This post will mostly be somewhere between my review of and reflections on the 1988 novel Wittgenstein's Mistress, by David Markson. I'd like to for perspective's sake, introduce this by how I was introduced to the novel. I was with Morgan at a book store about a block away from my friend Amanda's place. The store is Women And Children First, a fantastic little place in Andersenville, on Clark. I walked in, and I saw all the fiction on my right, lining the wall with little staff picks and recommendation notes. I knew what I wanted to do was find something I didn't know, hadn't heard of, looked interesting, stood out to me. I wanted to pick something not on my reading list and after walking up and down that wall for 40 minutes or so, there was this little staff recommend. It proclaimed first that it's a novel where nothing happens, and the most interesting thing this staff member ever read. Already I'm interested. It says it was rejected 54 times. Whoa. I read the back, and there is a brief synopsis (sounded interesting enough) some good critical blurbs, and maybe my favorite. One blurb from a literary personage, David Foster Wallace, the postmodernist I mourned a couple months ago, never having read one of his books. Lets see if I can take his reading advice, I figured. So, I bought it. Immediately. At the counter the woman said it was about her favorite book, I told her thanks for the recommend, that it made my decision.
Well, enough of this, I need to actually write what I thought of this thing.
The novel is stylistically something very strange. I'm not sure if I would rather say it keeps my interest or loses it, even now. It's one thought to the next and free association. It's her remembering all sorts of things as she sits alone (very alone) at a typewriter. There's a mood at first of novelty towards her own thoughts. She's very charming, you smile at her, giggle a little, and catch her little dry wit. The dry wit is the first thing that grabs you. She'll talk about Guy de Maupassant, or Helen of Troy. You start to realize she's confusing things. (This will confuse any reader too, let me say, and I don't consider this a spoiler, you'll use the internet eventually: T.E. Shaw is another name for Lawrence of Arabia. Remember when you read it.) She'll contradict herself, she gets vaguely frustrated or out of sorts. She is almost undoubtedly insane, and she tells you she at least was at some point. She'll write about absolutely anything, a very honest character. "Ah, me" she says at one point or another. Repeats it here and there. Ah, her.
In the beginning, she left messages in the street, like she tells you at the start of the novel. You realize she means, beginning when there are no people on earth besides her. Seems world population has dropped to an artist named Kate. Don't ask how it happened or what you hear about this, or expect anything deeper from her: she won't tell you. The world that she describes is empty enough that she has lived in the Louvre, the Met, burning frames for warmth. She lives on a beachouse now, like previous ones that she has burned, mostly unintentionally.
She talks about artists a lot. And Greek myths, the Greek plays (which she's read all of these,) Greek legend. She'll talk about philosophers, and writers, or cultural figures. Like in everything else she confuse things here. She'll change the story she told a few pages ago. She refers to all this intellectual stuff as "baggage." She's gotten rid of accouterments. She has some clothing when she stays some place and isn't driving from continent to continent. Right now, on this beach, she's shedding away with her baggage.
"The world is all that is the case." That's the first sentence of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. A sub note to this reads that the world "is a totality of facts, not things." The first of these sentences is repeated in the novel, by the narrator, almost a comple non-sequitur. She doesn't attribute it, or seem to be aware where its from. In fact, a little later she says she's never read a word of what he's written (she corrects this, remembering a sentence that I don't believe Wittgenstein ever wrote.)
Kate has slimmed down the world already. It is no longer populated by people. There might be cats though. Then she gets rid of her things. She burns the Greek plays. Now she's unloading through this typewriter all of the things she has learned, presumably studying as an artist. This might be some sort of answer if you were looking for one, but to me, solving the mystery of the strange world where she seems to be lviing and writing is quite besides the point.
It's also worth noting that she'll make you feel a little bit as if you were mad. This is one of the things I liked about it. Somethign that kept my interest was my amusement at the things she remembered that amused her... all these charming stories about Rembrandt being fooled by his students and the like ... and then the sadness I felt for the stories she tells that make her just a little more sad. The stories seem to be moving this way, by the way. Many of her artists went mad or met very tragic deaths. Her ability to deal with her own mind, even after shedding so much of the world, wavers a little, and it can be downright heartbreaking. If there's any plot whatsoever, it would be the movements of her mind as she drops everything she feels like telling you onto the pages.
Lets call this review a positive one. The book kept me entertained for a week or so, and it gave me plenty to think about. I found some good artists too. I'll make sure I'll add the caveat that not everyone will love the novel, I don't think. Apparently, at least 54 publishers did not
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
An Objection To Cartesian Dualism
There's a distinct possibility that absolutely no one who reads this cares in the least about this. So skip this one, I'll have a book review up in a day or so (for the 1988 Novel Wittgenstein's Mistress). Maybe less, maybe slightly more. This one will then be for a random person who happens upon my blog, or on the off chance that one of you have any interest.
All right, this probably applies to more than just the dualism in Descartes. In general it applies to any metaphysical dualism (matter + minds) where we also imagine God created these things. And I know Descartes thought this was the case. So on to the spirit of my objection:
We have these ideas: Matter is material, extended objects, not thinking things. The thinking things are minds, not-material, not-extended in space. The interaction, as I understand it, is that perceptions, pains, thought, emotions, and all that takes place in the mind. It takes place in the non-material part, even if caused by the material part. So here's the problem: Material is superfluous. It's unnecessary, and I can't see any reason for a perfect being to create it.
All of the effects of material objects could be founded completely within minds. As a matter of fact, to the minds it would be all the same. So why create material things at all? What reason would we have to believe they exist, and that minds also exist. Especially if matter is equally capable of doing the work of minds (a trivial point) in which case you have two things that can each do both jobs. However, the way minds are described, at least it seems that that should be all that is necessary. So why both?
I've read it over, and it looks as if Descartes tries to explain his dualism in the Meditations on First Philosophy, in a way which might respond to this, however for several reasons I don't buy his argument. For some of his answers, it's the same I don't generally buy the case of dualism, but here's what is the crux of his argument, from what I can tell: God is not a deceiver. This doesn't respond to anything, as I do not believe (say) an idealist picture (mind, no matter) would claim God IS a deceiver. For after all, our perceptions tell us nothing but what he establishes earlier (med 2) that we perceive x or y quality. Berkely's right here: it's qualities, not objects which we perceive.
An argument from simplicity seems to rule dualism out one way or another, is how it looks to me. Back to Occam's Razor: Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity, or in other words "all other things being equal, the simplest picture is the most reasonable to believe." The reasonable model here doesn't seem likely to be dualism, or not the cartesian case as I've seen it. Spinoza makes sense here, multiple aspects to the same thing.
--------------
I'd love to hear (and respond to) any arguments. I rarely hear this argument against dualism. I'm not sure if it has any history, or if any philosopher has made it, so sources on this would be interesting.
All right, this probably applies to more than just the dualism in Descartes. In general it applies to any metaphysical dualism (matter + minds) where we also imagine God created these things. And I know Descartes thought this was the case. So on to the spirit of my objection:
We have these ideas: Matter is material, extended objects, not thinking things. The thinking things are minds, not-material, not-extended in space. The interaction, as I understand it, is that perceptions, pains, thought, emotions, and all that takes place in the mind. It takes place in the non-material part, even if caused by the material part. So here's the problem: Material is superfluous. It's unnecessary, and I can't see any reason for a perfect being to create it.
All of the effects of material objects could be founded completely within minds. As a matter of fact, to the minds it would be all the same. So why create material things at all? What reason would we have to believe they exist, and that minds also exist. Especially if matter is equally capable of doing the work of minds (a trivial point) in which case you have two things that can each do both jobs. However, the way minds are described, at least it seems that that should be all that is necessary. So why both?
I've read it over, and it looks as if Descartes tries to explain his dualism in the Meditations on First Philosophy, in a way which might respond to this, however for several reasons I don't buy his argument. For some of his answers, it's the same I don't generally buy the case of dualism, but here's what is the crux of his argument, from what I can tell: God is not a deceiver. This doesn't respond to anything, as I do not believe (say) an idealist picture (mind, no matter) would claim God IS a deceiver. For after all, our perceptions tell us nothing but what he establishes earlier (med 2) that we perceive x or y quality. Berkely's right here: it's qualities, not objects which we perceive.
An argument from simplicity seems to rule dualism out one way or another, is how it looks to me. Back to Occam's Razor: Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity, or in other words "all other things being equal, the simplest picture is the most reasonable to believe." The reasonable model here doesn't seem likely to be dualism, or not the cartesian case as I've seen it. Spinoza makes sense here, multiple aspects to the same thing.
--------------
I'd love to hear (and respond to) any arguments. I rarely hear this argument against dualism. I'm not sure if it has any history, or if any philosopher has made it, so sources on this would be interesting.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
What It Actually Looks Like
First, let me say my father worked (actually, works) for Lucent Technologies. I have seen the aftermath. Lucent was the site of massive amounts of layoffs after they had constructed two of their own office buildings near Naperville, Illinois. I remember walking through nearly empty floors of a company whose workforce had been laid off, outsourced, eliminated, and in fact stripped to its bare minimum. I've seen the lowered morale and people worried about their jobs after they had so many things to pay for already. (That, in fact, for the public might be the first of the fallacies.) And I've heard names vanish, stopped hearing of certain of my fathers coworkers. This is when I was growing up.
My turn. Today, I arrived at work at about 3:30. Fashionably late. I asked the room (the SOC or service operations center, and the other staff who shares the room with their cubicles) how it was going. Some of them replied cheerily. Some didn't look. A couple answers came honestly "not so good." My first instinct is that a site was down, or a product was disabled, or network problems were bad, so these were what I was asking about. When I asked what I could help with, the answer came: "Nothing. Read your email from [the CEO.]" Bad things, and not everyone in the room had even heard. Asking more bluntly the less self-absorbed crew, I got the answer: The company is laying off ten percent of its employees. I'm at their HQ where at least seventy percent of us work. News spreads. The room gets quiet. Intermittently.
"Someone's gotta tell the execs what they're doing wrong. They say no lay offs until January, and then this! They can bite me," said John, dilligently defending the workforce.
"Calm down," Monica said cautiously. She wanted to make sure he didn't get fired either. No doubt both level-headed and very worried for his position and ours. The room was a-buzz when it wasn't dead quiet with this kind of banter. L. quipped about ducking out in there and doing little work, since none was expected with morale so low. Cool, as ever, he just sat around. He waited.
Larry's new and he asks me about it. Eventually he asks if there's any word on where the cuts are going to hit. I tell him there are more than ten people in the room, he won't see them all tomorrow. I tell him, by noon the next day, a bunch of those names are going to be gone.
There's a flood of people at this point, heading towards a big conference room down the hall and a floor away. These are directors, managers, and veterans. Just moving silently through.
It wasn't long then. First, Monica came back in with a bag straight to her desk. Silent. The room is quiet, and nobody knows. More news comes in leaked seemingly without source that Ken's going now. Light shock hits. Monica is now filling her bag with the last and walking off. They say Ken had pulled the power cord right from the wall and his workstation is off. Directors are moving through the floor right up to their employees, in front of everyone. "Have a nice day. Good luck, I hear the economy's not doing so well."
When Monica walked out, people stood up. This was the first I saw people's watery eyes. Hugs were exchanged. To me, she just said "Later, Extraodinaire." She had called me that since a tour she led, and I introduced myself as Michael, Admin Extraordinaire.
A name is heard from across the room when people go back to their desks, and L., who'd been ducking out there and keeping his head low behind me cool as always, he stands up. "No. No. They wouldn't let him go, NOT him. No, I will cry. I will cry. You're kidding me."
People shake their heads at him, somber. He walks straight out of the room, his new Mac on the desk.
I announce I'm going for a cigarette, but I go talk to Lars. His team is safe, looks like most of that floor is. I talk to him and he says I'm probably safe, but his IMs have been basically his RSS feed on who's gone NOW. This is when I hear Lisa's name, and I go smoke my cigarette. Which broke, so the last half I smoke unfiltered. I take the elevator to nine, and there's Lisa with a box, and a lot of quiet people. The one person I hugged. "Onto the next thing."
That's got to be one of the most interesting people I ever met. A storm chaser, a systems expert, and a tech for south pole researchers who was in Antarctica for around two years. Unfortunately, I don't trust the world not to show prejudice to her as a transgendered person whose name was likely not always Lisa.
Back in the SOC, John is fuming. Maybe about Monica, or Steve. "Well, Mr. [CEO], you've just decimated leadership. Are we go for the build?"
People are ending their usual workdays now, but no one is sure who will be coming back.
My turn. Today, I arrived at work at about 3:30. Fashionably late. I asked the room (the SOC or service operations center, and the other staff who shares the room with their cubicles) how it was going. Some of them replied cheerily. Some didn't look. A couple answers came honestly "not so good." My first instinct is that a site was down, or a product was disabled, or network problems were bad, so these were what I was asking about. When I asked what I could help with, the answer came: "Nothing. Read your email from [the CEO.]" Bad things, and not everyone in the room had even heard. Asking more bluntly the less self-absorbed crew, I got the answer: The company is laying off ten percent of its employees. I'm at their HQ where at least seventy percent of us work. News spreads. The room gets quiet. Intermittently.
"Someone's gotta tell the execs what they're doing wrong. They say no lay offs until January, and then this! They can bite me," said John, dilligently defending the workforce.
"Calm down," Monica said cautiously. She wanted to make sure he didn't get fired either. No doubt both level-headed and very worried for his position and ours. The room was a-buzz when it wasn't dead quiet with this kind of banter. L. quipped about ducking out in there and doing little work, since none was expected with morale so low. Cool, as ever, he just sat around. He waited.
Larry's new and he asks me about it. Eventually he asks if there's any word on where the cuts are going to hit. I tell him there are more than ten people in the room, he won't see them all tomorrow. I tell him, by noon the next day, a bunch of those names are going to be gone.
There's a flood of people at this point, heading towards a big conference room down the hall and a floor away. These are directors, managers, and veterans. Just moving silently through.
It wasn't long then. First, Monica came back in with a bag straight to her desk. Silent. The room is quiet, and nobody knows. More news comes in leaked seemingly without source that Ken's going now. Light shock hits. Monica is now filling her bag with the last and walking off. They say Ken had pulled the power cord right from the wall and his workstation is off. Directors are moving through the floor right up to their employees, in front of everyone. "Have a nice day. Good luck, I hear the economy's not doing so well."
When Monica walked out, people stood up. This was the first I saw people's watery eyes. Hugs were exchanged. To me, she just said "Later, Extraodinaire." She had called me that since a tour she led, and I introduced myself as Michael, Admin Extraordinaire.
A name is heard from across the room when people go back to their desks, and L., who'd been ducking out there and keeping his head low behind me cool as always, he stands up. "No. No. They wouldn't let him go, NOT him. No, I will cry. I will cry. You're kidding me."
People shake their heads at him, somber. He walks straight out of the room, his new Mac on the desk.
I announce I'm going for a cigarette, but I go talk to Lars. His team is safe, looks like most of that floor is. I talk to him and he says I'm probably safe, but his IMs have been basically his RSS feed on who's gone NOW. This is when I hear Lisa's name, and I go smoke my cigarette. Which broke, so the last half I smoke unfiltered. I take the elevator to nine, and there's Lisa with a box, and a lot of quiet people. The one person I hugged. "Onto the next thing."
That's got to be one of the most interesting people I ever met. A storm chaser, a systems expert, and a tech for south pole researchers who was in Antarctica for around two years. Unfortunately, I don't trust the world not to show prejudice to her as a transgendered person whose name was likely not always Lisa.
Back in the SOC, John is fuming. Maybe about Monica, or Steve. "Well, Mr. [CEO], you've just decimated leadership. Are we go for the build?"
People are ending their usual workdays now, but no one is sure who will be coming back.
Monday, October 6, 2008
More Sexist Bullshit at Work
Just thought I'd continue with this theme a little bit. The shift lead for the shift directly after mine (I'll call him RR) is newer than many of the people here, and he was asking about people who had been fired or had quit in the past year. My own shift lead (Z) was telling him about these people. RR asks of one of them soon, "was he a good admin?" Z keeps going, and tells about more. Alyssa comes up. She worked here very briefly, left when she got a better offer with another job, if I recall right. Z mentions she's "one of the only girls they hired as an admin," to which RR asks "Was she hot?" I groan a little. He follows it up, laughing stupidly "I mean, lets here the important part." Let me emphasize something: he was being jovial, but he wasn't joking in the sense that he didn't believe what he was saying. I stand up and tell him he's being BLATANTLY sexist. He asks "what?" and looks confused. I tell him he can be as disrespectful to whatever group he likes as vocally as he wants, but he needs to be careful what he says at work. I don't care if it is the middle of the night, this isn't cool.
I don't know if it mattered to him or not that it was the night. I don't know if it mattered to most people. It's just so accepted now. And he wasn't kidding that he saw nothing wrong with it either. Most don't seem to. Lets see if we can maybe go for a society where a specific group isn't thought to be there just for us to look at, eh?
I don't know if it mattered to him or not that it was the night. I don't know if it mattered to most people. It's just so accepted now. And he wasn't kidding that he saw nothing wrong with it either. Most don't seem to. Lets see if we can maybe go for a society where a specific group isn't thought to be there just for us to look at, eh?
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The Taste of Things Long Delayed
First off, a thanks to some friends of mine for the comments online and in person that I received for my previous post. I've got a revised version now because of some particularly helpful criticism. Thanks to Steve Delchamps for some very specific and helpful technical criticism. And to Laya for the encouragement from her own blog (called ihaveoneofthesealready.blogspot or somewhere i have travelled, gladly beyond, where she is blogging her year in Cairo) and to Morgan, Evan, Billy, to name a few.
There are several things I'd like to mention, sort of a journal-style more than anything else, but I'd like to focus on some related ruminations. If this symphony shit really bores you, go ahead and don't read it.
I do love the symphony. I feel like it's a good way to look sorta snobbish talking about it, but I can't apologize. It has been a long time since I've been to a symphony... or anyway it had been before last night, when I went to see the CSO under visiting conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (one of my favorites alive) play three works last night. I went with Laura, Darin's younger sister, who is without a doubt in my mind the only person I know who loves the music of Dmitri Shostakovich more than I do. This is saying a lot, I'd say he's my favorite musician at least in the twentieth century. I was reawakened to the experience of watching this performance. Some things I'd like to say of the experience are unrelated to the particulars. Some are intimately tied to it, but here are some things that I'll expand upon from notes I took on the bus home:
The approximate performance times of each piece are in the program. I honestly can say this is the only way I would ever be able to tell anybody how long any performance is. Time really gets very little notice. I can never be sure how long that violin melody lasts, or the length of the overbearing and ominous sequence of notes and blasts from the brass, there's no way I could tell you how long the whole thing lasts. I really get caught up in it. It's spectacular. Now I do have a terribly short attention span, and my mind does go everywhere, but it's so different than my usual day. Maybe I'm just used to seeing the clock at the bottom of my screen or the timestamps in my terminals. Quentin's watch is shattered for those moments though, to borrow a metaphor from Faulkner*. Sitting like that through a performance is something people in my generation (as well as probably many before and after) I believe find unfamiliar. Not often do we sit so quietly with one particular sense targeted for any longer than a couple minutes.
The first piece was composed by Tilson Thomas himself. It's a song in symphonic brass. t a big fan of brass only (which isn't to say I don't like it) but this was a well written piece. The thing to notice about this one, is the conductors movements seemed different than the next two. Maybe it was the orchestration. Something I thought about though, was that it must be odd for a renowned conductor to be performing something of his own while he's so known for conducting rather than composition. I imagined what it would be like, and felt it uncomfortable, like I would have to be more detached for something so far more personal and outside of my own established façade to reveal more. Fine if one was just the composer, or just the conductor, or at least so well known to be both, but this? -- Anyhow, I probably projected too much onto this conductor. If I could do anything in music, it might just be conducting.
Sibelius's 4th Symphony is really something else. So much so that the conductor turned and faced the crowd, and addressed us. Spoke right to the audience. This is weird in a way that only symphony-goers who have seen it before know. Ive seen it thrice, and have been to who knows how many concerts. He said it's his least performed, not because it has less to offer, but on the contrary, because it has more. It's a weather front of dark variations on a theme. It's downright intense. It cuts you off in the middle of a motive or a melody and throws its force in silence, or in a full orchestra of a new motive. It's auspicious, frightening, and uncertain. I hear it's on of his least liked -- Sibelius has never been one of my favorites, but I loved this. I caught myself about gasping with surprise.
Shostakovitch 5 is what I came to see. I'm not sure where to begin. First of all, if you can, you should download this. Or at least a Shosty symphony. However much or little interest you have in the style. One thing I can say about Shostakovitch is I'm never for a second bored. It really keeps my elusive attention, and it seems incredible every moment of it. It was also brilliantly conducted that night. I could go on, but with this symphony... you get the idea.
I've also mentioned at the beginning of September that I quit drinking and smoking for the entire month. I took thirty days without a cigarette or a drink. I didn't miss alcohol that much. I really didn't. There are some things I despise about it, but I do also kinda like it. And I like whiskey. And I like wine. And I like beer. A little odd to start drinking again though a month before I'm actually of legal age to do so. I got a good wheat beer for this, and I assure you, I still think its fantastic stuff. Tastes no different than I remember it...
...unlike the first cigarette I had this month, at 12:02AM on the first. I tasted it like never before. A Nat Sherman Classic, by the way. It assured me that this is something I do for enjoyment. But I'll be honest, I really can't say for sure that I'm going back to being a regular smoker. Not sure I like it that much. Not sure it's worth whatever... money, having a non destroyed esophagus, whatever.
My facebook message was changed on the first to "Mike Henning is smoking and planning..." in honor of that first cigarette, and because it's NaNoPlanMo**! That's right, I'm going to participate again. It's also funny because... well, you'll see on November first.
Before I conclude, I'd like to mention a new purpose for this blog, or an intention at least. I'm going to use this to write open letters to politicians and the like. Feel free to suggest a matter about which to write them, or ask why I would want to. my goal is at least two per month. Eventually, perhaps two per week.
* from The Sound and the Fury, specifically in the second chapter. I am aware of how pretentious that may be, but there's no other way I can think to explain it half so well. For a description of this concept, see Jean-Paul Sartre's great essay Time in the Work of of Faulkner. Both of these are recommendations.
** Google NaNoWriMo for hat the hell I'm talking about.
There are several things I'd like to mention, sort of a journal-style more than anything else, but I'd like to focus on some related ruminations. If this symphony shit really bores you, go ahead and don't read it.
I do love the symphony. I feel like it's a good way to look sorta snobbish talking about it, but I can't apologize. It has been a long time since I've been to a symphony... or anyway it had been before last night, when I went to see the CSO under visiting conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (one of my favorites alive) play three works last night. I went with Laura, Darin's younger sister, who is without a doubt in my mind the only person I know who loves the music of Dmitri Shostakovich more than I do. This is saying a lot, I'd say he's my favorite musician at least in the twentieth century. I was reawakened to the experience of watching this performance. Some things I'd like to say of the experience are unrelated to the particulars. Some are intimately tied to it, but here are some things that I'll expand upon from notes I took on the bus home:
The approximate performance times of each piece are in the program. I honestly can say this is the only way I would ever be able to tell anybody how long any performance is. Time really gets very little notice. I can never be sure how long that violin melody lasts, or the length of the overbearing and ominous sequence of notes and blasts from the brass, there's no way I could tell you how long the whole thing lasts. I really get caught up in it. It's spectacular. Now I do have a terribly short attention span, and my mind does go everywhere, but it's so different than my usual day. Maybe I'm just used to seeing the clock at the bottom of my screen or the timestamps in my terminals. Quentin's watch is shattered for those moments though, to borrow a metaphor from Faulkner*. Sitting like that through a performance is something people in my generation (as well as probably many before and after) I believe find unfamiliar. Not often do we sit so quietly with one particular sense targeted for any longer than a couple minutes.
The first piece was composed by Tilson Thomas himself. It's a song in symphonic brass. t a big fan of brass only (which isn't to say I don't like it) but this was a well written piece. The thing to notice about this one, is the conductors movements seemed different than the next two. Maybe it was the orchestration. Something I thought about though, was that it must be odd for a renowned conductor to be performing something of his own while he's so known for conducting rather than composition. I imagined what it would be like, and felt it uncomfortable, like I would have to be more detached for something so far more personal and outside of my own established façade to reveal more. Fine if one was just the composer, or just the conductor, or at least so well known to be both, but this? -- Anyhow, I probably projected too much onto this conductor. If I could do anything in music, it might just be conducting.
Sibelius's 4th Symphony is really something else. So much so that the conductor turned and faced the crowd, and addressed us. Spoke right to the audience. This is weird in a way that only symphony-goers who have seen it before know. Ive seen it thrice, and have been to who knows how many concerts. He said it's his least performed, not because it has less to offer, but on the contrary, because it has more. It's a weather front of dark variations on a theme. It's downright intense. It cuts you off in the middle of a motive or a melody and throws its force in silence, or in a full orchestra of a new motive. It's auspicious, frightening, and uncertain. I hear it's on of his least liked -- Sibelius has never been one of my favorites, but I loved this. I caught myself about gasping with surprise.
Shostakovitch 5 is what I came to see. I'm not sure where to begin. First of all, if you can, you should download this. Or at least a Shosty symphony. However much or little interest you have in the style. One thing I can say about Shostakovitch is I'm never for a second bored. It really keeps my elusive attention, and it seems incredible every moment of it. It was also brilliantly conducted that night. I could go on, but with this symphony... you get the idea.
I've also mentioned at the beginning of September that I quit drinking and smoking for the entire month. I took thirty days without a cigarette or a drink. I didn't miss alcohol that much. I really didn't. There are some things I despise about it, but I do also kinda like it. And I like whiskey. And I like wine. And I like beer. A little odd to start drinking again though a month before I'm actually of legal age to do so. I got a good wheat beer for this, and I assure you, I still think its fantastic stuff. Tastes no different than I remember it...
...unlike the first cigarette I had this month, at 12:02AM on the first. I tasted it like never before. A Nat Sherman Classic, by the way. It assured me that this is something I do for enjoyment. But I'll be honest, I really can't say for sure that I'm going back to being a regular smoker. Not sure I like it that much. Not sure it's worth whatever... money, having a non destroyed esophagus, whatever.
My facebook message was changed on the first to "Mike Henning is smoking and planning..." in honor of that first cigarette, and because it's NaNoPlanMo**! That's right, I'm going to participate again. It's also funny because... well, you'll see on November first.
Before I conclude, I'd like to mention a new purpose for this blog, or an intention at least. I'm going to use this to write open letters to politicians and the like. Feel free to suggest a matter about which to write them, or ask why I would want to. my goal is at least two per month. Eventually, perhaps two per week.
* from The Sound and the Fury, specifically in the second chapter. I am aware of how pretentious that may be, but there's no other way I can think to explain it half so well. For a description of this concept, see Jean-Paul Sartre's great essay Time in the Work of of Faulkner. Both of these are recommendations.
** Google NaNoWriMo for hat the hell I'm talking about.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Second Homes.
Let me put this plainly, I have a hard time posting something like this. It's far more personal than my usual thing. It's also not the kind of writing I usually do at all. It's very honest and rather sentimental. I'm pretty sure I don't usually like things of that sort. I don't usually like things written by me so much either, so this little composition had a lot going against it.
I'm stoking a flame, because I've been writing more lately, and I'm quite happy about that. Part of the idea here is that this is something that I may contribute to Evan's Zine. I'd like feedback, because this might be a draft I'll change before I tell Evan to use it if she likes it. Anyhow, it's a short, personal piece:
Second Homes.
I'm stoking a flame, because I've been writing more lately, and I'm quite happy about that. Part of the idea here is that this is something that I may contribute to Evan's Zine. I'd like feedback, because this might be a draft I'll change before I tell Evan to use it if she likes it. Anyhow, it's a short, personal piece:
Second Homes.
When I get busy, one of my biggest regrets is that I get what I can call (for lack of a better word) homesick. I don't mean for where I grew up, or for my family's house or anything like that. I don't mean for my own apartment, fortunately, I still see that a lot. I mean for my second home. I usually have one, at least. I know where mine is now. I know where it was last year. I can recall, if I try where my second home was, when I had one, all the way back since I was a kid.
You know what I'm talking about. The place where you spend that much time. I know it's actually someone else's home. They know too. They call me their roommate. I've cooked and cleaned there. I have kramer rights to slide through their door and walk to the fridge. Or shower for that matter.
It was a lot like that last year, with different people. I remember when it was my the dorm room where my friends Kevin and Dan stayed. I remember when it was Billy's or Jon's house when I was an adolescent. And I remember times, recent or when I was growing up, that I didn't have one.
I floated from floor to floor when I first got to college. Room to room, environment to environment before I found the place that was the second home. We could always be found there at eleven at night ... doing homework, or just messing around. I wasn't the only one there, and at about eleven everyone of us was: The Eleven O'Clock Rush was what Kevin called it, usually as a complaint. About this time we'd all go for a cigarette and when it all ended, I think we all missed it.
It was a part of who I was, and my friends shared it. I think I remember what each of these places were like well, and it makes me remember myself. My second home was sometimes academic, sometimes it was angsty, sometimes it was all punk, or sometimes it was indulgent, or creative, or very personal and comfortable. I know that I chose to spend time, feeling at home in each of these places. I remember starting to feel less at home, a sort of loneliness. That was as valuable, I think, as finding a home.
We choose our friends and our second homes. Its an over-simplification to say it, but it's choosing our surroundings. Its part of who we are, or it is for me. I think I can say I understand myself more with understanding my surroundings. I think its useful for me to understand myself like this.
What can we say without that?
--Michael.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
My Reading List
So I'm pretty excited about some of the books I've gotten recently, here's a rundown:
The Mind's I by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. This is a collection of relevant essays, dialogues, short stories, creative fiction and non-fiction all about personal identity and philosophy of mind. Philosophy of mind and brain, reductionism, holism, computer intelligence, sense of self, etc. Really cool stuff, all with reflections by each of the authors and collectors. I read one chapter and I was hooked, the table of contents was impressive and intriguing, and the authors are both writers I've meant to read more of since I found them each in high school... or my freshman year in college at the latest.
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. From what I've read I can only reaffirm this books place as a key work in 20th century continental philosophy and the history of 2oth century thought. Also appears to be an amazingly well put piece of feminist literature. To those who know me, my interests in feminism have only been growing. Thanks to Morgan for this one. She gave it to me, and its with her that I would most like to share what I find in it and discuss it.
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. A piece of what looks like light scifi, but is full of great ideas from the description. It was made into two movies, one of which is higly respect. Just a quick note on this aspect of it: why is it, if there's a highly produced hollywood film of a not so well known book I have to buy a copy of the book with a screenshot of the movie on it. I really don't want to have George Clooney Making out with some Star I don't recognize on the front of a novel neither had anything to do with, and nor did twentieth century fox.
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This one's right up my alley. Just the kinda thing I'm a fan of: thick modernist prose with ideas and potential for great interpretation. I hear it's beautiful, I can't wait to get to it. Thanks to Philipp for this one. I hope the guy enjoyed his time in Chicago. Fantastic person, that one. I intend to discuss this with him sometime, if by letter.
I'm also still reading Underworld, and I've loved the first half of it but put it down for a while. I'll go through all of these slow with school and readings for school on top f it. I may be able to post to my blog from work (like now) but I can't read a novel so easily. I'll post my thoughts on eah of them as I finish them. You can expect this in just a week or two for Solaris. The thing is thin.
The Mind's I by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. This is a collection of relevant essays, dialogues, short stories, creative fiction and non-fiction all about personal identity and philosophy of mind. Philosophy of mind and brain, reductionism, holism, computer intelligence, sense of self, etc. Really cool stuff, all with reflections by each of the authors and collectors. I read one chapter and I was hooked, the table of contents was impressive and intriguing, and the authors are both writers I've meant to read more of since I found them each in high school... or my freshman year in college at the latest.
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. From what I've read I can only reaffirm this books place as a key work in 20th century continental philosophy and the history of 2oth century thought. Also appears to be an amazingly well put piece of feminist literature. To those who know me, my interests in feminism have only been growing. Thanks to Morgan for this one. She gave it to me, and its with her that I would most like to share what I find in it and discuss it.
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. A piece of what looks like light scifi, but is full of great ideas from the description. It was made into two movies, one of which is higly respect. Just a quick note on this aspect of it: why is it, if there's a highly produced hollywood film of a not so well known book I have to buy a copy of the book with a screenshot of the movie on it. I really don't want to have George Clooney Making out with some Star I don't recognize on the front of a novel neither had anything to do with, and nor did twentieth century fox.
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This one's right up my alley. Just the kinda thing I'm a fan of: thick modernist prose with ideas and potential for great interpretation. I hear it's beautiful, I can't wait to get to it. Thanks to Philipp for this one. I hope the guy enjoyed his time in Chicago. Fantastic person, that one. I intend to discuss this with him sometime, if by letter.
I'm also still reading Underworld, and I've loved the first half of it but put it down for a while. I'll go through all of these slow with school and readings for school on top f it. I may be able to post to my blog from work (like now) but I can't read a novel so easily. I'll post my thoughts on eah of them as I finish them. You can expect this in just a week or two for Solaris. The thing is thin.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Some things seriously need to be said about work
All right folks, some half important background:
I work, for now, a standard 40 hour job. I work at a company's corporate headquarters. I work in the technology industry, for a .com doing unix system administration work. I work until 1AM; just two hours of my ten hour days are during standard business times. Things like dress code here are lax. Use of language, in the environment I work in is not particularly regulated. You can say "fuck" all you like at 7PM on a monday, nobody will blink. My supervisors (shift leads) and my boss do so. My boss's boss's boss will do so in our presence. I think that's two steps down from executive level, plus or minus one. Also, though we are "skilled workers," we're some of the lowest in hierarchy and pay within the company: we are an essential team to keep our sites (the entire business) running, but it is work akin to mechanics in the industry. We've been called that. Data mechanics. Server monkeys. Network firefighters (though that one sounds cool). like typical mechanics, you don't typically have to worry about offending anyone or being a little rough. There's absolutely no dress code.
Obviously, this should not mean whatever we say will be acceptable. I'm sure racial slang would not go over well, for a simple example. This is as it should be. Some things, like hateful discrimination, should remain unacceptable in work environments. one way or another though, since we all know our direct co-workers on such a friendly basis here, it becomes the norm to be... well, a little normative. To jibe and criticize. I have painted nails at the moment. The left hand black, the right hand white. I was asked about this by a laughing coworker, and I made up an excuse. It was stupid, and I shouldn't have felt the need. Somehow, since the me they know is different, I felt like I shouldn't reveal something else. But if I were openly gay, queer, or transgendered, no one would ask me questions about it. It happens a respected application engineer (higher end, more skilled work than ours) is transgendered. Here's thee issue I have with this, it isn't that people of "alternative lifestyles" (a term I have an issue with, but seems used in the corporate world as if some sort of euphemism or category were necessary) have some extended ability to express, it is that social norms here are strong enough that I believe they've just revealed that they don't accept and openly judge those who do not fall in line with them, though will supress their judgments to some people. I think it's pretty shitty that these guys are willing to show they think its wrong to do something like that, and are probably more unaccepting than they come across to other employees.
Lets look at another issue. Someone brings up Dane Cooke. I mention that he loses points with me because of the message he spreads. When I was asked further I said two things, he's dumb-macho, and he's an anti-feminist misogynist. A shift lead says something like "what's wrong with that, he's a comedian?" The Coworker who started this said that I was a feminist. My shift lead shakes his head and laughs. He tells me there are plenty of good reasons to be an anti-feminist. Like obesity and children's grades, because a decline in those is a result of feminism. I look at him and say fuck off. He laughs. I tell him to go fuck himself, I will not be laughed at. I will not have this discussion. It was a quiet next couple hours. I had the "I'll go to HR" look in my eyes, I guess.
To me, this was like him saying: "There are plenty of reasons to be against equal rights." If this referred to race he would have been afraid to oppose me for a second. Why different when we're asked about sexism? Because that's what this is. I'm a feminist because society is still inherently (patriarchally) sexist. Otherwise I would only be a humanist. Right now, part of humanism is feminism. I think it's discouraged in society because it's unmanly. I think that's bullshit.
That's all I've got to say for now.
I work, for now, a standard 40 hour job. I work at a company's corporate headquarters. I work in the technology industry, for a .com doing unix system administration work. I work until 1AM; just two hours of my ten hour days are during standard business times. Things like dress code here are lax. Use of language, in the environment I work in is not particularly regulated. You can say "fuck" all you like at 7PM on a monday, nobody will blink. My supervisors (shift leads) and my boss do so. My boss's boss's boss will do so in our presence. I think that's two steps down from executive level, plus or minus one. Also, though we are "skilled workers," we're some of the lowest in hierarchy and pay within the company: we are an essential team to keep our sites (the entire business) running, but it is work akin to mechanics in the industry. We've been called that. Data mechanics. Server monkeys. Network firefighters (though that one sounds cool). like typical mechanics, you don't typically have to worry about offending anyone or being a little rough. There's absolutely no dress code.
Obviously, this should not mean whatever we say will be acceptable. I'm sure racial slang would not go over well, for a simple example. This is as it should be. Some things, like hateful discrimination, should remain unacceptable in work environments. one way or another though, since we all know our direct co-workers on such a friendly basis here, it becomes the norm to be... well, a little normative. To jibe and criticize. I have painted nails at the moment. The left hand black, the right hand white. I was asked about this by a laughing coworker, and I made up an excuse. It was stupid, and I shouldn't have felt the need. Somehow, since the me they know is different, I felt like I shouldn't reveal something else. But if I were openly gay, queer, or transgendered, no one would ask me questions about it. It happens a respected application engineer (higher end, more skilled work than ours) is transgendered. Here's thee issue I have with this, it isn't that people of "alternative lifestyles" (a term I have an issue with, but seems used in the corporate world as if some sort of euphemism or category were necessary) have some extended ability to express, it is that social norms here are strong enough that I believe they've just revealed that they don't accept and openly judge those who do not fall in line with them, though will supress their judgments to some people. I think it's pretty shitty that these guys are willing to show they think its wrong to do something like that, and are probably more unaccepting than they come across to other employees.
Lets look at another issue. Someone brings up Dane Cooke. I mention that he loses points with me because of the message he spreads. When I was asked further I said two things, he's dumb-macho, and he's an anti-feminist misogynist. A shift lead says something like "what's wrong with that, he's a comedian?" The Coworker who started this said that I was a feminist. My shift lead shakes his head and laughs. He tells me there are plenty of good reasons to be an anti-feminist. Like obesity and children's grades, because a decline in those is a result of feminism. I look at him and say fuck off. He laughs. I tell him to go fuck himself, I will not be laughed at. I will not have this discussion. It was a quiet next couple hours. I had the "I'll go to HR" look in my eyes, I guess.
To me, this was like him saying: "There are plenty of reasons to be against equal rights." If this referred to race he would have been afraid to oppose me for a second. Why different when we're asked about sexism? Because that's what this is. I'm a feminist because society is still inherently (patriarchally) sexist. Otherwise I would only be a humanist. Right now, part of humanism is feminism. I think it's discouraged in society because it's unmanly. I think that's bullshit.
That's all I've got to say for now.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
In Memory of A Postmodernist I Still Need to Read (and other musings on the recently past weekend)
I went to see the neo-futurists this weekend as they did one of their performances of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It was fantastic, and I'll get back to it later in that portion, but I'd first like to reflect on just one of the thirty "plays" I saw there.
Writers Writing About Writers 2.0 was a short sketch where three neo-futurists sat at desks in front of the audience with yellow legal pads and composition notebooks. Another neo-futurist is at a blackboard. The voiceover narrator explains that they'll each write down the initials and date of death of the author on legal pad. These are taped to the board by the last of these. "William Butler Yeats, died January 28th 1939" (an important thing to note also is that I'm using Yeats as a filler, I can't remember who was first and I think it was a modernist poet) its almost shouted "C. S. Lewis, died November 22nd 1963" an interesting choice, later revelations may have elucidated why it might have been used "Kurt Vonnegut, died April 11th 2007" I winced, remembering hearing of his death. The voiceover narration continued, and it was a nice little sketch, very short. I noticed four and not three pieces of paper were taped to the blackboard. After the show I walked up to the blackboard and saw the pieces of paper with WBY 1/28/1939, CSL 11/22/1963 and KV 4/11/2007 and the one last one DFW 9/12/2008. I recalled that it was currently 9/13. I could only think of one writer DFW: David Foster Wallace. Had he died?
A side note on my at-least-weekly ritual: Recent Deaths. I check Wikipedia and find out who died. There are reasons for this, like my assumption that Studs Terkel's or Don DeLillo's death will go by unnoticed by major media, yet I'd want to know about it. I feel that's part of what our intimacy with authors, musicians and artists of our time involves. Part of it is I think an obsession with how much goes by me, how many influential people of whom I've never heard. Those are a couple of the main reasons. There must be more, and I even probably know what a couple of them are.
This time it was different. It was an author I knew about, and had been connected to my favorites, but I hadn't read anything but an article or two of his. He satconstantly on the book shelf of my mind waiting for me to get to him. Rest in Peace, DFW. I wish I'd gotten to know you before your untimely death. Maybe someday I'll know David Foster Wallace. Maybe I'll understand the suicide then. I know the concepts by which he wrote have always interested me. Sooner or later, I'll read Infinite Jest.
Now on the rest of the show. First of all, it has my full approval. That means if you're in Chicago and haven't seen it, I really reccomend going to a show. It's worth th seven plus roll of a die dollars you pay for a ticket, on average the cost of a movie on a weekend night. And it's typically more illuminating, every bit as enjoyable, far less reproduceable. I laughed at the comedy, respected all the performances, and saw some very cool ideas. It's very genuine: it isn't Shakespeare but it's local art of our times, and it isn't lacking. I'm definitely a fan. There were some great highlights in all genres of contemporary conceptual theatre. I can think of nobody I know who wouldn't have a good time. True, I could also probably find some major points to criticize in their performance, but it isn't my goal here.
I was planning on writing a little about what I'm up to besides, and some books, but I'd like to make sure this gets posted. However, one thing I will include is that Cory Doctorow has written a pretty nice collection of essays I've been working through called Content. It's Doctorow, so it's Creative Commons and therefore free for download. Here's a link:
http://craphound.com/content/
You might get a more extended report later.
Writers Writing About Writers 2.0 was a short sketch where three neo-futurists sat at desks in front of the audience with yellow legal pads and composition notebooks. Another neo-futurist is at a blackboard. The voiceover narrator explains that they'll each write down the initials and date of death of the author on legal pad. These are taped to the board by the last of these. "William Butler Yeats, died January 28th 1939" (an important thing to note also is that I'm using Yeats as a filler, I can't remember who was first and I think it was a modernist poet) its almost shouted "C. S. Lewis, died November 22nd 1963" an interesting choice, later revelations may have elucidated why it might have been used "Kurt Vonnegut, died April 11th 2007" I winced, remembering hearing of his death. The voiceover narration continued, and it was a nice little sketch, very short. I noticed four and not three pieces of paper were taped to the blackboard. After the show I walked up to the blackboard and saw the pieces of paper with WBY 1/28/1939, CSL 11/22/1963 and KV 4/11/2007 and the one last one DFW 9/12/2008. I recalled that it was currently 9/13. I could only think of one writer DFW: David Foster Wallace. Had he died?
A side note on my at-least-weekly ritual: Recent Deaths. I check Wikipedia and find out who died. There are reasons for this, like my assumption that Studs Terkel's or Don DeLillo's death will go by unnoticed by major media, yet I'd want to know about it. I feel that's part of what our intimacy with authors, musicians and artists of our time involves. Part of it is I think an obsession with how much goes by me, how many influential people of whom I've never heard. Those are a couple of the main reasons. There must be more, and I even probably know what a couple of them are.
This time it was different. It was an author I knew about, and had been connected to my favorites, but I hadn't read anything but an article or two of his. He satconstantly on the book shelf of my mind waiting for me to get to him. Rest in Peace, DFW. I wish I'd gotten to know you before your untimely death. Maybe someday I'll know David Foster Wallace. Maybe I'll understand the suicide then. I know the concepts by which he wrote have always interested me. Sooner or later, I'll read Infinite Jest.
Now on the rest of the show. First of all, it has my full approval. That means if you're in Chicago and haven't seen it, I really reccomend going to a show. It's worth th seven plus roll of a die dollars you pay for a ticket, on average the cost of a movie on a weekend night. And it's typically more illuminating, every bit as enjoyable, far less reproduceable. I laughed at the comedy, respected all the performances, and saw some very cool ideas. It's very genuine: it isn't Shakespeare but it's local art of our times, and it isn't lacking. I'm definitely a fan. There were some great highlights in all genres of contemporary conceptual theatre. I can think of nobody I know who wouldn't have a good time. True, I could also probably find some major points to criticize in their performance, but it isn't my goal here.
I was planning on writing a little about what I'm up to besides, and some books, but I'd like to make sure this gets posted. However, one thing I will include is that Cory Doctorow has written a pretty nice collection of essays I've been working through called Content. It's Doctorow, so it's Creative Commons and therefore free for download. Here's a link:
http://craphound.com/content/
You might get a more extended report later.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
What's with the sobriety thing? And bike rides.
For those of you who have not heard, I'm a teetotaling non-smoker this month. For all of September. The last time I had a drink was August 30th, and the last time I had a cigarette was fifteen minutes before 12:00 AM September first. This is about a week of non-smoking and no alcohol. It extends further than this by a little, I'm not drinking any pop-type beverages this month -- I didn't drink many in the first place, but they are free at work. I'm also cutting down dramatically on how much meat I eat. These last two are probably permanent or close to it. (I might write about the meat one later, in a different blog post.)
Here's your explanation:
I don't plan on permanently quitting drinking or smoking. I might quit smoking, and it's pretty highly likely I'll cut back (I intend to do so, come October). The fact is I needed to know I could do it, and I couldn't justify my smoking to myself by saying I liked it without actually knowing that this was the case -- which meant examining it with my mind free from the perhaps subconscious influence of chemical addiction. There's also the matter of knowing I could do it if necessary. I'll say that I could indeed quit smoking if I wanted to, and I'm proving it. A week in now. So far, so good. The chemical addiction isn't really getting to me. I didn't have much in the way of "nic fits" and I'm confident I could quit forever, should I decide to do so at some point. I wanted to do this with the quit drinking thing (there's also a pact involved in that with Morgan, Evan, and Caitlin) as an extra exercise in will power.
I particularly don't think I'll quit drinking for the simple reason that I don't see it as much of a vice in my life. I like a good beer, wine, or whiskey. I don't get drunk often. It's been quite a long time since I have been. The reason behind this is simply that I think it's good to exercise my willpower in multiple ways, and I think social drinking is a touch on the ridiculous side.
To comment on the will power aspect only: if I can't have control over whether or not I have a cigarette or refuse a drink, what can I, really have control over? I believe this kind of affirmation of freedom over our own initial impulses is a very valuable way to reaffirm that we are indeed (in one sense) decision making beings, and not slaves to something we might call beyond ourselves.
Now last thing to anybody who reads this:
If anyone has any interest in a bike ride in the city, I'm going to try to use every possible weekend of the bike friendly season to go on at least one longish bike ride. I'll go alone, but Join me if you like.
I've got some more things to say, but I'm at work.
Here's your explanation:
I don't plan on permanently quitting drinking or smoking. I might quit smoking, and it's pretty highly likely I'll cut back (I intend to do so, come October). The fact is I needed to know I could do it, and I couldn't justify my smoking to myself by saying I liked it without actually knowing that this was the case -- which meant examining it with my mind free from the perhaps subconscious influence of chemical addiction. There's also the matter of knowing I could do it if necessary. I'll say that I could indeed quit smoking if I wanted to, and I'm proving it. A week in now. So far, so good. The chemical addiction isn't really getting to me. I didn't have much in the way of "nic fits" and I'm confident I could quit forever, should I decide to do so at some point. I wanted to do this with the quit drinking thing (there's also a pact involved in that with Morgan, Evan, and Caitlin) as an extra exercise in will power.
I particularly don't think I'll quit drinking for the simple reason that I don't see it as much of a vice in my life. I like a good beer, wine, or whiskey. I don't get drunk often. It's been quite a long time since I have been. The reason behind this is simply that I think it's good to exercise my willpower in multiple ways, and I think social drinking is a touch on the ridiculous side.
To comment on the will power aspect only: if I can't have control over whether or not I have a cigarette or refuse a drink, what can I, really have control over? I believe this kind of affirmation of freedom over our own initial impulses is a very valuable way to reaffirm that we are indeed (in one sense) decision making beings, and not slaves to something we might call beyond ourselves.
Now last thing to anybody who reads this:
If anyone has any interest in a bike ride in the city, I'm going to try to use every possible weekend of the bike friendly season to go on at least one longish bike ride. I'll go alone, but Join me if you like.
I've got some more things to say, but I'm at work.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
I Have a Laptop (sorta)
...naturally, the first thing I should do with it is to blog. Or renew blogging. Who knows if I'll keep this up.
As for the laptop itself, it's an old ThinkPad T43. It's not really mine, either. Rather, it's a work laptop, that this company gives to most of their employees. Not to me. I'm too low on the totem pole. I can halt their revenue for hours, and I'm the one who's low on the totem pole. Not that I would of course. It'd cost me my job, I'd think. This laptop was given to my coworker bart. Who already had a laptop and gave it off to another admin. That admin passed it to another who passed it to another who became a teamlead and got a laptop from the company himself and passed it to me. But effectively I'm borrowing it. Indefinitely.
Time for Some
Announcements.
If I have time later, ruminations.
I'm considering another tattoo. It's picked out and has some special meanings already. Lets start with who said it. The author of it wrote it in his autobiography, and it seems to me to be true of him. This is why he's one of my heroes. That and his aptitude at writing (Nobel prize winner for literature) his achievements in Mathematics (for example moving set theory forward further than anyone besides Cantor) and philosophy (answered long-standing questions in logic and had a sensible, comprehensive political theory) and as an activist (imprisoned in britain, his pacifism was later commended by the government). The only person I'll call a persnal hero, of himself, he said an approximation of the text I'll be getting:
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unvearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
I put that on my profiles and all the regular modern age crap. Talked to my sister about my admiration for the quote. In spring she gets the thing as a tattoo. Seriously, she freakin stole it! Well, in any case, I'm probably getting it on my arm. I'm reclaiming it. Oh, and there's the added significance that we'll both have it. You know, shared ideals and sibling significance and such.
Also, I'm at least auditing classes right now. In a week I may have the capital to get myself enrolled. If this happens I'll have almost no money for as much as two weeks. Also, it'll be up in the air whether I'll be able to pay for what I would enroll in. Fun stuff, huh?
I thought I had already posted this, but while I apparently had not, let me include an image of how I think this tattoo might look.
As for the laptop itself, it's an old ThinkPad T43. It's not really mine, either. Rather, it's a work laptop, that this company gives to most of their employees. Not to me. I'm too low on the totem pole. I can halt their revenue for hours, and I'm the one who's low on the totem pole. Not that I would of course. It'd cost me my job, I'd think. This laptop was given to my coworker bart. Who already had a laptop and gave it off to another admin. That admin passed it to another who passed it to another who became a teamlead and got a laptop from the company himself and passed it to me. But effectively I'm borrowing it. Indefinitely.
Time for Some
Announcements.
If I have time later, ruminations.
I'm considering another tattoo. It's picked out and has some special meanings already. Lets start with who said it. The author of it wrote it in his autobiography, and it seems to me to be true of him. This is why he's one of my heroes. That and his aptitude at writing (Nobel prize winner for literature) his achievements in Mathematics (for example moving set theory forward further than anyone besides Cantor) and philosophy (answered long-standing questions in logic and had a sensible, comprehensive political theory) and as an activist (imprisoned in britain, his pacifism was later commended by the government). The only person I'll call a persnal hero, of himself, he said an approximation of the text I'll be getting:
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unvearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
I put that on my profiles and all the regular modern age crap. Talked to my sister about my admiration for the quote. In spring she gets the thing as a tattoo. Seriously, she freakin stole it! Well, in any case, I'm probably getting it on my arm. I'm reclaiming it. Oh, and there's the added significance that we'll both have it. You know, shared ideals and sibling significance and such.
Also, I'm at least auditing classes right now. In a week I may have the capital to get myself enrolled. If this happens I'll have almost no money for as much as two weeks. Also, it'll be up in the air whether I'll be able to pay for what I would enroll in. Fun stuff, huh?
I thought I had already posted this, but while I apparently had not, let me include an image of how I think this tattoo might look.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Tremble, be a human
I'd like to start blogging again, so here's a post about something that's as good as any I'll ever write.
"When you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine"
--Ernesto Guevara
I had a conversation earlier which uplifted me more than most. Let me preface this by saying I am a feminist. I care about women and society, how we see gender, how it needs to be corrected very badly. My views are summed up as well as anything by something my friend Kevin Garvey said in the conversation I'll later describe, I'll mark that with an asterisk, but I feel the need to explain further.
My freshman orientation showed me more should be for this, one moment especially affirmed this: a 'game' of sorts was made to highlight the understanding of different types of people (from different point of view to different ethnicity), and the stereotypes which are wrongly applied to them. My orientation group was set in a line, and different such groups would be read by the leader in the format of a statement aligning one with that identity (e.g. "I am Jewish," "I am African-American," "I am a liberal") those to whom the statement applied would walk ten or so feet from the line and stand facing them, and then stereotypes which students had written of such a group were then read. I heard "I am a feminist," and, immediately, walked to face the group. It surprised me out of the six women and four other men of my group, I was the only one to do so. After this ended, one of the orientation leaders, whom I knew to also be a feminist, came and told me she was surprised and glad that I walked over, considering it is always such a small group that does so, and that I was the first male she had seen do so after all of the orientation groups she'd had in two years. I told her I was sad that this was the case, and that more did not do so.
I sat outside the atrium, eating, picnic style with Dan, Kevin, and Steve. At one point in the conversation, Steve mentioned self-defense courses for women, and how it's bullshit that they may very well be needed in our society. "Think of what a woman needs to do not to get raped," he was saying, possibly speaking of his class discussion, "take self defense, carry mace, be accompanied in many situations, dress differently." I don't think I even need to tell you, the list continues. I could probably think of more myself, and I probably failed to remember more that were mentioned.
Then he said the next part of this: "What does a man need to do not to get raped?" The only thing that we really thought of, speaking for the general case here, is not go to prison. This isn't to say men don't get raped, but that's the only precaution that we have any pressing need to take, if it can be called that.
Self-defense classes, awareness of situations, these were considered, but the best response, from Kevin: "How about people learn to fucking respect their fellow human beings?"*
Damn right. That's what's needed. Respect. For people. Guess who isn't, in every part of society, getting a deserved amount of that? This isn't hard, and I'm not aboutto say the problem is in the least minimal. I was pleased to find myself among three other guys, all of them very enthused about that. I'd also like to see more.
I've had a disturbing and revealing past couple of ears by listening and knowing people. Off of the top of my head I can think of three women at the very least who had some experiences in which this was the sole issue, and I probably am again forgetting a few. I can think of, among these, even one instance of rape. Not a violent case, but one which no less highlights the issue: women are not respected nearly enough, and because they aren't major damage is done. All of the cases showed a similarity that the woman in question in each case was harmed by this mentally and emotionally. Usually accompanied by a vast loss of self-respect, which turned out to make things far harder for each of them. I talked to the person I mentioned that was raped at great lengths few months after this, and when I realized what this was a case of, and how much it changed things for her, I knew how absolutely crucial this issue was, and believe me it is.
In the other cases, it was usually blatant use of another person, by whatever means. This must have involved, for at least that time, a complete absence of respect for and care for the other person. I cannot imagine how deeply into society this lack of respect must reach. I just know the implications extend beyond this into the daily lives of women in our culture and probably every other culture on this planet. I know that, because I've listened, because I've observed the behaviours and heard the stories of my fellow human beings, I am very much changed and will speak and act as I can in order to express this. Join me and the multitudes who also understand.
I tremble. Do you?
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Yeah, it's damn long.
OK, it's been a week or so, and was thinking this is excusable. It has to be. I'm back home, and have been spending time with friends. And Louisa. You see how this leaves little time to blog. In the meantime, I have all these thoughts and discussions (many of which are with Billy, another key one with Nick J) during which I think "I should blog about this when I get around to blogging." Of course I forget some of this beforehand, and I'm reminded that part of this blog is to sort out these ideas as they happen. And bug you with them. That way I don't forget to bug you with them before.
Let's start with the 'right about now', shall we? What am I doing up at this hour? I've been telling meself to get to sleep earlier for days. Answer: Reading up on the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Yep. I've heard so damn much about it, gotta figure out the back story now. I was surprised to find it more than an internet phenomenon amongst atheists. Apparently, for the most part it is an attack on "Intelligent Design" rather than on religion as a whole (though it works as a demonstration of burden of proof lying with believers.) Bobby Henderson, the creator of this and the famous graph Global Temp. Vs. # of Pirates, started all of these things in a simple letter to the Kansas school board. They had made the unconstitutional (yep, that's my opinion) decision to teach ID in their classrooms, and Henderson (a self-described out-of-work science major) wrote a letter to the school board advocating that they have every reason to teach the Pastafarian theory (every bit as scientific as ID) alongside evolution and their recently-ruled teachable ID. I must say, this is a very Swiftian satire on the political concerning education. If there is any political issue I'm on about it's education. That'll be explained in another post, but I digress. I'll do that from time to time. For example...
I love wikipedia. It's true. Fuck the criticisms. It's not meant to be something you cite in a paper, necessarily, but I'll tell you it's good at what it does. If you want to know generally about a subject, there's wikipedia. It's my first stop for a low-down on most things. It's quite an accomplishment of human knowledge and free information. Something that's governed by the people themselves, works, and benefits all. Everything should work like this. Another great thing is the use of links. You wind up going to read about one thing, and read about tens of others. If you want something you're sure is reliable links to sources are available. Lemme sum up a couple of thoughts I had during such a process.
Richard Dawkins is a champion to many atheists. I need to look at his stuff more closely to decide if his ideas are any good. From what I can tell, a difference between his approach and mine is that he looks at things scientifically, I philosophically. I'm not even sure if we have the same conclusion, but I like his view that God is not impossible, just not likely. (Same with the FSM, I suppose.) Another idea he has had which is very controversial, is that the world would be better without religion. I don't know if I agree, but it certainly seems that way sometimes. What do you think? Would the world be better without religion? Hell, what would the world be without religion? Forget if religion is valid or not, it's just how things would be without it. Now. In today's world. Respond, I'd love to hear it. Back up what you say, I'll be responding. Not sure this'll be anything more than supposition though.
Then, I decided to figure out if I really know what it is I criticized in the first part of this post. Intelligent Design, I've concluded, cannot be rationally seen as anything more than an attempt to teach creationism in public schools. If you weren't aware, that's been officially established as unconstitutional after the Edwards v. Aguillard case of 1987. The idea is that there was some designer behind much of what we see and specifically to the presence of humans. There was an attempt to say this was not necessarily theistic (thereby creationist or religious) which allowed for a designer to be "intelligent but not god," but this will easily lead to the infinite regression of who designs the designers. It points as evidence to gaps of things that can't be explained. Michael Behe, Christian author of Darwin's Black Box (yes, I read it) does this well, but he admitted it was no logical proof, nor a scientific one. Let me go the extra step for him: it also gives no logical conclusion. The ID supporters talk about things in the world, particularly with humans, to have required direction in it's process, which brings me to a philosophical topic...
The problem, roughly, as I see it.
I talked about this briefly with Billy. If you want to improve the world, you have to remove the imperfections... are there any? Stupid question, right? Now if there exists a creator or designer of the like that these ID fellas think, making things better and more perfect, and this, as I showed, requires something like god... then what's with all the imperfections and suffering? There's the premise for the problem of evil. Go ahead and post if you'd like.
Damn, you must be tired of reading this stuff in extended blog posts, I might have to start a book instead.
Let's start with the 'right about now', shall we? What am I doing up at this hour? I've been telling meself to get to sleep earlier for days. Answer: Reading up on the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Yep. I've heard so damn much about it, gotta figure out the back story now. I was surprised to find it more than an internet phenomenon amongst atheists. Apparently, for the most part it is an attack on "Intelligent Design" rather than on religion as a whole (though it works as a demonstration of burden of proof lying with believers.) Bobby Henderson, the creator of this and the famous graph Global Temp. Vs. # of Pirates, started all of these things in a simple letter to the Kansas school board. They had made the unconstitutional (yep, that's my opinion) decision to teach ID in their classrooms, and Henderson (a self-described out-of-work science major) wrote a letter to the school board advocating that they have every reason to teach the Pastafarian theory (every bit as scientific as ID) alongside evolution and their recently-ruled teachable ID. I must say, this is a very Swiftian satire on the political concerning education. If there is any political issue I'm on about it's education. That'll be explained in another post, but I digress. I'll do that from time to time. For example...
I love wikipedia. It's true. Fuck the criticisms. It's not meant to be something you cite in a paper, necessarily, but I'll tell you it's good at what it does. If you want to know generally about a subject, there's wikipedia. It's my first stop for a low-down on most things. It's quite an accomplishment of human knowledge and free information. Something that's governed by the people themselves, works, and benefits all. Everything should work like this. Another great thing is the use of links. You wind up going to read about one thing, and read about tens of others. If you want something you're sure is reliable links to sources are available. Lemme sum up a couple of thoughts I had during such a process.
Richard Dawkins is a champion to many atheists. I need to look at his stuff more closely to decide if his ideas are any good. From what I can tell, a difference between his approach and mine is that he looks at things scientifically, I philosophically. I'm not even sure if we have the same conclusion, but I like his view that God is not impossible, just not likely. (Same with the FSM, I suppose.) Another idea he has had which is very controversial, is that the world would be better without religion. I don't know if I agree, but it certainly seems that way sometimes. What do you think? Would the world be better without religion? Hell, what would the world be without religion? Forget if religion is valid or not, it's just how things would be without it. Now. In today's world. Respond, I'd love to hear it. Back up what you say, I'll be responding. Not sure this'll be anything more than supposition though.
Then, I decided to figure out if I really know what it is I criticized in the first part of this post. Intelligent Design, I've concluded, cannot be rationally seen as anything more than an attempt to teach creationism in public schools. If you weren't aware, that's been officially established as unconstitutional after the Edwards v. Aguillard case of 1987. The idea is that there was some designer behind much of what we see and specifically to the presence of humans. There was an attempt to say this was not necessarily theistic (thereby creationist or religious) which allowed for a designer to be "intelligent but not god," but this will easily lead to the infinite regression of who designs the designers. It points as evidence to gaps of things that can't be explained. Michael Behe, Christian author of Darwin's Black Box (yes, I read it) does this well, but he admitted it was no logical proof, nor a scientific one. Let me go the extra step for him: it also gives no logical conclusion. The ID supporters talk about things in the world, particularly with humans, to have required direction in it's process, which brings me to a philosophical topic...
The problem, roughly, as I see it.
I talked about this briefly with Billy. If you want to improve the world, you have to remove the imperfections... are there any? Stupid question, right? Now if there exists a creator or designer of the like that these ID fellas think, making things better and more perfect, and this, as I showed, requires something like god... then what's with all the imperfections and suffering? There's the premise for the problem of evil. Go ahead and post if you'd like.
Damn, you must be tired of reading this stuff in extended blog posts, I might have to start a book instead.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Pynchon does me the favor of making a long list significantly longer, etc
Thomas Pynchon has been more compared to James Joyce than anybody still alive. I've been excited lately to find that he has recently written and published another book, and some critics are calling it his best since Gravity's Rainbow which he published in 1973. I've been excited, though I have not bought his new novel Against the Day as of yet. It will remain on my reading list for quite some time now, on the very low side of estimates, I will not even begin to read it for a year. The longest it'll take me to finally pick this one up is a decade. (I'd like to read at least one of his others, V., before then.) Partially, I think this is exciting news to me because it is like seeing something important within our lifetimes. We're seeing a master of writing like Joyce publish again.
This, I should mention, has made me look at my reading list again. I mentioned James Joyce twice in the last paragraph. He might be next. The only Joyce I've read are some short stories. I mean to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and perhaps, if I'm ambitious and want to start another giant, obscure book, Ulysses. While creating this blog, I noticed the previews for the templates do not use 'Lorem Ipsum' as filler text but instead lines from the English epic Paradise Lost. Another book I need to read. Fortunately, that one isn't totally giant. For my philosophical interests, I'd like to read Fear and Trembling, and I was just loaned some essays by Bertrand Russell. On the technical side of philosophical interests, I've also been loaned by my philosophy professor a book on mathematical logic. While I have it, I may as well do my best at trying to understand Gödel's theorems and Church's Theorem. Just getting the notation in that book down will be a task.
This week has been crazy if only for the little sleep I've been able to get: there is a subtle tradeoff with some classes: they might not have a final, you might not have to study much, but you'll need to write papers. I have chosen to be ambitious and write a paper for my philosophy class that I'll have to think about, I'll be developing some basic theory on personal identity and the survival or continuity of personal identity. No, I don't really have one yet, I'll come up with enough ideas to answer the problem which is posed (a rather simple one) and just move on to what such a theory could imply given more complex ones. (These more complex ones, specifically pertaining to the division of brain and consciousness, I have no immediate answer to, and will not be satisfied with what I conclude, most likely.) I'm in the process of writing a paper about gender and sexuality as it was for the Greeks and Romans and how it is today for, say your first year college student in our society. I am aware of how general this is, and that my report of sexuality in either society will be incomplete, but what can you expect? I'm trying to make apparent the contrast between modern thinking about sexuality (the perhaps falsely categorical look at it as gender-preference, the mental exclusion of homosexuals from normal terms) and the thoughts of the Greeks and Romans in antiquity (preservation of masculinity, detestability of passivity for the male, the occasionally ridiculous contrast they made in considering gender.) Looks like Foucault will be useful. Has anybody heard the statistic that more homosexuals come out of the closet as such in their first year of college than any other point in their life? If you know a source that says this, or something like it (even contrary to it) and can be cited, it'd be useful for this paper. For my philosophy paper I wish I could find my copy of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, it may hold insight which is more important for theory on brain and identity than was anticipated when it came out. Damn. I think I left it at home. Point is my papers will hint at these theses: The English paper will note that it is perhaps not naturally logical to make the strict, categorical distinctions between sexualities which we have made, and that though the Romans and Greeks weren't ideal either, their example perhaps shows this. My philosophy paper will argue that a continuance of consciousness and self-awareness while the seat of consciousness is also continuance qualifies for survival and maintains identity. (The brain, to me, is the seat of consciousness, both hemispheres together, with only one consciousness may be severely different, therefore perhaps not actually 'preserved'.)
This post probably wasn't that interesting for most of you, but it's a paper writing week: what can you expect? They'll get better. I promise.
This, I should mention, has made me look at my reading list again. I mentioned James Joyce twice in the last paragraph. He might be next. The only Joyce I've read are some short stories. I mean to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and perhaps, if I'm ambitious and want to start another giant, obscure book, Ulysses. While creating this blog, I noticed the previews for the templates do not use 'Lorem Ipsum' as filler text but instead lines from the English epic Paradise Lost. Another book I need to read. Fortunately, that one isn't totally giant. For my philosophical interests, I'd like to read Fear and Trembling, and I was just loaned some essays by Bertrand Russell. On the technical side of philosophical interests, I've also been loaned by my philosophy professor a book on mathematical logic. While I have it, I may as well do my best at trying to understand Gödel's theorems and Church's Theorem. Just getting the notation in that book down will be a task.
This week has been crazy if only for the little sleep I've been able to get: there is a subtle tradeoff with some classes: they might not have a final, you might not have to study much, but you'll need to write papers. I have chosen to be ambitious and write a paper for my philosophy class that I'll have to think about, I'll be developing some basic theory on personal identity and the survival or continuity of personal identity. No, I don't really have one yet, I'll come up with enough ideas to answer the problem which is posed (a rather simple one) and just move on to what such a theory could imply given more complex ones. (These more complex ones, specifically pertaining to the division of brain and consciousness, I have no immediate answer to, and will not be satisfied with what I conclude, most likely.) I'm in the process of writing a paper about gender and sexuality as it was for the Greeks and Romans and how it is today for, say your first year college student in our society. I am aware of how general this is, and that my report of sexuality in either society will be incomplete, but what can you expect? I'm trying to make apparent the contrast between modern thinking about sexuality (the perhaps falsely categorical look at it as gender-preference, the mental exclusion of homosexuals from normal terms) and the thoughts of the Greeks and Romans in antiquity (preservation of masculinity, detestability of passivity for the male, the occasionally ridiculous contrast they made in considering gender.) Looks like Foucault will be useful. Has anybody heard the statistic that more homosexuals come out of the closet as such in their first year of college than any other point in their life? If you know a source that says this, or something like it (even contrary to it) and can be cited, it'd be useful for this paper. For my philosophy paper I wish I could find my copy of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, it may hold insight which is more important for theory on brain and identity than was anticipated when it came out. Damn. I think I left it at home. Point is my papers will hint at these theses: The English paper will note that it is perhaps not naturally logical to make the strict, categorical distinctions between sexualities which we have made, and that though the Romans and Greeks weren't ideal either, their example perhaps shows this. My philosophy paper will argue that a continuance of consciousness and self-awareness while the seat of consciousness is also continuance qualifies for survival and maintains identity. (The brain, to me, is the seat of consciousness, both hemispheres together, with only one consciousness may be severely different, therefore perhaps not actually 'preserved'.)
This post probably wasn't that interesting for most of you, but it's a paper writing week: what can you expect? They'll get better. I promise.
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Here it is, folks!
Yes, yes, I'm making a blog. After probably over a year's absence from the "blogosphere" I'm entering the atmosphere hot, full with a screaming coming across the sky. Both Them and I thought I was gone for good, but looking back we all should have known better. It was all inevitable, and maybe (but hopefully not) predetermined. Certainly foreseeable.
I came back for a few reasons, first and foremost of which is I discovered I still enjoyed blogging after some experience on facebook with a series of philosophical notes. A second is that I've been musing with this idea a long time. I want to expand my blogging experience to more topics, more ideas, etc. I'm more or less doing the opposite thing as my good friend, and author of The Xiphoidian (Darin), I am reserving my facebook notes for the philosophical notes mostly, and posting more types here, with topics which will repeat (and some which will have no topic). (Do not misunderstand, this will also contain those notes; I will post them in both places simultaneously.) This could be said to be a major reason for this blog, to post on more things, here. This blog will be an outlet for my thoughts. It will be mostly just various thoughts of mine, on topics which I find interesting. You, my friends, know that is not a small number of topics. Another purpose is to expand this beyond "the facebook community" if you will, a greater audience by number. Facebook is also somewhat deficient, it does not allow for long responses, which good thought occasionally requires.
I invite you to comment on all notes which you wish to comment on. Argue. Insult me, if you must! (Though I may still your tongue (keyboard? (Nested parentheses?)) by moderation abilities, I'll try to restrain myself.) Suggestions for the blog itself are welcome. Anything I should add? Change template? Shall I repost my facebook notes?
Bonus points if you caught the obscure reference in my first paragraph here.
I came back for a few reasons, first and foremost of which is I discovered I still enjoyed blogging after some experience on facebook with a series of philosophical notes. A second is that I've been musing with this idea a long time. I want to expand my blogging experience to more topics, more ideas, etc. I'm more or less doing the opposite thing as my good friend, and author of The Xiphoidian (Darin), I am reserving my facebook notes for the philosophical notes mostly, and posting more types here, with topics which will repeat (and some which will have no topic). (Do not misunderstand, this will also contain those notes; I will post them in both places simultaneously.) This could be said to be a major reason for this blog, to post on more things, here. This blog will be an outlet for my thoughts. It will be mostly just various thoughts of mine, on topics which I find interesting. You, my friends, know that is not a small number of topics. Another purpose is to expand this beyond "the facebook community" if you will, a greater audience by number. Facebook is also somewhat deficient, it does not allow for long responses, which good thought occasionally requires.
I invite you to comment on all notes which you wish to comment on. Argue. Insult me, if you must! (Though I may still your tongue (keyboard? (Nested parentheses?)) by moderation abilities, I'll try to restrain myself.) Suggestions for the blog itself are welcome. Anything I should add? Change template? Shall I repost my facebook notes?
Bonus points if you caught the obscure reference in my first paragraph here.
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