For those that don't know, my New Year's Resolution #1 was to stop dotting lower-case I's.  Why?  Because the dot is completely extraneous, especially in typing, where the dot can make an i look even more like an l (especially in sans-serif fonts), and because in handwriting it is a) one more mark on a page, one more effort that is unneeded, and b) only introduced in the late medieval period to distinguish it from lowercase n, m, and u, which weren't usually ligatured. Mine are ligatured, so I don't need the dot.

As an aside, one of the main tools used to date Beowulf as a really old poem (~700) instead of a newer poem (~1000, a difference larger than the existence of the USA) is the use of the ancient word "wundini" when really, the word on the page is [w]iiiidiiii (or, if you have a good unicode font installed, ƿııııdıııı, which could be "wundini" or "wundmi" or "wundun" or even "winidun" or "wnudnu." Only "wundini", "wundmi", and "wundun" are legitimate Old English words, and "wundun" makes more contextual sense, with more parallel in the poem, and therefore makes a date as early as 700 quite ridiculous, given so much else in the poem that points to the early or even middle of the 9th century (1000-1050).

Anyway...


New Year's Resolution #2: I will post about every book I finish in the year 2007.

Book One: Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott

I wanted to read this for a while but didn't, because I thought on one hand I would have to go and buy it or check it out or somehow go out of my way to obtain it physically; also, I thought it was also pretty long.  It is a novella of about 62 pages, printed in 1884 and so public domain and available anywhere there's an internet connection for free. Both objections cancelled, I began reading it, even though I'm also reading another book and playing Final Fantasy V. I finished it in two days. Easy-peasy.

I thought it was quite good, particularly in its discussions of the world. Wikipedia says it's a commentary on Victorian attitudes towards women and lower classes, as well as on religion, and I can see where people are going with those, but, as a lover of innovative world-creation, I see what Abbot's doing.  With a flatland, there are necessarily also a lineland and a pointland. Abbott's Pointland has only one being, the King of Pointland, and all that is is him. Abbott's Lineland has line-people and point-people--the line-people men, the point-people women--and the Lineland people to survive reproduce by one line and two points, always producing one line and two points. This may seem sexist, and I might indeed have made the points male and the lines female to better coincide with hivelike systems, but that's me. Because of that system, in Flatland the men are polygons and the women are lines, and the angle of a polygon seems to indicate the level of intellectual intelligence: women are entirely emotional, triangles are workers, and circles are scholars and priests.

Note also that when a Sphere from Spaceland approaches the main character, a square, the Sphere speaks in emotional terms that the square cannot understand, leading me to think of the male polygons of Flatland as a necessarily increasingly boorish people. The Sphere is declared neither to be male or female, and gives no thought to the possibility that it is male, and that in Spaceland women are two-dimensional; as something not stated, it cannot be argued ("Lady Macbeth's Children" is a term for this*); we are merely given that the Sphere is both intellectual and emotional, which confuses and disturbs the narrator Square. We cannot take Abbott for a misogynist because of this, and given that in Flatland women do not appear to be unintellectual, wholly emotional creatures, but merely are, we cannot judge the Narrator of his story. This is an exercise in mathematical world-building, not an exploration of sexual mores.

Socially, however, how does the book fare? In a world of polygons, where smart people have wider angles, it becomes readily apparent that the most dangerous polygons have the sharpest angles, and so lowly isosceles triangles and women are deadly, and polygons above a certain rank are effectively defenseless except by social rules--ignoring the result of a social rule, if 100-sided polygons are rare, intelligent, and defenseless, but each successive generation develops more and more sides, it would be quick and inevitable for a social system of protection set up. Again, it's a non-issue that the circles are the bosses; they're the bosses because of necessity, because they're the smartest but also the weakest, so stratifications in society need to be set up to protect them. If anything, I don't believe Abbott is using mathematics as a metaphor for the problems with society, but using a mathematic example for how society is.  What is interesting, of course, is how the physically powerful are kept in their places by social rules: the more deadly isosceles triangles, the most deadly almost brainless with an acute angle of only around 4 degrees, and the women with no angles at all but able to pierce any person without much danger at all, are still kept reserved from all others.  They are necessary, especially the women, the deadliest of all--without them, there would be no generation; because of this, there can be no violent uprising of the weak against the strong, because the strongest cannot take care of themselves, being completely without ration. Also, if even the lowliest isosceles marries a woman, the next male generation will be, by the rules of Flatland, an isosceles of a lesser acute angle, until an equilateral triangle becomes a square, and so on. Perhaps Abbott might have criticized in this way, the idea of rebellion rather than the establishment; in Flatland, it is a mathematical certainty that the rebellion will become the establishment in ten to fifteen generations.

About Abbott's critique of our concepts of higher dimensions: it is interesting to note the King of Pointland's acceptance of another as simply his own wandering mind, the King of Lineland's acceptance of Square as merely an odd sort of line that grows and shrinks, and Square's first belief of Sphere as simply a growing and shrinking circle. Does Abbott criticize human clergy in our dimension by his descriptions of the circle priests in Flatland, who, when Sphere comes to them every thousand years, try and deny his existence? Is Abbott saying God is only a higher-order being? He does not say so, and even makes Sphere scoff at the idea of a fourth dimension, or fifth, or so on, proving his limited, though advanced, mind. Abbott's flat circle Priests are called "priests" but really could be called "bosses"; to use the word "priests" is telling, but I imagine that the reason they cannot understand Sphere is because he merely announces his presence to them. To Square, Sphere proves the third dimension by pushing Square off his plane into it. Sphere tells everyone, but only proves it to Square; Square thinks Sphere is womanlike because Sphere talks of emotions, and perhaps in the Flatland world Sphere can only be understood by those with a little emotion, those without the wide-angled intelligence of the 200-sided nigh-circle Priests. I do wonder if Abbott, in using the word "priest" is being ironic, and commenting instead on the intelligent scientists of our day who, thinking they have it all "figured out", deny the existence of things they cannot conceive of. That, perhaps, is the most direct social criticism I can ferret out in this book.

Overall, again, I liked it. As one who dabbles in math, to whom math seems a fine mystery, this book did capture my imagination. As one who admires world-building, I love how Abbott just works all of his details out--the chapters on how Flat people recognize shape, when they only see (in a 2d world) lines, is fantastic, and one of the best examples of good Whale Blubber**.

* "Lady Macbeth's Children" is used by LC Knights in his 1964 essay criticizing Shakespeare criticism; the problem as he saw it was that critics focused on things that weren't textual, but could be: Lady Macbeth was never mentioned to have or not have children, to ever have or have never had children, and so to examine her in the context of a mother is a false question, approaching nonsense like "What is the color of five?"

** A reference to Moby-Dick, in which Melville devotes a varying amount of time (some say "far too much", some say "just enough", almost none say "too little") to the physiology of whales and the commercial uses of their parts. I use "Whale Blubber" to mean the horribly long passages of explanation that get in the way of Plot. Of course, to be fair to Flatland, the sections of Explanation and Plot are completely separated into Part 1 and Part 2.

For Xmas, Leah got me Settlers of Catan and the 5-6 player expansion set, which is incredibly awesome, as well as a hardbound copy of the complete poems of Emily Dickenson, and the Greatest Hits I-III of Queen. Yes, my life is a good one. Also, my brother's already told me what he's getting me, but since I haven't received it yet, I'm not posting.  But just for the idea, he's the best brother evar.

Also, with Xmas money from relatives, I bought two large squared Moleskine notebooks, one for teaching notes and one for sermon notes (the teaching more active, the sermon more reflective). I'm looking forward to using them both.

I start teaching so soon!  Seriously, I begin teaching Comp I two nights a week starting January 9th.  That is a thing people call "soon."

I'm thinking of starting a blogger account for more formal essayish things, and translations.  Right now, though, I'm wondering how I should do the copyright on all those blogs and posts; I don't mind this blog being "all rights reserved," but I'd kinda like my translations to be public domain; my essays perhaps a limited Creative Commons-style license.

A few days ago I went Xmas shopping and had to endure both Disturb's cover of Genesis' "Land of Confusion" and Guns 'n Roses' cover of "Live and Let Die."  Both are horrible covers of horrible original songs. Both are tired and worn and bothersome. Both are stuck in my head.  Seriously, the mind is mean sometimes.

I downloaded the complete audiobook for John Hodgman's Areas of My Expertise recently, because it was free on iTunes.  It still may be, and if it is, is worth the download.  I haven't listened to it yet, but judging by everything else I've heard by him, and from leafing through the book at the store, I can say that it will be 6+ hours of mirth.

Leah and I had fun talking with Jeremy Marshall last night.  Message to Jeremy: You are indeed cool. (The "indeed" makes you cooler)

Also, I'm afraid we're not going to the Montague's New Years Bash And Stuff.  It's sad, but plans that were dependencies on our attendance have changed, and subsequently so has our attendance status.  Wow did that sound like a legal form or what?

Have I mentioned that I finished Paradiso?  Wow, it was terriffic. I mean the whole cycle was just fantastic and Paradiso was a suitable crown. It's clear as well that Dante was an even more mature poet than he was in Inferno: he still loves to put in the poetic flourish of a phrase, but in Paradiso he has characters lightly chastising him for being proud, sort of an "Okay, now, that was nice but we're here to worship God."

Also, I watched the film adaptation of Watership Down, and believe it to be a fine, fine film, aside from the too-long Garfunkel song stapled in. I love it because unlike most movies--especially most movies for a young audience--it is stridently realistic instead of idealistic.  I don't know what age I'll show it to my kids, but I intend to impress upon them that while wonderful, happy, glowing things do exist, they aren't the norm and shouldn't be expected. In fact, expect problems and be delighted when there are none. Focus on those rare perfect moments because everything in life is brutish and short and those good things need to be savored.

Well, that's enough preaching for now, I guess.  Toodle-oo.

Also, here's my reading list for the trip:

The Song of Roland, anon, Old French, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers
The Lusiads, Camoens, Portugese, trans. William C. Atkinson
The Divine Comedy, Dante (currently Paradise), Italian, trans. Mark Musa
Many Dimensions, Charles Williams, English
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie, English
The Bible (not the whole thing, of course.  That's huge), Hebrew/Aramaic/Koine Greek, NIV

Anyone notice a common trend? How's this--all books deal with religion.  Okay, one more?  All books deal in some way with Christianity.

The only book that doesn't mention Muslims?  The Bible.

This wasn't planned at all. Funny, huh?

I finished Alas, Babylon and started A Scanner Darkly, now that I'm pretty sure my theater won't be getting it (or Scoop, or Little Miss Sunshine--sigh) for the next month+.  It's pretty out there, and the lead-up from UBIK and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was pretty good.  Man, do I love Phil Dick. I'm really enjoying it, in that wonderful groove of "I just enjoy reading it, without regard to where the plot is going."

I saw Monster House 3D the other day with Leah.  Let me tell you, it was pretty good. It was definitely a PG movie, not a G movie, which worked to its advantage. I felt that it had a close similarity to The Goonies, and maybe nothing else I have to say will get you folks to see it other than that.  The motion of the CG characters is wonderfully smooth and realistic--moreso than any other CG movie I've seen; the motion-recognition software seems to have gotten nigh-perfect. It wasn't by any stretch a great movie, but it was pretty good.  The 3D effect wasn't even as much of a jumping-out-at-you thing, but more like watching a play: the addition of depth is nice, even if you have to wear dorky emo glasses.

Hopefully I'll see Lady in the Water Tuesday, so I can see which side I fall on: "It's all right" or "It's really horrible."  I haven't heard much else from friends or critics.

So I took a break from reading Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon (a break I took after reading the first chapter of Dick's A Scanner Darkly) to read the first chapter of The Elegant Universe, which Leah's started to read.  It's pretty good so far, and it already lead to a thought.

A distressing thought.

Now, I don't know anything about physics, but here goes:  If the light stars put out is incredibly old, and the closest stars are, even traveling at the speed of light, all but the closest stars would be too far away to get to.  By the time we traveled there, as we traveled at the speed of light to the star, we would be getting its light back at us at the speed of light in the opposite direction, so we would see it rapidly getting older. Perhaps this would make stars seen from Earth as mature, even supporting planets, die entirely by the time it takes us, traveling at the speed of light, to get there. We could get to immature planets that might develop planets by the time we get there, but what reason would there be for traveling across the inky void on a whim?  My conclusion: we wouldn't.

So, if all this holds water--which, given my lack of physics background, it probably doesn't--then there would be no liklihood that Earth would ever discover and interact with another civilization.  It's just not anywhere within probability given the rareness of planets and the value of money spent here on Earth and not on risks in space.

EDIT: I meant BOOTS

The shoes that I've had for years, my beloved Wicked Road Warriors (obviously the best name for footwear ever), which have had treads almost exactly like the Flash's boots--that high-grip parallel lines only, have now died.  I blame their death entirely on Rave theater, which has me running everywhere all the time, walking for hours on end every day.  I don't care if I have to have a job where I'm standing in one place all day, it'd be better than walking/running everywhere.  Every five minutes.

Still, the free movies thing is nice.  And when I'm at work, I do fun things in my three and a half minute blocks of spare time, like attempt to science fiction or epic poetry, or plan out what I want to do in my upcoming composition class.  No, I can't ever finish one thing.

Oh!  I just discovered the local library has an actual SciFi section separate from the rest of the fiction, with a tiny but otherwise more-than-I-expected selection of Aasimov, Dick, Delaney, Heinlein, and LeGuin mixed in all of the Terry Jordan Sword of Time and the Expanded Universe of Star Trek Wars in the Dragon Forgotten Lance Realms books.  Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if SciFi was an actual genre, rather than a big category that mixed both the crap books with the greats?

A couple of things:

1.  I finished reading Purgatory.  I had no idea what was on top of the mountain at the end.  Completely took me by surprise.  Wonderful, warm surprise.  I recommend this to everyone, primarily those who've already read Hell.

2.  At work, I deal with a wonderful thing:  Sound Lenses.  Say that a couple of times, think about it.  Sound Lenses.  Lenses for sound.

3.  X-Men 3 was pretty alright.  No complaints really, except for technical issues.  Kelsey Grammer shined.

4.  Working on movie start times has really gotten me trained on using an analog watch.  Two months ago, it took me 15-30 seconds to read an analog clockface; now, it takes me a glance.

Leah and I joint-filed our taxes today.  First time I've done it (first year not a dependant), so I'm feeling pretty "settled down" and "married" and "old" and all that stuff.  Also, good to know, we're ridiculously poor.  My money from last year plus her money from last year...  we weren't officially required to file.  We're that poor.  Luckily, we are also so poor that we pay nothing and get a huge refund from our paychecks.

My total feeling after the whole thing:  This is what people freak out over?  I mean, sure, if you own your own business, I guess.  But this stuff was simple.

In other news, I've really been liking the latest Naruto story arc (I haven't yet seen 173 so don't spoil it) and I've been trudging through Allan Bloom's Love and Friendship.  I say "trudging" because even though I think I agree with him on many points, and his writing style is comprehendable enough, he opens with a 130-page chapter on Rousseau. Even though I agree with him that Rousseau wrecked a lot of stuff, I still don't want to read about it.  Now I just know more of why I don't like him.

Life continues as it has been:

• Still don't have a job, but I did get an email back today from a temp agency.  That seems progressive
• I applied for a teaching job at Freed beginning this fall.
• When Leah's at work, I clean the house up
• I still haven't set up my computer
• We still haven't moved this giant unused table out of the office and replaced it with a friend's used couch
• I've been reading more and more, thanks to late-night sleeplessness and daytime blah.  I've read Vonnegut's Jailbird and Breakfast of Champions. Galapagos is sitting on the table now, with Dick's The Man in the High Tower.

That's about it for now.  If I haven't been posting, I'm sorry.  There just hasn't been much new.

Some stuff:

1. Harding's copy of the OED (1st ed) is being discarded and as long as someone pays for the shipping, they get it. I already asked and I hope I hope I hope I get it. THE OED!!


2. Everybody who has a computer and listens to music on it should subscribe at Last.fm and get the Audioscrobbler plugin. Here's my page. Be my friend (like Nathanael and Spike before you). Seriously, check it out.


3. Every Sunday during church I get super-thoughtful and feel like blogging immediately after I get home. Then, I get home, eat lunch, get all nappy, and forget all about it. Sad, that.


4. Paris right now. What can you say?


5. I've been reading this great book: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It's like the exact opposite of Harry Potter; It's England in the Napoleonic age and magic is 300 years gone from the world and a stodgy, intellectual gentleman brings it back. It's very well written, with quietly funny social commentary.


6. I'm going home and going to sleep!


7. I've got a lot of tests to grade. And papers too. Tomorrow!

Sigh.

Okay, this week has been crazy. I gave a test yesterday and graded it today. I'm in a constant war between "I'm not a good teacher because every single one of you is messing up on these five things" and "But dagnabbit I told you directly what to do and not do." So you can see that my being right and their being dumb is winning out over my usual self-doubt. The thing is that there are actually some smart kids in the class who can actually write well, only they don't know exactly what to do. Oh well. More tests, more classes. Passing is passing.

And besides, maybe they underestimated me. Of course I've never DMed any of them or they'd know never to do that.

Also in the news: I looked over my reading list for my November 4th Comp Exam and Freaked the Crap Out!! Tonight at the library I started reading the Poetic Edda instead of working because, well, either I pass this thing or I fail.

I have been scanning slides, though, which is mind-numbingly boring. And it's on a Mac. Hey Mac people: here's a reason Windows is better. When Windows is terribly slow, I feel like it's something I can fix myself by shutting down some background programs, and then everything will speed up again. This feeling is corroborated by factual evidence. On a Mac, however, I just have to deal with it. There's no "conserve some system resources" option for me to enact, and so it runs slow all the time. For Macs, the solution seems to be "oh, that computer's too old."

My old 450 MhZ AMD (designed for Windows 98) ran Windows 2000 just fine (up until the 6-year-old hard drive crashed, and this iMac's clunking by on something much newer. I'm only running Photoshop! For crying out loud, aren't these computers optimized for that dang program? I never had this problem on my 450 with GIMP.

Also, according to Robbie, Tiger will destroy every file you have ever had. This may be hyperbole or my own simplification of a complicated issue, but I've never had that happen upgrading, from DOS to Windows, from Win95 to Win98, from Win98 to Win2000, from Win2000 to WinXP. Sure Macs are sexy, but I don't see how you people just put up with all that crap. Sorry, expensive crap. Honestly.

Currently Reading:

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
The Battle of Maldon
"Ƿıdsıð" (Widsith)
"Deor"
"The Battle of Brunanburh"
Selected Anglo-Saxon Riddles

Plan to Read:
Tom Wolfe, A Man In Full
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
The Poetic Edda

Spent my weekend with Leah, if by "weekend" you mean "Thursday to Tuesday".  So yeah, it was wonderful, if only because spending so much time with her was wonderful.

Thursday I went down and we watched Big Fat Liar.  I love Paul Giamatti; I need to see Sideways.
Friday I read and internetted when she was at work.  That night we watched American Treasure which was, again, a whole lot of fun.
Saturday we had a big Mother's Day dinner: Steak and Chicken.  It's one meal for them, the chicken cooked above the steak on the grill so it's effused with steaky goodness.  I can't argue at all.  We also had baked potatoes, and I spread my potato+A1 sauce love to at least three others.  Joy!  Then I was going to go to my parents' house by myself, but I couldn't leave Leah so she came with me.
Sunday was nice.  Church, my mom's spinach-stuffed shells, a nice afternoon nap, and then another wonderful car ride talking to Leah.
Monday was nice, too. Another nice day on the internet, another nice lunch, and a great dinner, followed by The Emperor's New Groove. We watch a lot of movies.  I checked my grades; the only good news is that I've now progressed to the point where a B+ is a huge disappointment.  I was going to go home but Leah convinced me to stay another day.  Her convincing is usually just "please"--I'm pretty much a sucker for her, what can I say?
Today Leah and I had a nice breakfast, then she went to work and I hung out on Gaia's forums a ton, then a nice lunch then I went back to the apartment.  Shortly afterwards, the afternoon vanished.  Oh Well.

I just saw a news commercial talking about phishing.  Effectively, they're trying to tell people not to hand their wallets to strange people who just walk up to them on the street.  After a certain point, do you ever think that these people deserve the inconvenience of canceling their credit cards and getting new ones?

Also, I've been reading C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity and enjoying it thoroughly.  There was something else I wanted to post, but I completely forgot about it.  It might be something like "My new favorite Beatles song is either "Mother Nature's Son" or "Two of Us".  Who knows.