Sunday, 1 June 2008 : Generic Abstract LinguisticsView as RSS

As the good Tom Waits would say, I want to pull on your coat about something. As I've been revamping my cv and hunting for advisors for the next round of phd applications, I've begun once again lamenting the fragmentation of my field. I suppose I should tell you what my field is but, y'see, that's where all the problems lie: there's no such field. As diverse and Renaissance as my interests are, they're all three sides of the same coin: language, sociality, and intelligence.

So, first things first. Evidently language is a diverse topic, but I mean to focus on formal and theoretical matters, the quintessence of what makes what we call "language". The early work of Chomsky to the contrary, there's an unfortunate —though entirely understandable— break between the study of formal languages and natural languages. On the natural side I'm interested in morphology and its interfaces with other components of language (morphophonology, morphosyntax & scrambling, morphosemantics & nuance). On the formal side I'm interested in the design of programming languages, ontologies, and interfaces. And on the middle side I'm interested in grammar formalisms like TAG and CCG as well as the automata theory that drives these and parsers and machine translation.

Sociality is also a diverse topic, without even accounting for the fact that I'm abusing the term to cover both the structure of societies and the interactions within and between them. Here too there's an unfortunate —though entirely understandable— break between the humanities and the sciences. In the humanities I'm interested in anthropology, gender/sexuality studies, performativity, the body as media, urban neo-tribalism, and online communities. More scientifically I'm interested in nonlinear systems theory, information theory, chaos theory, catastrophe theory, scale-free networks, and theoretical genetics. And again, on the middle side there are issues of sociolinguistics: code switching, emotional particles, uses of prosody, politeness and group-formation; and evolution: both evolutionary computation, and also cultural and linguistic evolution.

And as you may no doubt be gathering, studies of intelligence too are vast and harshly divided— between wetware and hardware, or between cognition and computation if you prefer. Language is often pegged as a fundamental component to humanity's ability for higher thought, and yet even despite this the majority of linguistic formalisms neglect questions of how cognitively realistic they are as models of actual human linguistic performance. Over on the side of artificial intelligence and artificial life there's a rift between those studying complexity, adaptation, and emergence vs those trying to hammer thought and knowledge into the rigid formalisms of logic and probability. Sandwiched between these conflicts are the war-torn battle grounds of machine translation, language learning, and language acquisition.

So how many fields are involved in this tripartite Janus of interfaces, systems, and agency? To make a short list: linguistics, mathematics, computer science, cultural anthropology, gender/queer/feminist studies, women's lit, systems science/systems theory, cognitive science, social psychology, computational biology, artificial intelligence/artificial life/machine learning, and given the vagaries of universities often electrical engineering and philosophy for good measure. How many is that? Too goddamned many, that's how many. And to top it off, all of them are interdisciplinary to boot. Now you may be saying to yourself that I'm trying too hard to unify too many disparate discourses, and perhaps it's true, but there is a cohesion there which should be evident by the extent to which each of those many fields crosscut these three seemingly simple categories.

To some extent I could just pick one extant field, but frankly they all get it wrong. Linguistics, my first love, is all too often uninterested in the computational tractability or cognitive reality behind the formalisms they advocate for capturing the hairy beast that is natural language. Computer science (the home of machine translation and parsing) and electrical engineering (the home of speech recognition) —though they've started coming around more recently— are all too often uninterested in theoretical linguistic issues, and even when individuals are interested the bulk of both departments focus on other topics more conventional to their fields (which is fine, but makes advisor hunting tricksy). Mathematics is fabulous, but all too often applied mathematicians, logicians, and semanticists operate under the misguided notion that the hairy beast can be quantified into the current state of mathematics, which even math-envious systems scientists are well aware is not the case; this is not to say there cannot be some formalism, just that it isn't here yet because the issues of conventional math and of natural language are very different, and that given my experience with this camp they're not willing to put aside current theories and create new ones more germane to this fuzzy illogical venue.

Nobody talks with anyone else. As I discussed above, linguists and computer scientists both despair of the other; granted computation linguistics and data mining are distant cousins with different goals, but both seek the same ability to understand language with computers. Even though NLP uses identical methodologies and faces profoundly similar problems as AI/ML, for some reason it takes decades for ideas to move from one community to the other. And the logical semanticists have at best cursory interaction with linguistic semanticists. Math envy runs high making interstitial interdisciplines like systems theory, machine learning, sociology, and the occasional linguist try desperately to distance themselves from philosophy, anthropology, and other disciplines deemed too soft, even though ideas originating in these fields form the basis of much of what those interdisciplines seek to capture.

Systems theory gets it right when they say that the current state of science is burdened by its focus on fundamentalism. Every field is focused on trying to drive things down, more basic, more primitive. And if computer science has taught us anything it's taught us that it's turtles all the way down; under applications are other applications, below those applications are operating systems, below those systems are languages, below languages are smaller languages, below them are smaller languages still, eventually is assembly that smallest language, and beneath that is machine language, beneath that the language of microcontrollers, the language of silicon circuits, down, down. It's often observed that biology can be reduced to chemistry, that chemistry can be reduced to physics. Like computer science, physics teaches us that there is no fundament; the molecules of chemical reactions become atoms, the nuclear atoms become protons, neutrons, electrons, the subatomic particles become quarks and quantum mechanics, down, down. And if physics can always unveil a smaller layer of physical reality, so too with formal ideas; computer science descends into mathematics, the sets and automata and topologies of mathematics descend into category theory which too always goes down, down.

But as Gell-Mann so eloquently stated, learning about the quark tells us nothing about the jaguar. If physics ever hits bottom, no matter how much we may one day learn about that fundamental mote of spatiotemporality, that knowledge cannot tell us anything of substance about the ways in which jaguars, or people, behave and interact; the reduction from one layer or representation to another looses information. What systems theory seeks to capture, as with my interest in generic abstract linguistics, is not the fundamental but rather the central, that which pertains at all levels of generality. No matter the level of abstraction, all of these layers exhibit the same or similar structures: they interact with a higher representation, they interact with a lower representation, and they interact with other systems within their layer. Systems theory tends to draw people from electrical engineering, computational biology, and artificial intelligence, but they have a message for computer scientists as well: the system and the interface are one. And there's a message for linguists too because language is just an interface, indeed language is precisely an embedding of the orator's system into the auditor's, every act of communication is an act of translation from one ontology into another. This message comes at us from philosophical anthropology as well: the speech is embedded in the dialogue, the act is embedded in a discourse, the discourse in society, and society in an intercultural exchange of ideas. Or if you prefer art and literature: the medium is the message.

There is something fundamentally central in my inter-interdisciplinary interests and it's that message about systems and language and emergence. As Kennedy and Eberhart say, the mind is social, it is not a solitary endeavor; intelligence arises out of a community of interaction. Language and culture are not defined by any one person, they are mutually defined by the interactions of many people, just as they are a description of the very same interactions of those people. Those familiar with Butler will be familiar with the idea that the act defines the self, rather than expressing it. The individual is defined by pushing off from the society, and in so doing defines that society as well as their own role in relation to it. The interaction defines the system, there is no self outside of society.

And yet, though I cite philosophers and artists and anthropologists, there is no reason why we cannot pursue a formal systematization of this fundamental centrality. Eberhart is an electrical engineer. Gell-Mann is a physicist. I'm emphatically not an engineer, but though I be a philosopher and theoretician, I am also an empiricist. This, I fear, is at the heart of my war. The gnosis is essential in the path to knowledge and wisdom, and yet it is too often discarded by those who work in mathematics and soulless circuitry. But if Sophia remained distant from the world there would be no hope for salvation; thought without action is meaningless. So too, without a formalization or systematization of our observations, even thought which pertains to the world is too often doomed to idle speculation. Nothing and everything can be said about postmodernity, this idle speculation too is thought without action, idea unbound from reality, from meaning.

categories: rant, ai, linguistics, sociology, computer science, systems theory, memetics, ontology

Sunday, 10 April 2008 :

Think before you make the coward's choice.
Old age is not for sissies.

music of the moment: Bookends Theme ~ Simon & Garfunkel (Bookends)

categories: links

Sunday, 5 April 2008 : fun

It's been a long time since I've had fun with computers. It hasn't been bad, mind, but over the last few years it's always been work, it's been a while since I just sat down to tinker around with things. Over the last couple weeks I've started playing around with Haskell (again) and with Darcs (for the first time) and it's been fun.

That is all.

music of the moment: Trust ~ The Cure (Show)

categories: coding

Sunday, 8 March 2008 : RIP: Gygax, 1938~2008

Yesterday I had a spare moment and so I got caught up on XKCD and the other webcomics I follow. Not following tv, radio, or any other news, I've only just learned about Gary Gygax. I'm not sure why it's touched me so, to me Gary's just always been a name in the field. I was never enthralled by his work, I joined the game too old, after other names were bigger.

The idea of the reaper being held up for days, noone dying because of a game, deeply fills our wishes that somehow, somewhere, there is the hope of escape. The idea of death as bungling and incompetent, as bound by rule and tradition, is deeply amusing in the "ha ha only serious" manner usually reserved for geeks. Dark humor is a rare breed. It touches on the things we fear most, but people these days don't use humor as release, as self mockery, most use it only for denial.

Death, is everywhere, is in every thing. I've had more brushes with it than I care to talk about, more brushes than I often think about. I still hold out hope that transhumanism will arrive before I'm gone, but as I grow older I grow more accepting that death too will one day come for me. I do not fear death, it is missing the rest of the great story that I lament, not seeing the next plot twist, not seeing how it ends, how all the loose threads get tied up.

I sorely miss Portland, the city, the people there, the zeitgeist. Though I'd flirted with it before then, Reed was when I first got into roleplaying. After so many years away from CTY, Reed felt at long last like coming home. The year I took off from Reed most of my friends and gaming circle graduated and flung themselves to the ends of the world. Junior and senior years and the time since then I made new friends, found new gamers, but there was never that critical mass anymore and people seemed to leave Portland and leave my life as quickly as they entered it.

I worked at Reed for a year after graduating, and in that time I broke my ties to all the beauty and wonder of college. By the time I quit working at Reed I was completely disillusioned. Years afterwards I went back to the campus for some transcripts and I could feel the glimmerings of magic beginning to return to the place. Not my magic anymore, but a nostalgic magic, the magic you can see for other people and their first discoveries of life outside of their parent's houses. Though Reed was the greatest place for me at the time, I've outgrown that home just as by the time I left CTY I had outgrown that home. I still miss the magic of those years, but that's not the magic I need now.

In my time since Reed I would get fluctuations of friends and happiness. The Plum Tree was a fabulous home and I miss Karen (and Jasmine, Ryan, Lonnie...). Free Geek was a fabulous home and I miss all the spin-off groups of friends with their isolated interconnected dramas. The CAT was also a home to me, though it was always more distant, more professional, than I think of home being. And then there were the unnamed groups —with Eric, Amos, Antonia, Arlo, Serenity, Zeo, Candy, Schwern— the ones often more personal than the others. Portland's a small town, and yet, somehow I couldn't help but feeling lonely.

And now, this last year, I too have left Portland. Not having a car and being too overwhelmed by school I've not had any real chances to get out and explore Baltimore. Even still I've already noticed that Baltimore is a city of death. Baltimore used to be a big port city, but unlike Portland it's never figured out what to do now that shipping has changed. Baltimore's been in a state of decline for decades, the streets are riddled with potholes, the urban schools are destitute, the racism between the large poor class of blacks and the pockets of middle-class whites is overt. The liveliness I've found is like the liveliness of a town once the battlefield lines have moved one town back.

After a year here I've started forming new friendships, but like the CAT they're not the emotional friendships I miss. I'm still on mailing lists for Free Geek and the PIG list, every now and then I log into the CAT's irc. Somewhere I still hold hope of one day moving back to Portland, of finding all my friends again but somehow without the loneliness that always seemed to grow into longer and longer stretches. I'm an alien in a philosophical wasteland. Free/open-source software, ecological sustainability, social engineering, technological enlightenment, goth/punk social commentary, political activism, polyamory, childfree, gender/sexual deviance, —in short being revolutionary— all of these are foreign concepts treated at best with cautious skepticism here. Gary's death is in some way a death of gaming, and for me gaming has always been tied up with my deepest friendships and all those ideologies, has been tied up with the spirit of Portland itself. His death reminds me that I can never go home,

but I haven't found a new one yet.

music of the moment: the wind and the memory of morning rain

categories: personal, transhumanism

Sunday, 19 January 2008 : Not just a day off.

Important words from pdx42:

In 2006, Dr. Martin Luther King Day happened to fall on January 16. Below, I am reposting a small part of what I wrote for that day, slightly updated for 2008.

(original)

In three days' time, on January 21, the third Monday of the month, we as a nation will be celebrating the life, accomplishments, and blessings of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Our nation and our society have truly been transformed for the better by his life. Many Americans regard him as the greatest peacemaker of our history. I believe him to have been the greatest American patriot of the 20th Century.

This weekend, while enjoying your day off on Monday, or listening to a sermon on the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., keep in mind that he was, first and foremost, an inspiring man of God, a man of peace who kept close to the words of his prophet, Jesus Christ. Please also keep in mind that at the time Dr. King was assassinated, most of his civil rights work was done. Almost two years earlier, he had turned his attention toward the injustice of the Vietnam War. I and many others believe that this is the reason he was killed, much more than for his stalwart work for civil rights.

This weekend, many people will be quoting Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. I'll bet you that even President Bush quotes this speech sometime in the next three days. Many consider it Dr. King's magnum opus, but they neglect -- perhaps intentionally, perhaps not -- the speech he gave not long before his death, "Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam". So that this is not forgotten, so that the words of this great patriot, America's greatest peacemaker, are not left to history, particularly in these days when we most desperately need to hear them, please download and listen to Dr. King's thoughts on the Vietnam War, which can plainly be applied to any war.

And do read the original. I know you are all old enough to remember that war. It was my first exposure to politics. I remember it. And I remember being ten years old and asking all the adults around me why we were there, and I remember noone could give any answers then either. I remember green-light videos of those missiles on the news. I remember people talking about Vietnam, a mythical word the wound too new to expose to some kid. And I remember losing power with those green lights when the hurricane hit Maine. It passed straight over us. I remember the eye, the deafening silence.

music of the moment: Pushing the Needle Too Far ~ Indigo Girls (Nomads Indians Saints)

categories: nonviolence, ethics, politics

Sunday, 30 September 2007 : Fading the CAT, and a PSA

School's started, or rather, school's gotten under way. I rather enjoy the classes I'm taking (which can be seen on my updated schedule). I've fallen far behind on LJ, so if there's anything you think I should read in the last fortnight~month, let me know.

Since classes've started and as I've been fading out the cat and psu and fading jhu in, I've been doing some reconfiguring of my environment. I've also been learning LaTeX (both for linguistics and for cs) which can be a strange beast to get into the guts of since all the online info is aimed for newcomers only it seems. In any case, it struck me that I've never made that geekmost step and posted my various profiles and macros for bash, vim, mutt, latex,... . Should anyone be interested, at some point in the nearish future (which longtime readers will know to mean a month from now when I get my next spare moment) I think I'll finally do that. It's about time I got back into generating content for this blog.

When I was working at the cat I wrote a lot of helpful little scripts for my sysadminning (and another bunch for ldap) and from classes I have a third batch for some relatively routine machine learning metaprocessing (separating a corpus into pieces for 10-fold cross-validation, etc). While all the scripts and configs are pretty small in themselves, all together they make for an enjoyable suite and others might find a few treasures in there.

Also, since I've been fading jhu in and getting set up for my classes, a PSA. As y'all know, I use OSX as my os of choice. Of all the oses out there it strikes the best balance between usability and configurability, imo; but this is not a sales pitch for mac. Y'see, osx is a posix system but unlike linuces the package management system it comes with is rather feeble and oriented towards gui apps and not basic tools; it does not use Aptitude (of Debian fame), nor RPM (of RedHat fame), nor even Portage (of Gentoo fame). Yes, there are various implementations of these venerable systems for osx, but none of them ship natively.

Thence, the PSA: if you are a developer who is distributing code, you should be distributing the source code itself. Yes, it's very nice of you to offer debian packages or rpms (the corollary PSA is that you should be offering these as well), but you should not require your users to have these installed. If you're evangelizing to mac users, you should not require that they install fink in order to be able to install your code; they should be able to use cvs or subversion and to run the makefiles manually(however painful such an approach may be). Just because you're writing research software does not make you exempt from standard good practices. It's not just mac, this also holds for Solaris and many other posix systems still alive and well in the wild. Open source, means open source; it does not mean, available through conventional package managers.

じゃ、またわね

music of the moment: Die On A Rope ~ The Distillers (Coral Fang)

categories: coding, psa

Sunday, 4 September 2007 : I am not a feminist.

I've said it before. I am not ashamed to say it. But noone understands it. I think there is a lot of wisdom in feminism. I do not generally disagree with feminism when practiced. But I am not a feminist. Some readers might think that this has something to do with the false notion that men can't be feminists. It does not. Some readers more familiar with my multifarious interest in gender and sexuality may think perhaps that is why I am drawn to queer theory and its ilk rather than to feminism. It is not.

Many friends of mine, however, both here on the internet and in my daily life, are themselves feminists. And I do have, as I mentioned, quite an interest in gender and sexuality and the ways in which they interact with the social, political, economic, cultural, linguistic, and psychological spheres of the world, as well as how we can go about disentangling this menagerie of thousand-dollar words in order to say something meaningful about what is a central facet of most people's lives and how we can use that knowledge to strive for greater equality. So some have found it curious that I eschew the title.

While some of my feminist friends follow in the traditional molds of second-wave or radical feminism, many take a more modern generalist approach. While the generalists pick some of the best authors from feminism, queer theory, women's studies, english lit, philosophy, and other related fields in constructing their own views and theories, it is feminism they quite pointedly refer to in labeling their interest. Indeed, more than one has written on why they feel "feminism" is the only proper term to use for generally encompassing the whole world of gender/sexuality studies. An opinion I disagree with and have often argued —perhaps at times too vehemently— against.

One of the problems with using "feminism" to refer to the whole of gender/sexuality studies is that it debases what feminism sets out to be. Feminism is a collection of analyses which are, definitionally, about women and sociopolitics. Not "about people, including women, and sociopolitics". Not "about the effects of gender, particularly women's, on sociopolitics". No, feminism is about women. Full stop. When people include ideas like queer theory —which focuses on disentangling gender, biological sex, and sexual desire to better discuss homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism— under "feminism" as an umbrella term, I cannot help but feel that the whole point of feminism, of women as the subject and topic of inquiry to counterpoint the hetero-patriarchal discourse privileging men as the sole subject of inquiry which society tacitly adopts— I cannot help but feel that when "feminism" is used as an umbrella term, the whole point of feminism is lost.

But the reasons I do not accept "feminist" as a label for myself extend beyond the fact that my interest in gender/sexuality studies is broader than feminism itself and that I disapprove of using "feminism" as a general term. That does, however, cut to the quick of it. Feminism is about (hetero[1], cisgendered[2], white middle-class[3]) women. It is not about men, it is not about bisexuals (pansexuals, sapiosexuals,...), it is not about transgendered (third gendered, bi-gendered,...) folks, it is not about polyamory, it is not about kink or pain/sensation or body modification, it is not about being child-free. Feminism is not, in short, about me.

Nor should I expect it to be. It is not the point of feminism to delve into the many identities and ideologies this one particular person may entertain. Richard Jeffrey Newman puts it quite well in his opening post for a discussion about male survivors of child sexual abuse and our relationship to feminism. If you wish to skip the preamble about why he wrote that opening for discussion, the heart of the article is outlined in the three embolded points at the end (and also in the last paragraph of comment #2 by "name withheld to respect his privacy" for more complications about why feminism is not the proper venue for male survivors).

Not identifying with feminism, that post took me aback at first. It is a connection I had never thought to have made, that male survivors of sexual abuse should seek for support among feminists, the most active and salient group for discussing sexual violence. As I read through the comments and followed links, I could not help but feel the sense of outrage by those men who did once seek for shelter with feminists. A rage not unlike the rage of trans folk, particularly MTF transwomen, who have sought such stormy refuge.

For me the sexual abuse, like the psychological abuse, did not have to do with sex. It had to do with power, with control, though it sounds clichéd to say. It had to do with the cycle of abuse in all families of alcoholics, addicts, molesters, and violence. The specific nature of the abuse itself is all too often unimportant, every abusive family is described in the same litany of little things. By the time I reached middle school I had found many friends who were also survivors, all of them women. The first thing you learn in a family of abuse is that you do not talk about what goes on within the family to outsiders, you don't even admit within the family. The second thing you learn is how to spot people like you. Every one has a different story, every one has the same mantra of secret signals and unspoken histories. For me, sexual abuse is about being crazy, about dissociation and depression and obsession; and to deal with it I sought my allies accordingly.

What set me aback is that that's not the case for other men. In retrospect, it makes a certain amount of sense I suppose. While the adolescence of delving into the insanity of ourselves and others was common in my circle of friends, I've known that's not the normal case. And while I've thought it would be normal for others with issues like ours, men aren't allowed to have those issues. Society allows men to have psychoses, to have delusions, to be serial killers— to have violent mental issues; it does not permit them to admit depression, mania, anxiety, cutting, eating disorders, multiple personalities— to being "moody": those are the exclusive domain of women. So while I sought refuge with women, others sought it in feminism. Which is itself a gender statement. Women are expected to find fulfillment in social relationships; men are expected to find it in intellectualism. So it makes sense for men, their gender identity already under assault, to look for ways of nursing their wounds without taking further damage to their masculinity.

But even beyond my expansive interests, the fact that feminism is not about me, and any reluctant issues there may be regarding my upbringing, there is a final reason I do not accept the label "feminist". In short, I believe feminism is wrong. Women certainly deserve equal opportunities, equal treatment, and safe spaces. But I am not comfortable saying that only women deserve these things. As I alluded to earlier, the scope of feminism is limited. But even more than being limited, feminism seems more interested in inverting the current gender–power system than it does in dismantling the whole thing entirely. And from where I stand, not within the gender order but not without it, I cannot help but see the injustice in that proposition. Women deserve justice, not because of what's between their legs, women deserve justice because they are human. But feminism at its very core, before one gets into waves or theories or analyses, is definitionally invested in furthering the idea of "women", of women as separate and differentiable from other people, of women as an exclusive category with wants and desires unique to themselves and deserving of equality with other exclusive groups.

Maybe it is simply because I was born American and so have been raised with the doctrine of deep distrust for "separate but equal". Maybe it is because I am ever part of the group excluded: not man enough, not born-woman, not gay enough, not straight, not trans enough or all too queer depending who you ask. But from where I stand, in order to end injustice to end discrimination to end hatred, while one must focus on those who suffer worst one must also be certain that in offering what help they can they are not perpetuating or exacerbating what they seek to remedy. But then, while I'm not accepted to the standard order, I'm also never wholly rejected. To look at me on the street my skin is white, I'm dressed well enough, I have facial hair and generally wear trousers, I'm taller than most, taller even than those who call themselves tall. I've been excluded from restaurants, but never in this country. I've had people avoid sitting near me, but never been told where to sit on the bus. We can't all be beautiful unique snowflakes, but I cannot speak for anyone in any of the number of groups I affiliate with, my experience is not theirs, they do not accept all my allegiances. I can only speak for myself, and I am not a feminist.

[1] That is, people whose 'natural' desire is heterosexual, even if they have decided to become lesbian for political (read: feminist) reasons.

[2] While individual feminists may extend their politics beyond cisgendered folks, as many of my friends do, I have so far seen no movement within feminism as a paradigm for accepting transwomen. There are, however, numerous examples of the two groups clashing.

[3] Though third-wave feminism and womanism both seek to address this particular shortcoming.

categories: personal, rant, sociology

Sunday, 29 August 2007 : The weekmonth in review

So it's been a while since I've writ, even yet again. I seem to have fallen into my videogames once more and find it hard to convince myself to get online regularly. That will all change in a couple weeks when school starts up, though I'm afeared it won't affect my posting regularity. I have been keeping (relatively) up to date reading others' journals, though.

Xenobia was returned to me shortly after my last post. It was just the battery that was shot from the looks of it. The new one works just fine. It's so nice to have hours of unplugged life once more, instead of less than half a dozen minutes.

One of my cousins passed away shortly thereafter. It was unexpected all around. His fiancee, a nurse, found him but he never regained consciousness. I never knew he was engaged. He, his brother, and his sister were the only extended relatives of around my age and so it was nice to see them when we did. But I never did get to know them too well. The Gilchrists were always a large enough family that we had to go to them for the big holiday celebrations, but we rarely saw them outside of those large parties. His mother, my aunt, is the one who maintains the family cookbook, a rare family tradition I value though for so long I was too young to appreciate it.

I have many half-written posts, too many: book reviews and rants on feminism and other things. So I will leave this here, that it might escape from my over-analytic clutches before it remains forever unfinished.

music of the moment: a million lovesongs (live) ~ Wolfsheim

categories: personal, computers

Sunday, 6 August 2007 : Signing off

So xenobia's been having issues with her power system for a while now. After the extreme busyness of the end of the school year, followed by moving, followed by getting settled in and caught up on everything, I finally have time to send her in to get fixed. And so, it may be a while before I can get back online. Take care all.

categories: personal, computers

Sunday, 19 July 2007 : Gettin' ma angst on

So I've been gone a very long time once again. It's seeming become a habit more than exception. But for now, this note from across the sea of three thousand miles of corn and desolate housewives.

So I finally got my stuff tuesday, quite a bit late, but all arrived intact. I got to unpacking the bulk of it yester morning, which was nice. Nice to have those helpful trinkets to hand, instead of constantly thinking "I have just the thing for this... in a truck floating over the arkansiatic". The kitchen'll need rearranging now, but I have all my cooking gear and spices!

So the morning was good, productive, got up early. And then, just after a nice lunch (an experimental stirfry of fivespice and turmeric) I checked my email and read an offensive comment by someone I thought a friend. Now, most y'all know me, know my mild temperament rarely angers. And barring one day when anonamyst saw me come home, I don't think any of you have ever seen me furious. I don't get furious. Outraged sure, upset now and again, angered on special occasion. But then, I don't generally have people insulting my life experiences, life choices. Even the conservative who would dismiss them ununderstanding doesn't do this, or if they gab behind my back they certainly have the decency not to say it to my face.

Shortly after, in the midst of writing the first version of this post fueled by that fury, my dearest came home. And like a balm to calm the nerves and soothe the burn, doing nothing she melted it away. There's a voice in the back of my head wonders whether I should beware that skill of hers. But deep down, I think everyone wants to be charmed. The eyes of a serpent, the smile of a saint, everyone wants to fall in, to see if the dream is as sweet as the promise.

categories: personal

Sunday, 30 May 2007 : Grindhouse

I just saw the greatest movie last night: Grindhouse, or at least Rodriguez's Planet Terror. I couldn't stay for Tarantino's half, though admittedly it didn't capture me from what I did see. But Rodriguez! If you like your comedy dark, and I do mean dark, if you like zombie cheesecake, if you like movies that don't even know where over the top begins, if you like your mockery to take itself very seriously <snicker>, then you'll love this film.

Apparently when it came out this april it didn't do so well in the box offices, which I find baffling. Though, looking at a couple of the previews for it, I can see why they wouldn't entice. Save yourself the time. If you're thinking of watching the previews for Grindhouse, don't. If you're thinking of reading the wikipedia page on the anthology, don't. If you're thinking of looking at the posters of the cover for the box, don't (it'll ruin one of the cute jokes, which works better with the buildup of not knowing it's coming). If you're thinking of reading other reviews, don't (it'll just ruin a lot of the plot and atmosphere of WTF?). And if you get this joke because you've seen the movie and you're thinking of telling other people, don't. (If you're thinking of bringing up one of the other's just before it either, don't ;)

But do see the movie. This is one of the few movies on my short list to own. It's been years since the last time I've seen a movie nearly this engaging.

(There's something diabolical about having watched it at the Mission Theater too. Something about watching an anthology tribute to the trashy exploitation films of the '70s on the big screen in a theatre. Something about that theatre being one of the old kind, designed for comfort not for packing them in; the kind where you can still order a beer (in a glass!) and food to take to your seat. And something more about it being a late night showing and the place being mostly empty.

It looks like they're showing it again for a while yet. I may just have to spend my three bucks and go see it again. Anyone care to join me, this weekend or the next?)

Update (Sunday, 11 June 2007): So I went and watched it again with misshepeshu this saturday, the whole thing this time. And having seen Death Proof all the way through, it definitely picks up in the latter half. For the first half of it, go to the bathroom, get some refreshments, keep an eye on it but don't let Tarantino's wankery get too much of you. But do be sure to come back for the second half of it.

categories: movie review

Sunday, 30 April 2007 : Your message has been served

Subject: Finally we got into such an argument over Luke that she got an hysterical attack and began to weep and sob - in bed, mind you.
From: galin Velasquez <galin.Velasquez@ANARGO.QC.CA>
 
Triangulate the Monotone Polygons.

Any questions?

Sunday, 30 April 2007 : Another day, another book

Momus tells me that I should blog every day. Or well, he says that to blog one should do it every day. And I think it wise advice. Like practicing a language or an instrument or other writing, things get rusty when left too long. So I'm here to say: no, I'm not going to blog every day, good gods are you nuts? I don't have time for that. But, I will say that I mean to get back into writing more often, like I used to; this I think will be good. And for a time at least I should be able to manage it.

In other news, I finished A Feast for Crows, the fourth book of A Song of Ice and Fire. For those who aren't familiar with the series, it's a medieval low-fantasy setting and George R.R. Martin is one of the gods of writing; thusly, start at the beginning. And when you get to the end, stop. Or read what's out, read his other stories, harass him endlessly over email about when the next book'll be out, and then go and read his blog like everyone else does you ingrate.

For those who are familiar, admittedly, this volume is weaker than the first three. For the vaguely familiar, the series was slated to be six books but what was to be the fourth book grew too long and ended up being split into this and the forthcoming fifth. Rather than telling half the story for all the characters he decided to tell all the story for half the characters; fair enough. Unfortunately, given the nature of the story and how spread out all the characters are, doing this means that the book feels unbalanced. The switches from fast to slow, from intrigue to war, from mystery to resolution, all seem a bit flatter than usual, though because of the missing characters and not the quality per se. All the same, it's a good book rife with all that we love and love to hate, even if short on the jalonqar, the dragons, the men in black, and their fiery new cultists.

music of the moment: 破曉 (feat. 周杰倫) ~ 南拳媽媽 (2號餐)

categories: book review

Sunday, 29 April 2007 : Why can't monsters, get along with other monsters?

I am not at Renn Fayre. To be honest I had not truly intended to go, but some part of me did want to, did consider, for the first time in the last couple-few years. The thing that prolly did me in was the ticket price (alas poor student!) though my back getting all messed up this week didn't help for having the schoolwork out of the way either. And since I'll be moving out to Baltimore this summer, this is the last year I could go for some while. More's the pity: this year a number of old friends came in for the weekend.

Livingroom table, covered with papers and oddments. Dinner, a simple dish of spicy tofu and baby bok choy. On the side, Dos Equis. On the mind, time. Passing, withering, wasting, empty. In the background, Type O Negative, Bad Religion, This Mortal Coil, Social Distortion. Songs grown old with playing, flat and infirm now, not strengthened by the fermentation. I've a'once too much music to listen to and not enough that's new, different, emotional. There's something in the water, or something in the age. The affliction's been going round like influenza for a year amongst the élite of all my friends.

Years ago I took steps to remove myself from the public stream of media. And for the longest time this was a good thing. Friends partook oft enough to know enough of what goes on in the world abroad, filtered of the nuisance and propaganda of the presentation. But as time's worn on those friends have flown 'way, worn thin. These days there seems to be more of a disconnect, like I'm being left behind by the world, rather than having time to enjoy it untethered by frivolities.

The problem with age is that the older you get noone tells you to go out and play. Trapped in the workaday world, every moment is a moment you could be doing more work. Trapped in the studyaday world, every moment is a moment you could be doing more research. Scheduled downtime, for movies, or shows, for gaming, for walking, slips away. Entertainment is scheduled in the cracks, reading on the bus, blogging before work, a moment's respite in a restaurant, but without a time out of time they are but passing distractions in the big rush, to make it big, to make a difference, to get known, to get ahead, to get dead.

Growing up we saw in our parents the dismal life we could never understand. No friends, no fun, no lives, no sleep —or perhaps sleep for once, that blissful narcotic, the waters of Lethe to wash away the worries of today, tomorrow, forever, waters rushing calmly over slumbering heads. And through our rush to grow up, to be free of the shackles of youth, we rush headlong until we wake one day and wonder where it all went so wrong.

Yet in our introspection we have our answers. In our friendships we have our drugs. And in our memories we have, of our demons, also Annwn. And Time too, the Great Destroyer, is the antidote to the suffering it brings. We have only to adjust, to relearn, to forget. And to never stop searching.

mood of the moment: done with depression.

music of the moment: Send In The Clouds ~ Silver Jews (American Water), Love You To Death ~ Type O Negative (October Rust), Big In Japan ~ Tom Waits (Mule Variations), Top ~ Live (Throwing Copper), Mr. Bitterness ~ Soul Coughing (Ruby Vroom), Something Hyper ~ Silkworm (It'll Be Cool)

categories: personal, links

Sunday, 25 April 2007 : On Composition and Syntax: Thoughts

This entry has been moved to my F/OSS blog which deals with other computer geekery too, and is where it should've been in the first place.

music of the moment: Narrow Your Eyes ~ They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18), She's Dead ~ Jim's Big Ego

categories: design, computer science

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