pick up a book with a robot or android in it and I guarantee there will be an issue that pertains directly to us. Picard, back to the trial after talking to Guinan, claims, "Commander Riker has vividly demonstrated that Commander Data is a machine; do we deny that? No, because it is not relevant – we too are machines, merely machines of a different type. Commander Riker has also demonstrated that Data was built by a man; do we deny that? No. Children are 'constructed' from the 'building blocks' of their parents' DNA. Are they property?
"... Your honor, the courtroom is a crucible; in it, we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a purer product: the truth, for all time. Now someday, [Commander Maddox] – or others like him – will succeed in replicating Commander Data. It is the decision that will be made today that will determine how we regard this creation of our genius. It will reach far beyond this courtroom and beyond this one android; it will forever define what kind of a people we are – what he is destined to be. It will forever shape the boundaries of personal liberties and freedoms within this Federation: expanding them for some, dramatically curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to sentence [Commander Data] – and all who come after him – to servitude and slavery? Your honor, Starfleet was established to seek out new life: well, there it sits. Waiting."

The android is the epitome of the good of humanity, and I only hope that we live long enough to make them, treat them right, and give them the best of our heart. If we're lucky, we will gain an invaluable friend in return.

The Things You Can't Pick...

2008-11-27T23:30:00.002-05:00

... do not include a nose. Though I'd rather not.

No. I refer to family.

I think I ended up with a fairly good one. I don't agree with most of the extended family on some things that matter to me (a lot of them being political issues), but we're all at least a little kind, funny, and sarcastic. Plus, we have history!

The good points of today (Thanksgiving) was seeing Katie and Diana (and the two J's too); I hadn't seen them in a long time, and it was good to play games with them. Then there was Mom, Dad, Grandma, and S, who I'd seen more recently, but were good to see again nonetheless. And all the rest. Playing games, eating together... I like that. Best point - beating each other with soft swords and axes, though it got a little old when Joe and Vann went into super competitive mode. We also got to play good games like kickball, which don't happen often due to a lack of people.

The bad point was when Taylor and Brad started purposely picking each other's cards in Apples to Apples. Then Fran would always pick the card that Angelica indicated was hers. It broke the game, which bummed me out enough except that Taylor and Brad kept denying they were doing it, because they found it funny.

I don't know why I was bothered by it so much. Games aren't that serious, and I typically don't mind too much if I lose. But there's a sense of fairness in playing them right, a sort of social code or contract everyone enters into, a frame to have fun around. The game is fun when anyone can enjoy some success, and any of the banter that goes around otherwise is incidental fun (a lesson Scott could learn). But once the possibility of success in play goes away, what's the point? Especially in a game like Apples to Apples, when picking the best noun/adjective match matters, what's the point when the choice is determined so crudely?

So I didn't pick them. For better and for worse. If the worst thing we have going around is lying in a game, it could be worse.

Meter

2008-11-22T10:11:00.004-05:00

I tried to teach Scott meter yesterday,
And he caught on pretty quickly, sometimes
Breaking the pattern for the sake of play
With the refinement of a little child's
Innocent pantomime. Play is the word,
The riled-up sort that comes after days
And days, effortless unstrained sprinting.

Can you say what line is above?
Could you answer what measure be this?
(Trochees aren't my skill, sadly,
By the reach of my silver tongue.)

From a Friend

2008-11-09T10:29:00.001-05:00

James's Dewey Decimal Section:

093 Incunabula

James's birthday: 10/8/1985 = 108+1985 = 2093

Class:
000 Computer Science, Information & General Works

Contains:
Encyclopedias, magazines, journals and books with quotations.

What it says about you:
You are very informative and up to date. You're working on living in the here and now, not the past. You go through a lot of changes. When you make a decision you can be very sure of yourself, maybe even stubborn, but your friends appreciate your honesty and resolve.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

James's Dewey Decimal Section:

072 Newspapers in British Isles; in England

James = 01359 = 013+59 = 72

Class:
000 Computer Science, Information & General Works

Contains:
Encyclopedias, magazines, journals and books with quotations.

What it says about you:
You are very informative and up to date. You're working on living in the here and now, not the past. You go through a lot of changes. When you make a decision you can be very sure of yourself, maybe even stubborn, but your friends appreciate your honesty and resolve.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

I can't wait until someone makes a Library of Congress value assignation.

Well, back to the Incunabula! Just like Merlin!

Retro Gaming: Mission Impossible

2008-11-07T23:30:00.002-05:00

Oh my. Ooooooh my.

First, some context. There was this game, Mission Impossible, for the Commodore 64. The C64 was an old computing system from the 1980s that got used for tons of games. It was the first computer I used, and my first game system.

The game's premise was that you were going through a series of rooms and elevator shafts in a mad scientist's layer, trying to search through desks, bookshelves, and so on for puzzle pieces. Completing the puzzle pieces would give the missile codes to prevent the mad scientist from launching a missile. In each room were robots to be evaded with different programmed behaviors, like electrifying a particular spot, or patroling back and forth. The layout of the hideout, and the behavior of the robots in the rooms, were randomized. And the trick is that you only have 6 hours... and you lose ten minutes whenever you die. Like any game from that time, it wasn't easy, and I never beat it.

It's a very pleasing game, even now. The haunting voice, "Another visitor. Stay a while. Stay forever!" is still cool. The character's steps sound like ice skating or something like that. The sprite's running and jumping actions are fluid. So on and so forth.

Anyway, I had forgotten all about it until today, when I went browsing for games. I found a Nintendo DS port of Mission Impossible for $10. It has a version with updated graphics and an original version. Needless to say, I bought it and played both. It's an improvement. There's a save feature. The bottom screen is used for the layout map, and they've enabled some simple touch-screen commands, though it's nothing revolutionary. It's worth the $10, though not much more than that. A 24 year old game has seldom looked better.

Here's a video if anyone's interested on seeing at least a little gameplay: http://www.archive.org/details/C64Gamev ... bleMission

The Average Amount of Time It Takes...

2008-10-31T00:06:00.003-04:00

... to compose an e-mail for:
Strangers - 1 minute
Colleagues - 3 minutes
Acquaintances - 5 minutes
Most Friends - 10 minutes
Close Friends - 25 minutes
Leslie - 45 minutes
Professors - 1 hour

Now, that may be a slight exaggeration, but it seems like whenever I'm e-mailing a professor, I'm asking for something, and I'm very particular about having a certain level of formality and not inadvertently offending the socks off of them. So when I was suggesting topics, for example, it took plenty of time to think about how to phrase the topic before I even sat down to write the e-mail. Then I kept nitpicking at my presentation, at the opening (Dr. or Prof.? Should I use "Dear?"), and the close (Is "Thank you" too simple? "Best wishes?" "Sincerely" too formal?). They didn't teach us these things in basic letter writing.

And of course most of the time the professors shoot succinct responses that probably took them a minute to make.

To my closer friends and Leslie, in contrast, I just tend to write a lot. To colleagues, I tend to write only confirming e-mails, like "I'll be there," but I experience the same anxiety with addresses so it takes longer. For strangers, I don't care as much about offending them, and the hesitation probably takes a minute.

E-mail etiquette is one of those things that suffers from the lack of a standard to go by. Yes, there are common sense rules for communication, but it's difficult to know how seriously someone is going to take an informality in e-mail. I'd rather either know the perfect way to start and close an e-mail, or know that it really doesn't matter for anyone, rather than shuffle through the doubt. True, it's generally safer to be more formal, but what takes up time isn't so much the formality, as the fretting over it.

One example - in class on Wednesday, someone responded to the professor, "Well, Dr. _____..." and immediately he said, "P___" in a voice that was actually annoyed by the convention. Then he explained he just prefers to be called that by graduate students. It was a sufficient surprise that later, when I was writing the e-mail, I decided to call him "P___." Then, worrying that maybe it'd be different in an e-mail, I wrote a paragraph about how I hoped I wasn't taking a liberty I shouldn't in doing that, because he might want something different over e-mail.

I guess if there's any reflection here, it's that the business world just wouldn't be ready for me. Either that, or I'd never answer the 300 e-mails a day and get all my work done.

When a Brownie is Made Up of One Quarter Chocolate...

2008-10-28T19:05:00.006-04:00

... is there cause for alarm when Leslie laughs fiendishly as she tells me this? Should I enjoy the brownie any less? Because I think I like it. Even if I can't eat too much at once.

The Fan Inside Me

2008-10-22T20:38:00.002-04:00

So today in class, we were trying to understand the performative versus conative use of language as J.L. Austin puts forth in the aptly titled How to Do Things with Words. He's trying to contend against the philosopher's tendency to treat every utterance as a statement to be either true or false. For Austin, language is not always a statement of fact or opinion that reports (conative), but it can also actually perform actions (performative). Saying "I do" in a marriage or saying, "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth" while smashing a champagne bottle against the ship would be examples of the latter (both examples on p. 5 of his book). By saying it, you do get married, and you do name the ship, if everything else is all good.

Anyway, to end a too-long setup, our professor first tried to give an example from her very specific upbringing. Then she tried to bring up a short story. "By that... who's that author. The one who wrote... 2001, and - " "Arthur C. Clarke!" That was me. There was a brief lull of silence. Then some laughter started bubbling out. "Ye-es," the professor replied, "Arthur Clarke." Then she said something to the effect that I was very quick and eager to give that answer. I can't help being so swift when she mentioned one of my favorite books, by one of the big three authors of science fiction. (The story she then proceeded to tell about was "The Nine Billion Names of God," where by making a computer program for some Buddhists to say all the names of God, programmers brings about the end of the universe, though they obviously didn't believe or intend to have that happen, and indeed were leaving the monastery to get away from the monks' dismay when they would "fail.")

It's been one of the difficulties in class participation though, to think about how much of my personal interest I can bring into play. Officially, I'm into medieval and early modern literature. And I am. I'm writing at least one, perhaps two (of three) term papers in that long period. But at the same time, I flirt with the nineteenth century Romantics (currently on my reading list from that period is Algernon Swinburne because he sounds so wild). I could a lot with twentieth century poetry and fiction. I'm decently well-read in science fiction and fantasy, and I know more about video games than a lot of people. And though some of these fields of study are less common than others, they do exist. For example I have been pleasantly surprised to find a book, The Meaning of Video Games by Steven E. Jones, that addresses textual study in video games, and uses a lot of contemporary theory to make it relevant. The author's an English professor. And from his writing, it's obviously a case of a hobby that crossed over into serious study, though to be fair he can bring a hefty number of literary allusions in too, including Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare. He definitely thought it through more than I did (to be fair, he's thought about it a lot more... in terms of a decade or two). But I could bring that up in class. That isn't a real problem, just going outside of what people assume I know.

No, it's doing so in a way that ... isn't literary? Or that others might snicker at? It's learning not to take myself too seriously in discussion. Like today in my other class, we were talking about Adam Smith and his Theory of Moral Sentiments. We tried to differentiate his sympathy from the sympathy and empathy of today. And A brought up Counselor Troi from Star Trek: TNG. She's an empath. She feels others' emotions as they feel them. And in the context of the discussion, that was cool, and it helped the professor understand what we were trying to say. Then (a few minutes later) he started talking about how Adam Smith says we want our joys to be shared as well as our sorrows, and how we want to reaffirm our joy by having others share in them. His example was his assigning a story for class and how having no one respond to it affectively was a disappointment. I wanted to bring up something from, of all things, an episode of Home Improvement as another example, but I held back. Too cheesy. Or maybe I didn't want people to know I watched Home Improvement.

For me, the toughest thing about classes is that I have a few too many locks on what I say in discussion. By the time I figure out the right way to say something, chances are someone's already saying something that does just as well as what I would've said. Or, perhaps worse, I'll filter myself and then find out that what I would've said would've been right. I prefer it when I say something and I get corrected. The correction is not the issue. It's getting over trying to get an absolute right answer by only consulting with myself. And, on the other hand, recognizing that what I have to say, if not any complete answer, may help others get to it, and may not. It's like learning to share again.

So, here on out, how about I try to undo one or two of those locks. Not all of them... there still is such a thing as propriety, but I've got to stop doubting I have interesting things to say before I find out whether any of it's actually interesting or not. (Wrap your head around that one.)

It Turned Out to Require Numbers

2008-10-05T19:58:00.003-04:00

1. For my birthday, Leslie made me a chocolate chip cookie. One huge chocolate chip cookie that fills an entire baking pan. It came out great; I've already had two portions, and after dinner tonight will have a third. It's like getting the best of both cookie and brownie. Last night, I also got a pint of Half and Half at a local drinking establishment - her treat. The top half was Guinness, and the bottom was Stella Artois. It was great, because even though Guinness is great, it is rich and dark, and to have it counterbalanced by a decent light beer like that ... I recommend it. Mmm, food.

2. Even though I'm not sure whether I'm doing anything for Halloween, I've been half-thinking of getting a costume together. Something that would be able to be worn during the day, possibly. I was thinking of heading to a great thrift clothing store which had quite the selection of jackets, coats, dress shirts, slacks, hats, canes, scarves, and so on. Maybe I could dress in all green, spray my hair red for the day, and walk around with a pipe? Or I could get a black leather jacket and pretend to be Neil Gaiman? Or put together a Dumb and Dumber-esque formal wear? Go for the1920's bartender look? Play someone from Carnivale? What I'm saying is that, if I'm going to go that route, I need some ideas. A bonus if I could then wear some of the clothes in other situations.

3. Along with the call for suggestions that way, I need suggestions for how to use my Mr. Bento Stainless Lunch Jar (AKA thermos), courtesy of Diana. What foods should I put in there for lunch? I'm pretty sure I could do soup, cooking it that morning or maybe making it the night before and then heating it up. I guess I could do rice and some kind of stir fry, or part of whatever I made last night. But otherwise... what are some easy ways to make some lunch without making it much more difficult than a sandwich and banana?

I Swear, I Sometimes Don't Think Academically (But Here I Do)

2008-09-28T20:03:00.003-04:00

So I went to the library today and got a lot of reading done. For anyone that is interested, I particularly have to recommend Rabelais’s writings (I read part of Pantagruel), which combine wit, farce, and even (to us) immature humor in such a playful and smart way – they’re pure laughter, holding nothing reverent, but because they doesn’t hold themselves reverent either (except jokingly), they seem fair. Most other works of the time that try for it (like Marlowe’s Faustus) try and fail to achieve the same level of laughter. It’s on the level of Chaucer and Shakespeare’s laughter (when they try for it).

Of course, I may only think it’s so great because it’s a relief to actually read it after reading for weeks about Bakhtin praising it. But that’s just a symptom of literary study; sometimes you read more about something than you actually read it, before you read it. Which, to me, is silly, but I have to keep up with what’s assigned., and it sometimes helps when I finally see it.

Look at that, I worked myself into a ramble and didn’t even get to where I want.

After I had done my reading, I went to read the newspaper, because there’s no kind of break from reading for class like reading something else. And, like my curiosity about reading people’s papers that are still saved on hard drives in the library and getting a feel for how people actually write (and maybe a bit on how they think), I like reading letters to the editor. And there was one with which I had a great amount of agreement.

The argument was for both of the presidential candidates to respectively present what they are going to do without slinging mud and deriding the other to make a point, because the only point that makes is who not to choose, not who to choose. (An important distinction.) I’m right with the author there. But then he also says that they should drop their rhetoric, such as using terms like reform and change, and only present facts. The sentiment is right – we should understand what the change is doing, what the reform’s actions and results will be, rather than relying on these words in a vague and imprecise manner, riding them as we ride slogans like “Liberty! Fraternity! Equality!” (whoops, that should be in French) or “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”But the attack on rhetoric is futile.

I’m not sure what they meant on rhetoric; it’s a fun word that gets bounced around, and as the Wikipedia entry notes, means a whole lot of different things. Aristotle (again, Wikipedia) treated it as practical reasoning rather than ideal logic. Bakhtin (sorry, had to, I’ve been reading it today) builds on it, referring to it as the way language expresses itself practically , a form well suited to addressing the way life is vibrantly lived, and therefore incorporated with all its livelihood in the novel. He probably means it as the sort of words that get bandied about in debate, words that are meant to convince and that need not have any substance at all, a language of debate. Though I get my perspective from the first two definitions and others, the last definition is the one I’ll argue with, saying, “Well, how can we say anything without rhetoric?”

To say anything meaningful, we have to say it in such a way that it has the ring of truth to it. That’s a function of language. We do it all the time, even when we say we’re nearly out of milk. We don’t (at least I hope) just point at the refrigerator and scream “Miiiiilk!” hoping for the point to present itself. We say, quite simply but to the point, “We’re nearly out of milk,” or a hundred other statements with similar bearings. That comes to us effortlessly, if by effortless we forget that we learned the language.

But once that’s out of the way, think about how “fact” and “opinion” were taught in grade school. I remember lists of sentences to compare. Some would say things like, “The Grand Canyon was fun,” and others would say, “The Empire State Building is very tall.” The first one would be an opinion, not because of any tricky use of rhetoric, but because fun is a personal judgment. The second would be a fact, because anyone can clearly observe that. Both use language to make a point, and want the reader to believe them, want to convince you that they’re right. Are they not, then, both rhetoric?

And so this can be applied to any statement of policy. Of course the candidates will want us to believe it. They seek to convince us. However, they do not have our intrinsic trust, so that what they say as fact, we’re going to check. That’s fine. But they’re still going to want to adorn what they say in such a way that we want to trust it. And so their list, even if forced to be in plain language, will still hold a will to make us think it’s true. To do away with all rhetoric will result in mere gestures and a reliance on the other people to figure it out for themselves, which isn’t communication at all. It would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater (or the bacon with the grease, since I’m hungry).

All of this is towards my perfectionist use of rhetoric, which would be to say that it would be better to say that they should leave their rhetoric unspun and uncontentious, plain and unadorned. They should present schematic reasoning (such that we can see the progression of ideas clearly) rather than self-obscuring feats of magical explanation that would make Lord Voldemort glad. Good rhetoric isn’t bad; it’s by practical examples and the good placement of words that truth sings rather than simply plods along. It’s also how lies sing, but in such a case we ought to manage the choir in such a way that they get placed in the back, rather than leaving the church in silence.

Things I've Read: Love in Excess

2008-09-20T11:37:00.004-04:00

It's about 1720. 60 years ago was the beginning of the Restoration, and about 40 years ago was the bloodless revolution. Since then there has been an upswing in theater and the arts which had been stifled by Oliver Cromwell. After some forays into rakishness and debauchery, books (and people) started getting very sentimental. There came the rise of a new virtue. It wasn't a Puritan one, where they kept it all in and only released it into personal diaries (though those diaries did still exist). No, it was poured outward. Men and women were affected by emotions and they celebrated showing them. Love was a passion that could not be restrained, bringing tears, rage, and confusion along that path to felicitous marriage. Oh, the tears.

Love in Excess is one of those early novels. It isn't quite sure of its position as a novel. The dialogue is still rough, the divisions are not neatly put into chapters, and the descriptions are still full of authorial interjections by Eliza Haywood on the nature of love, a voice that talks less melodiously than Jane Austen's would nearly a century later. And that's not to mention the overflowing uses of the comma, the use of a false negative, and the frequent use of "it's" in the possessive which may've been correct then, but isn't so now. But in its own way it amuses.

Alovisa and Ansellina are sisters that have an uncommon freedom, having been given an inheritance without any man over them (father, brother, or guardian) to decide for them how it should be spent. Alovisa lives in comfort in the luxurious Parisian court, when Count D'elmont comes back from the recent war, aglow with conquests. Receiving an anonymous note from Alovisa seeking to pique his desire for her, it unlocks instead an outflowing of love where none existed before. He notices women. And soon his search for love begins, Alovisa hoping it comes her way, others competing for it, and still others (like the Count's brother) hoping that they find their own.

The characters turn out to be tragically wrong about love sometimes, and a marriage can turn out awry. Love can be confused and nearly lead to rape. Other times, love creeps up unbidden where obligations would have the two be, say, guardian and godfather's daughter rather than lovers. And then love is sought where love cannot be in the other, because they are already taken. It's a sorting of the passions, and Haywood, while conventional in some ways, is sensitive to these shifts in a way that men and women of that time had some difficulty doing, and people of this time have even greater difficulty with.

If you study a literary period long enough in class (say, a week) there will be some claim that the issues there carry over into the modern day. Indeed, that juggling of marriage and love still occurs, though the specific terms of dating and propriety have changed radically, as well as the expression of feeling (which is to say that we might cry within or cry alone where D'elmont and his brother embrace and cry together). Though I wouldn't recommend reading the book in a single day, it is interesting enough for at least a peek.

Creator

2008-09-18T17:47:00.002-04:00

I won't write about school now. I'm trying not to think about it right now, not because it's bad, but because I think about it so much.

So I just wanted tos how off my creations in Spore. Though I enjoy it as a game, it's also very fun to just create shapes of creatures, buildings, and vehicles. It's like playing with clay or Legos.

You can scroll left or right, and the multiple iterations of a creature correspond to the multiple evolutions and modifications that go on during the creature phase. But, yes, that's the game I've been playing for a couple of weeks. I make things.

The Ad Hoc Chef

2008-09-09T16:34:00.003-04:00

I've been absent for a while. I was enjoying myself, getting little things to work, spending time with Leslie, going to Dragon*con, or most recently, reading intensively for class and playing Spore.

It's been a month since I've moved in. Most days, I've cooked or prepared meals for myself, the exceptions being when we go out or when Leslie makes something for both of us because it's just as much trouble as cooking for one.

I haven't cooked for myself this much before. At college, I always relied on the dining plans offered to me because I was living in a dorm without handy access to more than a microwave and a microfridge. In some senses, that was good - I always ate a warm meal, I always had plenty to eat, and I never had to put any time into preparing the food. However, it left me apprehensive of cooking for myself, was inefficient cost-wise, and made me reliant on whatever the menu happened to be.

During this summer, and summers previously, I would make lunch for myself, but those were either occasional or, in the case of the pretty good Thai noodle boxes, also cost-inefficient. So without much forethought I had a gas oven, lots of food I picked from the grocery without much insight into how to combine them, and cooking implements I knew how to use in theory. Oh, and a hungry tummy to act as impetus.

I shouldn't have been scared, though. I was imagining all of these possible disasters, when really the worst that could've happened was me messing up a meal. And I'm happy to say I haven't messed one up yet.

When I make instant noodles, that's nearly impossible to not mess up. The same goes with pasta and rice; I learned to boil water in high school, adding an ingredient into the mix wasn't any trouble. The same goes for boiling or simmering formerly frozen vegetables. As for things like mushrooms (one of my favorite foods to prepare, baking or sauteeing them), the packaging instructions carried me most of the way. Turning raw red or white pieces of chicken and pork into fully cooked portions I could be proud of isn't that difficult either, provided I remember to season them and don't scorch the pan.

And so I have meals like last night, where I threw together scrambled eggs (how I did it I'm still not sure... I whisked the eggs, put the eggs in a pan, and then made sure they didn't burn... right?), baked some mushrooms coated in peanut oil in a shallow pan at 450 degrees F for 10 minutes or so, and then put some jam on bread. Or I'll pop a calzone into a microwave. Or I'll boil up some pasta, toss some soy sauce in there, and whip up some corn as a side. It's fun. And my reputation of never more than three ingredients has become a cooking mantra. It really helps focus the selection, helps me not get overwhelmed. Yeah, I'll get around to recipes sometime. But right now, with the reading I still have to finish and the video game I want to get to and so on and so forth... I'll just cook to eat. And since it still happens to taste pretty good, who's to complain?

Food Land

2008-08-17T17:32:00.002-04:00

I've been in Atlanta a week now. It's been fun settling in, and less than fun having no stable internet access until sometime this coming week, and in total, it's been an adventure. Spirits are high though, and I've enjoyed this vacation time before I start school.

Leslie and I went out yesterday, exploring and getting some things from the cool Wal-mart with the escalator for both people and carts. But on our way, we decided to stop by a Spanish bakery that looked bright and promising. There wasn't anything we wanted right then (though I'll be back for delicious pastries), and soon we went around the building to the other side, to the Atlanta Farmer's Market.

Or so the front of the building said, in bright letters. I was expecting a basic concrete floor, an array of locally grown vegetables, and a massive gathering of all kinds of people. Instead what we found was a fully stocked international supermarket with all kinds of food and a massive gathering of all different kinds of people.

Here are some of the things I saw: tons of vegetables and fruit, half of which I'd never heard of, many kept refrigerated, some lying open, and a few soaking in water; 25 lb. bags of good rice (Basmati, several other kinds I'm less familiar with) for 85 cents per pound; an array of packaged meats next to a fully functioning butcher shop including the normal, the uncommon (duck meat, sheep), and the strange and bewildering (duck hearts, chicken gizzard, chicken liver); very inexpensive ramen; all kinds of crackers, cookies, pastas, sauces, drinks, and other items, mainly Spanish and Southeast Asian, some of which I had never seen before in or out of their package; a complete seafood section with fish, frogs, and turtles all swimming around in large tanks or already packaged with good prices for catfish and salmon in particular; inexpensive tofu; the best cashier I have ever seen, who could identify the vast amount of different vegetables and punch in their numbers without hesitation, whose hands worked magic on the scanner and kept what would've been a 10+ minute line in Wal-mart moving in under 5.

There was also a kind gentleman who let us go ahead of him when he saw that we were only buying some muscadines, tofu, and a couple of bottles of Mexican soda.

And the whole atmosphere... was festive. Bustling. Active. It didn't have a sterile atmosphere like some supermarkets, but it was well-kept, well-organized. With a lot of diverse groceries, the food and everything are fine, but it feels like a hole in the wall, and I feel vaguely uncomfortable being there because what they have are, to me, novelties. There, I feel like a gawker, a trespasser. Here, I only felt like I was in a great store.

What I am trying to say is that this is an excellent place to get rare ingredients or decently priced food. And it's a good spot for people-watching as well. And though I"ll probably still buy a good deal of my food at such tame places as Kroger, I'll probably shop here for noodles, rice, and some vegetables, anyway.

Oh, and the name? It turned out to be a Honk Kong Supermarket.

So... suggestions?

2008-08-05T17:18:00.003-04:00

I'm going to be on the road for at least 8 hours on Thursday. I have to go to Atlanta (or at least Georgia, I'm trying to figure this part out) to put in a deposit for the electricity so that we have air conditioning when we move in. Does anyone have any suggestions for free and legal entertaining radio shows or podcasts to download to my MP3 player?

The Long Drive

2008-08-04T12:12:00.002-04:00

Friday I drove to Atlanta and back.

I'm ambivalent about driving versus riding on long car trips. I honestly wish I could do both.

The driving part requires me to be alert and keeps me busy at doing something, and it is easy enough to break the monotony with some news or good programming (NPR is my best friend). And when someone else is in the car, it's easy enough to talk to them. But after a while it can still get tedious.

While riding, I'm limited to sedentary activities, sedentary in the mental sense. Reading, playing a handheld game, and doing crossword puzzles are fine, but to do only that for hours and hours upon end gets me bored and more importantly makes me drowsy. And when I get drowsy on car trips, it's very difficult to get me to sleep. (Whenever I've slept on car trips, it's because I was already exhausted before I got in the car.) And yes, you can talk to the driver or other people, but on a particularly long car trip, it's likely you aren't going to constantly talk. Jaws and vocal cords need breaks, if the conversation never does.

In this case, I chose to drive the entire way since it was the simpler solution. I'm carrying a load of stuff to Atlanta. Leslie is carrying herself and about six empty folded boxes. We will meet in Chattanooga and carpool down. The solution presents itself.

I leave just before 6 AM. The first fifteen miles or so on the interstate are always the longest, because the stretch from Clarksville to Nashville is painfully familiar, and I'm still counting every mile marker and exit, having not yet let that go in favor of the zen-like, "Another twenty miles has passed?" Luckily the morning news is on, so I listen to that for the first two hours. Then... it repeats. I know it's repeating because I heard the last part of their first broadcast. And I'm not so bored that I want to hear the news again. So music comes on... the Mirrormask soundtrack, because I need something quirky to keep me going. Coasting into downtown Chattanooga, I find a parking spot, take a walk around a block of high-priced restaurants and parking lots, and and then read The Two Towers until Leslie gets there.

At this point, I must say Leslie brings pie. And I am also obligated to say that she makes a damn good peach pie. She brought it, and it gets devoured at intervals on the ride home. (It was so good the plastic Panera fork we got to eat it starts breaking down or something, with the tines slowly crumbling away after contact with it. Maybe the fork just had issues.)

And so for the next two hours we enjoy some music she brought (including some from a rather mature anime called "Speed Grapher") and talk. And then lunch at Panera at around 12:15, a brief walk around, and... leasing office of doom!

No, the leasing process actually went fairly easily. It was just slow, reading and skimming through all of the paperwork, items sometimes repeated two or three times. Initial, initial, sign sign sign. Then we got to see our new apartment!

The layout looks exactly like Diana's apartment when she taught at the high school for a year, my freshman year in college. (Being intentionally vague here, since it isn't *my* information.) The door is positioned differently by 90 degrees, and the kitchen look differs a little, but that's about it. Big open space with patio on one side, kitchen on the other, and then a hallway to the bathroom and bedroom. Must've been a common design... I like it.

Once we got done checking it out, listing about every thumb-tack and spot on the walls and ceiling, we went back, turned that in, offloaded my stuff, got chores assigned, and drove back to Chattanooga. By then it's around 5. I drop Leslie off, and then listen to the news while it remains on. Then Market Place. Then Fresh Air. After I listen to a 2005 interview with Neil Patrick Harris, there's another guy that comes on. I listen to his swing interpretation of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and then decide it's time for "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me." It's last week's episode and Peter Sagal is on vacation, replaced with someone more overbearing in their humor, but it keeps me well enough engaged. Plus, Mo Rocca's on there, my second favorite panelist after Paula Poundstone.

By the end of the day, I've logged 12 hours. Was it worth it? Definitely, if I get an apartment out of it. I hope the next time there's a vacation in the mix though. It's not as satisfying to lounge in a bath as it is to lounge on the beach.

Chronos Book I: Failing Fortress

2008-07-31T11:52:00.003-04:00

So the last time I visited Leslie, she showed me a story that she had started but didn't continue. She had a few of these, it seemed, and this one was a couple of pages long. It was a Lord of the Rings fanfic. [EDIT: She wrote it and the other things she discussed yeeaaars ago.]

Well, I'm currently looking through stuff for my move, deciding what can stay here (including most of the nostalgic items), what should be taken, and so on. And... I found it. A notebook from about 1999, when I was 13 or 14. It's mostly illustrations. Some of the illustrations are flat-out amusing, some of them are slightly disturbing, and the rest are Star Wars ships, most of which I made up, and most of which I made up with stats. (I also designed several characters in this way, both for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.) I was a budding roleplayer then, and at the end of that year I would join a Lord of the Rings roleplaying community, Elendor, which I am still a part of today. The concepts for the characters in this booklet, though, are hilarious for anyone that knows Lord of the Rings.

But there is a story in here too, or at least the start of one. I must've had a whole book series in my head. It stops after two pages. The handwriting is surprisingly legible, but the writing is about what I've come to expect. XD

"Brought you some food, rookie!" Landos's voice rang as he opened the door to the guardpost. "What is it?" Crasnell emerged from the window, facing west toward the sunset. "You'll like it! Roasted slug!" Crasnell cringed, but Landos reassured him, "Just kidding! Here! Have some lashnog!" Crasnell examined the blue root, smiled, and said, "Thanks! I'm starved!" "Heh, knew you wanted food!" Landos smiled and went to the window. Crasnell finished his food and joined Landos. "At your permission, sir, but, may I ask why we guard this pass?" Landos laughed a jolly laugh and answered, "Tradition! Why, hundreds of years ago, a great army, led by a powerful wizard named Sisen, came to our kingdom to wage war! We were ill prepared, though, and fought us to this pass. Here, several thousand archers gathered and guarded this place from take over. Within a day the army of Sisen arrived. Thinking that we fled, they stormed through. Halfway, they stopped. Their commander heard something. Suddenly it came! With a rain of arrows, our archers took out their top men. Scared, they fled. Thereafter a post was set here to guard from their return." "Wow!" said Crasnell, as he walked into his room. "Get some sleep!" Yelled Landos, "I'll guard." Crasnell spoke up another question from his room. "Was our kingdom that large to inhabit the Western Reach?" "Yes, certainly, though now this is the frontier," Landos answered, "The wild men took the west before we could come back. Not wanting war, we extended to the east, to the ocean. Now get some sleep!" Crasnell complied, and fell asleep with a thousand questions inside him.

"Rookie!!! Wake up!!!" Landos ran into his room, grabbed his sword, and approached Crasnell's room. He smelled of fear, his eyes wide awake. Crasnell emerged, and yelled a few dirty words. "Shut your mouth!" Landos yelled. "Ok, listen." In the silence at first nothing was heard, but then a faint, and orderly march was heard. Crasnell grew serious and grabbed a sword and his chain mail armor and followed Landos to the horses. "Get on either one, but make sure it will fly, for there is no time to be slow!" They mounted their horses and looked at the army.

The army was gigantic. There were about 10,000 knights with plate armor gleaming in the moonlight. Leading them were 10 robed figures, probably high wizards. Behind them were 5,000 archers, bows ready but not drawn. Then came the terror. In the back were 2,000 mages and 1,900 priests. No known mage army was that huge, save maybe the magic kingdom to the north, Inor Malis, but they weren't here now. Suddenly they spotted, but a mile away, and coming fast, 6 lightning scouts, of the other outpost, 6 miles down. But they were summoned, for only two manned that outpost.

Let's go!" Crasnell said. Landos, about to say the same thing, left with him. They sped long, but the scouts overcame them and they had to fight their way. Landos took down 2 of them easily, but his partner was knocked off. Crasnell yelled, "Go! I will draw them away!" At that he got up, drew his sword, and ran south. Landos yelled, but Crasnell was gone. Landos, knowing that Crasnell's sacrifice must be taken advantage of, fled east.

It took a lot of effort to not edit myself.

Space Center!

2008-07-21T17:42:00.002-04:00

Today we went to the space center down in Huntsville, AL. (It's AL, right? Because AK is Alaska and AR is Arkansas and ABBA is ABBA.)

Considering I found out we were going yesterday, I might not have gone had it not been a place I really wanted to go. That, and it's not that long of a car ride. Certainly not as long as it takes to get to Atlanta.

So, why would I want to go to the Space Center? Ever since I've known how to read, and perhaps even a little bit before, space has been a fascination of mine. Astronauts in their suits, floating through space, stepping across the Lunar surface picking up rocks, piloting a rocket to some distant planet or moon, engaging orbit, and rolling down the windows to collect space dust in my fingers as it trailed by. As I read more, I learned about nebulae, galaxies, stars of all different sizes, quasars, black holes, dark matter, antimatter, and all the other concepts that have collected in the hundred years after Jules Verne dreamed a rocket.

At one point, I wanted to be an astronaut. A scientist. They said that we would be the ones to land on the Moon again, the ones to land on Mars again. What a dream! I had no clue of what either job entailed, but the rewards of discovery would be more than enough.

But somewhere, I got it stuck in my head that I wouldn't be a scientist after all. I wouldn't work in a lab or sit in a dusty room doing calculations with a team of mathematicians. No, I would sit in a dusty room to read books, write about them, lecture about them, and teach them to others. The allure of literature caught me, and I wasn't content to just read some in my off time, because then I knew I'd never really get as into it as I like. I still loved math and science, but they became something to know of and respect, and not necessarily something to do active research in, at least not right now. And, as far as I know, they don't launch English graduate students into space.

After looking at the exhibits today, I hesitated. Just a little. Seeing the Saturn V rocket, the space shuttle, all the different equipment and testimonies from various rockets and scientists, and that little girl in the IMAX movie who wanted to be an astronaut too, it made me wonder. Now I've looked at the requirements; if I went back to college and finished my degree in mathematics, I could technically be one. The maximum height is only an inch above mine, but I could promise to duck. My vision isn't 20/20, but I could get it corrected with lasers. Either that, or I can wait (and hope) for the day that space tourism becomes viable and relatively inexpensive.

Maybe, but it's not something to wait for.

No, no, maybe there'll be no going into space for me, not for a while. But considering the small number of people that are able to go, and the astronomical costs of getting them into space, and given the path I've chosen, I can live with that. I still have my dreams, my fantasies, and lots of science fiction to console me. Even Jules Verne in all his dry glory.

Distrust

2008-07-19T10:50:00.013-04:00

(Quick! Watch Dr. Horrible before you have to pay for it tomorrow! Warning: it's part musical! Dr. Horrible.)

Someone wrote an interesting letter to the editor today. It was talking about doing research on candidates. A quote: "Most politicians are transparent, some are translucent and some are even dishonest."

Okay, ignore the lack of a comma that should be there. Now, let's think about the progression going on here. When I was reading it, I was expecting something like this:
Transparent---->Translucent---->Opaque

Remember that progression from some science class? Yes. Instead, what I find is this:

Transparent---->Translucent---->Dishonest

Now, what they are suggesting is that , for politicians, the best way to ensure that they are honest is to study how much they disclose, that is, how little privacy they allow for themselves in public life. Except... openness has nothing to do with honesty.

A person who maintains the privacy of their tax records and other things is not wrong for doing so, and doesn't have anything to hide. Such an argument holds for anyone who chooses to withhold information without a warrant. They are not obligated to give it, and their refusal to give it is not any sort of incrimination. Maybe they don't see why it is any business of the taxpayer. Maybe they are guilty of something. There is no way to derive possible guilt from a refusal, and if we are to assume they are innocent and profess an American love for privacy, we cannot force records from them without probable cause.

To be a cynic for a moment, it is entirely possible for a person to fake being open and still cheat the system. Of course, that most often happens in totalitarian places where we call that an exercise of liberty and intellectual honesty (Václav Havel).

But I point out that statement because it strikes a common thread with the argument that, as we have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, we should hide nothing. Wiretapping, ISP monitoring, spying, bugging, credit records, crime records, tax records, travel records, phone records, camera surveillance, library records, all able to be violated as part of keeping us that little bit safer. When privacy is granted, it comes with the trust of the people granting it. The parents trust that the kid behind closed doors isn't concocting a bomb. When people are allowed to buy a house with opaque walls, those walls are inviolable except for when others are invited in, or when sufficient evidence of wrongdoing comes to light. We trust people in their other houses. When we walk amongst other people, we trust that the person wearing a long skirt isn't about to pull a gun from there or doesn't have shoplifted goods taped up the thighs. Society, at least the one we live in and tend to enjoy, requires trust, and that trust requires privacy, or the space for a person to act without being spied upon.

Don't we say that true honesty is doing the right thing when no one else is around? Can we be honest when we know someone is always watching? For politicians, perhaps they should be more open because so many people put their trust in them to go with the convictions for which they were elected. But in return, we should trust them when they choose not to disclose certain things, and recognize that openness and honesty are not the same thing.

Some Wordles

2008-07-09T20:12:00.004-04:00

Linked from Katie's blog...

Very interesting. One of this journal.

And this one is of a journal I had before this one.

And this one... is of CNN.

BBC World News.

Wikipedia!

And *snicker* Conservapedia.

Because I'm on a Write-page!

2008-07-07T17:46:00.002-04:00

Think of the word rampage. And then think of the word ramp. Now think of a wild onion fight. That's kind of where my mind is right now. Punning itself into redundancy. (Who put the pun in punishment, the torte in torture?)

I kept losing badly in Cranium Conga yesterday. Basically, you write an answer to a question down in a box, start a timer, and (for the category I kept losing in) tell them the first letter of what you wrote. If they guess in time, both people get points. But I would never get a chance to guess, or guess correctly, and when it was my turn, no one could get it! Admittedly an ingredient I'd always put in a favorite ice cream recipe being "milk" is dumb, but my dream profession being "astronaut?"

It always gets me on the Price is Right when someone bids $1 higher than someone else and then wins. I get some consolation if the person originally trumped gets up there, but that's some ruthless bidding. The worst is when someone bids $1 and then someone else bids $2. It's pretty ruthless. If I'm ever a contestant (ha) and the person next to me bids an amount one dollar higher than the other one, and I'm the last one to bid (50% chance), I'm going to bid one dollar higher than that one. I would do it when I was third, except that would allow the fourth person to basically guarantee getting it by bidding one dollar higher than me.

Your result for The Attachment Style Test...

The Cuddleslut

24% Anxiety Over Abandonment and 18% Avoidance Of Intimacy

You're mostly secure, but sometimes you need a little extra reassurance to make it through the tough times. You are usually affectionate and sweet, and you find it easy to fall in love. An encouraging word from a crush or a loved one can motivate you for weeks.

Fictional character with whom you might identify: Kaylee (Firefly/Serenity), Hiro Nakamura (Heroes)

Other Attachment Types:
Secure:	The Unicorn	\|	The Cuddleslut	\|	The Free Agent
Preoccupied:	The Cling Wrap	\|	The Squid	\|	The Insect
Fearful:	The Doormat	\|	The Leper	\|	The Exile
Dismissing:	The Hermit	\|	The Stone	\|	The Player
Confused:	The Waffler

Take The Attachment Style Test at HelloQuizzy

And I post this just because any comparison with Kaylee is a favorable one. :D

Because They Make Me Smile

2008-07-02T16:07:00.002-04:00

The Count and Cookie Monster - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7hTkzEwFZ0&feature=related

Grover and the Big Hamburger - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GOGNE0nWHk&feature=related

Rules of a Pundit

2008-06-23T08:40:00.002-04:00

1. When a poll says something you don't want to have to explain around, adjust it. Multiply the margin of error by two, add or subtract to the actually reported number as desired, and claim, based on expertise as a statistician, actuary, mathematician, or other numbers expert, that you think it's more like that.

Example: "The recent poll by Quargnax shows Bocain ahead by 15 points." "Oh, I think that's more like six or seven, but..."

2. Talking more loudly and interrupting the other person shows that you care. About your argument. Which is right.

Example: "Well, when you look at France and the way it's handled - " "FRANCE WAS HANDLING THINGS GREAT, AND THEY DON'T SHARE A BORDER WITH A MAJOR ... BLAH BLAH BLAH."

3. Don't forget to pluck that personality in the morning! A well-groomed personality acts as a mask if you happen to not know what you're talking about. Every question that puts you out of your depth is a good question, and a smile of condescension.

Example: "So what about those negative power couplings?" "Well, that's a good question. Certainly, smile smile smile, gab gab gab."

4. When you have five seconds left before the host will stop you, talk faster.

Example: "And as for those marriages in California, just-think-of-the-children-and-ask-whether-you'd-want-children-coming-from-that-marriage-because-ewwww!"

5. If it is your distinction in life to have a verbal pause, either make it as quiet or as distinctive as possible.

Example: "The tomatoes are auuuuuughm delicious."

6. Credentials, credentials? Remember that one time you worked under President George H.W. Bush? That makes you more knowledgable about every policy under the moon than 99.99% of Americans.

Example: "I recall when I was working in the white house... they had good chicken strips."

7. Twenty-four hour news means that you're truly needed to make, discuss, and otherwise interpret news. Be like the third stomach of the cow; after the anchors report it, and then discuss it, get ready to receive that cud and digest it out until the fourth stomach, the news summary broadcast, can reduce it to mind-numbing oblivion.

Example: "And of course you've heard about the guy who bought a slushie. I don't think that picking raspberry was a good thing. Especially with that murder that happened twenty feet away."

8. It does good to use some phrase that other people were using, if it's effective.

Example: "And Harry Potter 7 is truly the battle of the hexes." "And then the battle of the hexes." "Har har blah blah battle of the hexes." "And now the battle of the sexes, I mean hexes."

Reference Books

2008-06-21T19:56:00.002-04:00

I have found one of my dream reference books.

First, what makes the ideal one to buy? Of course they're all good for something or another. But the book has to be full of information of specific interest. That is, it's no good just buying an encyclopedia set, or an almanac on everything, but a book on mythology is good, and if it's a book about a specific mythology, that is great. But the book also has to convey information that isn't easily found elsewhere in such an easily accessible form. So this hypothetical book on, say, Greek mythology can't be simple retellings of certain myths and 200 word descriptions of each major god. It has to go through all kinds of stories, talk about all the gods and goddesses, heroes, heroines, princes, princesses, magical creatures, and villains. It has to be as detailed as it could reasonably be, even discussing different versions of certain tales.

And so I've found it. The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature. From the table of contents and introduction, it appears to be everything I would ever want from a reference guide on the subject, detailing the history and literature of Arthur from the fifth century to the twenty-first. When it retells stories, the retellings are barebones, but enough so that I can be intrigued into searching certain stories out... or not.

2008-06-15T20:08:00.002-04:00

I've been visiting Leslie for the past several days. It's been fun. :D

I was walking through Best Buy tonight (alone, since Leslie's working), and I was looking for a particular DVD, Labyrinth. But I was flummoxed for a moment about what place to look for it. Once I thought about it a bit, it was easier to guess (ah, sci-fi). But the better I know a particular movie or book, the tougher it is for me to place it in only one genre. At first, genre will mean those different sections in a book or video store where items are arranged electronically.

For Labyrinth, it can fit into a few different genres. It could be considered a children's movie, because it has muppets and fantasy. It could be considered fantasy, because it has trolls and such. It could be considered sci-fi, because many stores put fantasy in sci-fi.

Pride and Prejudice DVDs can occur in a few different places. Drama, romance, TV miniseries, BBC productions... what have you. The book itself can appear in romance or general fiction, though it most often gets placed in some classics section.

But these easy ambiguities are only a small shadow of the more difficult ones that come when considering a book, not for where it appears in the bookstore, but for how we might describe it.

To start with a familiar example, the Harry Potter series is certainly intended to appeal to children, so they might be called children's books. At least in the earlier books, the reading level and other aspects, including the ages of the characters, maintain that. However, it also has very potent roots in modern fantasy and mythology, drawing ideas of wizards and witches that are already apparent in Earthsea and other novels, centaurs and other magical creatures from various mythologies (and some fantasy like Narnia), and dragons from both. It is also a Bildungsroman depicting the growth of a boy into a man. It could be considered an educational treatise from the way Hogwarts is depicted, a satire of real world politics in a world of magic, a travelogue in an imaginary world, a journey of friendship, or any number of other things. Not all of them have to be genres or are typically considered as such, and alone, they carry nothing of what Harry Potter actually is. But like any body, where marrow in the skeletal system produces cells for a circulatory system run by a muscular pump, they are an interconnected part. And so while for brevity one might pick the most prevalent genre to describe the book as a children's book or fantasy book, it is difficult to pick between one, the other, or any other, for prime descriptive value.

But it is occasionally because we do so anyway, trying to describe something with the greatest efficiency with a limited vocabulary and capacity to articulate thoughts, that we sometimes come out with such travesties as making an introduction to a book sound pretentious when it is coy, vain when it is witty, and so on.

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

2008-06-05T21:47:00.002-04:00

Scott and Dad are watching it right now. I love all of the actors... Whether it's Mandy Patinkin, or Andre the Giant, who said before he died that he was never happier than when he was doing that movie.

Let me tell you a story. There is this site online which has targetted advertising based on your profile. (Oh, you can probably already tell it's Facebook.) When it sees in Leslie's profile that she is engaged, it targets her relentlessly with wedding ads, some innocuous, and some horrendously prejudiced.

When it sees that I'm engaged, it only offers up one wedding advertisement, for men's wedding bands. What other advertisements does it offer? View my odyssey between two instances of an advertisement:

Wedding band
Baseball
Healthcare
Arrested Development Tees
Indiana Jones T-shirts
Free Online Game (based on the "true story of Alice in Wonderland")
Make money for surveys
Big Beautiful Women
Beer
Political thing
College loans
T-shirts
Baseball
Shoes
Firefighters
Wedding band

So you see a few trends. First, most of them have nothing to do with weddings at all. And at least one of them has something that would to all perceptions be contrary to my being engaged, would it not?

Hmmm, I say, hmm. Because a woman is supposedly wedding-crazy, or because I have no concern whatsoever for wedding planning, such a discrepancy in advertising is generated. Are they reacting somewhat to some statistical tendency? Perhaps. Are they also perpetuating it and aggravating people in the process? Probably also true.

Do I ultimately think it a bad thing? Somewhat. In what way? Well... I've been leery of socialization through advertising for a while now. It's fine when parents do it, when school does it, when other kids do it, even when they aren't the desired influences, because they're local, and can be accounted for. How can one account for advertising, whose prime motive is not to make you function in society, or to make you happy, but to make money. That motive isn't evil in itself, but it can be blind. If negative gender oppositions are harmful, then how is playing with them to make a sale good? (I look in your direction, "Bridezilla"... yes, it's a show.) In this case, where Facebook's advertising is creating a standard whereby engaged women are constantly reminded of what their duty is (to the wedding), and engaged men are free to peruse big beautiful women while playing MMORPGs and wearing t-shirts and shoes for their favorite baseball team ... no wonder I'm a little leery.

Dear Atlanta Braves,

2008-06-03T22:04:00.002-04:00

Hey, what's up? Yeah, Jeff Francoeur, how's it going? Chipper Jones, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Yunel Escobar, Mark Teixeira, all you others, yeah, doing good?

I just have a few observations to make.

First, Chipper Jones, your bat is on fire. You're averaging over .400, .413 to be exact. After two months of play. That is extremely difficult, and I have to tip my hat to you. In a level of play where the pitchers are tricky, the fielders are fast, and ... well, you know the other considerations better than I do, because you trump them.

Second, why are you guys always losing away games? You do fine at home. I forget the statistic of how many you've lost away, but it's ridiculous. If you even won a third of the away games, you'd probably be leading the league.

Third, and the real reason why I write, what the heck was up with the game last night? It was a home game, which is of course why you won, but you made it very close. In the ninth inning, when you only needed two outs to win, there were two seperate plays where gloves failed to come up with balls, and runners got around the bases more. Maybe Smoltz should've struck them out, the way you outfielders were playing.*

And then at the bottom of the ninth, Jeff Francoeur steals home when the catcher loses the ball. And in the tenth, a man is hit in, and the game is over. Those were two good plays that wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't made a mistake, but... sometimes those plays don't happen. So good work, all of that. Try not to make the errors, and win them as terrifically as that if you happen to.

Best wishes,
Doctor Professor

*I used to be an outfielder, so I know a lot about making mistakes out there. Poor guys. >_<

Taken from Katie

2008-05-31T09:39:00.002-04:00

Would you kill your neighbor?
They're good country people. The salt of the Earth. (/Flannery O'Connor.) No.

What are two words that describe your last fight?
Verbal, toe-curling.

What were you doing ten minutes ago?
Eating oatmeal with too much water and drinking orange juice.

What's the last movie you saw?
In theaters? Indiana Jones. Outside of that? I saw parts of Terminator 3 on TV.

What did your last text message say?
OMG ur a graduate (I don't text message much.)

Who have you talked to most today?
Dad. Scott gets a close second. Mom isn't as talkative in the morning, understandably.

Do you carve pumpkins every year?
Not the past few years, because I've been in a dorm, but I might this year.

Color of your shirt?
Forest green.

Who is on speed dial 2?
I'm interpreting this as the second on my contact list... Kim and Frank. (It's listed under their last name.)

Whats your favorite season?
Autumn.

How are you feeling right now?
Good. My thoughts are a wavepool.

What did you do this weekend?
Not much.

How many times have you moved?
Including dorm? Lots. 10.

What is the last thing you touched?
Besides the keyboard and anything computer related? A door handle.

Would you do anything for someone else?
No.

Have you ever been called a punk?
Not that I recall.

Was yesterday better than today?
I'm not sure yet.

What is your ring tone?
Vibrate.

Do you have a favorite number?
Two, actually. 17 and 8. The number-of-how-far-down-I-was-numerically-in-4th-and-5th-grade, and the magic-number.

If you could meet anyone who would it be?
Oh, it'd be a bunch of dead people. Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Chaucer, Sir Thomas Malory... you get the idea.

How old will you be in 2 months?
The same age I am now.

Do you think you'll be married by then?
No. If it were 2 years, definitely.

Are you a Lost fanatic?
No.

Say you were given a drug test right now.....Would you pass?
Yes. I can't recall the last drug I've taken, besides caffeine.

Have you ever been to South America or Africa?
No.

Do you know how to knit?
No.

Do you have a job?
No. Starting this fall, school will be my job. Again.

Is there anything currently bothering you?
Not really.

What are you doing right now besides this survey?
Listening to Daft Punk.

Do you know how to play poker?
Yes. And I dislike Texas Hold 'Em.

Baskin Robbins or Coldstone?
Coldstone.

Physics or chemistry?
Physics. I pondered being a Physics major far more than I did being a chemistry major. Not that the latter would've been bad, but in Chemistry in high school I was always most enthused about the physics or calculation-heavy portions, even if they were things like particle physics, than I was with drawing Bohr models. It's a difference between a healthy respect and an undeveloped love.

Fly or road trip?
Depends on the distance. And the gas price.

Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Tanner Vineyard, or Shalayna Hatcher?
Bicycle Repairman all the way.

Clarissa

2008-05-29T21:10:00.002-04:00

Observations on what I've read so far of Clarissa, this winter and then this afternoon:

Clarissa gets an inheritance from her grandfather when he dies provided that she marry the right guy. Mr. Solmes comes sauntering along. Clarissa's brother likes money, and would like nothing more than to see her sister married to get some slice of it. What, she doesn't want to marry him? Well, he turns the family against her, father and all, and locks her up until she obeys. Friends are denied access. Clarissa is left to resist them with as much impudence as could be allowed, trying to respect her father while at the same time disagreeing with her brother's influence on him. Mr. Solmes is repeatedly told by her that she doesn't want him, but he is in turn convinced by the family that she'll calm down once she's under his marital power. Threats of a rushed ceremony ensue.

Mr. Lovelace witnesses the family's bullying. He becomes enamored with Clarissa in turn, but she cannot accept his advances because he has a blemished past and her accepting his advances would mean going against the family wishes, which she does not want to do. Also, she does not like the power he would have over her were she to accept his aid, which would involve him taking her away. How can she trust his promises? He's too sure of himself and keeps assuming that once he rescues her she will marry him.

And then she has a cadre of friends that gain some access to her, either through letters, or irregular appeals. Miss Howe in particular is the main correspondent in the epistolary. As her family keeps recommending Mr. Solmes, Miss Howe keeps saying, "If you do run off with Mr. Lovelace, you had better marry him right then." The cousin says the same thing. There is no choice. Marry one man, marry another, or...? Disgrace? Quite possibly. But yet Clarissa keeps admitting her one hope, that she might resist Mr. Solmes and turn him away, turn the family back to her side, or lacking that, gain the generous help of Mr. Lovelace and remain Single. How does she accomplish that, when she is utterly dependent?

She is stuck in dire straits. The marriage is to happen no later than Wednesday evening. She asks Mr. Lovelace to usher her away to a private residence from which he will be separated. Then she determines not to, as it gives him too much power. He doesn't get (or refuses to receive) the letter telling him to not come. He comes. He placates her. She goes.

What happens? Will she be ruined? Will she make the correct choice? Will she blind scurrilous men with her purity, or will it be trod upon before Mr. Lovelace's advances? Is she a Pamela, or something less? In any case, she's no Shamela.

I am genuinely engaged by it, though I must admit... it's an acquired taste. Eighteenth-century novels are that way. And it's all carried along because Clarissa is a sympathetic character... and because you want to punch her brother in the face.

Assorted Thoughts

2008-05-24T08:53:00.002-04:00

1. I went and saw Indiana Jones with Katie and Scott yesterday. Apparently most of the people went to the first showing or a later showing, because we only had about 15 people in the theater, and for a long time we were alone. As for the movie itself, it, well, felt like Indiana Jones. (Katie's version has a few embellishments.) I don't actually remember watching those movies for the first time. I just remember knowing them, because I had watched them the requisite five times and tons more for them to be permanently playing in my head as the movie is playing. But even withthis one, I could sometimes think, "This is what Indy is going to say," and he'd pull through. Reviews may have called this predictable dialogue, but there was nothing wrong with the words. The action is good and I always did like Marion's character, so I'm glad she returned.

2. My computer is working now. I built one Thursday evening, and loaded programs onto it yesterday. My family was surprised... I took the two packages that arrived upstairs without mentioning it, so that if I messed up, they wouldn't have to know. It took (for me) more reading than actually putting things together, and even then I managed to read one or two things wrong before I got them right. The instructions were perfectly fine, but it was the lack of experience and lack of instructions for the case that got me the most. I had to figure out which screws fit where. Then, after hammering the motherboard in with nails... I mean, after screwing it in with screws, , and everything was plugged in and connected, and I set it upright and nothing fell off (my biggest fear is the "kerchunk" sound), it was cool. Overall, I saved at least $200 doing it this way as opposed to ordering from Dell, so for all my time involved... it paid off.

But it's just funny. I only figured out how to open my old computer about 4 months ago, and now I feel like I can open one up and *do* things.

3. The reason why I hurried so much to get it done though is because the summer is already making me antsy. I always get this way, but perhaps because the time at home will be shorter, I'm going through the paces faster. I've worked on my bike. I've done one search for apartments or small houses (mainly to get an idea of opportunities and pricing; we won't be visiting for another month). I've applied for a couple of jobs. (Why only a couple? It would be useful, but I won't be around long, so I'd feel a little guilty getting hired and trained only to leave again.) I've cleaned upstairs to a reasonable extent. I've cooked a little (it's tough to drain pasta without a strainer), and so on. And now I have to wash my car... it's thoroughly pollinated. And of course, I have to read, but that's a different compulsion. :D

Do You Want a Fresh Catheter Each Time You Cath?

2008-05-20T13:51:00.002-04:00

I heard this on a commercial today while I was eating lunch. It was talking about some health insurance supplement or something. And I wondered... what the heck is "cath"? I looked it up in the faithful home dictionary and came up with nothing. Nothing on the common dictionary or the OED. So here are the words that they could possibly mean.

Catharize - To purify by ceremony, or to make chemically clean.
Cathect - To charge with mental energy, to give emotional load.
Catheterize - To introduce a catheter into.

I imagine that it's a shortening of the third word... maybe Katie uses it or something, but it was just such a strange shortening when I heard it, and it could mean anything from putting the catheter in to using it for its intended purpose to, I don't know, taking a stylish drug. Like asking someone in an upscale coffee shop, while whipping my voluminous hair behind me, "You cath?"

Ælfflæd

2008-05-17T22:58:00.000-04:00

... sounds like the perfect name for a daughter.

I'm Graduating...

2008-05-09T07:50:00.001-04:00

And the only thing my tassel does is flutter in my face determinedly calling, "Eat me!"

A Rag Man

2008-05-08T09:47:00.004-04:00

The past couple of days I've been playing around with anagrams at http://www.wordsmith.org/. I've forgotten when I found out about the site, but it had something to do with Mom.

Anyway, I've been doing combinations of "Delicious " for different people, the name being their first name. "Delicious James" yields "Lime Juice Sodas," "Delicious Leslie" yields "I Could See Lilies," and so on.

What about "Delicious Alexander the Great?"

A Clearheaded Exile's Tutoring
Egalitarians Excluded Hereto
Giddier Caesarean Helot, Exult!
Legit Horde, Exulted Caesarean
Greedier Satanical Hexed Lout
Actuarial Legend Exited Horse

And "Delicious George W. Bush?"

Becloud Egregious Wish
Beguiles Rowdies, Cough
Bogie Could Weigh Ruses
Bilge Guise Chews Odor
Bilious Chewed Gougers
Obscure Hideous Wiggle
Serious Debouched Wiggle

I must promise this... most of the benign ones made little sense. Here's one... "Credible Guises Hug, Woo!"

With that in mind, before I have my first child, I'm running probable name combinations through the anagram... just in case some self-entertaining college student doesn't come up with some interesting combinations of their own.

Things D Did While Drinking

2008-05-02T10:09:00.003-04:00

(This was written early Friday morning, in case the structure is hazy)

I went to my first bachelor party last night. It was fun. We met up, distributed t-shirts, went to Five Guys for burgers (I got the classic grilled cheese with bacon), went to play three games of Laser Quest (I got 3rd once, 2nd twice), drove to the Old City, decided instead to drive to Electric Cowboy practically back where we started, and finally drove all the way to Turkey Creek and a bar... I forget the name.

(At Laser Quest, the 2nd and 3rd games were confusing. Robbie and I decided to team up for the first one, but at the end of the game P had... nearly 500 points, while 2nd place had 130. It took all of our scores combined to beat his, and even then only narrowly. So the third game we didn't try silly teams, and Robbie won, and I took second. Take that, people who decided that hiding in the tower was a productive thing to do.)

There I had a Guinness I could drink nice and slow (I could've spent the entire hour nursing it), and D had four drinks. A minty combination, a fruity combination, a mudslide, and something clear. There was a choir there, and they sang a lot of church music. D put in a request for We Three Kings, and then they belted out after singing Carol of the Bells (I kept thinking, "That's a West Wing song!" from the episode that Josh Lyman goes through PTSD to the sound of ringing bells, a few episodes into the second season. Stunning.)

After that, we went to Wild Wings. Live music until 1 AM, lots of drinking, girls for the single guys (or singlehearted) to glomp onto. D had six more. As he explained it, he was trying to get all of the colors of Voltron (he never ceased mentioning that). At drink 7, he made a record of all of the drinks he had, which sadly got lost, but I was surprised he could remember them all.

At first I had a Jack and Coke, and then after a long while I had a Fire and Ice. The latter was particularly scrumptious... it had Goldschlager, which smacks of cinnamon, but they also had what I think was peppermint schnapps. The overall effect was crisp, refreshing, and mildly intoxicating. I passed my time talking to others, and eventually keeping company with D when he had number 10 and was finished. It was like talking to a guy who is simultaneously aware he's drunk, has a faux British accent, and acts like the Godfather. He kept blessing people who worked at Firehouse with store chains, and kept saying, "Ah, Leslie, she could go far." It was interesting.

Anyway, I'm happy with how things went. Bar-hopping isn't really my scene at all; I much prefer what I did at the first place I went to, buying a beer and going at a pace where I would be done with it in at least an hour. That's probably the German in me. But I must say... if I were ever going to drink to get drunk, I would probably choose similar drinks as D did.

Things I Have Pondered Doing at Graduation

2008-04-29T22:16:00.004-04:00

1. After the ceremony, when I'm exiting, whip out a wizard hat from under my robe, put it on, and shout jubilant spells in false Latin.
2. Wrap my honor cord around my belt.
3. On my name card, write "Say this like Albus Dumbledore does with Harry's name in the movie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - go for batshit crazy."
4. Wear platform shoes to the ceremony so that I'm the tallest one there.
5. Interweave my tassle with red licorish for a tasty snack during the boring parts.
6. Go to graduation as a wizard judge, while going to Halloween as a graduate.
7. Adopt a stentorian chortle to use at improper times, slapping my knee, touching my nose, and winking at the person next to me. "Eh? Eh?"
8. Dye my hair and wear a disguise kit (glasses + fake nose + mustache) so my family can't find me.
9. Tape the day's newspaper puzzlers to my hand, and try to do the jumbled quotation entirely in my head so it takes most of the two hours.
10. Factor the time on my watch, so that whenever the time hits a prime number, mention to someone next to me, "It's a prime time to graduate!"
11. When the seventh speaker gets up to speak, get up with them and stretch a little.
12. Slip sheets of paper in, but instead of them being puzzles, make them quotes, poems, pi to the hundredth digit, whatever. Try to memorize it.
13. Text family with "OMG IM GRADUATING." (Who wants to take bets that this will happen, even though they've said no cell phones?)
14. There's a trick in math where, if you have a number, and add it with the number with its digits reversed, and repeat if necessary, one will often end up with a palindrome. (42 + 24 = 66; 102 + 201 = 303; 127 + 721 = 848; 168 + 861 = 1129, 1129 + 9211 = 10340, 10340 + 4301 = 14641.) I will attempt to perform this trick with 196.
15. I will compose a poem. In my mind. Extra points for poems of 10 lines or more, metrical verse, or particularly luxuriant free verse. Sonnet gets an 70. A villainelle gets a 90. If I can perform a sestina, I win forever. So if you see me frantically writing afterward, that's why.

What I'm saying is that it'll be long, and I'll need ways to amuse myself.

So I Don't Forget the Federal Debt

2008-04-25T17:57:00.002-04:00

... or why I was wrong about it.

I was reminded of a lecture earlier in the semester in Globalization when I heard a desk worker in the library talking a little too loudly, enough so I could hear him at a computer about 40 feet away or so. (Whatever happened to indoor voices?) I agreed with him on a lot of what he said, but he kept going, "Look at the federal debt!" And then I was reminded of that lecture. The reply?

"Yes. And?"

So I'm going to get my thoughts out before I revert back to leaping again, trigger at the ready, at the mere mention of debt. The point? Debt has its uses too, and need not be bad debt. But I'll get there. I'll try to go by points.

1. Money has to do with the exchange of value for goods.
Money is not a George Washington, nor is it a gold nugget. Money is not any one material good. When corporations hurl money about in investments, they aren't trucking their chests of gold around (even if the investment happens to be gold, nowadays). They oftentimes simply sign a check, or now even carry out the exchanges in value electronically. When we use a debit card, value is exchanged between our bank account and the seller, who then provides the good.

The best way to think about money then is not as dollars and cents, not as certain measurements of value, but as an exchange of electricity or energy. In our pockets, in our bank accounts, in our investments - to our name - rest the potential for exchange, stored as if in a battery. They each hold a certain liquidity or accessibility. Cash is readily exchangeable, checking account money is with the proper tools, and investments have varying liquidities depending on how efficiently we can sell or redeem them for some value. All of those are potential energy. The active energy come with the payment. Then value is transferred.

2. The federal gov't and the Federal Reserve function separately.
Yes, the Federal Reserve is partially owned by the government. But it has autonomy too; when Ben Bernanke says things, there's not much the President can do. They help each other out. But the debt that the federal gov't runs is not the Federal Reserve's debt. The money that the gov't prints is from the Treasury Department. So on.

3. There are commercial and investment banks.
Commercial banks are the ones we put our money in for ready access, or take loans from. When we put our money into a bank, we've put it in with many, many other people's. The bank holds an assumption that everyone will not demand their money all at once, that they will hold a certain level of money unused for some time. They use this money to give out loans, from which they get a return and make their profit. The trick is to balance the inflow (deposits + loan payments) with the outflow (withdrawals + loans) so that the bank always has money to fulfill its obligations and makes the maximum profit possible.

Investment banks are those that deal with businesses, making all kinds of... yes, investments.

4. The Federal Reserve lends money to banks.
When commercial banks balance between their inflows and outflows, sometimes they run into issues. Perhaps they have more money than they currently want, but want to put the money in something safer than loans. In that case, they buy treasury bonds, treasury notes, so on. Perhaps they have more outflows in a certain time, and need money to meet an obligation. What happens then?

The bank sells some of its treasury notes to meet the obligation, and adjusts otherwise. Who will buy the treasury note without looking to make a profit? The Federal Reserve. It buys high. Then, when more inflow comes than is anticipated, the Federal Reserve will sell those treasury notes at a low cost. If it should ever run out of treasury notes, it buys more debt from the federal gov't. The Federal Reserve manages itself so it works out for them without long-term costs, and the banks meet their obligations.

5. Treasury notes are federal debt.
So, in this way, federal debt is actually used to keep banks operating and lending between each other. If there were not such a way to give some safety net for investing more money, then banks would not lend as much. Hence unhappiness.

Why use Treasury Notes? Because the gov't always pays its debts.

6. If the federal debt were low, the system would not work.
If the federal debt were to fall (a speculative concern in the late 1990s, not now), then the Federal Reserve would have to figure out another investment to exchange with banks, one that is as secure and guaranteed as Treasury Notes. So the Federal Reserve doesn't create money to meet is obligations... it uses the gov't's debt.

So that's one reason why having some debt is important. However, the debt may seem perhaps... adequate. Too adequate? Too large?

7. Debt is not an issue as long as it is paid off.

8. When one goes into debt, that happens because someone has bought the debt.
That's what a treasury note or a savings bond is. It is purchased debt, bought until it has accrued its value plus interest, when it is redeemed. The gov't takes the value, uses it, and through other revenue-raising activities (like taxes), gradually sets money aside as interest paid off on the loans, which is how it accrues. It is easy to pay things off gradually rather than all at once.

9. There is a high demand for this debt right now.
We're in a recession most likely. So people go to a safe investment, like gov't bonds and such. Because the gov't always pays its debts. Much safer than having it in the volatile stock market, exchange market, commodities market...

10. Debt is not an issue as long as someone is willing to pay it off.
Which has held true thus far, and shows no signs of changing. Even when we were doing well economically, people are willing to speculate that the gov't will pay. The only time the debt will become a concern is when people refuse to buy it over a certain period of time. Then the gov't would go bankrupt because it would not meet its obligations in exchanging value.

But such an event would happen with enough time for gov't agencies to react, assuming they were on their toes. So it's not a pressing issue. Only a potential one. Something for a sigh, but not anything to cry about. It isn't a major problem.

There are major problems involving debt of course. Like the trillions of dollars American households hold in debt... if I remember correctly, three times the national debt. How? I don't the hell know.

What I know is that, if that continues, then we the children of America will not live as good a life as our parents. And I only hope we aren't bitter. (I'm not.)

Time to Stretch a Little

2008-04-23T18:26:00.003-04:00

So I finished the paper I was supposed to this week. The immediate burden. On the goddess Asherah in early Isrealite religion (think around the time of Solomon to when the Israelites were exiled by Babylonia). Yeah, there was a goddess. The Bible didn't talk much about her. I thought it was interesting, and wrote on it.

Except that, after I'd gotten approval for the outline I had turned in, I had typed it out, and it turned out to be... 5... pages. When the minimum was 8. So it took a little bit of scrambling to do those last three pages, including a good deal of today. But it's done. And I turned in my thesis on Mnday. With that, I only have end-of-the-term assignments:

2 papers
2 exams

Then I'm done. *jig* I know a lot of other people have more strenuous final exam activities, so I don't go shouting it to everyone. But I've had those too... and I'm relieved to have one semester before graduate school where I can really relax at the end of it. Especially with going to the wedding of two good friends next weekend.

A Book Recommendation

What? I've actually had time to read something for pleasure since spring break that was longer than a newspaper article or a short story? Yes. I've been reading it at a crawl, but with the book due back to the library Friday, I had to put more effort into it. So after going to the bank today, after I was done with my paper, I reached this fork in the sidewalk. I could go left, and go to the Golden Roast, and hunker down and read it. I know people that go there on Wednesday, and I could hang out with them if I shied away from reading.

But I was tired of shying away. After throwing my pen in the air and determining myself to go wherever it pointed, I disregarded which way it pointed, and went right. I walked to the Botanical Garden.

I didn't exactly know I was going there at first. But it was the farthest place I could walk and stay on nice green grass without turning around, and it had been a while since I'd been there. True, I'll be there in only a week and change (for the wedding), but it was good to go alone.

It was a good atmosphere for the book. I did get distracted at one point from reading, but it was one of the cats (whose name as called by a caretaker was "Indigo") who kept accosting my hand. A fluffy, black cat that would look up whenever I retracted my hand and meow, not the plainitive (1) "Why aren't you paying attention to me?" of Nona (Leslie, Becky, and Derek's cat), but a simple friendly, "Hi. Pet me."

So I've done about everything but talk about the book. It's Rose Daughter, by Robin McKinley. Leslie recommended it after we saw the old French movie La Belle et la Bete. The movie was good because it was fantastical, even as it kept to the traditional line. Rose Daughter breaks many of those lines, but both what is kept and what changes is... refreshing. I don't want to say anything more. It isn't a retelling of a fairy tale, so much as a reinvention of one, an innovation of its own.

(1) I am thinking of this word, I think, but I wonder where I got it. The dictionaries I checked don't have it, Google doesn't acknowledge it. Am I spelling it incorrectly? I've always thought it meant something like, "demanding of attention, or even pleading" at least in connotation.

2008-04-14T15:14:00.002-04:00

O, the crap I will reach for when I fumble for words. Excerpt:

"Lyonet responds to Gareth's disguise, reducing it to a public subjectivity that would say such hard criticisms; her words address the stereotype and assume it incapable of defeating two knights even after that has been done."

What? Reducing? Public subjectivity? Stereotype? Both my readers quirked an eyebrow and, at best, underlined it, and at worst, labeled it "unclear phrasing."

It's true.

There are at least two kinds of C-grade writing. The first is the one that I ridiculed before. It's fairly barebones, functional writing that is barely grammatically passable before a pass through the electronic proofreader. Stilted phrasing, schematic writing riddled with clunky language, so on.

I've committed the second one, where people introduce words and phrases that certainly mean something at the time, and may indeed do so at a high level, but which otherwise use such disgusting cliched obfuscating terms as "public subjectivity" and "reducing."

What does reducing mean? Well, in this sense I mean it's a degraded sort of perspective compared to Lyonet's own one, a more two dimensional one. What is the public subjectivity? Why, it's the way the aristocratic court would see Gareth in disguise, how they would judge and be biased against him. The stereotype isn't a large problem; it refers to his being an uppity kitchen knave, and that's clear when it's not in excerpt.

So how do I redo it?

"Lyonet responds to Gareth’s disguise by berating him as an aristocratic court might; her words address the kitchen knave stereotype and assume that the knave is incapable of defeating two knights even after that has been accomplished."

Clearer, I hope. I just had to rework a couple of words as I posted it. Whee, writing!

Good writers are the ones that have the sense of when to revise, and how, and that aren't afraid of making large changes.

Great writers do it better.

I'd say I'm pretty good. I'd say I'm pretty too, but that's off topic. ;)

Accepted!

2008-04-07T23:44:00.002-04:00

To the program I've been waiting to hear from for a while. Not a moment too soon either. I'll have monetary details and such tomorrow, hopefully.

Strangely, though I have gotten in, I still want to see how my application in Information Sciences is doing. But assuming all goes well, I really want to pursue this.