Social Reform and Folk Dancing

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

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.

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

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

 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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...

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

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.

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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...

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.

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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!

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.