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| Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 |
scazon
|
1:03a |
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kniedzw
|
12:03a |
Martial (not marital) Note
After a couple of months of feeling like an idiot, stumbling around, and getting my ass kicked, I am now officially a yellow belt in Shorin-ryu Okinawan karate. ...which doesn't mean I really know anything more than I did before. It just means that my gi isn't monochrome any longer. |
| Monday, October 6th, 2008 |
swan_tower
|
7:59p |
I'm just full of postiness today. (Except for the two-hour span where I PTFO'd on the couch. I forgot to include napping in the list of things that I sometimes do in the afternoon or early evening. Though two hours was particularly appalling.) Anyway, if you've been looking for a nutshell description of IAL that tells you more than "Stuart faerie disaster novel," there is now a small blurb on my site. I'm not fully satisfied with it, since the Civil War and its surrounding troubles are an ongoing concern in the book, not just backstory, but that's the way the blurb came out, so that's what you get for now. It'll do as a placeholder, anyway, until we get some actual cover copy written. |
swan_tower
|
7:34p |
thinky thoughts, Indian edition Vandana Singh is currently guest-blogging over at Ecstatic Days, and she linked to this piece on the navarasas, or nine emotions -- "emotions" being a simplification for a concept described more fully in that piece, since it includes both the causes as well as the effects of feelings. It's a neat structure, I think, and in reading through it, I found myself placing each rasa in the context of the Bollywood movies I've seen, since that's the most familiar Indian frame I have. (I have heard some Indian music, and read the Ramayana, but those aren't fresh enough in my memory.) In particular, I like adbhuta, which makes me think of the "sense of wonder" we often say is at the heart of SF and fantasy. The description given there is more focused on the mystical, but I can easily imagine it stretching to cover the wonder SF evokes with its technological flights -- as well as things like human beings walking on the moon. Those are, after all, part of "the world and all its wonders." This makes me want to build a whole Western genre system around the rasas. Speculative fiction would be the genre of adbhuta, while romance, clearly, is the genre of shringara. You'd get two types of horror for bhibatsya and bhaya -- splatter and thriller -- hasya for comedies, which don't get their own genre in the bookstore but certainly do in the theatre . . . I'd probably put litfic with karuna. Adventure fiction, drawn from across traditional genre boundaries, would be veera. That leaves me with rowdra and shanta, and the latter may not have a genre, unless it's self-help books. (Which sounds more derogatory than I intend. They just set out to evoke shanta, as fiction generally doesn't.) Not sure what to do with rowdra. Apocalyptic fiction? I'm not sure where mysteries would generally end up, either. Scattered across many, perhaps, dependent on whether they set out to scare you ( bhaya) or make you curious ( adbhuta) or what. It's an interesting lens, anyway. And I like the adbhuta connection, at least. |
midnight_sidhe
|
9:00p |
I just sang "Nessun Dorma" with only the accompaniment for the very first time. I do not think anyone would want to pay to hear me sing this, but I can do it without assistance and still hit all the notes - I nailed that high E at the end. It might not sound as full as my high C, but it's definitely there.
Actually, the biggest problem I had singing it alone was figuring out where the cues were. Need to work on that. The woman who sings the guide vocals sort of mangles the Italian, so I don't actually want to sing it with her; I'd rather sing it with Sarah, who doesn't mangle Italian (at least, she articulates everything the same way Andrea Bocelli does, and I trust Bocelli knows how to pronounce Italian!), except that her cues are of course different and therefore no help. |
sen_ichi_rei
|
5:49p |
Solo I ended up getting a small mezzo solo in the middle of "Egypt" this song that they've done in previous semesters, which I now need to learn, and which I only was sight-reading the solo. It's not a whole song or anything that shiny, but it's definitely a solo. And maybe I'll get the counter-melody at the end of Yonatan Shapira. So again Techiya thinks I'm a mezzo, because I'm singing mezzo for Egypt. Actually, let's do a comparison of songs we sing and parts I have: Alto: Eli Yonatan Shapira Rumania Mezzo/lower Soprano: Miriam's Song, kinda (soprano II, but goes to alto when there are only 2 female parts) Adon Olam Egypt Carmen Sandiego (lower soprano) Undetermined: RumaniaCarmen SandiegoMelech Shelach Rak B'Yisrael Yesusum (if we get to it) ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) timmypowg's Hatikvah (Actually, timmypowg, did they assign parts for any of these while I was gone?) So as of now I have 2 alto parts and 3 mezzo parts, or 2.5 and 2.5 if you count Miriam's as something in between.With the updated information it's 3 alto and 4 mezzo or soprano parts. I think part of it is a lack of sopranos. If we had more sopranos I'd probably be consistently an alto. Or if we had more women in general maybe they'd let me occasionally sing tenor. Gah. I have to learn my parts. With no time to do so!!! *Edit* Yeah. I'm officially a mezzo or something. Does my low D mean nothing? |
swan_tower
|
2:23p |
back to the recs In the vein of "writing-related program activites," I'm trying to catch up with my book recs. I've read a bunch of good things lately, so I'm going to try to post one each day this week. May not succeed, but hey, it's a goal. Today's rec, therefore, is Old Man's War, by John Scalzi. Fun and funny military SF. The short form of the rec is, I picked the book up to read five pages and see what I thought of it, and a few hours later I'd finished the whole thing. Which is very nearly the best recommendation I can give any book. |
timmypowg
|
5:16p |
Another Day at the Fair for Keyboards http://web.mit.edu/braunst/www/other.htmlThe fourth movement of A Day at the Fair is out. If you're a 12-tone person, this will continue blowing your mind, as it uses a 24-tone scale instead, like the previous movements. This one is Primera Danza and it's got a beat, so if you like music with beats, this is it. The next one will probably be a slow movement that actually uses a diatonic scale! That way hopefully I'll be less inclined to write out of tune tonal music and do something more like the Serenade. But go listen to it -- it's only a little over a minute long -- and tell me what you think! |
q10
|
1:58p |
general updates
my meringue needs work, but did at least come out as a recognizable form of meringue. key lime pie had overall positive reception. thanks to everybody who offered advice. i used a fairly generic shortening pie crust. one of our Italians suggested this as the weak link and recommended substituting pasta frolla, which, on the basis of a little googling, appears to be the Italian version of shortbread. i am intrigued by this possibility
Gothic remains awesome, although easier to get from a book. still torn on Yiddish. on one hand, the instructor is at least a fairly fluent heritage speaker, which is rare enough (at least in secular places) these days that i feel bad not taking advantage of it. on the other hand, i we've had a good couple of meetings in Yiddish, and i've done all the assigned reading, and although there've been many fascinating cultural tidbits, and i know how to exchange a few formulaic pleasantries and a little more about the writing system, i haven't learned shit about the language yet. there's something oddly reassuring about that nice declension table right in the first assigned chapter of the Gothic book.
pretty clearly can't do both. will probably have some kinds of opportunities for both again, i guess. |
swan_tower
|
12:53p |
the full-time writerly life: daily edition So, time management. With conventional office jobs and the like, your time is structured for you. Bosses expect you to show up at a certain time and stay until a certain time, or at least to do X hours per week. Some full-time writers, I know, treat their self-employment the same way -- but as I said elsewhere re: "dressing for work," I suspect that many of them used to be in office jobs. My employment has generally been irregular; classes provided scattered points of fixity in my schedule, but the rest of my work (reading, papers, grading) was built around deadlines, so I tended to do it whenever, so long as I got it done in time. Which is my lead-in to saying: what will I do with myself all day? I said in my last F-TWL post that one thing I won't apologize for is my hours. I only got my alarm clock plugged in last night -- I needed a power strip in the bedroom; it isn't just that I couldn't be bothered -- and I may start using it again, so I can regularly wake up at 11. (Otherwise there's the occasional day when apparently my body decides it needs to keep me unconscious until after noon. On the one hand, maybe it's right to do so, but on the other . . . even I think that's a little ridiculous.) I wake up swiftly, in terms of being able to get out of bed, but I'm not good for much right after that. Takes a while for my brain to warm up. So my routine after getting out of bed involves spending an hour or so checking e-mail, reading blogs, etc. Which isn't as much of a time-waster as it sounds; true, the Internets are full of procrastination, but this is my best route to random information I wouldn't think to go looking for. Last night yhlee sent me off into the wilds of Wikipedia, reading about ocular heterochromia. This is on the list of "not to be apologized for": I'm feeding my brain. So while I'm not going to pin things to precise blocks of time, the general pattern is wake up, spend an hour dinking around, have lunch. After that, it's more fluid. I figure my afternoons will be for some combination of domestic duties and writing-related program activities. Sometimes I'm in a mood to knock off a bunch of business e-mails or update my website or read for research or send out short stories. Sometimes I'm in a mood to organize a closet or go to the grocery store or sew curtains. Whatever I'm motivated for, that's what I'll do, unless there's something else on a pressing deadline. Because really, that's the great virtue of a flexible schedule: you don't necessarily have to make yourself do something you just have no will for today. ( Eventually you may have to. But I've learned to trust myself that I will generally grow the motivation in time; ergo, I am better off not pushing it unless I have to.) Around about 5 p.m., I start thinking about the end of kniedzw's work day. If I got up early to drive him to work, I consequently have to go pick him up again; otherwise, I'm waiting for him to show up. I'm treating this as a distinct block of time because one thing I would like to start doing is cook; I feel like I don't have much excuse beyond lack of enthusiasm and practice for making meals that involve actual preparation. So I can be doing anything that's compatible with cooking dinner. (Do I expect myself to make a real meal every day? No. Baby steps, here. If I'm making "turn the following raw components into food" meals twice a week to start with, that will be substantial progress.) In the evening, it's more kick-back-and-relax time. Reading and/or watching of things, probably, though I'm looking into starting up some martial arts class, that would presumably fall in here. But in general, activities that don't involve me closing my office door and ignoring kniedzw. He objects if I do that too much. And then there's late at night, which is when I will get the writing done. (So yes, the basic "work" part of my workday comes at the end.) If I feel inspired to tackle it in the afternoon, then by all means, bring on the keyboard; but if I haven't done it earlier, this is the one really scheduled thing in my day. Because if I'm not putting words down on a regular basis, then I ain't really a writer, am I? I have more to say on my writing expectations for a given day, but I think that will fit better into the macro edition of my schedule. I'm posting about these things mostly for my own benefit, really, to work through them in my own mind and have a record of my plan, but I figure at least a few of you might find it helpful. |
kniedzw
|
1:38a |
Image meme
(From various folks.)
Post a picture in my comments of what you think describes me when you think about what/who I am.
Give no written explanation though. Just an image.
(I request that the images be safe for work, but beyond that, more or less anything goes.) |
brokenwndw
|
1:23a |
Once Again Yesterday I went back to Pandy's for the Shards release party. I arrived a little late for the main event, which was fine by me, since I really wanted to draft; unfortunately, we didn't get a draft together until rather late in the day. ( Also, I'm still not a very good drafter. ) Current Mood: sickCurrent Music: Puff the Magic Dragon |
| Sunday, October 5th, 2008 |
q10
|
11:25a |
...incessant need to figure out what your words mean and why ya put them in that order like many, i used to think Saturday Night Live was just another way to fill in the blank in ‘the golden age of ______ is twelve’. then i clicked a link their interpretation Palin/Biden debate. the golden age of SNL isn't over, it's just frequently dormant. the golden age of SNL is the mid-to-late presidential campaign season. |
little_e_
|
5:39a |
|
little_e_
|
5:04a |
|
tahnan
|
4:01a |
From the National Review Don't ask me why I keep reading the Corner on the National Review, a collection of conservative bloggers. Humor, perhaps. But sometimes the humor turns ugly: The other day I was lunching with an actress pal in London and she started going on about the "gay mafia" allegedly in control of "Doctor Who" at the BBC. And I involuntarily rolled my eyes, because showbiz types are always going on about this or that field of endeavor being sewn up by some gay clique.
But I must say this is impressive: Last week in this space, I made a jocular reference to a global economy "so vulnerable that only the stalwart action of Barney Frank stands between it and ten years of soup kitchens". I tittered too soon. It turns out the entire planetary meltdown is due to Congressman Frank's sex life: followed by a fair and balanced article from FoxNews abot how it's all the fault of Frank's partner Herb Moses. (Disclosure: before correcting the typo, I wrote "fairy and balanced". How much better would Fox be if its news reporting were fairy and balanced?) Suppose, just suppose, that somehow Barney Frank and his partner really are to blame for the entire mess. (Bill O'Reilly certainly thought so: "You still went out in July and said everything was great. And off that, a lot of people bought stock and lost everything they had"—i.e., investors just hang on Frank's every word.) Even if that's true: introducing the fact, and the Fox story, by talking about a "gay mafia" being in charge is just...despicable. Cut that first paragraph, and you've got a statement that Barney Frank and his sex life are responsible for the collapse of the economy; with it, you've got a statement that Barney Frank and his gay sex life are responsible. It's...words fail me. Incidentally, the Corner does make clear that things are much better in heterosexualland: I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. |
cqs
|
3:39a |
Political language I've been posting a lot (too much?) on politics elseblog, but I want to point out a few quick things about some responses to the Vice-Presidential Debates. First, Bob Herbert at the New York Times writes: For Ms. Palin, such things as context, syntax and the proximity of answers to questions have no meaning. Let's be clear: Herbert observes one instance of Palin taking a (Reagan) quote out of context. He makes no points whatsoever about syntax; apparently on that point he cites Palin as saying: Say it ain't so, Joe! There you go pointing backwards again ... Now, doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? That's how it appears in the official transcript—though oddly, he cut out one of the stranger sentences,"You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration." Preferenced? Let me, however, repunctuate what she said and clean up a word or two (this is an hour and nine minutes in; I'm using the NYT video, since it's synched to the transcript): Say it ain't so, Joe: there you go again pointing backwards again. You prefaced your whole comment with "the Bush administration". Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad that you did. I know that education, you are passionate about; and with your wife being a teacher for 30 years (and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?) There might be a small disfluency at "we have to plan to do", as if she started to say "what we have [to do for them]" and corrected herself to "to plan to do for them". "Education, you are passionate about" is a fairly unremarkable case of topicalization, moving an object (here, of a preposition) to the start of the sentence; there's a clear pause (well, an "and", pronounced "n", but that's pretty much a verbal semicolon), and then she comments on Biden's wife being a teacher. ("Her reward is in Heaven" struck me as odd at the time, but of course, it's Matthew 5:12, and seems to me like nothing more than an acknowledgement that teaching doesn't have much of a monetary reward. Incidentally, it appears that "a teacher's reward is in heaven" is specifically common as a saying in Nigeria and Ghana.) Herbert also says that "Ms. Palin's words don't mean anything. She's all punctuation"; it's a cute zinger, but I'm not sure what it means, really. And his final linguistic point, after a few paragraphs about Gen. David McKiernan, is that "During the debate she twice referred to General McKiernan as 'McClellan.' Neither Ms. Ifill nor Senator Biden corrected her." But honestly, getting a name wrong is a simple slip of the tongue, not really any worse than Obama calling Biden "the next president" or Biden calling his running mate "Barack America". Also: if neither Biden nor Ifill corrected her, doesn't that suggest that they, too, thought the general's name was McClellan? (Probably not; I'm just trying to follow Herbert's logic.) The bottom line is this: as LL has pointed out about Bushisms, repeatedly, an occasional grammatical slip or incorrect word is inevitable from all but the most talented of public speakers (and perhaps even them). And there are plenty of other reasons to dislike Sarah Palin (or any other candidate of your choice); let's focus on the content of what she says, rather than denying that any content exists. Second, in the interest of equal time: John J. Miller at the National Review complaining about Biden saying "different than" instead of "dfferent from" is also (a) needless and (b) wrong. |
| Saturday, October 4th, 2008 |
q10
|
8:53p |
recommended reading reduplication theory?
what are the most important bits of recommended reading for somebody who wants to learn more about approaches to reduplication in phonological theory?
many thanks for any advice. |
_mycroft_holmes
|
7:55p |
On reading Romesburg
Wow... Charles Romesburg is a bastard.
And he's right.
He argues that great minds don't enter natural resource sciences because great minds are inclined to think in isolates rather than constructs, and natural resource sciences currently offer few opportunities for abstraction and puzzle-solving. In other words, it's an entire branch of science catering to (comparatively) dull pluggers. And he (Romesburg) believes it will never improve as a discipline unless it actively recruits people with above-average problem-solving skills who'd otherwise go into, say, microbiology or engineering. Not only that, but apparently agricultural and social scientists score at the lowest end of the scientific spectrum on IQ tests.
I propose that students drawn to the natural resources potentially fall into 2 groups, but in actuality 1 group predominates: concrete thinkers who think mainly in terms of constructs, of facts and data, of the world as perceived immediately through the senses, of what is, of things one can get one's hands on. Through careers in the natural resources they fulfill their love of and interest in nature, and of recreation and the lifestyle they want, while avoiding constant immersion in abstract thinking and puzzle-solving at which they do not excel, and which many of them dislike. (Romesburg 1991)
To be fair, it's not all recreation and lifestyle; most people involved in conservation have a value structure that truly compels them to work on behalf of the natural world, regardless of intellect. So a smart person might occasionally sneak through. But still, it struck me as absolutely right in many ways, and something most of us are afraid to acknowledge for fear of legitimizing our collective inferiority complex and/or de-legitimizing ourselves.
The whole time I was reading the article, I was bridling against Romesburg as an arrogant, unpleasant, pedantic jerk. And yet, I can't deny any of it. I mean, I KNOW that smart people don't go into natural resources. It's not like anyone I know from college is doing this. It's just me, the resident moron (it was intellectual affirmative action, probably) and even I notice the dearth of intellect among both grad students and more advanced natural resource scientists.
Sigh.
It's not like I was in the greatest frame of mind to start with. Now I'm sort of inclined to go drown myself and do conservation science a favor.
Current Mood: simian
Current Music: I Hung My Head |
q10
|
2:06p |
more pie questions
with custard and/or meringue pies in general, and key lime pies (which have an unusually short bake time for the custard) in particular, how long do they keep safely at room temperature, and are they ruined by refrigeration? |
q10
|
11:48a |
slr design history question
the past year-and-change or so has seen a major increase in the number of DSLRs with sensors the same size as a 35mm film frame. they're still too expensive for most mortals, of course, but the space of possible designs is being explored. i've noticed one thing about all of them. they mostly have excellent viewfinder coverage, but uninspiring viewfinder magnification, compared with some of the nicer 35mm film SLRs. why is this, do we think? some of this is an effect not of digital but of autofocus, since the highest magnification viewfinders were associated with manual focus cameras, but even when you compare with high-end autofocus film SLRs there seems to be something of a gap.
this strikes me as pretty silly, because the viewfinder is the whole point of bothering to build an SLR, which is otherwise bulkier, heavier, more expensive, and more mechanically complicated than it needs to be. since many high-end DSLRs are ridiculously heavy anyway, it seems especially weird that they often have substantially lower-maginification finders than old manual-focus film SLRs that weighed half as much. |
q10
|
11:31a |
remember, those of you thinking about maybe commonwealth-reunion-ing, that there's a registration deadline coming up. y'all should show up. even if it's boring at least a critical mass of us can heckle together or leave in collective disgust or something. just like old times. |
tahnan
|
5:07a |
Mean ol' Katie Couric OK, I've posted something about crappy Sci Fi shows. (For Clarke's sake, they cancel Dresden and Painkiller Jane, and bring out this?) So I've earned myself a short Palin post. Even if I hate myself for my continued train-wreck obsession with her. PALIN: The Sarah Palin in those interviews [with Katie Couric] is a little bit annoyed. Because it's like, no matter what you say, you're going to get clobbered. If you cease to answer a question, you're going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that, too.
But, in the Katie Couric interviews, I did feel that there were a lot of things that she was missing, in terms of an opportunity to ask what a V.P. candidate stands for. What the values are represented in our ticket. She goes on to talk about (a) what she reads (the NYT, the WSJ, the Economist) and (b) what Supreme Court cases she disagrees with (Kennedy v. Louisiana, Kelo v. New London, the Exxon case). What I learn from this is that, first, Palin can give a clear, coherent, reasoned answer as long as she knows what's going to be asked—a few news outlets called the Fox interview a "do-over"; and, second, that she did badly in that interview because, er, she thought that actually answering the questions would get her "clobbered", and Couric didn't ask her the questions she wanted to answer. That's a little bit stunning, really. Or, as the obligatory Rich Dansky put it: "Her complaint? That Couric actually asked her questions that a VP should be able to answer, instead of just teeing her up for anti-Obama talking points.... I think you can agree with me that anyone who has trouble with Katie Couric isn’t going to do real well across the table from Vladimir Putin." She did own up, just a little, by saying that "on that one, truly I shouldn't have been so (INAUDIBLE) and (INAUDIBLE) that. Because that was an important question and I should have answered it" (transcript is Fox's; I can't find the original. They're bad at transcripts, insofar as they also mark her clearly-enunciated "Kelo" as inaudible). But, at the risk of clobbering her, I just can't help feeling that makes it worse: that's a question she should have answered but didn't (so why not?), and the rest were questions she felt she didn't need to answer (and why not?). She talks specifically about the "what newspapers do you read" question: But, I was sort of taken aback, like, the suggestion was, you're way up there in a far away place in Alaska. You know, that there are publications in the rest of the world that are read by many. And I was taken aback by that because I don't know, the suggestion that this was a little bit of perhaps we're not in tune with the rest of the world. You know what? Even if that was the implication of Couric's question—and I don't think there was any anti-Alaska prejudice, though I might grant that Couric was implying that Sarah in particular isn't so in tune with the rest of the world—even if Couric asked a loaded question, in what sense is the right response to utterly brush it off instead of meeting it head-on? If Soledad O'Brien called Couric "a pit bull in an interview", what kind of hockey mom is Palin that she couldn't handle her? Oh, it's all just so stupid. I need Obama to win in November because of his policies, his leadership, his vision, but more and more I need him to win because I need Sarah Palin to go the hell home. |
ephermata
|
1:59a |
What does knot theory have to do with P^#P != NP ? I didn't know, but Michael H. Freedman has an answer - by assuming that the complexity class P^#P is not equal to NP, you can prove a new theorem in knot theory! Complexity Classes as Mathematical Axioms M. Freedman (Submitted on 30 Sep 2008) Abstract: Treating a conjecture, P^#P != NP, on the separation of complexity classes as an axiom, an implication is found in three manifold topology with little obvious connection to complexity theory. This is reminiscent of Harvey Friedman's work on finitistic interpretations of large cardinal axioms. http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.0033 Current Music: Crystal Castles - Air War |
swan_tower
|
12:32a |
It's raining right now.
Like, actual water falling from the sky.
. . . I now live in a place where this is an event worthy of comment.
In other words, winter is coming -- but not George R. R. Martin oh my god the Others are going to come over the Wall and kill everybody winter; just Bay Area "okay, time for the year's precipitation" winter. I'm living in wet season/dry season territory now, and this is the first rain I've seen since moving here.
In totally unrelated news, Monster House is kind of an awesome movie. |
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