I wish my GSI luck in staying awake through that metaphysics paper. I ended up choosing a topic which required a really light treatment of a broad area, and which didn't draw any interesting conclusions. It was tough to stay focused on that jerky paper.
Preliminary gathering of passages for the Wittgenstein paper has begun. That's due Friday morning. I don't have enough time to make it any good, and that's pretending that I don't also have to prepare an essay and study for (and take) a logic final in the meantime. Don't be too near to me at 10:01 am Friday, at which time my brain will probably deflate explosively.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
One down
At last, one of my papers is done! I will trim around the edges and smear a little lipstick on it until I turn it in on Friday, but all of the substantial work on the logic paper is finally done. I don't have any other niggling problems I need to chase down--none that are so obviously problematic that I intend to chase them down, anyway.
This is especially good because I have accomplished fuck-all on the others. Well, I've got half my page count written on the Metaphysics paper (due Monday), but man did I end up carving out a boring topic for myself. I have no idea how good any of the crap I've spewed for it is; it has become too boring and the logic paper has control of my feedback loop. Still haven't even 100% settled on the topic for the Wittgenstein paper due next Friday, and that will be the hardest of the bunch. But no problem, first there's a completely comprehensive logic final to take next Thursday, in which short essays will be written on all topics, and you also come in with a prepared essay on a topic chosen from a list already provided. Which basically means I have to write another paper for logic and memorize it, while studying for the rest of the final and also writing the impossible Wittgenstein paper. My lack of God, the Wittgenstein paper is a terrifying prospect.
I'd like to take a moment to congratulate myself for correctly identifying this as the semester to take no 'real' classes in addition to these three. I thought they would all be bears. Two of them were. This is an incredible experience. Incredibly stressful, I mean. Here's hoping I don't get so hung over from the prison party (which becomes my birthday party 3 hours in) that I am completely useless the next day. That's how things went the last couple of times I went to a party. How about: beer. I'll stick to beer. Wine has been a good friend to me historically, but lately it has been sneaking up on me and the next thing I know I'm spraying purple onto the BART tracks. It's also nice that the party will be within staggering distance from home.
Anyway, it came about way too late but I am intensely relieved to flush the cache of considerations on this paper aside. It is actually the strongest paper I've written here (assuming I didn't miss anything major). I was limited to 8 pages, but I got around that by using endnotes instead of footnotes for the first time. Endnotes are great--they go down to 10-point font and are single spaced. Yeah, there's a full page of endnotes. But fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. If I go insane and apply to grad school, and this paper doesn't get ripped apart, it's probably what I will develop into my writing sample.
This is especially good because I have accomplished fuck-all on the others. Well, I've got half my page count written on the Metaphysics paper (due Monday), but man did I end up carving out a boring topic for myself. I have no idea how good any of the crap I've spewed for it is; it has become too boring and the logic paper has control of my feedback loop. Still haven't even 100% settled on the topic for the Wittgenstein paper due next Friday, and that will be the hardest of the bunch. But no problem, first there's a completely comprehensive logic final to take next Thursday, in which short essays will be written on all topics, and you also come in with a prepared essay on a topic chosen from a list already provided. Which basically means I have to write another paper for logic and memorize it, while studying for the rest of the final and also writing the impossible Wittgenstein paper. My lack of God, the Wittgenstein paper is a terrifying prospect.
I'd like to take a moment to congratulate myself for correctly identifying this as the semester to take no 'real' classes in addition to these three. I thought they would all be bears. Two of them were. This is an incredible experience. Incredibly stressful, I mean. Here's hoping I don't get so hung over from the prison party (which becomes my birthday party 3 hours in) that I am completely useless the next day. That's how things went the last couple of times I went to a party. How about: beer. I'll stick to beer. Wine has been a good friend to me historically, but lately it has been sneaking up on me and the next thing I know I'm spraying purple onto the BART tracks. It's also nice that the party will be within staggering distance from home.
Anyway, it came about way too late but I am intensely relieved to flush the cache of considerations on this paper aside. It is actually the strongest paper I've written here (assuming I didn't miss anything major). I was limited to 8 pages, but I got around that by using endnotes instead of footnotes for the first time. Endnotes are great--they go down to 10-point font and are single spaced. Yeah, there's a full page of endnotes. But fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. If I go insane and apply to grad school, and this paper doesn't get ripped apart, it's probably what I will develop into my writing sample.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
No more philosophy lectures
Today I attended my last lecture as an undergrad. If I'm lucky, I'll audit a million classes in the Fall. (There didn't seem to be a sufficiently compelling reason to stick around and pay tuition.) There's the remote possibility of going to grad school (toward which end I have collected zero letters of recommendation). But, basically, the fun part of my existence as a student ended today. Where I am now, I can think of lots of ways to have improved on my strategies as a student. So at least I learned that much.
It occurred to me, though, as I walked away from class for the last time, that I have pretty sweet bookends for my two years at Berkeley. The first class I attended there was my Theory of Knowledge class, taught by Barry Stroud--probably the best all-around philosopher at Berkeley. And the final lecture was Barry Stroud presenting a paper he contributed to an upcoming anthology of commentary on Wittgenstein. You could have worse bookends as a philosophy student at Berkeley. In fact, I'd say I'm willing to claim that you would have to do worse, if you had it any different as a philosophy student at Berkeley.
Tomorrow morning will be the last tutoring engagement at San Quentin. It will quite possibly be the last time I set foot in that prison. Or maybe not--we'll be working on expanding the program to other programs and schools. Maybe I'll have reason to go back there, who knows. A large chunk of my identity from the last few years is disintegrating before my very eyes.
It occurred to me, though, as I walked away from class for the last time, that I have pretty sweet bookends for my two years at Berkeley. The first class I attended there was my Theory of Knowledge class, taught by Barry Stroud--probably the best all-around philosopher at Berkeley. And the final lecture was Barry Stroud presenting a paper he contributed to an upcoming anthology of commentary on Wittgenstein. You could have worse bookends as a philosophy student at Berkeley. In fact, I'd say I'm willing to claim that you would have to do worse, if you had it any different as a philosophy student at Berkeley.
Tomorrow morning will be the last tutoring engagement at San Quentin. It will quite possibly be the last time I set foot in that prison. Or maybe not--we'll be working on expanding the program to other programs and schools. Maybe I'll have reason to go back there, who knows. A large chunk of my identity from the last few years is disintegrating before my very eyes.
No more teaching in prison
Last prison class was tonight. I go to tutor in the prison Friday morning for the last time. Then office hours. A week later, our end-of-semester party. Then, apart from working to expand the program to other schools and finishing the facilitator handbook--apart from all that extra-extra-curricular stuff--it's over.
I can hardly believe it. I have been ready to be done for quite some time now. But of course it's a bit sad and surreal.
I can hardly believe it. I have been ready to be done for quite some time now. But of course it's a bit sad and surreal.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
School is impossible
3 final papers due in what feels like 5 seconds. All of which require generation of topic. I spent the weekend poring over what I thought would be the logic paper topic, and today decided that it was a dead-end. But starting tomorrow, I must turn in topics for all the papers.
Metaphysics will be something about the relationship between composition and fundamentality. I am pro-universal composition (for any two non-overlapping objects, there's a further object composed of them). I am anti-fundamentalist (there is no "bottom level" of matter; it is infinitely divisible). I will write something about the relationship between these views, or rather which commitments are compatible with which, or something like that.
Logic will probably be something about natural language conditional statements. But I just threw out the argument I was trying to develop over the weekend--I think I can only make a very boring claim, compared to what I was aiming for. Maybe there's a way to switch teams and make a paper out of the failure. Or maybe I can clear up some of my half-formed thoughts about what kinds of natural language statements can't be translated into first-order logic (e.g., "There are some cowboys each of whom shot one of the others in the right foot").
Wittgenstein--who in the hell knows. Perhaps something about rule-following, and the purported (but plausible) impossibility of explaining a sign with another sign, etc. Or what that has to do with the possibility of a language being developed in the first place.
Some shit like that. In short, it will be nifty once graduation has happened.
Metaphysics will be something about the relationship between composition and fundamentality. I am pro-universal composition (for any two non-overlapping objects, there's a further object composed of them). I am anti-fundamentalist (there is no "bottom level" of matter; it is infinitely divisible). I will write something about the relationship between these views, or rather which commitments are compatible with which, or something like that.
Logic will probably be something about natural language conditional statements. But I just threw out the argument I was trying to develop over the weekend--I think I can only make a very boring claim, compared to what I was aiming for. Maybe there's a way to switch teams and make a paper out of the failure. Or maybe I can clear up some of my half-formed thoughts about what kinds of natural language statements can't be translated into first-order logic (e.g., "There are some cowboys each of whom shot one of the others in the right foot").
Wittgenstein--who in the hell knows. Perhaps something about rule-following, and the purported (but plausible) impossibility of explaining a sign with another sign, etc. Or what that has to do with the possibility of a language being developed in the first place.
Some shit like that. In short, it will be nifty once graduation has happened.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The recently streamed
Blogs. One more thing to fall behind on?
Watched the movie Agora the other night. Better than its description had made it sound, but of course a bit loose with filling in the imagined events of history. Still, always nice to watch someone's take on the darkest moment in human history, and nice to see someone pin the blame on the spread of Christianity. Not an American movie. But of course really, given the myriad accounts of its destruction, the Library was probably whittled down in a series of separate events. But of course from our perspective, there once was a Library and now it's gone, and because of that our view into the past ends a lot sooner (how much sooner? I am tempted to suppose that we'd have accounts stretching a couple of millennia further back) than it would had its works survived.
Have also been watching the occasional episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which is a great way to feel nostalgic for a time when such a show stood a chance of being put onto television. Surely I saw some of that show when it originally came on? But I am not having any strong memory stirrings as I watch it. Anyway, although its contents are pretty well-known to a nerd like me, the show was quite well put-together, and even if you have a respectably strong grasp on, say, evolution or astronomy, it's nice to hear someone like Sagan talk about it.
Just a few weeks before my final papers are turned in. Two and a half, I guess. I am almost ready to get started writing them. It is a dreadful prospect.
Friday, April 15, 2011
3D Hackerspace
Last night, checked out a local hackerspace that had advertised itself on reddit. Something like 5 blocks away, cool! Brought my craftier friend along. Nice enough bunch of guys; the exact group you expect to find at a Maker Faire table (they will in fact be at one). Was glad to see that their membership dues are cut in half for the unemployed. Still, no real chance to get involved in that stuff until school's out. But tempting to go check out their mini-wood shop, look askance at their MIG welder, and maybe check out their occasional electronics workshop. Anyway, call it one more cool thing about the neighborhood.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Understanding outstandingly bad works of fiction
I occasionally have cause to wish that I didn't feel compelled to finish most every story that I start, regardless of its quality. Either the story is good, so I finish it for plain enjoyment, or it's bad, so I finish it so I can feel smug and superior (I suppose). Only in a handful of cases do I chuck the book across the room, or peel my lazy ass off the couch, or whatever--those times when I can't even get that sort of negative pleasure from absorbing the fruit of someone's creative labor.
Unfortunately, my threshold is such that I've been subjected to S. King's The Stand three times now, enjoying none of them. Back when I was a middle-schooler or whatever, I was rather devoted to the guy. I would have said that his appeal stemmed from the sympathy he could elicit for the characters, or something like that. I knew that lots of his fans were big into The Stand, which was a big, fat book. (I don't know how I knew that, or anything, in the days before the Internet.) Eventually I got around to it and, well, it fizzled around a third of the way through. I don't really remember that well what I didn't like about it, I just remember not really seeing what the fuss was about. It was no The Shining or Skeleton Crew, say.
Not much later, a friend liberated a copy of the new, extended version of the book. He'd sped read it without much interest, but knew I liked the guy, so he passed it on to me. Perhaps the added 700 or however many pages would add whatever the story needed? I read it again and still: meh.
So who knows why I started the 90's mini-series the other night, when I saw it available on Netflix streaming. I probably guessed it would be so bad I'd switch it off within 5 minutes. Maybe my schadenfreude tank was getting low. Well, I didn't remember enough of the original story to compare them, but it certainly was shorter this way. That's probably the best thing I can say about it.
At least I can now remember better what was so unsatisfying about the story. I would probably describe myself as agnostic in the days I first read it. I had a pretty deep opposition to religion, but big mystical matters in general were a bit more of an open question. And maybe some of the incessant, insipid chatter about GOD'S WILL wasn't quite as noticeable if spread over 1200 pages. But the tedious manichaean sorting of all people into two camps, and the complete absence of consideration of those parts of the planet outside the US, would have been equally pervasive.
That story has claimed enough of my time, I suppose. I just find it a little bit funny that I gave it another 6 hours of my life these past few days.
A friend of mine told me an anecdote he'd read somewhere about something that happened during the production of Kubrick's The Shining adaptation. (I remember I didn't much care for that movie, seeing it fresh off of reading the book. But now I love Kubrick to death and have written King off, so I suspect I would like it more now.) Creative differences between K&K had led to a fairly strained production, I guess.
CUT TO: INT, NIGHT. A phone is RINGING. An ALARM CLOCK-RADIO reads 3:17. A tousle-haired STEPHEN KING picks up the phone and switches on the LIGHT.
KING. Hello?
INTERCUT WITH: INT, NIGHT. VERY CLOSE on a mouth surrounded by dark stubble. A glass filled with ice and an amber liquid is raised to the mouth, which drinks. PULL BACK to reveal STANLEY KUBRICK.
KUBRICK. This is Kubrick.
KING. What the... it's three o'clock in the morning!
KUBRICK. Listen. Do you believe in God?
KING. What? Is this some kind of joke?
KUBRICK. Well?
KING. I don't know, who can say...?
KUBRICK. Just yes or no. Do you believe in God?
KING. Er, I don't know... er... I guess so*.
KUBRICK. Oh.
KUBRICK hangs up.
ROLL CREDITS.
* "Ayuh"
Unfortunately, my threshold is such that I've been subjected to S. King's The Stand three times now, enjoying none of them. Back when I was a middle-schooler or whatever, I was rather devoted to the guy. I would have said that his appeal stemmed from the sympathy he could elicit for the characters, or something like that. I knew that lots of his fans were big into The Stand, which was a big, fat book. (I don't know how I knew that, or anything, in the days before the Internet.) Eventually I got around to it and, well, it fizzled around a third of the way through. I don't really remember that well what I didn't like about it, I just remember not really seeing what the fuss was about. It was no The Shining or Skeleton Crew, say.
Not much later, a friend liberated a copy of the new, extended version of the book. He'd sped read it without much interest, but knew I liked the guy, so he passed it on to me. Perhaps the added 700 or however many pages would add whatever the story needed? I read it again and still: meh.
So who knows why I started the 90's mini-series the other night, when I saw it available on Netflix streaming. I probably guessed it would be so bad I'd switch it off within 5 minutes. Maybe my schadenfreude tank was getting low. Well, I didn't remember enough of the original story to compare them, but it certainly was shorter this way. That's probably the best thing I can say about it.
At least I can now remember better what was so unsatisfying about the story. I would probably describe myself as agnostic in the days I first read it. I had a pretty deep opposition to religion, but big mystical matters in general were a bit more of an open question. And maybe some of the incessant, insipid chatter about GOD'S WILL wasn't quite as noticeable if spread over 1200 pages. But the tedious manichaean sorting of all people into two camps, and the complete absence of consideration of those parts of the planet outside the US, would have been equally pervasive.
That story has claimed enough of my time, I suppose. I just find it a little bit funny that I gave it another 6 hours of my life these past few days.
A friend of mine told me an anecdote he'd read somewhere about something that happened during the production of Kubrick's The Shining adaptation. (I remember I didn't much care for that movie, seeing it fresh off of reading the book. But now I love Kubrick to death and have written King off, so I suspect I would like it more now.) Creative differences between K&K had led to a fairly strained production, I guess.
CUT TO: INT, NIGHT. A phone is RINGING. An ALARM CLOCK-RADIO reads 3:17. A tousle-haired STEPHEN KING picks up the phone and switches on the LIGHT.
KING. Hello?
INTERCUT WITH: INT, NIGHT. VERY CLOSE on a mouth surrounded by dark stubble. A glass filled with ice and an amber liquid is raised to the mouth, which drinks. PULL BACK to reveal STANLEY KUBRICK.
KUBRICK. This is Kubrick.
KING. What the... it's three o'clock in the morning!
KUBRICK. Listen. Do you believe in God?
KING. What? Is this some kind of joke?
KUBRICK. Well?
KING. I don't know, who can say...?
KUBRICK. Just yes or no. Do you believe in God?
KING. Er, I don't know... er... I guess so*.
KUBRICK. Oh.
KUBRICK hangs up.
ROLL CREDITS.
* "Ayuh"
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Old-ass TV
We watched the final episode of "The Riches" tonight. Not the best show, and no tragedy that it was canceled. But still a courageous show--maybe none other has quite reached the squirmy, cringy level of "fuck! abort mission! abort!" tension that it did. Unfortunately, some of that tension came at the expense of its main characters' rationality ("I will now lie and put us all in unreasonable danger in order to keep things exciting"), but I suppose I don't know how stupidly I might act if someone dangled a $13M purse in front of me, either. However, it is a bit unusual (paragraphically worthily so) to see a show dropped mid-stream like that, 7 episodes into its 2nd season. Maybe that's how they still do it in network world, with no warning. "Fuck this, we're going with reruns of 'Wizards of Waverly Place' or whatever it is that kids watch these days."
(Aside: Granted, there is no such thing as good taste in television programs. But you would be apalled by the crap that my nieces watch. I have racked up a few millennia in purgatory just learning what "Wizards of Waverly Place" refers to. If you, fortunate soul, feel out of the loop right now, stay there. I have never been less ironic.)
But that's not old-ass tv. What I was thinking of when I titled this post, which I now raise as a palliative for the images I've conjured to my own mind, is the 1950-or-so Burns & Allen show, of which I watched my second episode tonight. I'm slightly fascinated by first-generation television, the stuff that is still tightly knit with radio and vaudeville entertainment. It's not great programming by today's standards, and I have no idea what I would have thought of it had I been born 50 years earlier. Nothing remotely like that exists now, is my point. I'm thinking of these facets:
That's what occurs to me worth mentioning, anyway.
We also watched some of the 6th season of "Weeds." Agreed that "Riches" might have done better to follow this show's willingness to move the characters around every season or two, half a step ahead of the firestorm. There really wasn't that much to plumb in the plot they'd opened up in the first season of "The Riches," no need to stay locked in to the set of characters that they had. Or maybe if that daughter had taken off her clothes as often as MLP does, we'd have a few more seasons left to go. Oh right, network TV.
(Aside: Granted, there is no such thing as good taste in television programs. But you would be apalled by the crap that my nieces watch. I have racked up a few millennia in purgatory just learning what "Wizards of Waverly Place" refers to. If you, fortunate soul, feel out of the loop right now, stay there. I have never been less ironic.)
But that's not old-ass tv. What I was thinking of when I titled this post, which I now raise as a palliative for the images I've conjured to my own mind, is the 1950-or-so Burns & Allen show, of which I watched my second episode tonight. I'm slightly fascinated by first-generation television, the stuff that is still tightly knit with radio and vaudeville entertainment. It's not great programming by today's standards, and I have no idea what I would have thought of it had I been born 50 years earlier. Nothing remotely like that exists now, is my point. I'm thinking of these facets:
- a stage set which relies on an audience's imagination, which interposes an unseeable, slightly implausible hallway between front door and living room, an invisible fourth wall into the living room which the narrator is free to cross whenever no other character is watching
- a narrator who monologizes about the action, who hops through that imaginary wall to come answer the door, play straight man to some joke, and then cross back from the porch to his downstage perch
- the smallness, almost triteness, of the jokes, which really I just take as an interesting window onto past culture (like the in-script advertising, but a little more general than a mere indication of past television business models)
That's what occurs to me worth mentioning, anyway.
We also watched some of the 6th season of "Weeds." Agreed that "Riches" might have done better to follow this show's willingness to move the characters around every season or two, half a step ahead of the firestorm. There really wasn't that much to plumb in the plot they'd opened up in the first season of "The Riches," no need to stay locked in to the set of characters that they had. Or maybe if that daughter had taken off her clothes as often as MLP does, we'd have a few more seasons left to go. Oh right, network TV.
Friday, April 8, 2011
A droid of principle
I'm beginning work on a few side pages. Almost done with the preliminary version of one of them, but it's time to retire for the evening. Right now I'm trying to take a survey of what I take to be the principles which determine the way in which everyone ought to act. I also would like to start canvassing my commitments (things, unlike principles, that do not support themselves but which must be argued for). And along those lines, breaking down the various shades of "isms" that I come across could be nice, too. Most of which has to live on the back burner 'til I'm outta school!
Anyway, I am sleepy and hanging up the hat on a half-built peg for now. I hope I haven't said anything completely retarded on those pages. I certainly ... I certainly ... what was I going to say? Who knows. It's time I hung up my hat.
Anyway, I am sleepy and hanging up the hat on a half-built peg for now. I hope I haven't said anything completely retarded on those pages. I certainly ... I certainly ... what was I going to say? Who knows. It's time I hung up my hat.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Apparently I'm rambling about prison tonight
I don't really have anything to say, but I feel like I have to say my little nothings every so often in order to prevent myself from saying nothing whatsoever. Let's see now.
Li'l Miz and I cranked thru a whole disc of Dexter tonight. Second disc of season 4. I enjoy the show. Somewhere in the middle of the marathon, I wondered, why do I watch this? Do I relate to a serial killer? Of course not. But a guy who would rather cordon off a whole section of himself... ah, I begin to see. That and the appreciable acting talent on display, I suppose.
And of course sometimes I can feel the hatred of people. Tonight in prison class we had Jeanne Woodford as our guest. Fucking Jeanne Woodford. Fighting to kill the death penalty in California, former warden of San Quentin (who originally approved our program, I might mention), former undersecretary of corrections in California. Fucking Jeanne Woodford. Of course our class was generally quite interested and attentive. But I look around. I look to see who's tuned out, who doesn't look amazed that we roped this particular fish... and I hate them. Not quite to serial killer level, happy to report.
Speaking of our program, we just found out that we won the--I won't remember the actual name--Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Community Service, or some shit like that. I guess I'd better learn the name or I won't be able to self-aggrandize with it much over the years. Of course, we've applied for others too. I accept partial credit for helping keep the trash compactor walls apart, but I really have to take my hat off to my partners for doing the groundwork that keeps our program's lights on--certain tasks which, if left to me, would result in the untimely termination of the program or a dearth of amazing guest speakers. Damn if I don't have rock stars for partners. I really don't do squat, once the first few weeks (the main shit storm of the semester) are over.
Last night went down to bro-ville with prison program homegirl alpha to meet folks from Project Noise, who are working on raising awareness about various oft-ignored social issues. They are working on a documentary called Prisonocracy. Gonna hook them up with Ms. Woodford and a few other rock star stud contacts we've got.
Seems like a possibility that our expansion plans for the program (into other prisons and schools) will require some meetings in Sacramento with whatever undersecretaries. That's fine, but it seems those meetings (or the follow-up meetings with the various wardens of CA) would go best with various data that we just don't have about how wonderful (i.e., effective) our programs are. Anecdotal evidence? Scads available. But we're too busy just keeping the lights on to collect actual statistics.
That's what's happening. As soon as the semester is over, and we've accepted our awards and diplomas, I've got to finish this goddamn handbook we're writing for the program. Thanks to the miracles of LaTeX, it's up to 30 or so pages already, but there is so much more content to add. I guess I think it'll be around 50 pages long before I hand it off. Then there will still be flesh to press in Sacramento and whatever prison we expand to first. Our goal is basically to get into one more prison + school, and hope the momentum carries on through there. Folsom makes sense, since (a) it's the other Johnny Cash prison, and (b) it's next door to Sacramento. One of the Salinas area prisons would also make sense.
I really like and respect a lot of people I've met at Berkeley (almost all of whom are from my philosophy classes, since that's about all I've done there). But my die-hard homies, who I want to have contact with to the grave, all came from the prison program. Fuck yeah.
Li'l Miz and I cranked thru a whole disc of Dexter tonight. Second disc of season 4. I enjoy the show. Somewhere in the middle of the marathon, I wondered, why do I watch this? Do I relate to a serial killer? Of course not. But a guy who would rather cordon off a whole section of himself... ah, I begin to see. That and the appreciable acting talent on display, I suppose.
And of course sometimes I can feel the hatred of people. Tonight in prison class we had Jeanne Woodford as our guest. Fucking Jeanne Woodford. Fighting to kill the death penalty in California, former warden of San Quentin (who originally approved our program, I might mention), former undersecretary of corrections in California. Fucking Jeanne Woodford. Of course our class was generally quite interested and attentive. But I look around. I look to see who's tuned out, who doesn't look amazed that we roped this particular fish... and I hate them. Not quite to serial killer level, happy to report.
Speaking of our program, we just found out that we won the--I won't remember the actual name--Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Community Service, or some shit like that. I guess I'd better learn the name or I won't be able to self-aggrandize with it much over the years. Of course, we've applied for others too. I accept partial credit for helping keep the trash compactor walls apart, but I really have to take my hat off to my partners for doing the groundwork that keeps our program's lights on--certain tasks which, if left to me, would result in the untimely termination of the program or a dearth of amazing guest speakers. Damn if I don't have rock stars for partners. I really don't do squat, once the first few weeks (the main shit storm of the semester) are over.
Last night went down to bro-ville with prison program homegirl alpha to meet folks from Project Noise, who are working on raising awareness about various oft-ignored social issues. They are working on a documentary called Prisonocracy. Gonna hook them up with Ms. Woodford and a few other rock star stud contacts we've got.
Seems like a possibility that our expansion plans for the program (into other prisons and schools) will require some meetings in Sacramento with whatever undersecretaries. That's fine, but it seems those meetings (or the follow-up meetings with the various wardens of CA) would go best with various data that we just don't have about how wonderful (i.e., effective) our programs are. Anecdotal evidence? Scads available. But we're too busy just keeping the lights on to collect actual statistics.
That's what's happening. As soon as the semester is over, and we've accepted our awards and diplomas, I've got to finish this goddamn handbook we're writing for the program. Thanks to the miracles of LaTeX, it's up to 30 or so pages already, but there is so much more content to add. I guess I think it'll be around 50 pages long before I hand it off. Then there will still be flesh to press in Sacramento and whatever prison we expand to first. Our goal is basically to get into one more prison + school, and hope the momentum carries on through there. Folsom makes sense, since (a) it's the other Johnny Cash prison, and (b) it's next door to Sacramento. One of the Salinas area prisons would also make sense.
I really like and respect a lot of people I've met at Berkeley (almost all of whom are from my philosophy classes, since that's about all I've done there). But my die-hard homies, who I want to have contact with to the grave, all came from the prison program. Fuck yeah.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Whining I recommend you ignore
About a month until I am a college graduate, and I really, really wish it were over. The well has run dry, folks. 10-page Wittgenstein paper? Completely impossible. 7-page logic paper? No idea what to write about. 10-page Metaphysics paper? Hopefully I can stumble through that. Plus a 2-page Wittgenstein paper and a logic problem set due tomorrow, more problem sets and another short paper to come. I am over it, folks.
Maybe it just seems bad because I seem to be struggling against a cold. And I was rather hung over yesterday. Boy... Friday night, we prison class folks put on a pot-luck. One of the students in the class volunteered his place--a 60-person co-op up on the hill above campus. Besides us facilitators and our host, two other students showed up. That means I didn't share my wine with a crowd and only ate one bowl of pasta salad. Not too much later, after perhaps the worst couple of games of pool I've ever played (the one ball I sunk belonged to the other team), there I am atop a precarious rooftop with a great view across the bay...
Another co-op resident, whom I dimly recognized from some philosophy class or another, comes out with a friend of his and a wee water pipe. I accept it, they hang out for a minutes and have a couple of the cookies I baked, and then they take off. A couple of minutes later, I notice I have got the shingles in a death grip, and everything feels wrong--what was in that stuff? Afraid I am going to lose my shit and either get dizzy or nauseated on a rooftop, I beat a hasty retreat and walk about 7,000 miles down the hill to the downtown BART. At this point I am convinced that I just unwittingly smoked something very... deluxe. Good thing I only had to ride one stop, because the deceleration into my destination undoes every bit of intestinal fortitude that I have been mustering for the past hour. I paint the tracks on both side of the platform a royal purple, stagger the rest of the way home, and collapse.
I think it was just a case of having had more wine than I'd realized. Don't try this at home, especially not on the roof of your home.
Or maybe the problem is that I recently 'discovered' (that is, allowed myself to try) Minecraft. No more Minecraft until the work for tomorrow is done! Not one little delve, no. And very minimal interaction over the coming month, YOU HEAR ME, ME?
Aaaahhhhhh jeez. Enough. Philosophical Investigations §258 is calling me, and I just can't ignore it any longer.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Reactions
Sadly, Blogger won't let you put in all the reactions tags you might need, so I don't use them.
And I'd already come up with the first draft of tags I was going to let you check off for my posts. Here at the most special place on the Internet, you are special too. Or, you would be, if I could canvas your full range of reactions. In case things change in the future, I'll leave myself a note with the words I think make for a nice set of reactions, on first consideration. Meanwhile, we'll have to stick with the clunky comments system.
And I'd already come up with the first draft of tags I was going to let you check off for my posts. Here at the most special place on the Internet, you are special too. Or, you would be, if I could canvas your full range of reactions. In case things change in the future, I'll leave myself a note with the words I think make for a nice set of reactions, on first consideration. Meanwhile, we'll have to stick with the clunky comments system.
- acrimonious
- anile
- aperient
- arch
- contumacious
- contradictious
- effulgent
- effusive
- jejune
- lachrymose
- laconic
- logomachical
- loquacious
- mendacious
- obsequious
- ostentatious
- periphrastic
- piquant
- sanguine
- vitriolic
- vituperative
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Break off some more
Boy, you'd think a guy who is starting his own blog would spend his whole spring break writing blog entries, wouldn't you? You'd figure he'd put everything on hold for a delicious opportunity like that.
Been hanging out at the bro's palace for the past couple of days. Somehow our souls were trapped by a 3D puzzle, but luckily we have almost freed ourselves--by fully acceding to the puzzle's demands of servitude. Other than that, snuffly kids and girlfriends--one of whom I interrupted typing just to talk about the virtues of nose-blowing and loogie-hawking. Not the girlfriend, she's pretty squared away on that score.
Been pretty busy, apart from when I actually catch up on a little school reading, on the 900th iteration of breaking down the rules etc. of MECCG (Middle-earth CCG, i.e. Magic-style bullshit), as though I were planning on writing a rules-aware network game client (for the 10 people left playing this game since it went out of print at least a decade ago). Why? Because I have long been fomenting plans for a generic game-client, but one cooler than those that already exist. Most that exist are 'dumb', in that they are nothing more than card-shuffling, dice-rolling, virtual tables which allow you to move representations of game pieces around. This would be the same, but I would have a scripting language intended to allow you to translate any board/card/etc. game rules, so that the client could handle most of the procedural riff-raff.
Coming up with a sufficiently elegant and robust framework has been challenging me. (Sometimes rules could interact in ways that seems to send me into a non-effective loop.) That's one of the nice things about studying philosophy for a few years, though. While I'm not yet any closer to completing that design, it no longer feels quite so huge to capture ALL GAMES EVER, compared to people working out how to capture ALL LOGICAL ENTAILMENT EVER, for example. It feels like it must be more tractable than I was working out. Anyway, MECCG is cool stuff, but it's also perhaps the most complex game that I can think of.
Gotta read a book to little Lucas.
Been hanging out at the bro's palace for the past couple of days. Somehow our souls were trapped by a 3D puzzle, but luckily we have almost freed ourselves--by fully acceding to the puzzle's demands of servitude. Other than that, snuffly kids and girlfriends--one of whom I interrupted typing just to talk about the virtues of nose-blowing and loogie-hawking. Not the girlfriend, she's pretty squared away on that score.
Been pretty busy, apart from when I actually catch up on a little school reading, on the 900th iteration of breaking down the rules etc. of MECCG (Middle-earth CCG, i.e. Magic-style bullshit), as though I were planning on writing a rules-aware network game client (for the 10 people left playing this game since it went out of print at least a decade ago). Why? Because I have long been fomenting plans for a generic game-client, but one cooler than those that already exist. Most that exist are 'dumb', in that they are nothing more than card-shuffling, dice-rolling, virtual tables which allow you to move representations of game pieces around. This would be the same, but I would have a scripting language intended to allow you to translate any board/card/etc. game rules, so that the client could handle most of the procedural riff-raff.
Coming up with a sufficiently elegant and robust framework has been challenging me. (Sometimes rules could interact in ways that seems to send me into a non-effective loop.) That's one of the nice things about studying philosophy for a few years, though. While I'm not yet any closer to completing that design, it no longer feels quite so huge to capture ALL GAMES EVER, compared to people working out how to capture ALL LOGICAL ENTAILMENT EVER, for example. It feels like it must be more tractable than I was working out. Anyway, MECCG is cool stuff, but it's also perhaps the most complex game that I can think of.
Gotta read a book to little Lucas.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
O, BBS
Now, don't get me wrong: I wouldn't trade the Internet for a bajillion perfect BBSes. But those things had something special that the Internet just can't deliver. Maybe I'm just not a teenager anymore, but no--I think those things did something that no modern-day social network can do.
More and more, I'm encountering folks born in the nineties (as if that weren't a criminal offense), so maybe I should start by going back in time to 1984 or so, whenever it was I entered the computer age. We got a PC, with full-on aircraft-carrier grade metal casing. The keyboard was in a metal case, for crying out loud. It weighed a ton, and you could hear the *CLACK* of its keys from nine time zones away. I would totally use that keyboard if I still had it. After we had it a while, I saw my brother using a terminal program to dial out to a couple of local BBSes. So that's what that handsome metal box with the colorful lights--a 300 baud Hayes Smartmodem--was for. Who knows where he got the numbers from; my brother seemed to have been born knowing what to do with a computer, and I absorbed what I could when he felt like teaching me bits and pieces. They were probably posted on (actual) bulletin boards at the local computer shop. Of which there was one.
Did I not expand "BBS" yet? That stands for Bulletin Board System, you philistine. It worked like this: some pimply kid set up his Apple ][ in the garage and connected it to a dedicated phone line. Thus a sysop (system operator) was born. Then one person at a time could call in, log on, and leave messages. Some places required you use your real name; those did not interest me, except in a couple of rare cases where I knew the people, and never at first. There were two boards that most interested me at first, both running 40-column displays, I think on Apples: Stonehenge and Xanadu. (40 columns per line at 300 baud, 8 bits per character, works out to just shy of one line per second. When I upgraded to a 2400 baud modem several years later, hoo nelly! And then when a user gifted me a 14,400 baud modem? The screen could hardly keep up.)
ATDT 899somethingsomethingsomethingsomething
CONNECTED
I remember making my first account, on whichever board I got through. The bloop-bleep-squawk completed and suddenly text was appearing <i>on my screen</i> that came from <i>somewhere else</i>. It was rather thrilling. "I am in the goddamn future! How could this even be happening?" Something like that basically went through my mind the entire time I used modems. Anyway, it came time to create a logon, and I suddenly realized that I didn't have a clever epithet ready.
ATH0
NO CARRIER
I went and paced in the living room of an empty house, racking an 10 year-old brain for something clever. Something clever and original. And totally awesome. And totally original. For maybe twenty minutes I searched for something just right. Ah-HA! Excalibur, what an awesome fucking name. No one fucks with Excalibur! Back on board. Oh crap, need a first & last name. Very well, "*** EXCALIBUR / ***" it is. They passed me back a computer-generated password that I use to this very day. That's right, find the old computer that Xanadu ran on, get that password, and you can update this blog yourself.
Of those first two boards, Stonehenge was harder to call into--because, as it turns out, that board had an "Elite" section (what kids nowadays might call a warez site--at ridiculously slow transfer rates, but of course there were hardly as many bits to copy per game). Stonehenge had message boards, of course, but the discussions were a little less involved and a little more, well, dickish. The sysop, I believe, was called Elrond. I think it was based out in Marina. Anyway, I called there plenty to check on new messages. (I don't think I had a clue about the Elite section until after he got in trouble with the law. And that was the end of that board.)
Where I spent more of my time at first was Xanadu. That was out in Seaside, I believe. I forget who ran that one, but I remember my favorite user name was Silver Samurai. Anyway, the message boards there were a bit more active and interesting. General discussion, mostly. A "never-ending story" board or two (where one is to post a couple of paragraphs to continue someone's story). Eventually an RPG-type board with more of a shootin'-from-the-hip approach to rules.. All good stuff for a little kid to play around on.
What was great about these places was that a prepubescent kid with strong spelling skills could engage in discussions with full-on teenagers and adults on an equal setting. I have always been a lot more loquacious through a keyboard than through my throat, partly because I rely heavily on the ability to edit as I go. Words tend to come to me in a jumbled order, and I tend to forget what I'm talking about in the middle of speech. I do a lot better with writing. BBSes became a primary means of socializing for me, and I made friends of various ages over the years.
So what was it that was so great, apart from happening to cater to my proclivities? Why am I down on current social networks relative to the BBS? After all, in a way LiveJournal is a nice way to sort of roll-your-own BBS experience: from a huge pool of other users, you can decide whose navel-gazing you will make a regular part of your reading experience. These here blogs aren't really any different; they are better, hypothetically, since they are more agnostic.
It turns out to be a good thing, a more interesting thing, to lack complete control over the group you're in. Different boards set different tones, attracted different populations, and if what was happening someplace was uninteresting or bothersome in some way, you would just take it out of your terminal program's list of phone numbers (or, I suppose, sort it to the bottom). Once you became a regular somewhere, though, you had to take the bitter with the sweet. If there is someone who annoys you there, they probably annoy the community at large, and social pressure would either force them out or they would become a lively wellspring for debates. Or perhaps merely a whipping boy. But the boards were open forums, regulated only by the sysop's policies--which tended to be liberal, or else the boards tended to be unpopulated. Generally, anyone who liked could call in and smear their stupid opinions all over the place. Over time, the ever-growing population of callers self-selected into different communities. You'd see mostly the same faces on the different set of boards you were interested; some people made up a new name everywhere they went, some never changed. The only thing that no one expected to be tolerated on a BBS were personal threats etc. But ragging on people was a pretty regular enterprise (though sometimes restricted to dedicated forums).
Of course, your average person didn't know what a modem was, so there was a significant selection bias at work. How many times did I explain my hobby by telling someone a modem was like what Matthew Broderick used in War Games, and then answer no, I didn't hack into NORAD. So the random selection of co-users wasn't so random as it is today, when literally everyone and their grandma is on the Internet. Only the nerdiest, least poverty-stricken people were around.
It is also interesting when just about everyone that you encounter is local. Users would get together individually at and restaurants. We'd copy disks, go hang out, whatever. My parents thought it was weird that their fifteen year-old kid was hanging out with thirty year-olds, but they didn't know me as a kid, they knew me as an articulate but slightly fucked-up kid who complained about his parents a lot and who liked to write. (Man did I ever write a lot in those days. That was going to be my future.) The occasional long-distance caller was the rare and compelling exception. But good message boards were hard to find, so if you found a cool community on the other side of the continent, you'd use one of the features that let you download all the new messages, read and respond to them offline, and send those back across afterwards.
I think maybe there was something important about having to dial a board's number, redialing every so often until it wasn't busy. During peak traffic times, it was pretty common to just sit there auto-redialing until you were lucky enough to be the first one to slip in between callers. It was a little bit special that at any given moment, you were the one who got to use the board. If you'd been waiting for the line to free up, you would scan through and figure out who'd just been on by which new messages had been posted. You would figure out how the last caller had been using that time. If hardly any new messages had been left, and it wasn't a big file-transfer board, then you knew they had either been dealing with a lot of private messages (what we called "email") or else chatting with the sysop.
Ah, chatting! That was one of the distinctive features of message boards. Whenever you were on, it was always possible that the sysop was sitting there, watching you browse around. And you could request a live chat, or they might break in at any moment to say hi, or "stop doing that," or whatever. That's what really tended to blow my mind as a youngster. The idea that RIGHT THIS MOMENT, you just hit your "e" key in Carmel Valley and it showed up on my screen in Monterey. No reason that should be any more amazing than phones working in general, but somehow it was far more impressive to me. I became a faster-than-average typist, since I basically was growing up on a keyboard. Waiting for slow typists in chat was rather tedious.
It has crossed my mind once or twice to try and figure out how to make something like that happen in Internet world. People have, of course, done things like set up websites that are portals into old-fashioned BBSes. But the potential user base is too big, somehow. They aren't really any different than any other online forum.
It's occurred to me that you could do something similar to what Google Buzz and Google Reader both ended up doing--aggregating people's posts from a variety of places. With a little more work on a front end, it could end up being like your own personal BBS. But that doesn't suffice either, because it's a vantage point onto many places that you alone use. The other people you are watching will not see each other, and discuss crosswise. Sure, you could set it up so that anyone could get onto your "board," but I think hardly anyone ever would. They would just check their own aggregate list. You could set it up so that what appears for you are friends-of-friends, and that might be best. But I don't know, I haven't come up with quite the model I think would work yet.
More and more, I'm encountering folks born in the nineties (as if that weren't a criminal offense), so maybe I should start by going back in time to 1984 or so, whenever it was I entered the computer age. We got a PC, with full-on aircraft-carrier grade metal casing. The keyboard was in a metal case, for crying out loud. It weighed a ton, and you could hear the *CLACK* of its keys from nine time zones away. I would totally use that keyboard if I still had it. After we had it a while, I saw my brother using a terminal program to dial out to a couple of local BBSes. So that's what that handsome metal box with the colorful lights--a 300 baud Hayes Smartmodem--was for. Who knows where he got the numbers from; my brother seemed to have been born knowing what to do with a computer, and I absorbed what I could when he felt like teaching me bits and pieces. They were probably posted on (actual) bulletin boards at the local computer shop. Of which there was one.
Did I not expand "BBS" yet? That stands for Bulletin Board System, you philistine. It worked like this: some pimply kid set up his Apple ][ in the garage and connected it to a dedicated phone line. Thus a sysop (system operator) was born. Then one person at a time could call in, log on, and leave messages. Some places required you use your real name; those did not interest me, except in a couple of rare cases where I knew the people, and never at first. There were two boards that most interested me at first, both running 40-column displays, I think on Apples: Stonehenge and Xanadu. (40 columns per line at 300 baud, 8 bits per character, works out to just shy of one line per second. When I upgraded to a 2400 baud modem several years later, hoo nelly! And then when a user gifted me a 14,400 baud modem? The screen could hardly keep up.)
ATDT 899somethingsomethingsomethingsomething
CONNECTED
I remember making my first account, on whichever board I got through. The bloop-bleep-squawk completed and suddenly text was appearing <i>on my screen</i> that came from <i>somewhere else</i>. It was rather thrilling. "I am in the goddamn future! How could this even be happening?" Something like that basically went through my mind the entire time I used modems. Anyway, it came time to create a logon, and I suddenly realized that I didn't have a clever epithet ready.
ATH0
NO CARRIER
I went and paced in the living room of an empty house, racking an 10 year-old brain for something clever. Something clever and original. And totally awesome. And totally original. For maybe twenty minutes I searched for something just right. Ah-HA! Excalibur, what an awesome fucking name. No one fucks with Excalibur! Back on board. Oh crap, need a first & last name. Very well, "*** EXCALIBUR / ***" it is. They passed me back a computer-generated password that I use to this very day. That's right, find the old computer that Xanadu ran on, get that password, and you can update this blog yourself.
Of those first two boards, Stonehenge was harder to call into--because, as it turns out, that board had an "Elite" section (what kids nowadays might call a warez site--at ridiculously slow transfer rates, but of course there were hardly as many bits to copy per game). Stonehenge had message boards, of course, but the discussions were a little less involved and a little more, well, dickish. The sysop, I believe, was called Elrond. I think it was based out in Marina. Anyway, I called there plenty to check on new messages. (I don't think I had a clue about the Elite section until after he got in trouble with the law. And that was the end of that board.)
Where I spent more of my time at first was Xanadu. That was out in Seaside, I believe. I forget who ran that one, but I remember my favorite user name was Silver Samurai. Anyway, the message boards there were a bit more active and interesting. General discussion, mostly. A "never-ending story" board or two (where one is to post a couple of paragraphs to continue someone's story). Eventually an RPG-type board with more of a shootin'-from-the-hip approach to rules.. All good stuff for a little kid to play around on.
What was great about these places was that a prepubescent kid with strong spelling skills could engage in discussions with full-on teenagers and adults on an equal setting. I have always been a lot more loquacious through a keyboard than through my throat, partly because I rely heavily on the ability to edit as I go. Words tend to come to me in a jumbled order, and I tend to forget what I'm talking about in the middle of speech. I do a lot better with writing. BBSes became a primary means of socializing for me, and I made friends of various ages over the years.
So what was it that was so great, apart from happening to cater to my proclivities? Why am I down on current social networks relative to the BBS? After all, in a way LiveJournal is a nice way to sort of roll-your-own BBS experience: from a huge pool of other users, you can decide whose navel-gazing you will make a regular part of your reading experience. These here blogs aren't really any different; they are better, hypothetically, since they are more agnostic.
It turns out to be a good thing, a more interesting thing, to lack complete control over the group you're in. Different boards set different tones, attracted different populations, and if what was happening someplace was uninteresting or bothersome in some way, you would just take it out of your terminal program's list of phone numbers (or, I suppose, sort it to the bottom). Once you became a regular somewhere, though, you had to take the bitter with the sweet. If there is someone who annoys you there, they probably annoy the community at large, and social pressure would either force them out or they would become a lively wellspring for debates. Or perhaps merely a whipping boy. But the boards were open forums, regulated only by the sysop's policies--which tended to be liberal, or else the boards tended to be unpopulated. Generally, anyone who liked could call in and smear their stupid opinions all over the place. Over time, the ever-growing population of callers self-selected into different communities. You'd see mostly the same faces on the different set of boards you were interested; some people made up a new name everywhere they went, some never changed. The only thing that no one expected to be tolerated on a BBS were personal threats etc. But ragging on people was a pretty regular enterprise (though sometimes restricted to dedicated forums).
Of course, your average person didn't know what a modem was, so there was a significant selection bias at work. How many times did I explain my hobby by telling someone a modem was like what Matthew Broderick used in War Games, and then answer no, I didn't hack into NORAD. So the random selection of co-users wasn't so random as it is today, when literally everyone and their grandma is on the Internet. Only the nerdiest, least poverty-stricken people were around.
It is also interesting when just about everyone that you encounter is local. Users would get together individually at and restaurants. We'd copy disks, go hang out, whatever. My parents thought it was weird that their fifteen year-old kid was hanging out with thirty year-olds, but they didn't know me as a kid, they knew me as an articulate but slightly fucked-up kid who complained about his parents a lot and who liked to write. (Man did I ever write a lot in those days. That was going to be my future.) The occasional long-distance caller was the rare and compelling exception. But good message boards were hard to find, so if you found a cool community on the other side of the continent, you'd use one of the features that let you download all the new messages, read and respond to them offline, and send those back across afterwards.
I think maybe there was something important about having to dial a board's number, redialing every so often until it wasn't busy. During peak traffic times, it was pretty common to just sit there auto-redialing until you were lucky enough to be the first one to slip in between callers. It was a little bit special that at any given moment, you were the one who got to use the board. If you'd been waiting for the line to free up, you would scan through and figure out who'd just been on by which new messages had been posted. You would figure out how the last caller had been using that time. If hardly any new messages had been left, and it wasn't a big file-transfer board, then you knew they had either been dealing with a lot of private messages (what we called "email") or else chatting with the sysop.
Ah, chatting! That was one of the distinctive features of message boards. Whenever you were on, it was always possible that the sysop was sitting there, watching you browse around. And you could request a live chat, or they might break in at any moment to say hi, or "stop doing that," or whatever. That's what really tended to blow my mind as a youngster. The idea that RIGHT THIS MOMENT, you just hit your "e" key in Carmel Valley and it showed up on my screen in Monterey. No reason that should be any more amazing than phones working in general, but somehow it was far more impressive to me. I became a faster-than-average typist, since I basically was growing up on a keyboard. Waiting for slow typists in chat was rather tedious.
It has crossed my mind once or twice to try and figure out how to make something like that happen in Internet world. People have, of course, done things like set up websites that are portals into old-fashioned BBSes. But the potential user base is too big, somehow. They aren't really any different than any other online forum.
It's occurred to me that you could do something similar to what Google Buzz and Google Reader both ended up doing--aggregating people's posts from a variety of places. With a little more work on a front end, it could end up being like your own personal BBS. But that doesn't suffice either, because it's a vantage point onto many places that you alone use. The other people you are watching will not see each other, and discuss crosswise. Sure, you could set it up so that anyone could get onto your "board," but I think hardly anyone ever would. They would just check their own aggregate list. You could set it up so that what appears for you are friends-of-friends, and that might be best. But I don't know, I haven't come up with quite the model I think would work yet.
Spring break
Let's go to the beach and take off our clothes!
This may be the last spring break of my life. Duhn duhn duhh!
I was excited by the thought of getting up whenever I damn please. And here I am, at 7:18 in the morning, up, posting. That's because yesterday at 2:30 or so, when I finally finished the last time-sensitive, school-related task that I could think of, I took a nap. Normally I hate naps because I wake up grumpier than before. But I was too durn tired to resist, and I slept for at least 4 hours. I guess I woke up about as grumpy as I went down, so all in all it was a win, I guess.
Then I & la Miz finished off the penultimate season the The Wire. I can't think of a better show that ever done existed, that I've seen. To think, we were a little bit "meh" the first time we tried it. I guess we were full up on crime dramas at the moment. Once the memory of the Sopranos faded, we gave it another shot on account of the hype.. and fuck the Sopranos. It's Wire or nothin'.
Wacky dreams. Just finished one where a cop came to my house while I was stashing a key inside the lid of a fictitious outdoor grill so my sister could get in for some reason while I was away somewhere. There'd been complaints that we partied too loud or something. I took the cop on a tour of my house to show how little we looked like the partying type. Ok, that was kind of a boring dream. But before that I had one of those "I realize I'm dreaming but this is pretty neat" dreams. Don't remember how it started, but it was basically rendered like a cartoon--a variety of cartoons. Some protagonist was fleeing pursuers, and he would switch worlds every now and then, with each world rendered in some new art style. I can remember what a couple of them looked like but I don't know how to describe their differences. I really like how this one troll was drawn. Anyway, let's say I'd like to compliment the production designer and artistic lead on that dream. It really isn't fair that you can't order up a DVD or something of your dream imagery.
Anyway, I suppose we may go visit pals or something when Miz gets her work break. Other than that, I will relish my chance to catch up on readings, because I am sorely behind in all of my classes. I've also got to do some thinking on what to do for my logic term paper. That is the main of my spring break plans, other than sleeping in today--ha, ha. I really know how to tear it up! Someone call the cops on me for partying so hard.
This may be the last spring break of my life. Duhn duhn duhh!
I was excited by the thought of getting up whenever I damn please. And here I am, at 7:18 in the morning, up, posting. That's because yesterday at 2:30 or so, when I finally finished the last time-sensitive, school-related task that I could think of, I took a nap. Normally I hate naps because I wake up grumpier than before. But I was too durn tired to resist, and I slept for at least 4 hours. I guess I woke up about as grumpy as I went down, so all in all it was a win, I guess.
Then I & la Miz finished off the penultimate season the The Wire. I can't think of a better show that ever done existed, that I've seen. To think, we were a little bit "meh" the first time we tried it. I guess we were full up on crime dramas at the moment. Once the memory of the Sopranos faded, we gave it another shot on account of the hype.. and fuck the Sopranos. It's Wire or nothin'.
Wacky dreams. Just finished one where a cop came to my house while I was stashing a key inside the lid of a fictitious outdoor grill so my sister could get in for some reason while I was away somewhere. There'd been complaints that we partied too loud or something. I took the cop on a tour of my house to show how little we looked like the partying type. Ok, that was kind of a boring dream. But before that I had one of those "I realize I'm dreaming but this is pretty neat" dreams. Don't remember how it started, but it was basically rendered like a cartoon--a variety of cartoons. Some protagonist was fleeing pursuers, and he would switch worlds every now and then, with each world rendered in some new art style. I can remember what a couple of them looked like but I don't know how to describe their differences. I really like how this one troll was drawn. Anyway, let's say I'd like to compliment the production designer and artistic lead on that dream. It really isn't fair that you can't order up a DVD or something of your dream imagery.
Anyway, I suppose we may go visit pals or something when Miz gets her work break. Other than that, I will relish my chance to catch up on readings, because I am sorely behind in all of my classes. I've also got to do some thinking on what to do for my logic term paper. That is the main of my spring break plans, other than sleeping in today--ha, ha. I really know how to tear it up! Someone call the cops on me for partying so hard.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The Hungarian revolutionary
Hoo boy, like I really have time for this when I should be finishing my metaphysics midterm paper... (both the story I'm about to relate, in condensed form, and the telling of the story). I'll keep it very brief. I guess it won't work out to so much of a story as me reviewing my thoughts, because I am not 100% sure what I think should happen yet. Anyway. I can't get too sleepy before I have to determine how coherent the paper is as I cut out a page and fill in some fuzzy bits!
We are (probably) on the verge of kicking someone out of the prison program for transgressing some rules. After tonight's class we took him into our own ad hoc kangaroo court in order to try and suss out whether he would continue to threaten our program or not. I and my co-facilitators all had our own various levels of conviction that he should be kicked out. I was a close second in that old witch-hunting feeling to the facilitator who has actually dealt with the guy personally in prison. That's unusual; generally speaking I've learned that when anyone in the class comes up and asks for some special rule-bending treatment, I have to refer them to the other facilitators because I'll just say okay to anything anyone asks. But tonight I got to play a bit more of a bad cop than I generally do.
There are some hard-set rules about what we do and do not talk about with the tutees, and how we conduct ourselves in there. The topic of conversation part is easy: conversation is acceptable if and only if it is about the educational material we are helping with. The conduct part is pretty easy too: in general, be professional. Okay, that's vague, but the part that matters is not. Physical contact is okay if and only if it's a terrorist fist bump. There's one way to go right, and a million shades of ways to go wrong. ("Okay, we accidentally touched. Acknowledge and move on." versus "We are slapping each other's backs and giving neck massages.") Likewise with conversation.
This guy, who hates our rules and calls them "inhumane" broke all that. Spent a half hour talking about "How did you get here? How do you guys treat rapists? Tell me more about what you are saying about the interracial dynamics in prison. What are you doing when you get out?" etc. Made the other tutors uncomfortable, and if a guard or the principal had seen that, we'd be ass-out in the wind.
Talking tonight, I felt like he was a bit disingenuous, and rather manipulative. As though we hadn't gone on for a month at the start of the program about what was and what wasn't acceptable. Yeah, I guess basically I don't feel much reassured--and yet that seems to require that I think he was lying to my face, and I'm not sure that he was. You know, ESL and all that, maybe some of the nuances didn't get through. His apparent barrage of challenges to, say, the handshaking rule didn't receive what was a convincing rationale to him, so he seemed to blow it off, and was slippery in discussing how things went down.
There had been some friction the previous week, but I guess it was just another debate about whether we are inhumane for not shaking hands or something. That softens the story a little--I'd gotten to think that he was a repeat offender and it was all over for him. Maybe he'll be better if we let him back in? But the other tutors were quite uncomfortable. Anyway, I have to stop thinking about this and start thinking about a posteriori necessary truths, specifically the statement, "heat is molecular motion."
See? That was brief.
We are (probably) on the verge of kicking someone out of the prison program for transgressing some rules. After tonight's class we took him into our own ad hoc kangaroo court in order to try and suss out whether he would continue to threaten our program or not. I and my co-facilitators all had our own various levels of conviction that he should be kicked out. I was a close second in that old witch-hunting feeling to the facilitator who has actually dealt with the guy personally in prison. That's unusual; generally speaking I've learned that when anyone in the class comes up and asks for some special rule-bending treatment, I have to refer them to the other facilitators because I'll just say okay to anything anyone asks. But tonight I got to play a bit more of a bad cop than I generally do.
There are some hard-set rules about what we do and do not talk about with the tutees, and how we conduct ourselves in there. The topic of conversation part is easy: conversation is acceptable if and only if it is about the educational material we are helping with. The conduct part is pretty easy too: in general, be professional. Okay, that's vague, but the part that matters is not. Physical contact is okay if and only if it's a terrorist fist bump. There's one way to go right, and a million shades of ways to go wrong. ("Okay, we accidentally touched. Acknowledge and move on." versus "We are slapping each other's backs and giving neck massages.") Likewise with conversation.
This guy, who hates our rules and calls them "inhumane" broke all that. Spent a half hour talking about "How did you get here? How do you guys treat rapists? Tell me more about what you are saying about the interracial dynamics in prison. What are you doing when you get out?" etc. Made the other tutors uncomfortable, and if a guard or the principal had seen that, we'd be ass-out in the wind.
Talking tonight, I felt like he was a bit disingenuous, and rather manipulative. As though we hadn't gone on for a month at the start of the program about what was and what wasn't acceptable. Yeah, I guess basically I don't feel much reassured--and yet that seems to require that I think he was lying to my face, and I'm not sure that he was. You know, ESL and all that, maybe some of the nuances didn't get through. His apparent barrage of challenges to, say, the handshaking rule didn't receive what was a convincing rationale to him, so he seemed to blow it off, and was slippery in discussing how things went down.
There had been some friction the previous week, but I guess it was just another debate about whether we are inhumane for not shaking hands or something. That softens the story a little--I'd gotten to think that he was a repeat offender and it was all over for him. Maybe he'll be better if we let him back in? But the other tutors were quite uncomfortable. Anyway, I have to stop thinking about this and start thinking about a posteriori necessary truths, specifically the statement, "heat is molecular motion."
See? That was brief.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Why is writing so haaard?
Finally have a first draft of the short paper that's due tomorrow. A paragraph too long and a confused twisted bit right in the middle where I'll get the space back eventually. Two whole pages. I worked on it (which includes a fair bit of getting up and pacing and checking to see if anything had changed on the Internet in the past 0.3 nanoseconds) all day yesterday. All day on a two-page paper? I tell ya, the shorter the paper is, the harder it is to write. I guess it doesn't help that it's interpreting Wittgenstein, which requires tying together threads from lots of different places (and more importantly, deciding which threads to leave out).
How is it that I can get so lost in the space of just two pages? I can read a sentence and have no idea whether it's leading me off topic or staying on. I have the contextual awareness of a housefly when it comes to reading this stuff, especially perhaps my own. No wonder I was once a creative writing major. I am definitely more attuned to just letting crap spill out of my [virtual] pen than laying brick down after brick. When I DO have that bricklaying feeling (that is, that one time that I DID have it), it's great and I feel intelligent. But usually when I write I am just wagging my tongue without any real idea of what I am saying. Just like now.
Time to move along to the paper that's due Thursday (for which I have a few lines of notes to be turned into five pages of metaphysical goodness. A much more traditional philosophy paper: I will be able to burn a page or two in just laying out obvious shit. Here's wishing myself luck!
How is it that I can get so lost in the space of just two pages? I can read a sentence and have no idea whether it's leading me off topic or staying on. I have the contextual awareness of a housefly when it comes to reading this stuff, especially perhaps my own. No wonder I was once a creative writing major. I am definitely more attuned to just letting crap spill out of my [virtual] pen than laying brick down after brick. When I DO have that bricklaying feeling (that is, that one time that I DID have it), it's great and I feel intelligent. But usually when I write I am just wagging my tongue without any real idea of what I am saying. Just like now.
Time to move along to the paper that's due Thursday (for which I have a few lines of notes to be turned into five pages of metaphysical goodness. A much more traditional philosophy paper: I will be able to burn a page or two in just laying out obvious shit. Here's wishing myself luck!
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Death in Monetary
Went to Monterey for step-grandma's memorial service yesterday. It had been a long time since I had been there (well over a year, maybe over two). The only real social reason I have to go there is to see family, and the part of the family that I am in regular contact with comes to me often enough. It's always a bit nostalgic, because Monterey is damn purty and just eccentric enough to be interesting. I felt a little sadder leaving this time, but that was probably because of the sad family vibe.
The service was nice and personal. Step-pa's a Christian Scientist, and I guess they don't do funerals, for whatever reason. The service was at the Methodist place just up the hill from their house, and the pastor or reverend or whatever she was called let them do a reading from the CS Textbook etc. When she talked, it was to give an illuminating biography. She concluded with a poem that step-pa wrote on his mother's death, which was well-read and crushingly sad. My mom's remembrance was sad too. ("We've lost our last parent. No one is left between us and that dark abyss. And people, let me tell you, it's cold out here.") A few people in the audience stood to say some things, and other statements were read.
Anyway, I had to cut my visit very short because I am behind two eight-balls this weekend--two papers demanding my attention. I am writing this because one of them is frustrating me at the moment. But I had best quit the lollygaggin' and tongue-waggin', and get back to section 201 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
The service was nice and personal. Step-pa's a Christian Scientist, and I guess they don't do funerals, for whatever reason. The service was at the Methodist place just up the hill from their house, and the pastor or reverend or whatever she was called let them do a reading from the CS Textbook etc. When she talked, it was to give an illuminating biography. She concluded with a poem that step-pa wrote on his mother's death, which was well-read and crushingly sad. My mom's remembrance was sad too. ("We've lost our last parent. No one is left between us and that dark abyss. And people, let me tell you, it's cold out here.") A few people in the audience stood to say some things, and other statements were read.
Anyway, I had to cut my visit very short because I am behind two eight-balls this weekend--two papers demanding my attention. I am writing this because one of them is frustrating me at the moment. But I had best quit the lollygaggin' and tongue-waggin', and get back to section 201 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Magic fun schoolbus of the ages
Excellent. Apparently the investigative services unit in the prison discovered that some files had been put onto the computer in the sheet metal/machine shop classroom. Their attention has been diverted toward the Prison University Project but I honestly don't know whether it was them or us. We have a couple of guys who teach in CAD, and maybe they bring in model files now and then to help teach the types of material that the guys ask for. It is possible one of our guys has been bringing in the occasional file. And if so, it is possible that we are in some amount of trouble (I don't know how much). I am sure nothing nefarious is going on, but internal investigative units in prisons tend to be pretty edgy. I mean, for all they know we're bringing in models in separate files which can be combined to produce a magic skeleton key or something. Bullshit, I know, but I'm just trying to see it from their end. Anyway, hopefully that won't turn into a big old nightmare. We'll see!
It's an interesting final semester in school. You know, I realized today that I kind of dominate in two of my discussion sections (metaphysics, philosophical logic). One of those "does anyone besides Mr. Droid care to comment?" kinds of things. I suck at the actual philosophizing part of those classes, but they both have a lot of formal theory. I'm not the best in the world at those, but I don't suck at them, and that's exciting, so I don't shut up. Then there's Wittgenstein. Definitely not formal. I suck balls and am an eager listener.
Also? It's really hard to stay alert in a 4.5 hour solid block of classes.
Anyway, let's get to bed so we can get up early and go back to prison! And then a funeral! Meanwhile writing two papers! I will spend spring break sucking my thumb curled up in a corner.
It's an interesting final semester in school. You know, I realized today that I kind of dominate in two of my discussion sections (metaphysics, philosophical logic). One of those "does anyone besides Mr. Droid care to comment?" kinds of things. I suck at the actual philosophizing part of those classes, but they both have a lot of formal theory. I'm not the best in the world at those, but I don't suck at them, and that's exciting, so I don't shut up. Then there's Wittgenstein. Definitely not formal. I suck balls and am an eager listener.
Also? It's really hard to stay alert in a 4.5 hour solid block of classes.
Anyway, let's get to bed so we can get up early and go back to prison! And then a funeral! Meanwhile writing two papers! I will spend spring break sucking my thumb curled up in a corner.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Back to prison
I don't mind telling you, I don't particularly want to go to prison tomorrow. (Who ever does?) Or I guess I'm going today, because it's apparently after midnight. But I haven't had to go yet this semester, apart from renewing my ID card, so I can't complain too much, even if I have some really good reasons to.
It's kind of a monstrous week: couple of papers, couple of problem sets, a funeral, and a little blood in the john. Oh yeah, and maybe the Toyota will fall to pieces when we drive it toward Monterey, that'll be a nice capper.
A funeral, did I mention? Indeed, mom's man's ma has passed on. I can't say I ever much enjoyed her company, but I feel terrible for her family (particularly mom's man). And that, apparently, is my elegy for her. "Never much cared for her, but it's not like I don't feel bad for the people who are sad to lose her." I should be so lucky to be so fondly remembered.
Anyway, have to go to prison tomorrow because it's what we do: we escort the new beige card holders around, coach 'em on how to look like they know what they're doing, when to tell everyone to haul out their IDs, etc. It's been an exciting program to be involved in, but I'll be darned if I'm not just a little burnt out on it. I'll talk more about it when I'm not admonishing myself for not being in bed already.
It's kind of a monstrous week: couple of papers, couple of problem sets, a funeral, and a little blood in the john. Oh yeah, and maybe the Toyota will fall to pieces when we drive it toward Monterey, that'll be a nice capper.
A funeral, did I mention? Indeed, mom's man's ma has passed on. I can't say I ever much enjoyed her company, but I feel terrible for her family (particularly mom's man). And that, apparently, is my elegy for her. "Never much cared for her, but it's not like I don't feel bad for the people who are sad to lose her." I should be so lucky to be so fondly remembered.
Anyway, have to go to prison tomorrow because it's what we do: we escort the new beige card holders around, coach 'em on how to look like they know what they're doing, when to tell everyone to haul out their IDs, etc. It's been an exciting program to be involved in, but I'll be darned if I'm not just a little burnt out on it. I'll talk more about it when I'm not admonishing myself for not being in bed already.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Metaphysics is neat
So here's a funny thing about life that you have already noticed unless you are a dim bulb: you only get to try it one way. No takey-backsies; no trying plan B after plan A turns out to kinda suck, with respect to its longer-reaching consequences. You know this already, but I mention it because of one of its mundane consequences: when you are in some particular situation, you can't tell which of the aspects of that situation are due to the situation itself, and which are due to the conditions under which you entered the situation. And that little epistemological niggle is what's on my mind here, at least to some degree or 'nother.
That was fun to write, which is why I wrote it. It wasn't particularly revelatory or anything like that, but here's me explaining why I not only wrote that, but why I wrote this. I am unsure which of the following best describes my own history. Is it that I should have taken a Metaphysics class as soon as I was able, or is it that I would naturally react to a class this way in the final semester of my undergraduate education? Because how I'm reacting is this: metaphysics--easily my least eagerly anticipated class of the semester--freakin' rocks.
I entered school as a philosophy student not because I am some deeply, broadly read student of philosophy. I don't know shit about this shit, whatever books I've read along the way. I wanted to get a feel for the boundaries of inquiry, so that when I think to myself, "That is some cold, original shit you just woke yourself up with there, Mr. Droid," I would know whether I'm right. Consequently, most of the time I am reading two guys arguing about how it should be this way or the opposite, and they both seem like they are smarter than me, and I want to find a way to make them both right, or something.
That is, while I am indeed discovering the lay of the land, so to speak, I am not also discovering how to classify myself. If you gave me a multi-axial index of philosophical commitments and asked me to place myself somewhere, I would perhaps be able to exclude a few regions from my possible reply, but hell if I could say anything positive.
But reading Kripke in metaphysics, I think: duh! of course. I am scandalized on Saul Kripke's behalf that his Naming and Necessity was at all controversial. But neither Kant nor Lewis is a dummy, nor are their adherents whom I've met, and I'm looking into how Kripke seems to be incompatible with what they said. Wikipedia has all the further details you could hope for. Naming and Necessity: quite a book.
Anyway, usually in a class I read a couple of opposed positions and appreciate what both of them have to say. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, except that it would be really nice to know what I currently thought had the upper hand in the debates. Something about that really makes it easier to criticize everything else that you read, or at least to keep in mind the landscape which determines the relations between the different positions you've read--a fixed point. But in metaphysics, though I am really taking Lewis and his possibilia seriously, I at least have a very intuitive and obvious-seeming place to plant my flag. Beat Kripke and I'll follow you, but until then, this guy seems so right!
Anyway, usually in a class I read a couple of opposed positions and appreciate what both of them have to say. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, except that it would be really nice to know what I currently thought had the upper hand in the debates. Something about that really makes it easier to criticize everything else that you read, or at least to keep in mind the landscape which determines the relations between the different positions you've read--a fixed point. But in metaphysics, though I am really taking Lewis and his possibilia seriously, I at least have a very intuitive and obvious-seeming place to plant my flag. Beat Kripke and I'll follow you, but until then, this guy seems so right!
Grammar
Most of the time, I think it's damn fucking weird that old-ass cultures, what who invented words and grammar and shit that we use every day, lacked both 'white space' and punctuation in their writing. And capitalization (or rather, diminution). I couldn't read this shit without that shit. But then I watch myself debate whether a certain comma belongs in a certain place. I think about how it would work either way. I think about how two hundred years ago, when a motherfucker would comma off every single clause of his sentence whether it "needed" it or not like some kind of German (I am looking at you, David Hume), current practices would seem nigh on blasphemous. How that approach to commas doesn't seem any more wrong than my own. EVENTUALLYIWONDERWHETHERTHEYDIDNOTHAVEITRIGHTINTHEFIRSTPLACEHAVINGINTRODUCEDWRITTENLANGUAGEANDALL
Sunday, March 6, 2011
LaTeX is neat
My logic professor encouraged his students to emulate his use of LaTeX to do our problem sets. For a couple of weeks, I was too busy to set aside a couple of hours to install everything and learn the first few ropes, but I am really glad that I chose to do so. I have been using it for practically any purpose I can think of since.
LaTeX, if you don't know, is a computer language for typesetting. It is old (Donald Knuth old), free, and stable. The only thing that might make you hesitate about using it is that you can't think of a reason why you would want to learn a typesetting language when you already have LibreOffice or whatever installed for all your word processing needs.
But it is really nice to have the manual control over layout that you get with markup languages, rather than WYSIWYG interfaces. (Not that there aren't WYSIWYG-ish editors, for the nervous-but-interested.) Being able to split the source document into several files is nice too.
But mostly what is nice about LaTeX is that, with the small learning curve behind you, you can just worry about content. No pulling down a drop-down list and dialog so that you can insert weird characters, or edit table properties, etc. (Of course, admittedly, you'll probably have a browser open to the LaTeX wikibook most of the time.)
Although LaTeX really shines for letting you easily embed mathematical/technical formulae into plain text, even if you are only writing plain English you will love this shit. I am using LaTeX to write the facilitator's manual for the prison volunteering program I help run. It's something like 40 pages right now, much of that a nice Table of Contents and big section headings and crap, but I need to pay zero attention to layout. Pictures and such are laid out very professionally, and indeed it is all about the paragraph word spacing. Everyone told you not to use justified text settings on your word processor, because it looks like crap. But in LaTeX it looks great, because there are some really deep algorithms running down there that are adjusting the word spacing throughout the entire paragraph (not for each line at a time), and it looks faboo.
If you're interested, I'll direct you to my professor's page on using LaTeX, since he does a nice job of providing links for multiple platforms, editors, &c.
LaTeX, if you don't know, is a computer language for typesetting. It is old (Donald Knuth old), free, and stable. The only thing that might make you hesitate about using it is that you can't think of a reason why you would want to learn a typesetting language when you already have LibreOffice or whatever installed for all your word processing needs.
But it is really nice to have the manual control over layout that you get with markup languages, rather than WYSIWYG interfaces. (Not that there aren't WYSIWYG-ish editors, for the nervous-but-interested.) Being able to split the source document into several files is nice too.
But mostly what is nice about LaTeX is that, with the small learning curve behind you, you can just worry about content. No pulling down a drop-down list and dialog so that you can insert weird characters, or edit table properties, etc. (Of course, admittedly, you'll probably have a browser open to the LaTeX wikibook most of the time.)
Although LaTeX really shines for letting you easily embed mathematical/technical formulae into plain text, even if you are only writing plain English you will love this shit. I am using LaTeX to write the facilitator's manual for the prison volunteering program I help run. It's something like 40 pages right now, much of that a nice Table of Contents and big section headings and crap, but I need to pay zero attention to layout. Pictures and such are laid out very professionally, and indeed it is all about the paragraph word spacing. Everyone told you not to use justified text settings on your word processor, because it looks like crap. But in LaTeX it looks great, because there are some really deep algorithms running down there that are adjusting the word spacing throughout the entire paragraph (not for each line at a time), and it looks faboo.
If you're interested, I'll direct you to my professor's page on using LaTeX, since he does a nice job of providing links for multiple platforms, editors, &c.
Discovery of the most special place on the Internet!
You and I have something in common: we both know where to find the most special place on the Internet.
But you would be forgiven if you weren't immediately sure what was so special about this place. You may even be confused, for it is not unreasonable to suppose that you may already have found sites which claimed to be "the most special place on the Internet."
However, none of those places contained my most delicate, personal thoughts. This place does (will). I am the most special person there is. This is where my most special thoughts go. I really can't see how it could possibly be that there would be a more special place than this on the Internet.
My lawyers will be contacting any and all other claimants on this and similar titles, and I will be seeing them all in hell.
But you would be forgiven if you weren't immediately sure what was so special about this place. You may even be confused, for it is not unreasonable to suppose that you may already have found sites which claimed to be "the most special place on the Internet."
However, none of those places contained my most delicate, personal thoughts. This place does (will). I am the most special person there is. This is where my most special thoughts go. I really can't see how it could possibly be that there would be a more special place than this on the Internet.
My lawyers will be contacting any and all other claimants on this and similar titles, and I will be seeing them all in hell.
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