From New Scientist, via BoingBoing.
The proposed calendar would make figuring out holidays, and college course schedules, much easier. That "extra week" every five or six years is interesting, too...it means a cluster of time that is unrelated to anything, which is kind of wild, and it also means that the seasons would shift just a little bit until the week was reached, and then snap back into place.
The idea is bizarre, but it could work.
His other idea, that everyone should operate on GMT, is also interesting. Nowadays, we can say "What time is it there?" to our friends in other countries in order to get an idea of what they're up to. If everyone operated on GMT, we'd instead have to either ask directly what they were doing, or ask "What time of day is it there?", or come up with a whole new paradigm in our heads to cover the timezone difference. I don't know, I think the calendar idea has more merit.
Still, I don't really think either of them would catch on.
Tuesday, January 4, 2005
Fake tsunami pictures?
According to Snopes, the pictures I linked before may not be of the recent tsunami at all.
I was unaware that China celebrated a "tidal festival".
Snopes has another picture; this one looks extraordinarily fake.
I was unaware that China celebrated a "tidal festival".
Snopes has another picture; this one looks extraordinarily fake.
Kobayashi wants to die
Or does he?
From Mainichi:
Or was I on the right track before? Was he dissatisfied with his life, trying to break free of the mold? Was his eventual goal to be stopped and to gain "redemption" by being punished by his culture?
I'd like to know what drives people to commit such sick acts.
In the meantime, why not give Kobayashi his wish?
From Mainichi:
Kaoru Kobayashi, 36, a former worker for a Mainichi Shimbun sales agent, has told investigators that he initially denied the allegations and wouldn't cooperate with investigators because he wanted to be sentenced to death.Is this reverse psychology? Ridiculously stupid reverse psychology? (Granted, Kobayashi has already proven that he's missing a few brain cells.)
"I thought I would be punished with the death penalty if I damaged investigators' impression of me," he said.
Or was I on the right track before? Was he dissatisfied with his life, trying to break free of the mold? Was his eventual goal to be stopped and to gain "redemption" by being punished by his culture?
I'd like to know what drives people to commit such sick acts.
In the meantime, why not give Kobayashi his wish?
Holy cedar falls
From Mainichi:
And the culture truly owns those trees, as it has been around for just as long as they have.
I wonder what makes a tree holy...how it becomes so, over time.
An 800-year-old "holy" cedar tree in a quake-hit Niigata shrine crashed to the ground on New Year's Day in front of locals making their first prayers of the year.This story reminded me of the trees in Nikko and the Toshogu Shrine. Those trees are gargantuan and very, very old.
And the culture truly owns those trees, as it has been around for just as long as they have.
I wonder what makes a tree holy...how it becomes so, over time.
Monday, January 3, 2005
New Year's Resolution!
In the year 2005 I resolve to: |
Hey, sounds like a good idea to me...
T Campbell has pissed me off today.
From Fans!.
Oh, ha, ha. That's hilarious. Pardon me while I attempt to rein in my overwhelming giggles.
Because obviously, if someone disagrees with my politics, they are either 1) Evil, or 2) Too stupid to do anything but listen to Evil people. My opinions are, of course, infallible.
Yes, this comic hits the nail right on the head. Oh however did you get so clever, Mr. Campbell?
I think if it had been someone other than Campbell it wouldn't have bothered me so much. Usually when I see oversimplified "ha ha Bush is stupid" comic strips I either ignore them, or, if they've become too much a part of the comic, stop reading that comic.
But T's known for good character development. He's not simpleminded when it comes to personalities. I am accustomed to intelligent plots in Fans!, not gross oversimplifications and political prejudice. I find my own intelligence insulted whenever I try to imagine why he'd turn off his brilliant writer's mind and portray the President like this.
He damn well better surprise me tomorrow.
Oh, ha, ha. That's hilarious. Pardon me while I attempt to rein in my overwhelming giggles.
Because obviously, if someone disagrees with my politics, they are either 1) Evil, or 2) Too stupid to do anything but listen to Evil people. My opinions are, of course, infallible.
Yes, this comic hits the nail right on the head. Oh however did you get so clever, Mr. Campbell?
I think if it had been someone other than Campbell it wouldn't have bothered me so much. Usually when I see oversimplified "ha ha Bush is stupid" comic strips I either ignore them, or, if they've become too much a part of the comic, stop reading that comic.
But T's known for good character development. He's not simpleminded when it comes to personalities. I am accustomed to intelligent plots in Fans!, not gross oversimplifications and political prejudice. I find my own intelligence insulted whenever I try to imagine why he'd turn off his brilliant writer's mind and portray the President like this.
He damn well better surprise me tomorrow.
Cracked bullet train windows
Mainichi: Bullet train passenger notices cracks in windows
(Random fact: "Hakata" is the train station in Fukuoka. I've been there; my school group stayed over during our last night in Japan in 2001, and it was there that my "Indian food in Japan" tradition began. I have not, however, been to Osaka.)
At around 6:45 a.m., a passenger on the Hikari No. 342 superexpress bound for Shin-Osaka from Hakata found two windows on one of its eight coaches were cracked and alerted a conductor, West Japan Railway Co. (JR West) officials said.That's disconcerting, but I don't really know why. The article doesn't go into what might happen if the windows of a shinkansen happened to fully break. I'm imagining a vacuum effect from the high speeds that could send passengers flying out of the car, or even destabilize the entire train and wrench it off the tracks...but I don't really know.
(Random fact: "Hakata" is the train station in Fukuoka. I've been there; my school group stayed over during our last night in Japan in 2001, and it was there that my "Indian food in Japan" tradition began. I have not, however, been to Osaka.)
Pioneer refuses to give up on PDP
And I think that's a good thing. Plasma screens look a hell of a lot better than LCDs, in my opinion.
I read an article a few weeks back that claimed that Japan as a whole had essentially dismissed plasma screens in favor of LCD. I remember finding that extremely odd; it's a wonder I didn't blog about it.
From Asahi.com:
I read an article a few weeks back that claimed that Japan as a whole had essentially dismissed plasma screens in favor of LCD. I remember finding that extremely odd; it's a wonder I didn't blog about it.
From Asahi.com:
PDP TVs are facing increasing competition from liquid crystal display TVs, which are being made larger, and the emergence of other types of flat-screen technologies.I know I'd rather have a huge plasma TV than a huge LCD TV.
But a senior Pioneer official said: "Plasma is more appropriate than LCDs for TVs that are 40 inches or larger. We believe PDPs will continue to share the flat-screen TV market with LCDs."
Sunday, January 2, 2005
These results are very different from the results of those personality tests I took back in high school
Jung Explorer Test
Actualized type
(who you are)
Actualized type
(who you are)
ESTP
| OR | ESTJ
|
Preferred type
(who you prefer to be)
(who you prefer to be)
ENTJ
| OR | ESTJ
|
Attraction type
(who you are attracted to)
ENFJ
| "Persuader". Outstanding leader of groups. Can be aggressive at helping others to be the best that they can be. 2.5% of total population. |
Take Jung Explorer Test
personality tests by similarminds.com
Via Kirkie. It said that "The current algorithm breaks the tie randomly so refresh the page to see alternate results", so that's why there are two results for actualized and preferred.
Also, I've been having a lot of fun editing the HTML to get rid of superfluous tags and to use CSS wherever I can, and let me just say that testing code in Blogger's "Preview" is a bitch. Blogger's posting page uses CSS styles for HTML elements. This is pretty standard for websites now, but it means that when I preview my own code, they render in Blogger's styles. The upshot is that I have no idea if it's going to look right on my site until I actually post it. ;P
Blame the linguists!
You may have noticed that I've subscribed to Language Log, a blog for linguistics professors (apparently, based on a quick scan through the usual contributors list; there's no "About" page). It is refreshing and interesting to read the thoughts and analyses of people who are working in the field. Several times, I've thought about linking to articles and commenting about how cool they were.
Today, however, I'm actually going to do it, as today's post "Near? Not Even Close" by Mark Liberman is absolutely delightful. It's deliciously snarky, well-informed, and comprehensible.
And it ends with a tongue-in-cheek call to action:
Liberman "blames" the linguists at the end of that piece, too, linking to "No Professor Left Behind", which is the same piece he linked second in the recent article. In this one, he discusses a lack of scansion ability in modern English professors. Here's the amusing conclusion:
Today, however, I'm actually going to do it, as today's post "Near? Not Even Close" by Mark Liberman is absolutely delightful. It's deliciously snarky, well-informed, and comprehensible.
And it ends with a tongue-in-cheek call to action:
Once again, I blame the linguists for failing to educate the public -- and the pundits -- in the basic techniques of grammatical analysis.What's interesting is, that first link goes to an analysis of the study about front and back vowels that I discussed aeons ago. Some great stuff in that piece, including the following:
The nature of the English lexicon of names makes it impossible that Perfors' list was strictly controlled, phonologically and otherwise. You can't contrast (say) Beet and Boot, or Bit and Butt, or other "names" that differ only in the front-back dimension of their main-stressed vowel. Even if you could, the names would not be equally common (overall or in a particular age range), or equally associated with famous people, or whatever. Instead, the list of names with front vowels surely differed from the list of names with back vowels in many other ways, phonetically and otherwise. Perfors doesn't give the complete list that she used, or the raw results, so it's hard to tell whether there are any other plausible differences. And if she didn't start the study with the hypothesis that front-back was going to make the difference, but instead considered the 20 or so obvious phonological alternatives -- high vs. low vowels, labial vs. non-labial consonants, one syllable vs. two, open syllables versus closed, etc. -- then there's the statistical problem of multiple tests. And what's the distribution of sexual orientations of the hotornot.com "subjects"? These are the kinds of annoying, picky little questions that reviewers (are supposed to) ask for publication in refereed journals. Perfors may well have answers for such questions, and if she publishes in a well-refereed journal, she'll have a chance to bring them out.(This reminds me of the piece I wrote about my problems with the way media writers "analyze" poll results.)
Liberman "blames" the linguists at the end of that piece, too, linking to "No Professor Left Behind", which is the same piece he linked second in the recent article. In this one, he discusses a lack of scansion ability in modern English professors. Here's the amusing conclusion:
I blame the linguists. We've somehow allowed a generation or two of intellectuals to grow up without elementary skills in the formal analysis of speech and language. Simple phonetic transcription, fundamentals of morphology and syntax, elements of logic, basic verse scansion...As you can see, there's lots of stuff to learn from Language Log, and lots of fun to be had along the way.
Just in case you don't get it, that's a wry joke. There's been a broader educational trend away from formal analysis and specific skills, in favor of problem-solving and "learning to learn". In that context, blaming linguists for the fact that English professors can't scan is like blaming philosophers or religious leaders for the fact that MBAs are unethical.
Still, who else is going to fix the problem?
So maybe it's time for a new national program: No Professor Left Behind.
Saturday, January 1, 2005
Starting again
My fasting the other day seemed to completely destroy DietPower's ability to gauge my metabolism. For the past three days it has given me something like 746 calories, total.
On the first day, I went biking to earn a few more calories. Yesterday, I didn't do anything, and instead gave up and ate way too much pizza.
Today, I decided that 746 calories is ridiculous. I started my diet over again, telling DietPower to ignore its data on my metabolism and base its calculation on my weight, height, and age. I also changed the end date of the diet, and my goal weight.
It's going to be slower than I was hoping to lose all the weight, and I'd like to meet a goal this year instead of just work towards one forever, so rather than spread out my weight loss goals over two years, I calculated what I might realistically lose this year and set the end date for January 1, 2006. Getting to my ideal weight will have to wait until that year; at this point, I would just like to get down to around where I was when I first got out of the hospital, or where I was when I first met Sean. (I'd gained weight after leaving the hospital, then lost it over six months doing the Atkins program. Since Atkins was having an effect on my kidney function, I gave up on that, and gained all the weight back.)
So, here's to new beginnings. Hopefully this more realistic goal will keep DietPower from starving me.
On the first day, I went biking to earn a few more calories. Yesterday, I didn't do anything, and instead gave up and ate way too much pizza.
Today, I decided that 746 calories is ridiculous. I started my diet over again, telling DietPower to ignore its data on my metabolism and base its calculation on my weight, height, and age. I also changed the end date of the diet, and my goal weight.
It's going to be slower than I was hoping to lose all the weight, and I'd like to meet a goal this year instead of just work towards one forever, so rather than spread out my weight loss goals over two years, I calculated what I might realistically lose this year and set the end date for January 1, 2006. Getting to my ideal weight will have to wait until that year; at this point, I would just like to get down to around where I was when I first got out of the hospital, or where I was when I first met Sean. (I'd gained weight after leaving the hospital, then lost it over six months doing the Atkins program. Since Atkins was having an effect on my kidney function, I gave up on that, and gained all the weight back.)
So, here's to new beginnings. Hopefully this more realistic goal will keep DietPower from starving me.
Harry Potter and the Horror of the Ellipsis
J.K. Rowling is a master storyteller, weaving intricate plots with believable characters and astonishingly detailed and fascinating setting. And her writing can be brilliant; take, for example, this snippet from The Sorcerer's Stone:
This kind of tight, meaningful writing is what brings me back again and again. It's what makes me a fan of a writer.
But then the problems begin.
At the end of The Goblet of Fire, the dialogue of Voldemort and the Death Eaters becomes erratic. For example, Lucius Malfoy says:
This is a very exciting scene. Harry is dueling with Voldemort, the Dark wizard who killed his parents. He really has no hope of winning, but something extraordinary is happening between the two wizards' wands. It is supposed to be tense and scary. Obviously the ellipses, dashes, and run-on sentences are meant to build that tension.
But they have the reverse effect. They build boredom and annoyance.
What happened to short, impactful prose? What happened to implied meaning? What happened to proper sentence structure?
As a counter example, consider this section, which occurred before the duel, when Harry and Cedric first arrived in the graveyard.
Imagine, if you will, how horrible they would have been if they had read:
So why, why does her writing degenerate into something akin to stream of consciousness, and continue that way into book five?
I am not implying that ellipses and dashes (and even, perhaps, Rowling's inventive use of semicolons) have no place in writing. If a means is effective, I see no problem in using it.
But gimmicks are only effective in small quantities. The pace of writing should be varied, as should the words used. Redundancy only amplifies prose if it is scarce.
When avoiding overuse of gimmicks, the best idea is to fall back on standards. "He said" instead of "He commented". Periods instead of ellipses or exclamation points. The gimmick should surprise and delight the reader--as the first example I cited in this post delighted me.
What is most disconcerting about this is that J.K. Rowling knows how to write effectively. She did it through the first three books. But something happened in Goblet of Fire...and now I've lost the high, I no longer need to hurry back and read more, I'm not lamenting the fact that I haven't taken the book somewhere when I have an idle moment.
The writing, my dears, is just as important as the story.
(The downturn in Rowling's writing was noticed by others, but I hadn't read their articles before I wrote mine.)
"Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign...to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good."The brilliance, of course, comes from contrast. Dumbledore's explanation is indulgent; the following sentence, however, is simple and direct. The implied meaning is far more powerful than simply stating, "Dumbledore looked out the window and pretended to be interested in a bird so that Harry would not be embarrassed about crying."
Dumbledore now became very interested in a bird out on the windowsill, which gave Harry time to dry his eyes on the sheet.
This kind of tight, meaningful writing is what brings me back again and again. It's what makes me a fan of a writer.
But then the problems begin.
At the end of The Goblet of Fire, the dialogue of Voldemort and the Death Eaters becomes erratic. For example, Lucius Malfoy says:
"Master, we crave to know...we beg you to tell us...how you have achieved this...this miracle...how you managed to return to us..."A little later, Voldemort is explaining:
"I remember only forcing myself, sleeplessly, endlessly, second by second, to exist....I settled in a faraway place, in a forest, and I waited....Surely, one of my faithful Death Eaters would try and find me...one of them would come and perform the magic I could not, to restore me to a body...but I waited in vain...."Voldemort's speech pattern continues in this vein, enough that one might suppose the ellipsis is used as a technique to present Voldemort's manner of speaking, but then the pattern slips into the prose.
At these words Harry remembered, as though from a former life, the dueling club at Hogwarts he had attended briefly two years ago....All he had learned there was the Disarming Spell, "Expelliarmus"...and what use would it be to deprive Voldemort of his wand, even if he could, when he was surrounded by Death Eaters, outnumbered by at least thirty to one? He had never learned anything that could possibly fit him for this. He knew he was facing the thing against which Moody had always warned...the unblockable Avada Kedavra curse--and Voldemort was right--his mother was not here to die for him this time....He was quite unprotected....Note the inconsistent use of ellipses and dashes. The prose and dialogue continue in this same way during any scene in which tension is supposed to be building:
"We bow to each other, Harry," said Voldemort, bending a little, but keeping his snakelike face upturned to Harry. "Come, the niceties must be observed....Dumbledore would like you to show manners....Bow to death, Harry...."
He concentrated every last particle of his mind upon forcing the bead back towards Voldemort, his ears full of phoenix song, his eyes furious, fixed...and slowly, very slowly, the beads quivered to a halt, and then, just as slowly, they began to move the other way...and it was Voldemort's wand that was vibrating extra-hard now...Voldemort who looked astonished, and almost fearful....I don't know about you, but I was about ready to tear my eyes out.
One of the beads of light was quivering, inches from the tip of Voldemort's wand. Harry didn't understand why he was doing it, didn't know what it might achieve...but he now concentrated as he had never done in his life on forcing that bead of light right back into Voldemort's wand...and slowly...very slowly...it moved along the golden thread...it trembled for a moment...and then it connected....
At once, Voldemort's wand began to emit echoing screams of pain...then--Voldemort's red eyes widened with shock--a dense, smoky hand flew out of the tip of it and vanished...the ghost of the hand he had made Wormtail...more shouts of pain...and then something much larger began to blossom from Voldemort's wand tip, a great, grayish something, that looked as though it were made of the solidest, densest smoke....It was a head...now a chest and arms...the torso of Cedric Diggory.
This is a very exciting scene. Harry is dueling with Voldemort, the Dark wizard who killed his parents. He really has no hope of winning, but something extraordinary is happening between the two wizards' wands. It is supposed to be tense and scary. Obviously the ellipses, dashes, and run-on sentences are meant to build that tension.
But they have the reverse effect. They build boredom and annoyance.
What happened to short, impactful prose? What happened to implied meaning? What happened to proper sentence structure?
As a counter example, consider this section, which occurred before the duel, when Harry and Cedric first arrived in the graveyard.
And then, without warning, Harry's scar exploded with pain. It was agony such as he had never felt in all his life; his wand slipped from his fingers as he put his hands over his face; his knees buckled; he was on the ground and he could see nothing at all; his head was about to split open.You'll note that in this particular example, Rowling uses semicolons instead of ellipses--more inconsistency. However, I would direct your attention to those last two sentences.
From far away, above his head, he heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the spare."
A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: "Avada Kedavra!"
A blast of green light blazed through Harry's eyelids, and he heard something heavy fall to the ground beside him; the pain in his scar reached such a pitch that he retched, and then it diminished; terrified of what he was about to see, he opened his stinging eyes.
Cedric was lying spread-eagled on the ground beside him. He was dead.
Imagine, if you will, how horrible they would have been if they had read:
Cedric was lying spread-eagled on the ground beside him....he was dead....But they did not, and this proves that Rowling understands the power of snappy, meaningful sentences. She knows that the period is a very effective piece of punctuation.
So why, why does her writing degenerate into something akin to stream of consciousness, and continue that way into book five?
I am not implying that ellipses and dashes (and even, perhaps, Rowling's inventive use of semicolons) have no place in writing. If a means is effective, I see no problem in using it.
But gimmicks are only effective in small quantities. The pace of writing should be varied, as should the words used. Redundancy only amplifies prose if it is scarce.
When avoiding overuse of gimmicks, the best idea is to fall back on standards. "He said" instead of "He commented". Periods instead of ellipses or exclamation points. The gimmick should surprise and delight the reader--as the first example I cited in this post delighted me.
What is most disconcerting about this is that J.K. Rowling knows how to write effectively. She did it through the first three books. But something happened in Goblet of Fire...and now I've lost the high, I no longer need to hurry back and read more, I'm not lamenting the fact that I haven't taken the book somewhere when I have an idle moment.
The writing, my dears, is just as important as the story.
(The downturn in Rowling's writing was noticed by others, but I hadn't read their articles before I wrote mine.)
明けましておめでとうございます
This is traditionally translated as "Happy New Year", but I like the translation Steven L. Renshaw provides on his "New Year in Japan" page:
(I found this New Year's explanation via Sid's New Year's entry.)
Japanese express wishes for the New Year by saying "Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!" (pronounced ah-keh-mah-shteh oh-meh-deh-toe go-zah-ee-mahss). Only one Kanji (Chinese character) is found in this phrase (within the first word). This Kanji is a combination of the characters for sun and moon, and among other ancient meanings, it has to do with the sun and the moon getting together and becoming "bright". It entails "changing" and "opening"... "dawning"...Interestingly, though he doesn't go into this, all of the "changing" part of the meaning is embodied in "akemashite"; "omedetou gozaimasu" is "congratulations", which is also used in "tanjoubi omedetou gozaimasu" (Happy Birthday) and other congratulatory phrases. So, that's a lot of meaning in one small word, most of it brought through the kanji 明.
[...]
In ancient lore (under the lunar calendar), the New Year was seen in relation to change in both the sun and moon as well as the symbolism of their luminance. The meaning(s) of the phrase "Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu" may be somewhat complicated, but (roughly translated) may include the following: "The year is changing... darkness gives way to light... new life begins... Congratulations!"
(I found this New Year's explanation via Sid's New Year's entry.)
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