elegy on a toy piano

"Not That Great of an Evening" by Mark Halliday

2009-05-31T00:58:00.001-04:00

Yeah I went to the talk, and the reception.
Yeah I went to the dinner, and the party.
It was not a terrible evening. It was okay.
I don't think I did anything especially stupid.
But I feel kind of crummy. Not wretched, you know,
but just kind of lost or left over—
like I'm the little cup of overcooked beans
somebody covered with plastic wrap and pushed to the back of
the fridge. I might drink a little Scotch
just to get sleepy. Everything is okay. But it's like
there's so many voices—all these voices
still skittering around in my head like mice—people
having things to say. Everybody finding lots to say—
this professor gave a talk about the interpenetration
of coexisting cultures—I think that was the concept—
I kind of drifted away in some sections—and then
people clapped so I was clapping and then I was standing
with a cup of wine and trying to have on my face
the I'm-so-interested look. I'm so interested but
I'm also witty and cool. Then I was part of
several little exchanges—not really conversations,
it's more like we're throwing peanuts at each other's mouths.
My peanuts just bounced off the chin or the cheek of
whomever I spoke to. This was partly because the room was so noisy
and my voice is phlegmy and weak. In my next life
I want to have a voice nobody can ignore. But then
I would need to have things to say. Tonight I tried
but I could feel how unriveting I was. I don't blame people
for sliding away from me at the reception, and also at the party.
If I met me tonight I would slide away from me too.

But how do they all do it? Are they happy?
I know some of them are not happy, but at least they seem to be so
present. Whereas I was like glancing at the door
waiting for my interesting life to show up.
My cup of wine kept being empty
which made me feel as if I was standing there in my underwear
so I kept refilling it. I was a blur.
I was a blur on its way to becoming a smudge.
And this was not about the evening being terrible. Actually
that's the scary part of it. This was a normal evening
with me being a fuzzy blur. At dinner I kept trying
to look very interested in the conversation on my left or my right
so it wouldn't be obvious that my only true companion was
my plate of salmon and potato. At one point
the troublingly attractive woman across the table was talking
about the talk we heard on coexisting cultures and suddenly
I felt potentially witty and I said loudly, "Who would have thought
that interpenetration could be so boring?" and I grinned at her
and I felt quite rogueish for a quarter of a second
but she just blinked as if I'd thrown a peanut that hit her eyelid
and then she kind of tilted away from me so she could finish her observation
about the ironies of postcolonialism. My face then felt
like a huge decaying pumpkin. Then for a while
I pushed a piece of salmon around on my plate, seeing it as
a postcolonial island, and I imagined the natives muttering
"Things were better under the emperor, at least you knew who you were."

Then after coffee I drifted along to the party upstairs and I thought
there must be a way to have fun. What is it?
So I ate three brownies. While nibbling the brownies
I tried to maintain the I'm-so-interested look. I'm sure I chatted
with a dozen people. Several times I started a sentence with
"It's fascinating the way" or "It's so fascinating the way"
but at the moment I can't remember what I was saying was
so fascinating. It was something about memories of high school
at one point. At the party there were at least four women
who seemed very attractive and I just wanted one of them
to give me some big eye contact, that's all,
the kind of gleaming twinkling eye contact that says
"I am intensely aware of your masculine appeal"
but this did not happen, and I began to feel resentful,
I resented the feeling that the focus of the evening,
the focus of existence, was always over there or over there
and never like here where I was standing.

So yeah. It was like that. At some point pretty late
people were telling jokes and I started telling several people
the old long joke whose punch line is,
"Let your pages do the walking through the Yellow Fingers"
but somehow it took forever and only one person really heard the punch line
and he just patted my shoulder and said something like
"Time to get this old steed back to the stable."
Then we both laughed and actually I was happy then
for a second. After that I sat on the sofa
drinking something that looked like wine
and I felt I was such a blur it was like I was the sofa's third cushion.
And then apparently my shoes carried me all the way to this room
where it's just me and the Scotch and the empty bed.
Okay, so not that great of an evening, but no tragedy either;
but I'd just like to feel how it feels to be
in focus at the focus, to feel "Hey, you want the party?
Seek no more! The party's right here."

"Regret" by Stephanie Anderson

2009-05-26T12:30:00.000-04:00

You lay your quick horses in my lap;
I think of how I would rather sleep,
but I say nothing aloud:

I don't believe in being pretty anymore,
or know why I watch you read in bed.
We are simple:

There is nothing between us,
we are merely skin—
little-trained of more.

I shift my head,
see the compliments of the lamp's shine
strong against the light and dark of your face—

I want to lay against your back,
and urge your horses to gallop.
Instead, I give you my back.

We close our books and eyes—
I want to be beautiful,
but I say nothing aloud.

"My Waiting Brain" by Bruce Weigl

2009-05-15T03:32:00.002-04:00

There are certain pathways he must follow when he goes into my brain,
or else something catastrophic might happen he said. He said
any kind of bleeding in the brain is not good and should be avoided.
I think he was talking to himself. Meantime, my waiting brain said
Love yourself; love your pain and your illnesses
waiting down the road for you like old friends in the shade. Better
spend some time tonight looking at the stars.

Empty again like the dead hawk's heart is empty of blood on the
highway
where it must have slammed into the truck's windshield at say
sixty-five miles an hour,
is how my brain says the world looks today,
although it may be this unseasonably warm winter of green grass,
and geese
who don't know which way to hoot
that has my head spinning;
the way a too warm December evening
can hold still its last moment of light, right before your eyes.

iii

Help, my waiting brain says, and then, Fuck you.
He woke me up at four a.m.
with his pal, Mr. Spinning Room,
in our private field of opiates,
so all I could do was lay there and listen to rain murmer in the night,
the sound like someone who is lost,
talking to herself in darkness.

Good morning highly polished chrome nightmare tool.
You look fine this morning, like a silver snake
bristling alive in every scale,
longing to be inserted into my waiting brain
to wind down the tunnels of me, once and for all.

We were celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ the Savior,
by stuffing our bodies with food and wine,
so like the Romans,
we fell into a stupor afterward,
a semicomatose state, especially the men.
Everyone was otherwise preoccupied,
and though I was surrounded
by the snoozing, snoring bodies of my people,
it was as if I were alone,
just my waiting brain and me. Night came
with its enormous rotation of stars,
so something seemed possible, even if it wasn't hope,
even if the thing we spend our lives moving toward
is unknowable, until it's too late to turn back.

In the dark I wanted peace,
my waiting brain told me,
as if that's too much to ask,
as if sacrifice is too much to ask,
given everything I've done for you
my brain explained, and how could I argue.

vii

In the end, my waiting brain said
Dismantle me but don't undress,
the blue spruce watch us through the blowing snow;
forgive my forgetfulness,
but I don't remember my name.

"A Night in Martirios" by D. Nurkse

2009-05-15T03:29:00.002-04:00

Sometimes when the story is wildly implausible
the author will have one character say
I have a hard time believing this
and the other explains:
it's the axle working loose,
the fog in the orchards,
controlled fires in the canebrake.

Now we are resting at twilight
on a frayed floral quilt
and the dimity curtains open
in the wind from Orizaba.

Now the author has the characters undress
and sleep together, they are naked
as the space between words,
the lamp is unlit, the bed unmade,
the silence is absolute,
occasionally a faint hiss of rain
or the scritch as the author
erases his own name.

"Evora" by D. Nurkse

2009-05-15T03:00:00.001-04:00

Maybe we may talk our way out of death
given that the I disappears so disingenuously
whenever you look for it, so does the poem,
leaving only the track of a snail
in the stucco alcove where we catnapped
in Evora, in late summer, scrunched
in the osier bed, before you knew me,
before I didn't know you, when the future ended,
cracked sun in the mirror, when the finches
instructed us in thin scattered voices
to stand our ground against delight.

"Inter-library love" by Tim Love

2009-02-26T15:41:00.003-05:00

ISBN 0226306690 request
ISBN 075510904X request
ISBN 075510904X dispatched
ISBN 0571137326 request
ISBN 0571137326 dispatched
ISBN 042514724X request
ISBN 042514724X dispatched
ISBN 0263108201 'Jilted' request
ISBN 0708983758 'The Unforgiven' request
ISBN 0263108201 dispatched
ISBN 0708983758 dispatched
ISBN 0880016647 request
My shelves are overflowing with you
ISBN 0226306690 dispatched
Let's share archives
ISBN 0226306690 overdue
Let's exchange backups
ISBN 0226306690 overdue
Let's merge catalogs
Fine

devil's details, ghosts in the slot machine, etc

2008-11-03T04:17:00.002-05:00

Soooo, having avoided studying for my exam in favor of ballot research overkill, I've totally reversed my position on Maryland Question 2 (less caps-locked version here), the so-dubbed slots referendum. I've since been called a traitor by some drunk guy who barely knew my name, so I feel the need to explain myself!/I can't sleep, indulgence ftw.

(Though, on a more serious note, I'm troubled by how many people seem to have forgotten that the presidential decision is not the only item on the ballot. Part of me is kind of pleased the dude was invested enough to say anything at all.)

I am in no way opposed to legalized gambling per se. It's not the wisest pastime, and anyone with a cursory understanding of statistics might just as soon toss coins into a wishing well. However, it is not a legitimate function of state (or any) government to prohibit gaming or gambling on these grounds. What people do with their time and money, no matter how stupid, is their own business, provided they do not actively infringe upon the rights of anyone else while they're at it.

Upon closer examination of this particular proposal, though, I am no longer enthused, namely because:
(1) The purpose of the state constitution is to set forth basic framework, with details left up to local jurisdictions or enacted as regular legislation (for the record: the slots ban in the 1960s was the latter). This hardly qualifies as a fundamental aspect of governance, and the proposal as written contains too much minutia to warrant constitutional amendment status.
(2) The specifics spelled out in the referendum, once ensconced in the constitution, would be incredibly difficult to change. Any alterations would also need to be adopted as constitutional amendments and subjected to another referendum to state voters.
So, if we wanted to allow slots in Cecil County within 2.5 miles of Interstate 95 instead of just within 2 miles of Interstate 95, we would have to do this all over again. This is a needlessly laborious way to correct zoning issues, a waste of time and tax money, and a perversion of the amendment process.
(3) The proposal inappropriately encroaches on the authority of local governments by specifying which parts of Maryland can and cannot have slots. It would be far more prudent to enact legislation lifting the ban on slots statewide, and to leave specific decisions such as where and how many up to individual communities. Among other things, this amendment is an underhanded way of castrating county legislatures.
(4) It only legalizes slots in five specific locations around the state. Slots in other areas would still be illegal. As such, this referendum is as anti-slots as it is pro-slots, as it would effectively constitutionalize the slot ban for all but these locations.
(5) While money would go to education, the initiative does not say that this is ADDITIONAL money for education. Right now, funding for public education comes out of the State’s General Fund. If the budget crunch continues, it is not unreasonable to assume that slots money will simply supplant General Fund money, resulting in no NEW money for schools.
(6) Why the hell is 7% of the revenue being allocated to "horse racing purses"?

Basically, I'm of the mind that the vast majority of this proposal has no business being a constitutional amendment (and that horse racing has no business getting 7% of the spoils), so I'm voting no.

In conclusion, this excerpt from some online personality test would be much more suitable:
"Which is a better nickname for a male porn star?

Black Jack

The Slot Machine"

Appetite

2008-09-16T22:09:00.013-04:00

At the restaurant, we sit hungrily
like birds in the wilderness waiting
for a table.
Mouths watering, surrounded
by cigarette smoke and laughing soldiers,
I bury my head in my hands to drown out
my empty stomach.
I am riding on fumes.

Smith, party of 4, your table is ready.
Smith, party of 4, your table is ready.
Smith, party of 4, we sincerely hope you're not
dead in a ditch somewhere,
but there are other mouths to be fed.

After the summons,
we're whisked away,
menued, watered,
some bread exchanged for rolls.
The soup of the day
is tomato stem cell,
organic and grown locally.

My fuel light fades.

The regular sits in his own company at the table
across the universe.
For 1/3 of a second,
he is 2/3 face,
1/6 full glass,
1/6 empty glass,
body unseen but assumed
behind an ionic column.

Then he empties his cup,
downing its contents in gulps and starts,
like light quanta
except with dark
rum instead of photons.

I forget to pretend
to watch the television in the corner.
I chew with my mouth
open.
He finds me out.
It's impolite to stare.
It's a tragedy to be ignored.

His eyes narrow, and then, gruffly,
he informs me that he drinks
to suppress his appetite.

He looks too thin to
donate blood.
You don't look like you've got a weight problem,
I say.

He smiles the weedy smile.
"I'm not talking about food, sweetheart."

Sweep me up.

2008-08-02T02:09:00.010-04:00

Suicide is the best kind of death, the only good kind. Rather than the involuntary termination of a life dearly beloved or at least passively condoned, suicide turns death into a voluntary activity, a cure for various ills, including dishonor and suffering. As someone who has unsuccessfully given it a shot, however, I can’t help but note a certain irony in that those who love life so dearly die against their will every day, whereas I can’t quite manage it even as I long for it with all of my being.

However, I will, WILL be successful this time. First of all, I have come ever more to understand that I am utterly mediocre and have nothing novel enough to offer the world, or at least nothing brilliant to justify my continued existence. I will not be happy, as I seem to be incapable of being happy, and I will not be satisfied, because my ambition by far outstrips my ability. As such, to continue living is to continue suffering and nothing else. Moreover, to continue living is to continue wasting valuable resources on a person (me) who would be better off dead.

I had considered giving it another shot, but this is the last straw. For a brief bit this summer, I entertained the notion that I had onstage performing talent that might amount to something my academic talents never would. However, after I was cast and as time wore on, I came to realize that this was untrue, and furthermore that the new Hayley, the Hayley that emerged as she came of age, would be damned in theatre just as she was in all other parts of life. Eventually this came to a head for every possible reason, but the big overarching one was that I just wasn’t worth keeping around. I am still not worth keeping around, but rather than waiting around for Godot to cosmically fire me, I am simply going to do myself and everyone else a favor and take my own life.

When a person’s bad traits by far eclipse her good ones, and when she rarely if ever experiences positive emotions but frequently is overcome by negative ones, what point is there to continued existence? Duty aside, I am contributing to overpopulation and resource scarcity by remaining alive and offering nothing back, whether it be in the form of art or academia or even personal relationships. Ryan, my boyfriend, made a dire mistake in choosing me, a fact that I believe he has slowly realized as time has worn on, and which he will surely and thankfully realize after I am gone. I am grateful for him, but I am also sad that I kept him from finding someone better all these years, and for all of the times that I made him unhappy. I hope at least that I was a decent lay.

I wish I could cite a ‘duty to die’ as my reason for killing myself, but in truth, it is a duty to myself as much as if not moreso than a duty to others, and thus far less noble than the word duty would normally imply. It does a service to others, certainly—to my boyfriend, who deserves someone prettier and more local, to my parents, who have enough on their plate with one problematic child, and to my peers, who will have more air to breathe. More importantly, however, I will finally be free of the pain and anxiety that has plagued my existence in varying amounts for over a year now. I have had enough of wondering whether the next day will be bearable or downright horrible. Theatre no longer brings me success or happiness, I am unable to focus on anything consistently enough to properly achieve good things—I only attain them by accident, through sheer luck, and at that point they hardly qualify as achievements. Other things that would at first glance appear to be to my credit reflect me as I was years ago before this condition rather than me as I am now, and in that sense these things don’t really feel like achievements, or at least don’t testify to my worth as a human being. For instance, I guarantee that were he to meet me now for the first time, Ryan would want nothing to do with me, as every interesting thing about me and every intelligent thought in my head that attracted him in the first place has been replaced by constant, anxiety-ridden static upstairs.

I am continually frustrated with my inability to function competently on a regular basis, and my apparently increasing capacity for utter, outright stupidity. I just want to curl up into a hole and die, and I am going to ensure that I do just that. I have led a very unsuccessful period for a while now, but this time, at this, I will be successful. I will kill myself. It will not be sexy, nor will it be heroic, but it will be the smartest move I ever made.

I don’t care what happens to my stuff or my body. I don’t care about anything, I think, and that’s the problem.

I do not enjoy being alive. I am happiest when asleep. I hate awakening. I hate every day of my life, and I hate constantly dreading the next moment. I hate being ugly, I hate being stupid, I hate being careless, I hate being oblivious, and I hate being so uncaring and unmotivated despite ample desires and ambition. I hate the word hate for being such a strong word, and I hate myself for being too much of a pansy to use it with conviction. I hate everything, so I’m going to make everything going away.

If there is a God, I wish he’d make it all easier. But apparently prayers fall on deaf ears. I always knew this deep down, but some mornings made me want to believe so badly that I came within a unit of doing so. Maybe this time I’ll be lucky.

I used to put off suicide because I felt like I had to write a note before I left, and I knew I'd never be satisfied with my writing because my writing is generally quite lame. Not wanting to leave a less-than-perfect legacy, I could never bring myself to even try to write it, though I managed to attempt the deed itself without bothering with a note a couple of times. However, I have decided to write something here less out of self-interest than as courtesy to those wondering what happened, wondering why I did what I did, or, god forbid, wondering if someone else did it to me.

This is it, folks. I love you guys, especially some of you. This is not your fault; if anything you've convinced me to give myself many more chances than I deserved.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

ask which books were His favorites

2008-05-13T22:11:00.001-04:00

OMG OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111!!!111!!11!11!!1LIM (X-->0) (SINX X/X)

2008-04-16T03:32:00.004-04:00

HE IS THE BESTEST THING EVER WE MUST SUPPORT HIM HOPE CHANGE CHANGE HOPE HOEP CHAENG ROFOLZZ

...but seriously, I like the guy. He's my first pick for the oval office right now.

That said, I'd like him better if he planned to fund his education intiative by eliminating the costly yet retarded War On Drugs rather than by reducing NASA's budget. "Let's inspire kids to excell in math and science by making sure they can only become astronauts if they move to China." Good one, Hope Man.

Buzzwords aside, it'd be a real shame if kids had to choose between uncensored internet access and space dreams. That's not what America is supposed to be about.

Note: NASA only accounts for a tiny portion of the federal budget anyway.

I am going to get this tattoo.

2008-01-28T20:47:00.000-05:00

I have finally decided to get a tattoo like the one described in J.D. Heskin's short poem, "Down Under":

It was only then I made out the tiny words
tattooed above the hairline of her vagina.

And what will you say of this?

Much to my credit, I've never said anything,
but I admit to having thought about it a lot.

However, in the name of mystery (?), I might put mine below the hairline, so that it will only be visible when I'm naked and not when I'm wearing certain swimsuits. I'm still not entirely settled on this part, though.

Ugh.

2007-10-08T22:07:00.000-04:00

This is utterly despicable.

If the Abu Ghraib travesty was really an isolated and officially condemned event, then why the need to pervert the Geneva Convention and file away certain individuals as "illegal enemy combatants"? Why would it be necessary to invoke a dubious distinction that voids Convention-granted human rights for a certain class of people if one had no intention of allowing those people's rights to be violated?

Even if one were to throw out the testimonies of individuals who claim to have been victims of the United States' outsourced torture program, as well as the testimonies of their families and friends and the testimonies of former government officials, it simply does not make sense for the Bush administration to go to such lengths to create loopholes in both international and domestic policy without any intention of exploiting them. Between this, the testimonies, and additional trails of physical evidence such a flight logs that match the accounts of detainees, the 'benefit of the doubt' I'd afforded my country has pretty much been worn away.

As if the torture, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the bastardization of international law weren't enough, the United States also does not seem to think it necessary to observe the legal jurisdiction of other countries. What happened in Bosnia is a political kidnapping. Along similarly arrogant foreign police lines, the administration's response to the Canadian inquiry was both condescending and unacceptable.

It is ironic that an administration which frequently tosses around phrases such as "the culture of life" should have such a dramatic lack of respect for human dignity. Moreover, their arrogant and secretive 'tough guy' approach is liable to do more harm than good for the nation's security (which is the supposed rationalization for all of this crap). Newsflash!: Torture doesn't actually produce reliable confessions, dipshits. As if the inherent ethical problems and the country's reputation weren't enough, torture has been shown time and time again to be a comparatively ineffectual intelligence gathering strategy.

The Bush administration's means of gathering intelligence and apprehending suspected terrorists bear an uncanny resemblance to those of Barty Crouch in the Harry Potter series, so mad with power that he was willing to stoop as low as or lower than his enemy in order to accomplish some kind of security---even when his rough tactics undermined his goal by punishing the wrong people, and in turn putting innocents behind bars. I realize it's a nerdy analogy, but it struck me enough that I thought it worth mentioning nevertheless.

Part of what made American so endearing internationally once upon a time was our courtesy toward and respect for both our own citizens and people from other countries. We accorded both friends and enemies the status of 'human being', instead of unaccountably demoting some of them to 'illegal enemy combatant'.

Given the current state of affairs, I'm not sure how "proud to be an American" I am. For now, I honestly cannot wait for this administration to leave office. I have had enough.

GO AWAY

2007-04-07T21:59:00.000-04:00

Update schmupdate?

My 'blog' sucks0rz.

Billboard Top 100 Hits (1987 through 2003) - free mp3 downloads!

2007-03-04T23:24:00.000-05:00

"Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis. Its most famous chart, the "Billboard Hot 100", ranks the top 100 songs regardless of genre and is frequently used as the standard measure for ranking songs in the United States. The "Billboard 200" survey is the corresponding chart for album sales." ~wikipedia.org

1987 / 1988 / 1989 / 1990 / 1991 / 1992 / 1993 / 1994 / 1995 / 1996 / 1997 / 1998 / 1999 / 2000 / 2001 / 2002 / 2003

"Patenting Life" by Michael Crichton

2007-02-22T02:30:00.000-05:00

"One-fifth of the genes in your body are privately owned, and the results have been disastrous."

Genetic projects are costly enough without charging scientists for working with material that is found naturally in the human body. Gene patents may help offset the cost of their holders' research, but only to the detriment of future research by anyone else in the field.

The intent of patent law is to encourage innovation. Gene patenting is not doing this. Instead, critical work is either rendered financially unfeasible, or the exorbitant licensing fees are passed on to the patients.

Gene patents also have the ethically dubious effect of granting their holders ownership of (part of) other people’s bodies. Maybe it’s just me, but the prospect of being someone else’s private property, in whole or in part, just doesn’t sit well.

FYI: Michael Crichton is the author of Jurassic Park, among other things.

Popper and Experimenter’s Regress

2006-12-14T04:57:00.000-05:00

(I'm posting this here in case my hard drive goes belly-up again. Everyone check for brainfarts!)

Karl Popper’s landmark take on science is both striking and inspiring, and many scientists consider its development an act of heroism. The influence of his theories is such that they have been invoked in scientific debate in order to evaluate one position or another, a rare feat for a philosopher in any field (Godfrey-Smith 57). Given his impact and his unique and arresting take on the matter, Popper’s views make for a pertinent and illuminating point of reference when dealing with other works on the subject, particularly those which are more sociological in their approach.

Popper’s philosophy of science is more or less two-fold. His first concern was with what he called the “problem of demarcation”, or the problem of distinguishing science from non-science. His solution to this problem lay in falsification: in order for a theory to be scientific, the hypothesis must be potentially refutable given certain possible observations. In other words, theories must take “risks” in order to be scientific. These risks usually amount to generalizations that prohibit the occurrence of certain kinds of events, so that if said events are observed, the theory is refuted (Popper 41). Falsificationism also dictates the objective of scientific testing: “Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it (Popper 42)”.

In keeping with his solution to the demarcation problem, Popper described scientific change as the repetition of two simple stages, conjecture followed by attempted refutation. In the first stage, a scientist would endeavor to explain some aspect of the world by means of a falsifiable hypothesis. In the second stage, the hypothesis would be subjected to critical testing—or testing that aimed to show that the hypothesis was false—and would then be either refuted or kept on the books for more testing in future.

Popper’s other topic of interest was the inconclusive nature of science’s inductive methodology. He stressed repeatedly that science could not confirm a theory, regardless of how many times that theory agreed with observation (Popper 44). The scientific method could only refute a hypothesis; it could never show it to be true. Theories that withstood repeated attempts at falsification are “corroborated”, but corroboration only means resistance to falsification on multiple occasions. It does not imply confirmation.

Popper’s theories have often come under fire both directly and indirectly from those who investigate science primarily from a historical or sociological perspective. Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch offer such an account of science in the fifth chapter of The Golem: What You Should Know About Science. In this chapter, they reflect on the controversy that occurred in the early1970s over the detection of gravitational radiation, and they use it to illuminate a phenomenon that they call “experimenter’s regress”, or the social process of theory acceptance on the ‘research frontier’, a process which generally produces a verdict that is used to measure how well experiments have been run.

Beginning in 1969, Professor Joseph Weber of the University of Maryland claimed to have found evidence for gravitational radiation, the likes of which had been predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, though not to the extent that Weber observed. Distinguishing between oscillations produced by gravitational radiation and those produced by the random vibrations within the device used to measure said radiation (vibrations which are bound to occur at any temperature above absolute zero), however, proved a trying and ambiguous task. Many scientists repeated the experiment, but the controversy came to an end more because of the rhetorical skill of one scientist—Richard Garwin—than because of any observational evidence to contradict Weber’s claims. Collins and Pinch quote one scientist as saying:

…As far as the scientific community in general is concerned, it’s probably Garwin’s publication that generally clinched the attitude. But in fact the experiment they did was trivial—it was a tiny thing… But the thing was, the way the wrote it up… Everybody else was awfully tentative about it, it was all a bit hesitant. And then Garwin comes along with this toy. But it’s the way he writes it up you see. (Collins and Pinch 104)

Another states that, “Garwin talked louder than anyone and he did a very nice job of analyzing his data… they sort of convinced everybody (Collins and Pinch 105).” It is apparent that the acceptance of a theory is by and large a social process, then. Note that this is in direct contrast with Popper, who asserts that, “…in science, only observation and experiment may decide upon the acceptance or rejection of scientific statements, including laws and theories (Popper 45).”

However, while the resolution of experimenter’s regress in the face of ‘novel phenomena’ differs from Popper’s account of science, a more marked difference lies in the way ‘science’ is conducted following the resolution. In the aftermath of experimenter’s regress, the social consensus becomes “the correct outcome”, and its production or lack thereof is used to determine how well experiments have been done:

The student can have a good idea whether or not her or she has done an experiment competently by referring to the outcome. If the outcome is in the right range, then the experiment has been done about right, but if the outcome is in the wrong range, then something has gone wrong. In real time, the question for difficult science, such as the gravity wave case and the others described in this book, is, ‘What is the correct outcome?’. Clearly, knowledge of the correct outcome cannot provide the answer. Is the correct outcome the non-detection of gravity waves? Since the existence of gravity waves in the very point at issue, it is impossible to know this at the outset (Collins and Pinch 98).

In Collins’ and Pinch’s characterization of science, observation and experiment do not always determine whether or not a theory is correct. Instead, the scientific community reaches a consensus as to the correctness of a theory, and the production of the outcome that has been agreed upon becomes a way to measure how well an experiment has been done. Experiments, after this point, are no longer used to test theories; theories are instead used to test experiments. This is, admittedly, a rather dangerous practice, especially if current methods of experimentation are known to be more exact than those that were used when consensus was forged. Moreover, this approach contrasts drastically with Popper’s view of science:

Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory (Popper 42).

What Popper’s view of science fails to account for, then, is the fallibility of the experiments themselves. Most anyone who has taken a laboratory course knows that there are many things that can go wrong during an experiment, whether it be due to equipment malfunction or human carelessness.

Were one to constantly subject both outcomes and experiments to the kind of rigorous scrutiny that Popper would have applauded, scientific progress would likely grind to a halt. Not only would outcomes provide no definite proof for hypotheses, but it would also be impossible to conclusively falsify a theory. This too, though, would contrast with Popper’s account of science:

Only the falsity of a theory can be inferred from empirical evidence, and this inference is a purely deductive one (Popper 46).

One could argue that Popper concerns himself primarily with “the problem of demarcation”, and that the evaluation of experimental procedure in another issue in and of itself, one that Popper simply left unaddressed. However, Popper does articulate clearly that experimentation is not scientific unless it genuinely attempts to falsify a hypothesis; and this is plainly not the case in the most practical classes in schools worldwide.

Popper emphasizes that science’s inductive method cannot confirm or establish theories; that at best, theories can be corroborated, or resist falsification. And while most scientists would agree wholeheartedly with this, they for practical purposes tend to treat corroborated theories as if they have been proven, using them as benchmarks to test other theories, and, perhaps more perversely, to test experiments themselves. This practice is not only unscientific according to Popper; it is fundamental inversion of what Popper advocates.

Science clearly requires a set of criteria to evaluate the quality of both theories and experiments. However, if one is to believe Collins and Pinch, the way that scientists currently tend to go about conducting these evaluations is decidedly unscientific in nature. Experimenter’s regress is resolved by a combination of rhetorical mudslinging and other social factors, and the outcome is then used as criteria for experimental quality. If this process is science, it is not Popper’s science.

Works Cited

Collins, Harry and Pinch, Trevor. The Golem: What You Should Know About Science. London: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Popper, Karl. “Science: Conjectures and Refutations”. Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science. Ed. E.D. Klemke, Robert Hollinger, David Wyss Rudge. New York: Prometheus Books, 1998.

Curiouser and curiouser.

2006-11-21T02:45:00.000-05:00

Harry Potter's Magic Wang

2006-10-11T23:48:00.001-04:00

Better than Madlibs: Systematically replace the word "wand" with the word "wang" in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It's amazing what kind of difference one letter can make:

"Why aren't you supposed to do magic?" asked Harry.
"Oh, well -- I was at Hogwarts meself but I -- er -- got expelled, ter tell yeh the truth. In me third year. They snapped me wang in half an' everything."

"Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Harry Potter." It wasn't a question. "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wang. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wang for charm work."

"Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wang. Eleven inches. "

Harry took the wang. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wang above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls.

"Oh, move over," Hermione snarled. She grabbed Harry's wang, tapped the lock, and whispered, "Alohomora!"

The troll couldn't feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry's wang had still been in his hand when he'd jumped - it had gone straight up one of the troll's nostrils.

"He ran onto the field as you fell, waved his wang, and you sort of slowed down before you hit the ground. Then he whirled his wang at the dementors. Shot silver stuff at them."

"Yes," Harry said, gripping his wang very tightly, and moving into the middle of the deserted classroom. He tried to keep his mind on flying, but something else kept intruding. Any second now, he might hear his mother again... but he shouldn't think that, or he would hear her again, and he didn't want to... or did he?

Something silver-white, something enormous, erupted from the end of his wang.

Then, with a sigh, he raised his wang and prodded the silvery substance with its tip.

"Get - off - me!" Harry gasped. For a few seconds they struggled, Harry pulling at his uncles sausage-like fingers with his left hand, his right maintaining a firm grip on his raised wang.

Crediting J.K. Rowling and some stranger from IRC.

Here's looking at you, Bob.

2006-10-03T22:41:00.000-04:00

Which OS are You?

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls.

2006-08-30T01:27:00.001-04:00

Response to Gerry Garibaldi's How the Schools Shortchange Boys:

Ironic or not (and if it is meant to be ironic, it doesn't do a very good job of it), acknowledging your generalizations would make this a far more compelling read. Yes, there may be trends across genders, but to constantly make "Boys do this, while girls do this"-esque statements without any qualifiers and/or an obviously ironic tone smacks of close-mindedness.

To wit, females (surprise!) can have learning disabilities. I would disregard your statement asserting otherwise as a deliberate exaggeration, except that such would have been out of place given the rest of your article. Either way, it is a ridiculous declaration to make.

Regardless of who is being affected, the pertinence of the lesson should always be addressed. If there is no reason for the students to be learning something, it shouldn't be taught; and if a teacher cannot explain to the students the rationale behind the curriculum (assuming there is a rationale), the teacher is at fault, not the student. That said, there are more respectful ways to ask the question, so the student in your example still should have been reprimanded, though perhaps to a lesser degree.

Additionally, a diverse array of positive role models is hardly a bad thing. Literature should of course be chosen primarily based on the merit and relevance of the text, but there are female writers who are on par with Mark Twain, so perhaps that school system just had particularly bad taste, and the institutionalized political correctness simply allowed said bad taste to infiltrate the book list.

Political correctness gone to far is hazardous, yes, but so are policies that consider people only as members of a group and not as individuals. Not all women are obedient, organized sheep, and not all men are skeptic geniuses shortchanged by a politically correct bureaucracy. Generalizations should be clearly identified and justified when not made in jest. Many of the posits in this article appear to have an anecdotal basis, but what has been true in your experience (and maybe even the experiences of others you know) is not sufficient grounds for all-encompassing conclusions.

On a less scolding and in turn more conciliatory note, heterogeneous grouping is a flawed and arguably UNethical policy. By training teachers to teach to different skill levels simultaneously, Big Brother is obviously acknowledging that disparities in capacity exist, so touting the policy as a hallmark of equality is pretty dishonest. Moreover, teaching to the dumbest kid in the class will bore those who have already mastered the material, and disengage them from education--how is this ethical? It will also make those who are still mastering the material feel stupid when their classmates are obviously outclassing them--how is self-esteem trashing ethical?

The most ethical thing to do is to give everyone the opportunity to excel, improve, and utilize their abilities to their fullest potential. Heterogeneous grouping is not the best way to do that, and as such is not the most ethical policy. That said, the grouping needs to be flexible and fair, and not based on generalizations regarding gender. Garibaldi's endorsements sound suspiciously similar to the racial segregation of years past, using anecdotes and pseudoscience to draw vast conclusions about a particular group and elevating group membership status above all educational variables. This is a dumb, unfair thing to do.

Theoretically, to be continued.

2006-08-01T03:47:00.000-04:00

We’d bought an electric blanket.

Strangely, despite the advertisements, despite the glistening packaging that promised new-and-improved comfort, the blanket felt like a straightjacket.

It had been our last day together. For miles, television sets were up in arms over the weather. No longer mere fodder for small talk, the chill had become the subject of heated discussion across the continent. Doomsayers touted it as a modern ice age; optimists and venture capitalists chuckled at all of the fuss, though the latter sometimes invested just in case, buying stock in heating companies, hot chocolate markets, and quilt-making firms. All around me, parents cuddled children, lovers held embraces past their due out of necessity rather than affection. I buried my face deeper into my scarf and exhaled.

Once a laptop, now a SEX MACHINE.

2006-07-30T01:45:00.000-04:00

Behold, the most orgasmic application ever.

...this thing seriously had me in stitches (on and off, I'm not *completely* insane) for over an hour.

For those of you (jerks) who couldn't be bothered to click the link: PowerOrgasm causes my laptop computer to have an orgasm---performed by Meg Ryan in an excerpt from When Harry Met Sally---whenever the power cord is plugged in.

YOU GOTTA GO

2006-07-22T22:32:00.000-04:00

AUGUST 4TH THROUGH 6TH
ACT TWO PERFORMING ARTS
A STEADY STREAM OF FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

Shallow schmallow, marshmallows don't scream sex.

2006-07-11T01:48:00.000-04:00

The difference between friendship and a romantic entanglement is first and foremost sexual attraction, and sexual attraction is in large part related to physical appearance. It is not shallow to take a potential mate's appearance into consideration, it is honest and intrinsic to the sexual chemistry that distinguishes lovers from platonic pals.

Granted, obesity may be more of a genetic bane for some people than it is for others. And while the heavyweight who makes a considerable effort to shed the extra pounds and to live a healthy lifestyle despite a demonstrated genetic disadvantage should be cut more slack, this does not make his/her fat rolls attractive.

At present it is nigh impossible to conclusively pinpoint which factors most determine an individual's weight or abundance thereof. Until we can make such conclusions with vigour, the most productive attitude for most people is one which places the problem within their control and thus the solution within their grasp. Moreover, there is certainly a sizeable body of evidence to suggest that lifestyle choices really are the biggest and most heavy-handed (pardoning the pun) factor in most obsesity cases.

I try not to pass judgement on the work ethics of fat people, because there ARE exceptions to that rule, but no amount of benefit-of-the-doubt is going to make me find Jabba the Hutt sexy.

SUMMER GOALS

2006-06-04T14:11:00.000-04:00

1. Put together and run an SAT prep course for fun and profit (but mostly for profit).
2. Actively read every book that I own, though focusing in particular on physics and science books.
3. Spend less time in bed. Be awake during the day. Rise early.
4. Do a science fair esque project just for my own satisfaction.
5. Perform in a summer show.
6. Give myself and other people rides to places.
7. Continue to work steadily and stay focused at APL.
8. Go see live music, theatre, and musical theatre.
9. Stay in love.
10. Never, ever get bored. I have an imagination. I will use it.
11. Do what is necessary to remain comfortable with how I look in a two-piece swimsuit.
12. Choose learning and thinking over complacency no matter how tired I am. I can be lazy after I am dead, and not until then.
13. Take up tennis.
14. Eat healthfully.
15. Be rational and think critically at all times.
16. Stay flexible.

Response to arguments in favor of animal-rape legislation.

2006-06-03T13:01:00.000-04:00

Regardless of the pragmatic rationale behind either act, it is ridiculous for us to ban human-nonhuman sexual activity because it "takes away the animal's dignity and right to consent" when we routinely neuter and slaughter animals for our own purposes, without their consent. If we are going to expand human ethics so that they govern our interactions with other species, we must be consistent about it.

"But it is neccessary to kill and neuter animals for food and to prevent unwanted offspring!"

Whether or not it is 'necessary' (and, in this case, our definition of necessary is completely humanicentric, and thus very selfish indeed--the offspring is unwanted by humans, not necessarily by the animals denied parenthood) is utterly irrelevant to whether or not it is wrong. If animals are treated like humans under the law (with rights to dignity and whatnot), then surely it is as wrong to kill and neuter them as it is to 'rape' them.

Obviously, however, animals are NOT humans and are not treated like humans under the law. They do not have the right to life, and, hell, if we granted every living thing the right to life, we would be committing suicide via starvation. They also do not have the right to control their own reproductive futures: we routinely neuter them, whilst professional dog breeders selectively mate one dog with another in order to achieve a desired result in the offspring, without bothering so ascertain the degree of consent from either dog in question.

Petting a human who couldn't consent could be considered sexual harassment, but petting dogs is commonplace and generally acceptable. Likewise, a dog who humps your leg isn't liable for a lawsuit, but a human who did the same after you said no would be in, if you'll pardon the pun, the legal doghouse.

Rape is part of human ethics, but as these various examples show, human ethics cannot be and have not been transposed in their entirety to govern human behavior towards nonhuman animals and vice versa. Morally speaking, I don't see why we should make a special legal exception to protect the dignity of animals in case of sexual advances from humans when we don't bother to similarly protect their rights in cases of forced neutering, forced mating with other animals, and downright slaughtering for meat, fur, and god knows what else.

Or, the brain tumor that made it impossible for me to worry OR love the bomb.

2006-06-02T16:57:00.000-04:00

Just over twenty years ago, nuclear disaster blew the roof off of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, and Chernobyl and other Soviet towns are still bearing the brunt of the fallout.

Since then, photographer Robert Knoth and reporter Antoinette De Jong traveled through the Ukraine, Urals, Kazakhstan, and Siberia to capture, through searing black-and-white portraits and associated captions, the way that nuclear radiation has forever altered the humans who face it. Among those photographed are a six-year-old child frozen in a three-year-old's body, a fourteen-year-old boy with sarcoma of the prostate gland, two sisters with brain tumors, and vast, sweeping skies that seem to belie the contamination below.

Though I largely disagree with the foreboding innuendo about nuclear energy at the end--France, for instance, doesn't seem to have encountered radiation runaway of this calibre--their web-tribute struck me nevertheless (warning: some of the graphics might disturb the squeamish).

Excerpt courtesy of J. Allyn Rosser:

2006-05-28T00:14:00.000-04:00

Loopy, sly, we leered at one another
(what we just assumed was one another)
and did the things we weren't supposed to do,
grinning as if seated in the back pew
of a church that worshipped fuss and bother,
a dour church where facial expression
of any kind had been prohibited,
and where the chinking, hefty plate we shifted
hand to hand held such a vast collection
of their coin, we pocketed a fraction
for when the fog would lift, if it lifted.

Injecting Politics Into Vaccination

2006-05-09T02:28:00.000-04:00

The recent development and looming implementation of a vaccine that protects against the leading cause of cervical cancer has social conservatives up in arms. The overarching question in question: Should vaccination against potentially lethal sexually-transmitted diseases be mandatory?

The vaccine offers protection from human papillomavirus (HPV), infection with which causes the dysregulation of the cell cycle that underlies cervical malignant transformation. Health advocates are eager to make the shots part of the standard roster of mandatory immunizations required of students before they attend school, but pro-absinence groups worry that routine administration of the vaccine to adolescents would subtly condone sexual promiscuity before marriage.

Mandatory vaccination in principle subverts individual choice in order to protect the population as a whole. Most of the other mandatory vaccines, however, protect the majority if and when the individuals who make up that majority would be unnable to sufficiently protect themselves otherwise. By contrast, except in cases of rape, such individuals have a substantial vestige of personaly control over whether or not they're at risk for STDs, because individuals only become vulnerable to such an infection if and when they consciously decide to engage in sexual activity.

As a general rule, governments should protect people from one another, not from themselves. Stupid people ought to have the right to go down in flames as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. My right to swing my first only ends when said fist comes into contact with your face; if said fist never makes contact, then it's none of the state's business if I want to swing my arm around spastically until I pull a muscle.

Regardless, though, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that vaccinating adolescents will affect their sexual choices. Concerns that widespread administration of anti-STD vaccines will promote sexual promiscuity are as ill-founded and ludcrious as stating that seatbelts encourage dangerous driving.

Perhaps vaccination should be optional but highly encouraged: Opting against could mean pricier medical insurance, or medical insurance plans that don't cover related treatment for those who refuse immunization and then contract HPV (avec all of its cancerous baggage).

J'espère qu'ils dansent.

2006-05-03T16:39:00.000-04:00

"Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost,
Who put these bodies between us?"

Movie Memories

2006-05-02T18:38:00.000-04:00

Or, "Behind The Scenes Of A Silent Film With Subtitles In Braille":

I. Contracting Blindness

I first fell in love with the director
when I noticed the fine print
on the contract that I had
to sign
in order to play my signature
role in the longest
movie-series ever made.
Fingerprints to pageprints,
eraser free, I swerved
clumsily into the alternative
version and
erupted in goosebumps, as if to mimic
the tiny, mysterious mountains
rising from the page.
Entranced, I searched
the peaks and valleys, awkwardly
index(finger)ing latent
letteresque pattern formations.
Lost in translation, I suddenly
felt blind.

This gig is my one
chance, my own
special movie.
The script is
a little bumpy, but the show
must go on
and on
and on and on and on and on and
on.

I rehearse the lines.
Sometimes, I rewrite them,
but I never,
never direct.

I fell in love with the director
one last time
when I saw my finale
on the eleven-oh-clock news.
After that, though, the sets
changed too frequently, from prison
cell to suburban shanty,
sex appeal gone
to seed.

II. Revisiting

Reruns are my secret
shame, my guilty indulgence;
the secret lover who
won’t make love except in
the flattering dim twilight.
But I can
fill in the blanks, and see
good ships lollygagging
onto the horizon,
late
but fashionable, carting sugar.

I pretend I won’t be watching
reruns then, but I know I
will on days when the director is
missing and I need
to meld my face and lips and hands
with another set of face and lips
and hands
though I can only have one face
at a time.

There is a disclaimer
before every episode
that has nothing
to do with sex, violence,
violent sex
or naughty words.

“Beware,
the watchers are
being watched.
If you have read
this sign, then you
have already been
recorded.”

I sometimes wonder if
the watcher-watching watchers
ever watch
reruns
and who watches them
and me
when they do.

I cannot prove
it, but by God(el)
the reruns and
the watchers make
me self-conscious.

III. Squaring Wheels With Each Reinvention

When I try
to memorize too
many pictures, the vivid
colors escape
me. But I can twist
wires and spare
parts from the black
market.

The copy is
my recreation trigger,
just a blueprint mneumonic,
just a reminder to remember.

It’s just a copy, right?
A security measure, a back-up
for the unoriginal original
which is inferior and deteriorating
anyway.

I hate those
replacements, clones with their
rechargeable batteries,
incubating in
the recesses of machines that were
once solar-powered.
Strangely,
we still haven’t learned
to copy stars
without turning ultraviolet
into neon.

There's a weasel chomping on my privates.

2006-04-30T00:23:00.000-04:00

Best. Away message. Ever.

All you need is LOVE.

2006-04-23T02:26:00.000-04:00

With LOVE, Cirque du Soleil celebrates the Beatles.

(OMG OMG OMGAWESOME)

Casper gets unfriendly because MOBA is retarded.

2006-04-18T22:39:00.000-04:00

Everything is art, but if Bad Art can exist, MOBA itself = Bad Art.

This picture, on the other hand, is hair-raisingly sexy:

THE HOLY GHOST AND CASPER > MOBA.
MOBA has no taste AT ALL.

Moral of the story: Differentiating good art from bad art is a sketchy undertaking as it is, and the Museum of Bad Art does a horribly botchy job at it. Thus, I hereby relegate all art judgements and matters of taste to myself. Case closed.

This man is a hero.

2006-04-08T16:12:00.000-04:00

Smarajit Jana's program hasn't just slashed HIV rates in India. It has also drastically reduced violent crime formerly suffered by sex workers, whom Jana empowered into organizing a labor union, the likes of which insists on certain collective occupation standards--such as condom use.

That said, I don't like the condescending last sentence of this article: If anything, Jana's point --"I sell services, so do you"--was that he didn't reach DOWN to help them.

Something to keep in mind, please.

2006-04-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

That women get the short end of the stick in some situations doesn't justify discrimination against men in others. Another double standard should not be created to "balance out" an existing one; rather, the existing double standards should either be justified or eradicated.

I'll give examples for the application of this adage when my headache goes away.

BEWARE

2006-04-07T04:48:00.000-04:00

IN SOVIET RUSSIA, THE PAPER INTEGRATES YOU

P.S. PROCRASTINATION SUCKS

The first law of thermodynamics -> recycling.

2006-04-06T21:52:00.000-04:00

"We will not swallow. We will chew, and then spit. We will play with our food, and create something new and interesting from it."

The Bubble Project: Collectively filling in the blanks.

2006-04-05T01:56:00.000-04:00

Blank, white thought bubbles are placed on posters and other outdoor advertisements so that any passerby with a writing utsensil can fill them in. Ji Lee began the project approximately three years ago in New York City, where he distributed thirty thousand of the bubble stickers onto area advertisements:

THE WORDS OF THE PROPHETS ARE WRITTEN ON THE SUBWAY WALLS

DISCLAIMER: This activity is illegal.
P.S. Art transcends law.

Old McDonald had a farm.

2006-04-04T17:42:00.000-04:00

WITH A HAPPY MEAL HERE
AND A BAG OF BARF THERE

E I E I O

Misuse the word, eat a turd.

2006-03-31T13:44:00.000-05:00

Peeve of the month: people who say that they have ADHD because they get distracted and energized every now and then; people who cry depression because they get flustered for two days and drown themselves in angsty music for the duration; people who refer to an enthusiastic bout of fandom as OCD.

Honestly, no wonder so many people are skeptical when it comes to psychological disorders: the terms are applied erroneously with such frequency in everyday settings that it's easy to imagine that they're applied just as ridiculously in the medical world. Combine this with sufficient doses of general misinformation and intrinsic prejudice, and it's easy to see why psychological disorders are so stigmatized.

Bahumbug.

2006-03-30T23:28:00.000-05:00

Call me dirty all you like; so long as my mental indulgences remain naught but inspiring personal baubles, they're no one's business but my own.

(IF YOU'RE TOO AFRAID TO PARSE ANYTHING, DON'T READ THE PROOF. STAY IN THE CAVE. JUST DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT HOW DARK IT IS IN THERE.)

On justifying logic:

2006-03-30T14:31:00.000-05:00

From a pragmatic standpoint, logic is simply the best system mankind has concocted so far to distinguish bad arguments from good arguments. Given its basis in evidence to make arguments, one could also make the case that logic has some empirical basis, though higher-level mathematics has divorced the system of logic from this supposed empirical basis to such a degree that the extent to which the basis is even a basis is probably minimal at best. That said, it is intriguing to note that concepts that originated as forays into mathematical abstraction, made in accordance with mathematical procedures but not intended to have any particular basis in or connection to physical reality, are becoming increasingly relevant to modern physics. Non-Euclidean geometry, for instance, was no more than a mathematical curiosity until Einstein applied it to physics with successful results--so while mathematics in general may "follow nature", it hasn't really followed it linearly in many recent cases.

Logic, even when it does have an obviously empirical basis, is an imposed structure by which one can make inferences in order to draw a conclusion, and to what extent the rules of logic are utterly arbitrary is difficult to determine.

But Monsieur Magritte, what if there is no spoon?

2006-03-29T14:41:00.000-05:00

The sound of Silence rides again!

2006-03-24T00:03:00.000-05:00

If and when I start a band, it will (a) be called The Martian Liberation Front, (b) retain the right to change its name without notice, and (c) cover John Cage's 4'33" and produce an appropriately fantastic music video to accompany it, perhaps utilizing black and white lego animation(?).

Interested parties please speak now, peace-holding is for weenies.

WHAT IS THIS

2006-03-19T01:43:00.000-05:00

IS IT TRYING TO TELL ME THAT IT IS GOING TO KILL MY HARDRIVE OR WHAT

HALP

untitled

2006-03-19T01:08:00.000-05:00

unwritten

Silly Jesus, tricks are for kids.

2006-03-17T22:58:00.000-05:00

THE TASTE YOU CAN SEE:

"The Lord Jesus Christ sees all things in the hearts and minds of men...

...but can he see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

WRONG!

Because it has swirls of cinnamon sugar in every bite!"

Der.

THE NEW EDUCATIONAL AWARENESS PROGRAM

2006-03-16T17:11:00.000-05:00

RED ALERT: Nice is different than good.

2006-03-15T18:06:00.000-05:00

Mother surely knew that
wolves would lurk along
that path.
She had to have known.
For the world is
filled with wolves,
and they especially
tend to cluster
in forests
where little girls
walk alone:
easy prey.
Yet she dressed me
in the color
of raw meat,
filled my basket
with warm-scented goodies
and sent me
specifically
into the woods
to grandmother's house,
unconsciously baiting,
conveniently on
red-alert:
all the better to find you with,
my dear.

Still, for years,
I believed
it was wolves
of whom I should
be wary.

I know things now.

I'm not talking about food, sweetheart.

2006-03-15T08:54:00.000-05:00

What follows is a fictionalized conversation that I might try to sneak in someone's novel someday:

GIRL IN BAR: I've noticed you. You seem to be here a lot.

HUGO: Oh?

GIRL IN BAR: You drink a lot.

HUGO: I do.

GIRL IN BAR: Do you think that you may be an alcoholic?

HUGO: No. I just use alcohol as an appetite suppressant.

GIRL IN BAR: That's not very healthy. And you don't look like you have a weight problem.

HUGO: I'm not talking about food, sweetheart.

GUESS WHAT DAY IT IS

2006-03-14T19:35:00.000-05:00

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208
99862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745
02841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831
65271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588
17488152092096282925409171536436789259036001133053054882046652138414695194151160
94330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495673518857527
24891227938183011949129833673362440656643086021394946395224737190702179860943702
77053921717629317675238467481846766940513200056812714526356082778577134275778960
91736371787214684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235420199561121290219
60864034418159813629774771309960518707211349999998372978049951059731732816096318
59502445945534690830264252230825334468503526193118817101000313783875288658753320
83814206171776691473035982534904287554687311595628638823537875937519577818577805
321712268066130019278766111959092164201989...

etc

(you get the idea)

Half the horizon's gone, working the numbers.

2006-03-12T20:36:00.000-05:00

Playing the Market is an experimental music recording by Emerald Suspension. The project features audio compositions based on patterns found in consumer-driven data: the stock market, confidence indexes, national debts, and, for kicks, the Fibonacci sequence.

"11:15 - Restate my assumptions.

1. Mathematics is the language of nature.
2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge.

Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature."

Once, I almost caught a glimpse of Jesus in the cigarette smoke, rising lazily upward from a butt.

2006-03-12T10:07:00.000-05:00

Smoking should be legal. If twenty-five percent or ten percent or eleventy-seven percent of the population wants to terrorize their lung cells, that's their perogative; the decision to adopt a less-than-healthy lifestyle, while not exactly commendable, is a choice that should be left up to each individual in turn--so long as those individuals don't directly and tangibly infringe upon the rights of other individuals in making said choices.

In keeping with this maximization of personal freedom, though, there should be separate smoking and nonsmoking sections or smoking should be confined to outside areas, so that smokers don't second-handedly impose their choice to smoke on non-smokers. (On a related note, I wonder if a cigarette could be invented that neutralized the tobacco and smellyness of the smoke when it hit oxygen.)

The practical upshot of keeping smoking legal is that rather than spending a buttload of money to fight a War On Cigarettes (ala the War On Drugs), we can continue to feed the communal taxpot with taxes from cigarette sales. Even from a moral perspective, consider that outlawing cigarettes means that tax money that could have gone to schools or public libraries or other altruistic-looking government projects will now be lost to black market scuzfests.

I remember reading that California used cigarette tax money to fund anti-smoking awareness programs. How ironically symbiotic.

Slutslutslutslutslutslutslutslutslutslugfug.

2006-03-11T23:45:00.000-05:00

I dislike the word 'slut'. It's derogatorily judgemental and doesn't even have a set definition--cowardly ambiguity with a stick up its (lingustuic) butt is not my idea of a worthwhile insult.

Unfortunately, too many people think that it actually does mean something (and that that something has serious moral relevance), even if there isn't much of a consensus among them as to what the definition IS, exactly. That's by and large why I don't bother with the word.

Try wench or sunshinetits or hobag instead of slut. Works like a lucky charm.

Second-star to the right by way of an infinitely spiralling funnel cloud.

2006-03-11T03:51:00.000-05:00

Every rule has an exception. However, if the rule in the previous sentence is true, it has no exception. Thus, it is its own negator. But in negating itself is provides the exception to the rule and verifies itself, as well.

Salt schmalt, she's a pillar of awesomeness.

2006-03-11T00:04:00.000-05:00

A whole LOTta umbrellas: Lot's wife became a "pillar of salt" after she disobeyed God's orders and cast her divinely unfavored city one last backward glance as she fled. Bless her for risking that little peek instead of obeying blindly.

It's as though she's the only one courageous enough to check to see if it's still raining (LOOK UP TO THE SKIES AND SEEEEE).

Photograph is courtesy of Guy Bourdin.

Nobody's on nobody's side.

2006-03-09T22:00:00.000-05:00

chess metaphors + optical illusions = near-theatrical glee

This is why we should go to Mars.

2006-03-06T02:07:00.000-05:00

An excerpt from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO, who was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945:

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women and childen collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

P.S. Due credit to Ryan, he found it first.

STUFF GOES ON HERE.

2006-03-05T21:25:00.000-05:00

Kilroy has been replaced.

2006-03-03T14:42:00.000-05:00

LONG LIVE HANGMAN

HELLO ALL

2006-03-02T00:22:00.000-05:00

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
WILL BE SLEUTHING THROUGH THE MULITZ THEATRE
THURSDAY 3/2 @ 7 PM
FRIDAY 3/3 @ 7 PM
SATURDAY 3/4 @ 2 PM
SATURDAY 3/4 @ 7 PM.

EVERYONE MUST COME WATCH IT BECAUSE:
1. I WILL BE WEARING A BEARD
2. YOU GET TO VOTE ON THE ENDING (which invariably involves my death, sort of)
3. IT IS AN EXCELLENT WAY TO ENCOURAGE PAOOIR (Public Acceptance Of Onstage Incestuous Relationships) THROUGH THE POWER OF DEMOCRACY
4. OUR ORCHESTRA DOESN'T WEAR PANTS (sometimes)
5. I SAID SO
6. OVERGROWN-RAPUNZEL WIG > YOU
7. I SAID SO
8. REFRESHMENTS
9. I SAID SO
10. PRETTY PLEASE

THEREFORE IN CONCLUSION
BE THERE OR
BE IMPAIRED
(SQUARED!)
THNX

IN SOVIET RUSSIA, THE PAPER INTEGRATES YOU.

2006-03-01T22:56:00.000-05:00

P.S. Due credit should be awarded to Sarathena for posting this fottergraf first. Gödel deserves more exposure.

On causal chains and responsibility:

2006-02-28T11:56:00.000-05:00

It is cold comfort to be told that a man’s genes and environment made him 99% likely to kill his landlady as opposed to 100%. Sure, the behavior was not strictly pre-ordained, but why should the 1% chance of his having done otherwise suddenly make the person “responsible"? There simply is no arbitrary percentage that ushers responsibility back in--quantifying the environmental/ genetic/ poltergeist factor for that purpose would be just that, arbitrary.

It is silly to equate degrees of moral responsibility with the extent to which the behavior was physically caused: either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are the result of completely random chaotic events, in which case we are also not responsible for them.

The perceived threat seems to be that environmental and biological explanations could be used to exonerate wrongdoers, because if someone tries to explain an act as an effect of some cause, the explainer is saying that the act was not freely chosen and that the actor cannot be held responsible.

So if we are ever to hold people responsible for their behavior, it will have to be in spite of any causal explanation we feel is warranted, whether it invokes genes, neurons, evolution, media images, self-doubt, bringing up-ke, poltergeists, class, prozac, etc. The distinction is hardly difficult to make, because to explain behavior is not to exonerate the behaver, and to understand is not to forgive.

As for responsibility (delegated unforgiveness) the answer is to think clearly about what we want the notion to achieve. Whatever may be its abstract worth, responsibility has an eminently practical function: deterring future harmful behavior.

Humans are predictably affected by the prospect of esteem and shame of reward and punishment, as we are compelled at least probabilistically to respect those contingencies. Whatever converts these standards into changes in the likelihood of behavior (i.e. “If the community would think that you are a boorish cad who deserves to die painfully for doing X, do not do X”) can presumably be programmed into an algorithm and implemented in neural hardware. Legal retribution is a way to standardize this algorithm and in turn to maintain a modicum of order in society; stipulating standardized punishments deter both the specific offender in question AND others like him from committing comparable acts in the future.

Some people (i.e. the criminally insane) are too addled to be deterred, to know that an act would harm someone, and as such are not inhibited by the injunction, “Do not harm people, or else!”. I am of the mind that we should forgo spiteful punishment, and retribution that harms the perpetrator with no hope of deferring him or people similar to him serves no purpose except to give victims and/or associates vengeful jollies. That said, the line between spite and standardized deterrence can be somewhat fuzzy and arbitrary, and I can only hope that our legal system is capable of drawing it with discernment and integrity.

Deterrence is, of course, not the only way to encourage virtue, but we should recognize it as an active ingredient that makes responsibility worth keeping.

ATTN BODY SNATCHERS:

2006-02-26T23:31:00.000-05:00

KEEP YOUR GRIMY HANDS (AND SURGICAL DEVICES AND WHATEVER ELSE THAT YOU'D USE) AWAY FROM MY ORGANS UNTIL I AM AT LEAST TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN PERCENT DEAD.

ALSO MY BRAIN MUST BE PRESERVED IN A JAR.

ALL OF THIS IS ONLY VALID IF I CHOOSE NOT TO BE CRYOGENICALLY FROZEN (IF I AM CRYOGENICALLY FROZEN DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT).

IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS I WILL MUTILATE YOUR KARMA.

KKTHX.

P.S. LEGAL-EESE TRANSLATION OF THIS TREATISE IS PENDING, SO DON'T DO ANYTHING FUNNY WHILE WE WAIT.

The doormouse gets antsy.

2006-02-26T21:47:00.000-05:00

I hate the structure of formal debate, because it requires participants to defend one side and only one side. Rather than listening to the opposing arguments and giving them serious consideration (read: enough consideration so that if those arguments are persuasive enough, the listeners will appropriately switch positions), debaters are expected to listen to what the other side say only so that they may make a more precise rebuttal. While I realize that one can stick to a position just for the duration of the debate and then reconsider all options after the final statements have been made, such institutionalized close-mindedness still irks me.

They're full of poo.

2006-02-23T17:23:00.000-05:00

Intelligent design simply has no validity as a scientific concept.

There is no data or laboratory work demonstrating intelligent design. It is not a testable hypothesis. Science does not consider supernatural explanations because it has no way of observing, measuring, repeating, or testing supernatural events. It doesn't mean that supernatural events, including divine miracles, have not happened, just that science cannot properly make any statements about them.

But intelligent design will not accept the well-established boundaries of science. Why? Because, in the end, no matter how many stones intelligent design throws at the theory of evolution, the only alternative it presents for the development and diversity of life, the only explanation for how a bacterial flagellum or the human eye came to be is that of supernatural creation/ design. The supernatural component that is the crux of their argument by itself establishes intelligent design as religious, not a scientific, in nature. And religion has no place being taught in science class, much less in public (and therefore, supposedly, religiously neutral) schools.

PLZ TO BE NOTING

2006-02-20T14:22:00.000-05:00

The words all look so awkward today.

2006-02-20T13:22:00.000-05:00

There's just not enough time in the day to both read news and make news.

All hail Eris, etc.

2006-02-15T23:37:00.000-05:00

You are a Faerie FNORD! flutter those pastel wings

Which FNORD are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

CAN YOU SEE THE FNORDS?
ON A FNORD WANT ADVERTISEMENT
THE FOLLOWING DESCRIPTORS COULD APPEAR:

Fnord is toast without bread.
Fnord is an arcade game like Pacman without the little dots.
Fnord is a little pufflike cloud you see at 5pm.

Fnord is where the buses hide at night.
Fnord is the empty pages at the end of the book.
Fnord is evaporated herbal tea without the herbs.

Fnord is that funny feeling you get when you reach for the Snickers bar and come back holding a slurpee.

Fnord is the 43 1/3rd state, next to Wyoming.
Fnord is an apostrophe on drugs.
Fnord is the bucket where they keep the unused serifs for H*lvetica.
Fnord is the echo of silence.

Fnord is the parsley on the plate of life.
Fnord is the sales tax on happiness.
Fnord is the feeling in your brain when you hold your breath too long.
Fnord is the reason latent homosexuals stay latent.

Fnord is the donut hole.
Fnord is the whole donut.

Fnord is the color only blind people can see.

Fnord is the "een" in baleen whale.
Fnord is neither a particle nor a wave.

Fnord is the space in between the pixels on your screen.

Fnord is the guy that writes the Infiniti ads.
Fnord is the nut in peanut butter and jelly.
Fnord is an antebellum flagellum fella.

Fnord is a sentient vacuum cleaner.
Fnord is why doctors ask you to cough.
Fnord uses two bathtubs at once.
Fnord keeps a spare eyebrow in his pocket.

Fnord is the smallest number greater than zero.
Fnord lives in the empty space above a decimal point.

Fnord is the redundant coin slot on arcade games.
Fnord was last seen in Omaha, Nebraska.
Fnord is the serial number on a box of cereal.

Fnord is the founding father of the phrase "founding father".
Fnord is the last bit of sand you can't get out of your shoe.
Fnord is Jesus's speech advisor.

Fnord is the Universe with decreasing entropy.
Fnord is the yin without yang.
Fnord is the the four-leaf clover with a missing leaf.
Fnord is double-jointed and has a cubic spline.
Fnord never sleeps.

FORUM PONDERANCE OF THE HOUR

2006-02-08T01:49:00.000-05:00

Given legalized prostitution, should women who refuse to work in the sex industry subsequently be denied welfare, on the grounds that they are willfully declining viable job offers?

"My Three Eclipses" by Martha Hollander

2006-02-04T06:08:00.000-05:00

Total, 1970

Direct viewing was forbidden, of course.
I remember how crescents formed in our hands
as we pursed fingers and thumbs together
to make shadows on the side of the house.
The sun, a perfect cashew of light,
emanated from our fingertips
like a gift, or a benevolent beam
to aim wherever we pleased.
Urged indoors to the safer light,
we could view the unimaginable on TV.
Hordes of Wisconsin schoolchildren
were pointing at the noontime black sky.
Our alter egos in infinite shades of gray,
they wore the same coats, same mittens —
as if there were no great interfering
ball of the world, no sprawling nation,
just electric ghosts hovering like angels
at the four corners of our New Haven street.
And how like the blurry screen
was the sky, silver, fabulous, outside!

Partial, 1986

Who can tell anyway on a grey day?
Yet there it was, savaging the mist.
I called you over to see it,
one hand gliding across your shoulders,
the other pointing into the sky,
"Up there — but don't look too long."
Our lowered heads rose and traveled together
like the spheres aligned above us.
The lovely modesty of this event
— no sudden darkness, no curse —
did nothing to ease the astonishment
of seeing an angry little sliver
where the sun should be.
We seemed to be catching the sun
in an intimate moment. White and awful
and incomplete, it offered the raw
knowledge that blinds us
to any foggy distinctions.
You squinted and looked away,
unable to bear unmediated sight,
while I held fast to you and stared until it hurt.

Annular, 1994

Surprise! a glacier's blue
like simultaneous dusk and dawn,
laid a filter over the city.
Crescents were everywhere, shifting
in the shadows of rustling trees
like thousands of tiny moons, smiles,
brows or birds, bubbles or whitecaps
hovering in festive fractals.
Mouths open, briefly beatified,
the lunch crowds laid down their bags to capture
crescents in their fingers once again.
Through the telescope installed in the park,
the crescents, with each universal motion,
were maturing into whole rings of light.
The mighty lens at the center of it all
revealed a golden O singing in blackness,
honoring, in the last eclipse of my life,
the epic marriage of earth and its only moon.

Reminder to self:

2006-02-04T00:17:00.000-05:00

Talk less, say more.

An Addendum To "Remote Control Neverland"

2006-02-01T18:39:00.000-05:00

Oh, how the sleep of you produces nostalgia. To think, if only we had a bit more fairy dust, we could turn back time. I, disguised as the sandman, would slip it under your eyelids, and you'd wake up beside me, looking for your shadow and hoping for a kiss. We'd take a field-trip past the second star to the left, tiptoeing as quietly as we could past darlings dreaming of the fountain of youth, their beds creaking whenever they stirred, tossed, or turned, making music that rhymed with infant cries out of nurseries and cribs of old.

"Skimming" by Paul Hackett

2006-01-27T19:54:00.000-05:00

I saw a man, the other day,
skimming stones across the tarmac of a car park.
I looked at him.
"I used to live near the sea",
he said.

ANGRY LETTERS AND KIDS THESE DAYS

2006-01-18T18:23:00.000-05:00

In response to Teens' Bold Blogs Alarm Area Schools by Tara Bahrampour and Lori Aratani:

The importance of internet safety is not license for out-of-bounds institutional 'parenting' that violates students' first amendment rights. It is not the school's place to regulate how teenagers express themselves off-campus.

Posting personal information online does incur a risk, a risk that increases exponentially as the information gets more specific and detailed. But should schools ask primary school students to leave if they talk to strangers? The line between freedom and security is notoriously tricky to draw, but if it is anyone's place to set limits for children when it comes to risk-taking, it is the parents', not the school's or the state's.

Granted, an awful lot of adolescent weblogs are tacky, petty, risk-inviting wastes of webspace, but freedom of expression also covers the right to talk without actually saying anything-- because what is appropriate or worthy of an audience is generally a matter of opinion, to be left up to the discretion of individual writers and readers.

Imagine if the printing press had been banned or otherwise stepped on, because, god forbid, suddenly authors could reach too many readers (how sad that he must write a bestselling masterpiece just to get the attention of his small town!) who would then be aware of the author's existence, thus creating a safety hazard. Likewise, if seven-hundred million people read a student's blog, who are we to take away the student's right to express himself or the readership's right to consume the information offered freely therein?

Weblogs are among the most, if not the most, accessible and widely read means of expression available today. Unless the content of the posts directly and demonstrably infringes upon the rights of another individual, it is out of order for an outside official body to take disciplinary action in order to shut down the activity.

Institutionalized censorship is hardly a good example to set for our youth.

Disregarding the act of translation as a problem in and of itself.

2006-01-16T16:38:00.000-05:00

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems renders mathematics, and for that matter all rigorously logical systems of any complexity, intrinsically incomplete. Given that mathematics is the primary language of science, what limitations does Gödel’s work place on scientific endeavors, and to what extent does this fundamentally incomplete language transpose its precincts onto what it describes?

And I should have let him go on, smiling, babywide.

2006-01-12T18:27:00.000-05:00

Every time I walk past the lower school in search of a soda machine that isn't sold out, I just want to morph back into my pre-pubescent self and join the kids on the playground.

Remote Control Neverland

2006-01-11T16:16:00.000-05:00

I'll sit cross-legged
and smile
at your closed eyes, imagining
myself in pigtails
in your dreams
and dancing
around, wearing a tiny, carefree dress.
We'll throw autumn leaves
at each other like elementary
school kids. I'll kick you
in the shins and pull
your hair because
I like you
(I DO NOT).

May I have this dance with your brown eyes?
We can waltz to your steady breath,
and keep time with your heartbeat
You'll be leading.

Then I'll spot our reflections, tangled in
the wriggling vines and occasional blossoms
of the fading yellow(ed)
wallpaper in your room,
in a house so old and so clean that the only
things collecting dust are your parents.

Even when sleepy, I'm like a
five-year-old with you.

I confess, then:
sometimes I almost wish that I could
control your dreams on a mixing board;
twisting and turning
levers and knobs to make this
daydream of mine so real that you'd awaken
with my fuzzy pink-and-purple hairtie
(the one that matched the tutu)
in your hand.

"Proof and Truth in Mathematics" by Devlin M. Gualtieri

2006-01-09T02:12:00.000-05:00

The idea of "proof" is the guiding light of mathematics. No matter how many examples you can give for the reality of your theorem, if you cannot offer a valid proof, then your theorem is merely a conjecture. After confidently mastering elementary algebra, most students are taken aback by the difference between algebra and geometry. Elementary algebra is taught as a tautology. Expressions are set equal to each other, and these equations are manipulated to obtain the desired reduction in complexity, such as finding the value of a variable (equating the variable to a number). Geometry, however, is an exercise in logic. In a geometric proof, each step follows logically from the others, and there is a chain of truth that extends from beginning to end.

Euclidian geometry as truth was an underpinning of mathematics until the nineteenth century, when mathematicians found that it was based on a flawed axiom. That axiom, the "Parallel Postulate," states that if you have a line and a point not on the line, only one line can be drawn through the point parallel to the first line. A trio of mathematicians - Lobachevsky, Bolyai, and Riemann - showed that there exists, in one case, more than one line; or in another, no such line. The truth of Euclidian geometry was either destroyed or transformed into three new truths, depending on your mood. Mathematicians preferred the three truths to no truth, and mathematical life went on.

Bertrand Russell continued the assault on mathematical truth in the twentieth century. Russell is famous for the nearly 2,000-page tome, Principia Mathematical, coauthored with Alfred North Whitehead, in which he attempted to reduce all mathematics to a form of logic. Russell used logic in the form of a paradox as his weapon against truth. Russell's Paradox, outlined in a letter to fellow mathematician Gottlob Frege, has an analogy in the statement by Epimenides, a Cretan, that "All Cretans are liars." Russell's mathematical statement of this paradox implied that there could be no truth in mathematics, since mathematical logic was flawed at a basic level.

This logical assault on mathematical truth continued in the work of Kurt Godel, an esteemed associate of Albert Einstein. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, popularized by Douglas R. Hofstadter in his book, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, caused quite a stir at its publication. This theorem states that certain statements in mathematics exist in a shadow world in which they are neither true nor false; they are "undecidable." The consequence of this is that there is a fundamental uncertainty in mathematics.

Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is to mathematics what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is to physics. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, published at about the same time as Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, states that some things in the physical world cannot, in principle, be known. Many physicists, Einstein included, were not convinced that, in effect, some things Man was not meant to know. Today, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is taken as fact, and it is even a useful tool. Likewise, mathematicians have chosen to live with incompleteness. Gregory J. Chaitin of IBM has stated that Godel's Theorem, "has had no lasting impact on the daily lives of mathematicians or on their working habits; no one loses sleep over it any more".

In 1950, Alan Turing, a founding father of computer science, proposed a test of machine intelligence that he called an "imitation game." This game is now called the "Turing Test," and the modern form has a person conversing with a computer program and guessing whether he or she is chatting with a machine or a real person. Turing thought it was necessary for the computer program to occasionally answer some questions wrong, lest its perfection prove it was not human. Mathematicians, of course, are human, and Andrew Hodges of Wadham College, Oxford, UK, remarks in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Turing's post-war view was that mathematicians make mistakes, and so do not in fact see the truth infallibly. Once the possibility of mistakes is admitted, Godel's theorem becomes irrelevant." Turing, apparently, rejected the idea of mathematical truth.

Computer programmers often repeat the slogan, "To err is human, but you need a computer to really screw things up." In light of the fallibility of computer code, it is interesting to see how some mathematicians have integrated computers into mathematics. The first notable example is the "proof" of the "FourColor Conjecture". The Four-Color Conjecture dates back to 1852, when a mapmaker, Francis Guthrie, found that four colors seemed to suffice to make a map in which no region of any color abuts another of the same color. The mathematician Arthur Cayley published this as a conjecture in 1879, and in that same year Alfred Kempe published a proof that remained in force until 1890, when an error was discovered. In 1976, Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken published a "proof" of the FourColor Conjecture, pushing it into the domain of the Four-Color Theorem. Their proof caused considerable controversy because they had used a computer to analyze systematically every conceivable map and demonstrate that four colors worked. Appel and Haken's method can be realized only with a computer because the computational workload is too much for mere humans. Mathematicians, of course, are still searching for a "real proof" of the conjecture, but perhaps not as hard as they were before.

Now that the low-hanging fruits have been picked from the mathematics tree, the remaining conjectures are requiring very long proofs that are prone to error, both in their construction and in the necessary checking by other mathematicians. A mathematician might err in a proof, and other mathematicians might compound that error by not catching a mistake. Fermat's Last Theorem was, until recently, one of the great unproven conjectures. This conjecture was written by Fermat in the margin of a book around 1630, and Fermat claimed to have discovered a proof, but he did not have space to write it in the page margin. In their attempts to "rediscover" Fermat's proof, mathematicians have demonstrated their fallibility. J.J. O'Connor and E.F. Robertson of the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) have reported that a thousand false proofs of this conjecture were published between 1908 and 1912.

In 1993, Andrew Wiles of Princeton University announced another proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, and for a while it held the ring of truth. However, Wiles withdrew the proof at the end of the year when a gap in the logical flow of the proof could not be mended. Finally, in 1995, a corrected proof was produced with the aid of another mathematician, Richard Taylor. No errors have been discovered in this proof in the intervening years, and this gives it considerable, although not absolute, validity.

Mathematics is still prejudiced in favor of pencil-and-paper proof, but it is slowly making some concessions to computers. There is now a journal, Experimental Mathematics, published quarterly by A.K. Peters (Natick, Massachusetts) that mediates the fusion of computers and math. To quote from the journal's mission statement, "Experimental Mathematics was founded in the belief that theory and experiment feed on each other, and that the mathematical community stands to benefit from a more complete exposure to the experimental process." Does mathematical truth really exist, or will most of mathematics become a tentative consensus of a mathematical reality mediated by computers?

Slip me a kiss inside the hangman’s knot.

2006-01-03T20:16:00.000-05:00

I have not slept in over thirty-two hours.

Pity my crippled immune system. And my sanity.

This is useless.

2006-01-02T23:25:00.000-05:00

I ALWAYS KNEW THAT MUFASA WOULD RESURRECT SOMEDAY.

2005-12-31T22:43:00.000-05:00

I always rather liked The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. For me, the story's imaginative elements just managed to overcome the blatant and rather pushy Christian allegory. I was much more taken with the whole wardrobe-as-a-hidden-passage-to-another-world idea than I was with what actually went on in Narnia itself. That idea provoked a plaintive longing similar to what Alice Through the Looking Glass inspired: "How cool would it be to find an alternate reality in your wardrobe or on the other side of your mirror?" I think I secretly hoped for years that my reflection would go slack and that the glass would morph into a portal, or that it'd start snowing in my closet (and not because the roof was leaking or the toilet was clogged, ugghh).

I saw the movie last night, though, and I wasn't particularly impressed. Too much of it tried too hard to imitate the Lord of the Rings films, and the result was decidedly stale. Additionally, while I understand that she's British and whatnot, Lucy's teeth were distractingly ugly. Yes, I know she's just a little kid and that Lucy isn't supposed to be gorgeous anyhow. Yes, I'm petty. Bite me.

Procrastination: The Good And The Ugly

2005-12-27T15:55:00.000-05:00

Good and Bad Procrastination

An addendum:

"Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work."

As an inveterate procrastinator, I have to say that while I mostly agree with this article's premise, it suffers from oversimplification/ generalization. It doesn't apply to all errands, and the break that errands can give you from work is not always counterproductive.

Putting off little things can end in crushing defeat. Failing to do basic maintenance on one's body, one's vehicles, or other property, often will result in catastophic surprises, and usually at the last minute.

Failing to change your oil on time can result in a blown head gasket. Do you really want to have to buy a new car? When you could have spent that money on reference materials to help you with your Big Problem?

Similarly, failure to do the little maintenance things at school or work (changing backup tapes, daily paperwork, etc.) can result in blowups of a more career-threatening sort, which can impede your access to and future opportunities to work on obituary-worthy problems. Every job has those details, and you ignore them at your peril.

And how many people have great ideas while brushing their teeth or do their best thinking in the shower? Handled correctly (as habits), the mundane details don't interfere with higher purposes. Handled incorrectly, they put the higher purposes hopelessly out of reach.

REINDEER DAY/ BELATED FESTIVUS

2005-12-24T21:07:00.000-05:00

Little evidence - plenty innuendo.

2005-12-23T19:57:00.000-05:00

Between a church and a casino
stands a man
praying.

Humbled abroad, straining for Siberia.

2005-12-19T20:08:00.000-05:00

(create your own visited states map)

(create your own visited countries map)

My shining armor bleeds when scratched.

2005-12-17T21:23:00.000-05:00

He’s at it again, declaring the stars a loss.
Chicken Little, he’s down on his knees.

He watches the tides trapped in a sidewalk.
He watches sand make a jailbreak to another universe.

He follows a nervous column of ants
along a crack to the next moon.

I TRUST CARPET WITH MY LIFE.

2005-12-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

Sssshhh. There's a really sexy man sitting next to me. Keep it on the downlow.

Il Santo preaches to fish.

2005-12-15T08:07:00.000-05:00

I FEEL LIKE A BICYCLE

TWO TIRED

In the mood for mood.

2005-12-13T05:32:00.001-05:00

We vacationed with gravitas:
burning fires, passion near the
ice box machine, Mexican beaches,
and one long glorious night in
a cabin tucked in the woods
where our sighing chorus started
the coyotes

singing. But the best was when we got home,
our luggage
cuddled in the vestibule,
or the hallway, but it was a vestibule
to us
because it was OUR hallway,
where we threw off our vestments,
which were really
just our clothes
but they seemed
like habits sorely religious,
which is how we felt dropping them

one by one on the stairs:
white shirts, black bra, blue jeans,
red socks,
star-spangled underwear;
then we stood naked in our own bedroom, our bed
with its dark comfort(er),
our pillows that smelled like us, and
the cat watching us
from the windowseat, purring
just when he should,
complementing the street noise
and our music.

LITTLE HANDS, LITTLE EYES, GREAT BIG HUGE LIES.

2005-12-12T13:28:00.000-05:00

>In addition to watching for warning signs, you must, "keep the lines of communication open" between yourself and your child. Make a point of taking an interest in the things your child is interested in so that you can develop a rapport, as we see in this dialogue:

FATHER: What's that music you're listening to, son?
SON: It's a band called "Limp Bizkit", Dad.
FATHER: They suck.

...you should strive for this kind of closeness in your relationship with your child. And remember: if worse comes to worst, there is no parenting tool more powerful than a good hug. If you sense that your child is getting into trouble, you must give that child a great big fat hug in a public place with other young people around, while saying, in a loud, piercing voice, "You are MY LITTLE BABY and I love you NO MATTER WHAT!" That will embarass your child so much that he or she may immediately run off and join a strict religious order whose entire diet consists of gravel. If one hug doesn't work, threaten to give your child another.

--Dave Barry

Sun Tzu, where are you now?

2005-12-11T11:15:00.000-05:00

Thank you, boy wonder.

2005-12-08T16:03:00.000-05:00

Which John Cusack Are You?

Binge on grains of salt.

2005-12-08T14:16:00.000-05:00

Go watch Marilyn Monroe. Invasion's so succexy (the best I can do is the best).

How many states of mind are there in New York?

2005-12-05T12:17:00.000-05:00

Harmony never misses a golden opportunity:

Capitalism for the whole family!:

More capitalism:

Redlight Christmas:

Standing tall before a monster:

Bottle o' red, bottle o' white:

On the other side of the lens:

Smile up upon me Jesus.

2005-12-04T12:10:00.000-05:00

God is the light of the world
and we fly to Him,
like moths, our souls to die electric death.

I pray you,
fly instead into the dark places.

The places that will terrify and teach you.

The places about which you will tell your
grandchildren.

I beg you,
follow not the God of the One Right Way,
for Heaven is not in the sky,

where the metal wings of airplanes frost over from the cold.

Heaven is here,
in this home,
by this fire,
with me.

A warm fuzzy machine of a world.

2005-11-30T23:57:00.000-05:00

Tangible or not, life, the universe and everything are all still quite inspiring and poetic. One can admire mystery and beauty without resorting to hokey religions and ignorant dogma.

Additionally, whatwith our reasoning system (read: logic) being rather contradictory and our our overall understanding of the universe--a universe which right now seems almost painfully subjective--being incomplete, we ought to additionally refrain from making umbrella statements about the way things Work, particularly Why things Work the way they work.

Life doesn't have to be 'magical' or incomprehensable to be beautiful. Our language does differentiate (faintly, but it does do it) between the awe-inspiring beautification of what could be expressed in both banal absolutes and in poetic yet accurate descriptions, and ridiculous romanticization that throws "truth" and accuracy out the window in favor of "magic". This is an important distinction.

Fundamentalist fairy tales can irritate even the most stoic of philosophers. But it would be folly for said philosophers to simply rebel against all of it by way of reducing everything ridiculously. For, aesthetics aside, reducing things to the extent that you have is nearly as innaccurate as the fundamentalist fairy tale. There is a happy medium in between that allows for both "fact" and "poetry", without sacrificing the truth along the way.

Reactionary banality taken too far is nearly as ignorant as unjustified mysticism.

Zen and the art of flim flam

2005-11-30T08:10:00.001-05:00

"You are not a fool just because you have done something foolish -- only if the folly of it escapes you."

I can't decide if I agree.