| called democracy for a reason |
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| 11:14am 04/11/2009 |
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mood:  determined
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Look, I'm for gay equality. I firmly believe that the number and gender of your sexual partners doesn't matter. (Many things about your relationship may matter, but number and gender ain't in there - and I do *not* have the time to discuss this tangent right now.)
And I wish that Maine had voted for gay marriage, and I hope there won't be backlash.
But.
It really disturbs me when I see people who are supposed to be on my side saying things like "you don't get to vote on my civil rights." Actually, they do. Free speech applies to all speech, even speech that we hate. Likewise, democracy means the population gets to vote about whatever it wants. Even when they're wrong. Even when they're really really really wrong and their votes are screwing up your lives. Because "democracy, except when it gives an answer we can't abide" is not democracy at all.
[EDITED TO ADD:
Dear people from elsewhere, hello. Enjoy flaming me. Flames will not change my opinion in the slightest.
If you'd like to read more of the basic arguments against democracy, may I recommend Unqualified Reservations? (NOT THE COMMENTS, JUST THE ARTICLES.)
Also, for the zillionth-and-first time, I AM FOR GAY MARRIAGE.]
[EDITED TO FURTHER ADD:
Also, if you came here just to tell me how horrible and wrong I am, I would like to ask you why. Surely you're not expecting to convince me. So, what is the point of insulting a random stranger on the internet?]
[EDITED TO ADD, AFTER LAB:
Many of you seem to be reading this as "I get to vote on your rights [and you don't get to vote on mine, because none of mine are currently contested]." Let me give a counterexample. I have serious problems with the whole concept of 'rights' in general, as I've said several times in the comments. But, in my opinion, if *anything* is a right, if the concept of 'a right' has any *meaning,* then one of the most inalienable rights is self-defense. And yet, most of you would probably vote that I don't have the right to have a gun. And I'd think you're wrong (and I might well break the law), but I'd never say that you're not allowed to vote on this.
Also, the thing about free speech was an analogy. I know full well that voting and speech are different.
Also, I can't know how I'd feel if I were gay. This is true. But it does not affect the truth or falsity of my arguments.] |
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Read 91 - Post |
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| things! x things! |
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| 11:34pm 22/10/2009 |
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[transcribed from notebook, because that way I don't have to fuss about writing things; new things go *into* notebook, and break out to here if they're lucky]
In which dinosaurs are totally related to turtles
I saw an ad on he Metro last week with a T-rex. He was leaning horizontally, and the changed perspective made him look like a lizard. Or even a turtle head, like Testudo! It's interesting cause I don't think a poor drawing was at fault here - it looked like an image generated from a 3D model, and perhaps T-rex heads do look like turtles if you only tilt them the right way. He has his uncle's.. beak?
In which I get to post reviews opinions about books - The Name of the Wind
Cons: I felt like most of the characters were NPCs. The farmers, the Ruh troupers, the other students and faculty at the University - they were just $funnyGuy, $friendlyGuy, $prettyGirl, etc. I could not distinguish the Ruh from generic gypsies in any way. Nor denner resin from a generic destructive drug - I couldn't even tell if it was supposed to be crack or heroin, which is partially down to me not knowing about drugs, but also down to the author as it seemed like he was using the societal image of Drugs=="Bad and Dangerous" more than any actual depiction of a specific drug.
Pros: Kvothe, the main character, was interesting and well drawn. And the dragon! That mated with the campfire! Perhaps the best part of this book was the magic system - it operated by "percent sympathy," that is, sympathetic magic with numbers and rules that you can be clever with. I approve.
~*~*~
[also in notebook, not coming out - failed bits of Merlin fic]
[because everyone in Camelot is going crazy]
[also, Lancelot would make a really really entertaining mercenary]
[and I want someone to write the SRS BZNS deconstruction fics for Merlin like they did for HP, but I do not know how]
[[is it just me who finds things like 'everyone in Camelot is going crazy' or 'Lancelot would make a good mercenary' entertaining even if they have no context besides Arthurian legend itself??? And all the glorious mixed-up-edness it contains.]] |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| in the history of awesome |
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| 08:25pm 18/10/2009 |
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music: you're so vain, you probly think this song is about you, don't you
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So I'm back from Capclave! Yes, again - second Capclave, third con. They're still only getting better. This time I actually knew about open parties in time to spend both Friday and Saturday evenings being ridiculous there, and that's where I did most of my talking. But I was also able to talk to quite a few people in the hallway or between panels, etc. - not that many, but enough that I'm not quite sure of the number, and it might be double-digits. And yes, this does count as a triumph. Cause it's better than the status quo.
And oh, I love being in an environment where small talk involves Issac Asimov or Stargate or the COBE mission, and even a compliment on my shirt turns into a conversation about words evolving.
Speaking of which: my lovely XKCD shirt, the one that says "Science: It works, bitches," struck not just one but two independent people as saying something negative about science-and-women. And those are just the people who told me. So - anyone in the peanut gallery think that shirt is a problem? Or can think of a good word to substitute for 'bitches'?
~*~*~*~*~*~
I took 18 pages of notes in my pocket-sized notebook; here are some highlights.
* secret rebel society of reverse engineers (if the aliens are Keeping Us Down by giving / trading us tech that we can't understand and thus use effectively)
* aliens terraforming (xenoforming!) our planet out from under us
* do aliens worry about cultural appropriation?
* vividness vs. depth of characters - not the same
* much science fiction works on and reinforces a fear of science
* transporters are like cell phones, they have sucky reception
* first contact made on our behalf by Sufficiently Advanced spacecraft (i.e., AI)
* colonizing space with AI/ robots, not flesh-and-blood humans
* manned spaceflight is like indie bookstores
* romance from the man's point of view?
* relationship of urban fantasy to Alanna & Xena
* Romeo + Juliet + Werewolves
* what would be the machine or alien equivalent of love? considering AI development in one case amd evolutionary biology in the other
* Foundation series as 'fix-it fic' for real-world history
* thematic relationship of forgotten origin planet to homesickness for Earth
* Augustine said: "In the Gospel we do not read that the Lord said: 'I send you the Holy Spirit so that He might teach you all about the course of the sun and the moon.' The Lord wanted to make Christians, not astronomers. You learn at school all the useful things you need to know about nature." i.e., ancient famous Christians were *not* creationists. (in the science-denying sense of the word) |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| there are no features, only code |
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| 10:03pm 15/10/2009 |
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mood:  awake music: maybe black mesa/ that was a joke, haha, fat chance/ anyway this cake is great..
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My program is eternal.
So yesterday I finally got some results out of it; they're interesting, not as bad as I'd feared, but not as clean as I'd like, either. Basically, it's detecting pretty much the same pattern of events in our raw data as I'd been detecting by hand... plus lots of other very-small events, that are almost overwhelming the events I want by quantity in some cases. So do I just filter out any event that's smaller than, say, 1 nS? Or do I try to figure out a more intelligent design for separating the different *types* of events from each other?
No one knows. No one cares. I am well aware of this ;). Actually - my next door neighbor happens to care, which is awesome.
On a meta level, I'm a little bit worried, cause - well. I have to learn to deal with this stuff before it is too late. I basically assigned myself the task to make this program - first it was supposed to automate the data processing everyone in my lab does by hand (take raw signal, voltage over time, and look for 'jumps' in the voltage levels c.f. continuous variations), then take that first pass of processed data and figure out more interesting things from it. I've been making up all the algorithms, and everything... which is really fun, and that combined with the interesting-ness of the algorithms I've been learning in first Molecular Evolution and now Bioinformatics class is tempting me to try for algorithm development in grad school, lack of proper CS background be damned.
Anyway, so I've made up this job for myself - my boss thinks the idea is cool, but he has no particular ideas for what I should be doing with it - which is so validating and encouraging, that I can do whatever I want and it's apparently the right thing. But this also means the project has no particular end goals. Or partially done benchmarks. Which means I am permanently stuck thinking I should do more, better, I should have gotten past this bit by now. And this is always true, cause of course I'm very rarely working at 100% capacity (or even near it). But kind of crazy-making, because... I just realized. If I get into grad school, if I'm lucky, I'll be doing very much the same kind of thing I'm doing now. Self-defined, open-ended projects. I won't have the luxury of fishing with my day's work and being *done* for many years, if ever. So I need to figure out a balance of how to actually work on a project like this.. and yet not feel guilty and neglectful whenever (most of the time!) I'm not working on it. Anytime now would be nice. |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| short reactiony things... |
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| 07:14pm 10/10/2009 |
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mood:  busy
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~*~*~
I just read The Illustrated Man (Ray Bradbury), and the way he talked about the theme of homesickness really stuck out at me. The constant repeated images - smell of leaves in the air, strawberry pie, fields and neighbors and so forth - are not home to me at all. They're everything the space men identify with Earth, yet they're like a foreign country. It's interesting. All the people in these stories suffer from not having this. And we don't have it anyway, and we don't even miss it - and we don't have space to make up for it either.
~*~*~
I'm a bit obsessed with the "I can ride my bike with no handlebars" song. It's… if you actually listen to the lyrics (which I didn't the first time I heard it), describing this creepy slow slide from an innocuous playful sort of power ('handlebars') through more serious ('I can lead the nation with a microphone') and even dangerous ('I can guide a missile by satellite') power, through the temptations and abuses thereof, ending up with total destruction ('I can end the planet in a holocaust') and finally circling back to handlebars one more time, just so we make the connection. Anyway, it's neat. I love to sing songs with clever lyrics like that. Except this one is not actually sung, so it leaves me kinda wishing I could rap.
~*~*~
I have just about had it with people who say "Columbus didn't discover America; people were already living there!" People were already living there, yes; and there was a whole other continent cluster that they didn't know about, and that didn't know about them. Until Columbus, and the exchanges that diffused outward from that initial point of contact.
Now, Columbus and his sailors also killed peaceful Indians for target practice - there's no doubt about it, we have their own words. I'm not excusing them.
I'm just saying - discovery does exist, and it is a one-way process (since sailing across the ocean and meeting the people who sail across the ocean to you are very much different things). Columbus discovered the Americans. And then he killed them. Okay?
~*~*~
A few problems on the GRE are actually hard. What is with that? On the other hand, developing my obscure vocabulary and lightning calculation skills could always be considered good things.
~*~*~
Apparently interesting discussions can only happen on the anon meme, because no one wants to sign their names to thoughtful (and thus potentially controversial) comments. Oh Merlin fandom, I love you. But this is just a bit insane. :-) |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| i'm not trying to be pilate, i'm not trying to be keats... |
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| 04:11pm 01/10/2009 |
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Most of my favorite things in life are not true.
~*~*~
What is truth?
In standard usage: the state of being the case. In accordance with reality.
Within a closed system (e.g. mathematics): in accordance with the rules and state of said system.
What truth is not: an appropriate descriptor for everything good, or beautiful. (Or good *enough,*, or beautiful *enough.*) A symphony cannot be 'true' anymore than it can be 'purple' or 'heavy.' I blame this abuse-through-dilution of the word on several things:
Most obviously, the Romantics. 'truth is beauty, beauty truth' - and I had a modified version of that quote as my journal subtitle for years. It *feels* right, yes? (Unless you are ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) asciilifeform, to whom it's apparently never made any sense - I wonder if it's a culturally Western thing? For values of West that don't include Russia.) But *why* does it feel right - with which reality is it in accordance?
Things frequently *feel* true - we appear to have a feeling-like-it's-true organ in our brains. (Unless that's just me, and I'm weird, but I do *think* it's pretty standard if perhaps not 100% so.) But - it is trivially easy to show that this organ does not work. Many people feel quite strongly that contradictory things are true. And if true means *corresponding* to something in this (outer) world - well, clearly the earth cannot be both round and flat simultaneously. etc. Of course things frequently seem contradictory when they're not - because they're referring to different contexts, for example, or using different definitions for terminology - but it's silly to argue that nothing that people feel is true is ever *really* contradictory.
Another thought - it may be related to the halo effect. That is, our brain is much more inclined to simply assign something a general +1 than to keep track of whether that +1 should be only in honesty, rather than beauty, and so on.
And an analytical thing rather a built-in one: it's always fun to connect things together. To make a unified theory that explains everything nicely, rather than a group of unconnected theories that may leave some things out. Hell, Occam's Razor even makes a kind of law from this! So it feels wonderful to have a from-the-ground-up axiomatic system that accounts for scientific truths, *and* your key moral principles, *and* your musical/artistic/etc. tastes, all together... even if this does mean stretching things a bit.
One last thing:
I feel like we've become afraid of using objectively-meant positive labels. Sure, we like things - but that's just our opinion, no one has to agree with it, we could always be wrong. (Except for the times when people to have to agree because otherwise we'll scream and say "do you want to be like X?" But this is not an argument.. it's an appeal to the inside of the other person's head, which we have to assume is at least minimally similar to ours. Digression aside!):
Not everything has to be true. The sunset is not true; my laptop is not true; the food I'll eat for dinner in a few hours isn't true, and neither is my husband, but I don't love him any less. My favorite books. Whole entire disciplines...
True is not synonymous with worthwhile, or important, or even necessary. True is not synonymous with righteous. There are other dimensions of "up." And we need to use them. Say it: this painting is beautiful. This moral premise is *right.*
... and if I can't prove these things with arguments, well. I'm still not backing down. And I can fight for them, with everything I have. |
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Read 9 - Post |
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| my problem with a lot of 'geek chic' [a context-free rant] |
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| 07:07pm 24/09/2009 |
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... I'm sorry, I know this isn't the point. But things like this just bother me, perhaps because I am in that sort of vulnerable middle ground of people who are supposed to be the target audience - people who like science just enough to be attracted by those keywords, and yet also don't really understand them in the correct context, so yearn for them to be transplanted to a more anthropomorphic-type context where they can then be "understood." But I don't want that fake understanding... it's seductive, but it's a lie. Better to batter my head against the brick wall of mathematics until my skull bashes in; or better to give up.
I know I'm a weird kid for having such a strong sense of profanity when I don't actually have a religion. But you don't throw away books, and you don't give trash to Testudo, and you don't dilute science by using its names and concepts wrong. Science is not a warm and fuzzy discipline, it won't love you, being right is the only thing it has. And since it is also what's standing between us and the freezing cold and starvation of being hunter-gatherers again, I do wish people would treat it with some respect. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| keeping me honest |
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| 11:09pm 19/09/2009 |
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Not only do I have biases, but I can even figure out what some of them are...
The received truth can't be right. Sure, if an argument ends up supporting something the liberal or conservative orthodoxy, or something the New York Times or Reason says... it could still be right. But I'll be considerably more skeptical than I would be if it contradicted (in at least some way) all the major "you're-supposed-to-have-it" opinions that I know about. And this skepticism dial may be calibrated a bit too high.
Also, this goes double for things that you "can't say" - I give the evidence in favor of them more weight than I probably should - because it's almost impossible to find something that backs the allowed position, and yet treats the taboo position as something to honestly argue with.
I have a bias towards things being measurable. And explainable. Especially with numbers involved. Which is... I fully believe that a lot of people-type things are measurable, that they're not magic. However, this does not mean that our currently proposed measurements or models are correct. I could probably stand to remember this more often.
I have a bias towards mapping one discipline (especially a sciencey or mathy one) onto another - explaining various things as activation energy, or dynamic equilibrium, or mechanics-without-the-friction, etc. So I probably don't see the analogies' shortcomings as much as I should.
Of course I share the general biases that all humans have - the tendency to assume that my current theories are correct and shouldn't be junked, the temptation to favor explanations that allow my current (or desired) behavior rather than discourage it, etc. But that's all the me-specific ones I can think of for the time being. Outside perspectives are, as always, welcome.
[I'm thinking of 'bias' specifically in the sense of and as influenced by Overcoming Bias and its offshoot Less Wrong, the latter of which has been much in my thoughts this summer.]
[Edited to add more thoughts...
I think this is common, but - I tend to judge communities that I am part of by their best members, but communities that I'm not part of by their squeaky-wheel (-gets-the-grease) members. Because when I'm in a community, I choose my favorite parts to pay most attention to, and those color the whole community's picture in my head far out of proportion to their actual size or significance. Whereas communities that I'm not part of - the average member may be quite nice, for all I know, but I only really notice and thus care about the distinctly non-average member who tends to impinge upon outsiders, in a usually disturbing fashion.
] |
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| i don't know about yours, by my computer is an obstacle course full of orcs |
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| 06:05pm 16/09/2009 |
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Linus Torvalds explains why he doesn't like kernel debuggers:
I don't think kernel development should be "easy". I do not condone single-stepping through code to find the bug. I do not think that extra visibility into the system is necessarily a good
thing....
And sure, when things crash and you fsck and you didn't even get a clue about what went wrong, you get frustrated. Tough. There are two kinds of reactions to that: you start being careful, or you start whining about a kernel debugger.
Well, I say there are two major kinds of attitudes towards computers. Either you view them as a tool to help you solve other problems, or you view them as a kind of Mount Everest to prove your intelligence on by making them jump through ever-more-complicated sets of hoops.
I've been guilty of the second attitude more times than I can count. It's *good* for a system to be difficult to use, because when I learn it, every new trick is a notch in my belt. Today, I'm proud of the fact that I learned how to use C better - my program has arrays declared with star notation, and malloc! But, you know, learning to use a tool should not be an end in and of itself.
So just try telling reddit that anything should be easier, ever. And they'll say you should work harder, and if you can't figure it out you're stupid. Because real programmers use (emacs/ vi/ butterflies/ etc.). It's all there in the source code.
Well, sure, it's all there in the source code. And if I had years worth of free time to spend, maybe I could actually understand it all. But here in the real world, we have limited amounts of effort to spend, and limited time. And every brain cycle I spend trying to figure out how arrays or file types work in the nth language is a cycle I'm *not* spending on a real problem. Because... listen guys, we all like to feel smart and special for figuring this stuff out. But computers are not here to get in our way. And this perverse joy we feel every time we successfully make them get in our way *slightly less* is Not Helping. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| Filk Anthems |
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| 09:06pm 10/09/2009 |
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music: and i want it so much, close my eyes i can taste the mars dust in the air...
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The song Somebody Will is my new national anthem. I heard it at Balticon, and along with some great panel discussions of "how could we make time machines?" and "how could psychohistory be real?" and like those topics, this song, specifically, inspired me a lot.
I say "national" anthem cause that's the nation I want – the one that cares about space travel and the rest of the future, that won't give up, that hasn't given up already
This world that created them
World we create with them
One chance to make them all real
There's a quote I tend to see in political contexts - "be the change you want to see in the world" (Gandhi). But I think it applies even more here, in science and technology. If we don't build the future, well, no one is going to build it for us. Yet another quote comes to mind: "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has" (Margaret Mead). Everything we have now was built by people, not magic and not alien monoliths. We know we can build a future. Previous generations already have.
The song Rich Fantasy Lives on the other hand – makes me cry. Don't get me wrong, I like the song – it's clever, it's fun to sing, and it's a celebration of fandom and all of its possibilities much like the song above. But see this part in particular:
Until that steam engine to Hogwarts arrives
We'll lead rich fantasy lives
Rich fantasy lives
Until something better than this world arrives
We'll lead rich fantasy lves
And... no. The steam engine to Hogwarts is not going to arrive. Because Hogwarts is not real, never will be, was never meant to be – it's magic. And I love fantasy, I do. But it is not something we can try to make real. And this.. blurring of the boundary between fantasy and science fiction – it's great in a literary sense, we can tell more stories than ever before - great stories! But it's not such a good boundary to blur in our minds. Because if we put future-tech and magic in the same box, in many ways, we're relegating the former to the latter one's fate. No one dreams of making fantasy real. But we do dream of making science fiction real, or at least we used to. And I do not want to give up on that dream.
[This entry was written months ago, but not posted till now cause it was stuck on the wrong computer.] |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| An Open Letter Found on the Sidewalk, Sodden with Rainwater and Streaked with Dirt |
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| 11:12am 16/08/2009 |
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When I was a kid, my father always used to yell at my mother. For daring to argue.
I was raised by an abusive father.
But even when I knew barely anything else, I knew that this was wrong.
So I have kind of an allergy, you see, to places that stifle debate. And I'm sick and tired of the growing canon of !fail.
Every few days, it seems like - or maybe not quite every week - there's another link being passed around on my friends page. 'Look at the horrible racism!' it screams, or, 'see the sexism! Homophobia in action!' And, being the social creature that I am - don't we all want to see what our community is talking about? - I follow the link. Sometimes I find actual prejudice; more often I find something that was meant innocently, but pushes some peoples' buttons because of how they see the world. (And we all see the world in different ways.)
One person's innocent thought experiment, or cast of characters, or plot point, is another person's - you know what, I don't even want to get into it. I'm writing a meta-argument, and I can only do so much at once.
...........
Because trying to defend any of the linked-to things, in any way, is 'getting into it.' And I do not accept that framing.
When Race!Fail started back in January, there was lots of debate. And defense. And that defense was taken, instead of as an argument that should be responded to in some fashion, as 'fail.' Hence the name of this whole long and drawn-out process; also, hence the mostly-silencing, by now, of people who don't agree.
Of course there's been defense - sometimes - by the very people who were attacked, and their friends, on that particular issue.
But on all the posts linking to fail that I've seen - and there are lots, they come in waves! - there are handfuls to hundreds of comments, all on how horrible the fail is. Some, even debating, on tangential questions - some about how wonderful you, the original poster (or you, the previous commenter) are - some rhetorical questions asking why there is so much fail, and why are we seeing it all right now?
Rarely, if ever, even one arguing that the link in question might not really be fail.
..........
When only agreement is allowed, you get statism; when dissent is only allowed in one direction, you get a ratchet. Since many people dare to say that x, y, or z should now be added to the list of fail, and no one dares to say it shouldn't - we have a ratchet.
Which is making this 'movement' into a parody of itself. People look through one fail target's associations to find the next one. People descend in hordes on strangers, not even with arguments, but with content-free ad hominem insults. People gleefully make up new insults - well okay, I understand that one, it's kinda fun! - but other people then call this behavior productive, and fling said insults around with abandon. People demand that the targets of attacks accept their terminology as accurate and helpful - not just 'privilege,' which is decades old but still not universally understood - but things like 'your ass is showing.' People talk, in comments, about how much they hate people who 'fail'... and why do those failers have to be so hateful?
And I got an anonymous comment on my cryptic meta-post the other day. Someone agreed that this fail phenomenon has gone too far, and did not even dare to sign zir name. Internet, when you've made people too afraid to sign their names to posts, you have FAILED.
........
Sure, you can try to justify this behavior. You can even succeed - a pretty wide range of human behavior is understandable, after all. But ask yourself, is this the behavior that I want from my community? And if it's not, when will I dare to say so? |
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Read 5 - Post |
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| On Picking Sides, or, Life is Not a Football Match |
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| 08:07pm 15/08/2009 |
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I am not on your side.
I am not on anybody's side.
I may agree with you, today, on this issue or that. I may sound - for now - like a good gay-rights supporter or an anti-racist, a liberal or a rationalist.
But these labels are descriptive, not prescriptive.
And I have no particular desire to 'live up to them' well.
I don't have group loyalties, except by accident; I have opinions. So I may think you are going too far this time, and I may think that factor is relevant, and I reserve the right to fucking disagree. |
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Post |
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| People. |
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| 03:08pm 14/08/2009 |
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mood: determined
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I don't think anyone even reads my journal who cares about *Fail. But let me just say:
It is so ironic that the liberal outraged people say of people they accuse of fail - "They live in a bubble! They're so unused to listening to other viewpoints!"
Your lovely feminist progressive anti-racist fandom circle is a bubble. And a bubble that I like, most of the time, that's why I hang around it! Still, you cannot say: "I always hear opposing viewpoints. Family! Acquaintances and strangers on the street! Fox News and the sometimes the supposedly 'liberal' mainstream media!" Because yes, you hear these opposing viewpoints. Do you listen to them? Do you ever engage with a single thing they say that you didn't already agree with? Because if so, I have not seen the evidence. |
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Read 17 - Post |
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| and i want it so much/ so many things sing to me... |
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| 01:31am 02/08/2009 |
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mood: awake
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I try to write actual essays and I am paralyzed. I know how to spit out my thoughts, sure; but I don't know how to prove a point.
They tell you in school, show supporting evidence. They tell you to have organization. So I know how to have the appearance, the accidents, of these things. But in school you get points just for trying.
And... I want to figure out what my ideas actually are. I want to fold them up into little origamis so they look beautiful and small. But they are strange semi-animated paper cranes, and when you look at them they open their wings and unfold and fly.
(Yes, I've made paper cranes before. I know that's not how they work.)
It's not that I need to convince people, even. It's that new ideas, to me, are the best thing ever. When you find one it is like a secret, a gift, a pirate's cache from the Internet's great treasure hunt. And I want to make that gift. |
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| magical aptitude tests, and similar things |
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| 11:28pm 20/07/2009 |
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mood:  tired music: leslie fish ~ "for we are the makers of valhalla!"
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So, I'm trying to plan out a magical working system for this story I keep mentioning.
And I have a very - odd - thing to consider.
When I was reading the Belgariad in middle school, I kept trying to visualize where the ball should go, and want. When I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I tried to distract myself when falling off of... something, I don't remember what anymore. When I read the Valdemar books, I tried to center and shield (magic is so much like electricity in some books, it's kinda crazy). I built so many unfolded tesseracts, I watched for mist in the trees and ran into it, I looked for true names for everything and if my parents had had a wardrobe I surely would've crawled into it and beat my head against the back.
And this story is.. predicated on all that, kind of. I wonder, by the way - every fantasy-obsessed kid wants to make the magic real, I'm sure. You want to find that other world - but with regards to this one, do you want to stay here, or at least have the option of coming back? Or do you just want to get out? Is that last one normal, or was that just me?
Anway. Given that kids do attempt to follow the rules for magic laid out in a book, any book, and this specific book, should it ever exist, is in a very meta way about that - is there any way we can put that to good use by having interesting and real world relevant systems for magic?
(The one example I know of - though it may not count as magic - is the First Sight and Second Thoughts that Tiffany Aching has in The Wee Free Men.) |
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| spacing, structure, symmetry and stuff |
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| 07:25pm 19/07/2009 |
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It's strange how much certain things seem to carry over, from stones to song to story. Like spacing, and the principles thereof - symmetry? Patterns? Repeats? Or not so much, but knowing when *not* to have them - learning to do asymmetry right. It's really interesting, I've evolved some of my own quirks with regards to this - beading is great for practicing structure unhindered by too much concern with anything else - but I've seen other people have some interesting different ones, and I wonder if mine will be stable at all. I don't do things now like I did five or ten years ago - but back then I did not know what I was doing. I wonder if, now that I have some clue, my style five or ten years from now will be not so different. Or if I will just never think that past-me had any clue.
I have a list of scenes that is complete, and I am happy with. I have some ideas how to go about learning sentence-by-sentence stuff.
I do not have lists of things I should have, like grad schools and professors and ideas for what I want to study. Oh well.
but.... I have something, so I'm happy, you know? Fidgety, cause it might not be the right thing. But fairly content, cause it is a thing, and I made it, and it came not from magic but out of my head. |
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| my head is a weird place (Magic Kingdom Reject) |
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| 10:07am 10/07/2009 |
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mood:  artistic
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K: "Would a fish stay out of water?"
T: "You're not a fish."
K: "You know what I mean!"
T: "No, really. You're some kinda weird... trilobite creature. It's pretty disgusting, actually."
*~*~*
The rejection is a sign, he tells her. Stay here, it's better anyway.
"Better for you," she says.
"Yeah, and? You're not that much different."
She looks at the engine. Not that much. Not that much is the difference between working and falls apart.
*~*~*
She goes back again and again. One time scared, one time defiant, one time sad. Third time is the charm.
*~*~*
K: "Give me what I want, and you'll be safe."
Q: "What do you want, then? Passage into my realm? I promise it won't be easy if you take it."
K: "No. Not now. That's not enough."
Q: "What then?"
K: "Safe passage. In, and out. For all my kind. For everyone. And... I'll come back, to take you up on that first offer, someday."
Q: "Listen, child, listen - that's only half a bargain. Everyone has to give something up."
K: "Even the queen?" |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| In Which Stories are Tigers, and Other Things Don't Work At All |
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| 06:04pm 02/07/2009 |
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So I'm trying to write stories again, and the one problem I can't address is resolution. Not resolution of loose threads – though that's an issue too – but in this one case, I actually have a plot, complete with satisfactory and thematically-fitting end. I mean the other kind of resolution, the kind that your monitor has.
It's like the stripes on the tiger that I keep speaking of: if you imagine a tiger, it has stripes, you can see them - but can you count them? I can't.
For example, say my secondary heroine just got into the magic world, and she's supposed to be learning how to do magic. She does her first trick. But what is it? - what should it be? Because I want it to be well-chosen – better than random. The thing she tries, and the way it actually works... should be relevant to the rest of the story. If not plot-related, at least doing work with regards to character and/or theme. (I read enough meta to know this shit, yeah.)
But all the meta and analyzing in the world will not help you choose the trick, or any of these thousand details that stand between 'outline' and 'story'. You have to make it up. And it's interesting... I almost feel that I can tell, when reading, whether the details in a given story were just made up because something had to be there, or whether they're actually a right-and-integral part of the story. So clearly stories can be written by saying – it doesn't matter what the trick is, just choose one! But I, personally (and I'm not saying this is a good thing!), can't seem to keep up the motivation to keep writing, unless I feel that it's not only something but right.
But it is frustrating to have a herd of tigers roaming about in the air, and no way to get them down. No way to show them to people properly, or even stand back and really appreciate their beauty.
So I want to know: is there an algorithmic way of generating such details? Because from all I know your back-brain is supposed to do it, and my back brain sucks for this, always has. So should I just give up? - And if not that, then what?
*~*~*~*
Thought about it some more, and I think I know the answer; it's touched on in my last post. You do this the same way you do anything... it has to be alive in your head. Just keep playing with it, picking at it, and eventually it will evolve or you'll get sick of it all and throw it away. It's not really a helpful answer to me, right now, but I do suspect it's the correct one. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| On the problems of being a dilettante |
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| 06:19pm 27/06/2009 |
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mood: creative music: code monkey think maybe manager wanna write goddamn login page himself...
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Most of the work on something creative is not done when you sit down to work on it. It's done in the background of your mind – when you're waiting for something else in five-minute snatches, when you're not even consciously working on it at all but an idea comes to you and makes you take notice. So when you have a bunch of completely unrelated problems in different fields lying around... your head has nothing to work on in it's down-time, which is most of the time, and you end up making no progress.
(And does this help me choose an actual direction? No, it does not. Oh magic 8 ball, help.) |
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geeky