Friday, September 28, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Paid To Die
PAID TO DIE
War note 1
**NOT A TOPIC FOR EVERYONE**
Every so often, the media publish the photos of army personnel who have died in Afghanistan. Invariably they are good-looking, intelligent, obviously well-intentioned people. We do not know them but their faces seem oddly familiar, part of our extended cultural family. And we can only imagine the sorrow and grief felt by their immediate families and loved ones.
It is an honourable death - one long deemed the ultimate sacrifice - yet I cannot help but feel that there is something terribly wrong with the whole set-up. A volunteer paid army, in the 21th century, should be something other than a war machine. Antiquity had mercenaries; we have peace-keeping forces. That these people should meet death as part of their work experience is an outrageous state of affairs yet there seems to be no going back on it. The powers that be praise Canada's contribution and things go on.
The events of 9/11 sent a real shock through American society and changed the fabric of daily life in New York, with many moving out of the city and seeking to work elsewhere. Thus a self-selection process set in as a result of these trying circumstances. One hears of false alerts suffered by George and Laura Bush, shuffled off the bunkers when there was in reality no need. Laura Bush - a handsome and intelligent woman - is, to my mind, a professional wife. She is a perfect first lady, rock solid, no- frills yet still feminine. It is stunningly obvious yet no one has commented on it - why say potentially hurtful things when there is no need to - yet this passage to image-driven reality does need to be looked at. We are sending handsome Canadians to Afghanistan and they are being killed: it is that kind of war.
Samuel Huntington of Harvard University shocked a number of intellectuals by his thesis that crisis in a planetary society would henceforth take the form of clashes of values between different civilizations, at least for a time. Your world-model or mine, on a take-no-prisoners note for both parties. And he proceeded to carve up the planet along religious and geographical lines. What the current stalemate between the developed and Islamic worlds is characterized by is a debate on legitimacy. President Bush - read our political institutions - officially 'speak' for us while voices form the Islamic world are the actions of each and everyone who wants to take a stance. Al-Qaida is an outlaw ripple in a salvageable situation, claims the U.S. It is a religious duty to combat imperialism, answers Ossama Ben Laden, a bit like a home-town preacher looking for contributions to the church renovation-fund. Contribute with your life.
I struggle with my daily existence - these days trying to learn computer programming - and come across the inspirational notion that follows as a text in one of my tutorials: "A war has no winners". Let us re-phrase that: "Everyone who goes to war creates tragedy". Young and healthy individuals are being made to die and it is tragic, illogical, unacceptable . That if nothing else should be common ground for all concerned.
The Clinton years of the American presidency were marked by scandal because it was something understandable. A young woman was hurt: everyone wanted more information on the psychological make-up of the perpetrator. Who was this fellow, the president. He bought poetry books - not so bad - yet he seemed incapable of commanding his instincts - not so good - and the American political system went into theater mode to look for meaning, to articulate something with a moral slant that would make going on and claiming world leadership credible.
And these days the Democratic party are holding the moral high ground, with an anti-war stance, all very much in the tradition of American politics. Maybe not everyone on the planet has a program for that performance.
Indeed the Lewinsky scandal might well be what is understandable in the Islamic world, if not the politics. What is Islam about, with it's ultimately stylized contention that women are so desirable that their very sight is an incitement to disorder. It is a request to keep desire pure, to ensure communication and trust between men and women through the possibility of relationship . We should be so lucky.
War note 1
**NOT A TOPIC FOR EVERYONE**
Every so often, the media publish the photos of army personnel who have died in Afghanistan. Invariably they are good-looking, intelligent, obviously well-intentioned people. We do not know them but their faces seem oddly familiar, part of our extended cultural family. And we can only imagine the sorrow and grief felt by their immediate families and loved ones.
It is an honourable death - one long deemed the ultimate sacrifice - yet I cannot help but feel that there is something terribly wrong with the whole set-up. A volunteer paid army, in the 21th century, should be something other than a war machine. Antiquity had mercenaries; we have peace-keeping forces. That these people should meet death as part of their work experience is an outrageous state of affairs yet there seems to be no going back on it. The powers that be praise Canada's contribution and things go on.
The events of 9/11 sent a real shock through American society and changed the fabric of daily life in New York, with many moving out of the city and seeking to work elsewhere. Thus a self-selection process set in as a result of these trying circumstances. One hears of false alerts suffered by George and Laura Bush, shuffled off the bunkers when there was in reality no need. Laura Bush - a handsome and intelligent woman - is, to my mind, a professional wife. She is a perfect first lady, rock solid, no- frills yet still feminine. It is stunningly obvious yet no one has commented on it - why say potentially hurtful things when there is no need to - yet this passage to image-driven reality does need to be looked at. We are sending handsome Canadians to Afghanistan and they are being killed: it is that kind of war.
Samuel Huntington of Harvard University shocked a number of intellectuals by his thesis that crisis in a planetary society would henceforth take the form of clashes of values between different civilizations, at least for a time. Your world-model or mine, on a take-no-prisoners note for both parties. And he proceeded to carve up the planet along religious and geographical lines. What the current stalemate between the developed and Islamic worlds is characterized by is a debate on legitimacy. President Bush - read our political institutions - officially 'speak' for us while voices form the Islamic world are the actions of each and everyone who wants to take a stance. Al-Qaida is an outlaw ripple in a salvageable situation, claims the U.S. It is a religious duty to combat imperialism, answers Ossama Ben Laden, a bit like a home-town preacher looking for contributions to the church renovation-fund. Contribute with your life.
I struggle with my daily existence - these days trying to learn computer programming - and come across the inspirational notion that follows as a text in one of my tutorials: "A war has no winners". Let us re-phrase that: "Everyone who goes to war creates tragedy". Young and healthy individuals are being made to die and it is tragic, illogical, unacceptable . That if nothing else should be common ground for all concerned.
The Clinton years of the American presidency were marked by scandal because it was something understandable. A young woman was hurt: everyone wanted more information on the psychological make-up of the perpetrator. Who was this fellow, the president. He bought poetry books - not so bad - yet he seemed incapable of commanding his instincts - not so good - and the American political system went into theater mode to look for meaning, to articulate something with a moral slant that would make going on and claiming world leadership credible.
And these days the Democratic party are holding the moral high ground, with an anti-war stance, all very much in the tradition of American politics. Maybe not everyone on the planet has a program for that performance.
Indeed the Lewinsky scandal might well be what is understandable in the Islamic world, if not the politics. What is Islam about, with it's ultimately stylized contention that women are so desirable that their very sight is an incitement to disorder. It is a request to keep desire pure, to ensure communication and trust between men and women through the possibility of relationship . We should be so lucky.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
BEE
BEE
Literary Note 1
The French edition of Bret Easton Ellis' "Lunar Park" (Robert Laffont, Pavillons, 2005) has no writing on it whatsoever. One merely sees a photograph of the author, in grey tones. Indeed that photo is a masterpiece, a semi-profile that shows the finesse, sensitivity, intelligence of the author. This is how French publishing presents it's own, undoubtedly praise as such for Ellis' work. The joy in realizing that it was Ellis - whom I had never seen - made me 'caddie' the book: I knew I was in for a threat, a few laughs, literary companionship.
I read the infamous "American Psycho" years ago. There is no doubt that Ellis is a serious craftsman - he gets up in the morning, writes on a schedule, polishes his work - and that he is in a class of artists, with something to express in each and every work. It is hard to say that Psycho was a joy because there are scenes of true horror in the book but I read it through. Anything that comes after this kind of catharsis has to be interesting.
"Psycho" was also an advance in intelligence from earlier takes on the issue of the mentation of extreme acts of violence. Norman Mailer might research a serial killer. Ellis researches Wall Street yuppies - at best, insensitive types with the patience to worry about money all day - AND extreme crime at the same time and presents the two together precisely because they do not mesh. It is safe to savage the yuppie for his crassness because after all this specimen is a deranged killer; and it is possible to explore one's own capacity for violence because the hopelessness that underlies such acts is missing for a successful stock broker. There is complicity here, between reader and writer, the literary contract is fulfilled.
In "Lunar Park", Ellis escapes from gay prison. His main character - called BEE as is the author and with a similar biography - is married with two children. Real celebrities cameo in and out, the plot is Steven King, the wife John Updike. Like John Updike, Ellis doesn't know the first thing about women and is quite incapable of creating a physical female character, (something for which his female readers should perhaps be grateful). This is a constant in a great deal of masculine books. Men and women are never more distant from each other as when each is trying to describe the other sex: women are pale psycho-rigid creatures who either refuse or demand sex precisely when it is inappropriate...and so on. One of the great moments in J.K. Rowling's" Harry Potter" is giving Harry an invisibility cloak. Women know they are invisible to men after reading male authors.
I have not finished "Lunar", but rather catch bits and pieces of it now and again, interlaced with other books and studies on quite different topics. It is a safe heaven of easy reading but I am not stretching it out but rather fit it in when I am just that tired. Ellis lifts the blanket, now and again, on what seems to be a central theme: the fear rippling through New York post 9/11. There is nothing much to say about it, I am afraid, but needs to be endured. Fear of the bomb was like that when I was a teen-ager. One had nightmares, would alternatively be fascinated with the subject or would want to forget the whole thing. It fueled a powerful anger towards political leadership: why wouldn't they do anything about it. Ellis' next work is meant to be about life in Washington. I am looking forward to it.
Literary Note 1
The French edition of Bret Easton Ellis' "Lunar Park" (Robert Laffont, Pavillons, 2005) has no writing on it whatsoever. One merely sees a photograph of the author, in grey tones. Indeed that photo is a masterpiece, a semi-profile that shows the finesse, sensitivity, intelligence of the author. This is how French publishing presents it's own, undoubtedly praise as such for Ellis' work. The joy in realizing that it was Ellis - whom I had never seen - made me 'caddie' the book: I knew I was in for a threat, a few laughs, literary companionship.
I read the infamous "American Psycho" years ago. There is no doubt that Ellis is a serious craftsman - he gets up in the morning, writes on a schedule, polishes his work - and that he is in a class of artists, with something to express in each and every work. It is hard to say that Psycho was a joy because there are scenes of true horror in the book but I read it through. Anything that comes after this kind of catharsis has to be interesting.
"Psycho" was also an advance in intelligence from earlier takes on the issue of the mentation of extreme acts of violence. Norman Mailer might research a serial killer. Ellis researches Wall Street yuppies - at best, insensitive types with the patience to worry about money all day - AND extreme crime at the same time and presents the two together precisely because they do not mesh. It is safe to savage the yuppie for his crassness because after all this specimen is a deranged killer; and it is possible to explore one's own capacity for violence because the hopelessness that underlies such acts is missing for a successful stock broker. There is complicity here, between reader and writer, the literary contract is fulfilled.
In "Lunar Park", Ellis escapes from gay prison. His main character - called BEE as is the author and with a similar biography - is married with two children. Real celebrities cameo in and out, the plot is Steven King, the wife John Updike. Like John Updike, Ellis doesn't know the first thing about women and is quite incapable of creating a physical female character, (something for which his female readers should perhaps be grateful). This is a constant in a great deal of masculine books. Men and women are never more distant from each other as when each is trying to describe the other sex: women are pale psycho-rigid creatures who either refuse or demand sex precisely when it is inappropriate...and so on. One of the great moments in J.K. Rowling's" Harry Potter" is giving Harry an invisibility cloak. Women know they are invisible to men after reading male authors.
I have not finished "Lunar", but rather catch bits and pieces of it now and again, interlaced with other books and studies on quite different topics. It is a safe heaven of easy reading but I am not stretching it out but rather fit it in when I am just that tired. Ellis lifts the blanket, now and again, on what seems to be a central theme: the fear rippling through New York post 9/11. There is nothing much to say about it, I am afraid, but needs to be endured. Fear of the bomb was like that when I was a teen-ager. One had nightmares, would alternatively be fascinated with the subject or would want to forget the whole thing. It fueled a powerful anger towards political leadership: why wouldn't they do anything about it. Ellis' next work is meant to be about life in Washington. I am looking forward to it.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Reba
REBA
TV NOTE 1
I have of late been watching everyweekday, an episode of Reba, an alledged sitcom about a monoparental mother with three children. I say alledged because the life situation Reba is living through strikes me as particularly humiliating and difficult. Her ex-husband lives a few houses down with his new wife and child while Reba is expected to march in solitary maturity. Country singer Reba McIntyre holds the title role, and the scene is upper middle-class Texas.
In real life, artists often do not hold university diplomas because their lives and work are the stuff that intellectual reflect on. William Shakespeare does not need a degree in English, as it were. Reba M. the accomplished singer may well be a match for a philandering dentist husband and then some but Reba the character in the sitcom is the poor soul who worked putting hubby through dental school only to be repudiated for a younger woman and a second family. This is serious business.
Brock the husband is in a semi-depression: the sub- text here being that he may have smoked pot in college and now finds himself in a pleasure deficit situation althoug his objective situation with Reba is excellent, and his second family all that a man might wish for.
So how are the two women to accept each other: with great difficulty.
The children are also a handful, the elder daughter pregnant in high school, and eventually to stay with Reba as the teen-age husband moves in. Implied here is that she might have gotten pregnant to 'catch' him - he is from a rich family - or worse, that there is a strange link with a father she finds more real than her mother: isn't that what the psychology of illegitimacy is meant to be. The'fat'her gets his assistant pregnant, a large 'fat' blonde reminiscent of the daughter.
So this is the set-up, along with a middle Wise-guy daughter with better marks at school, and a young male child. Maybe disconnecting from the father was the best way for Reba to stop having children.
So what does the show make of all this: in fact, not much. Six years of episodes merely shows it to us, under different lighting.
I like the set, which is always the same and has the feel of a theater set. The actors are also very much theater actors, especially the teen-age husband. There is Shakespearian ebullience in a lot of what goes on. And a lot of talk about positive emotion, family solidarity and the like. Reba is making the best out of an unliveable situation, the abnormal is presented as the new normalcy.
Reba likes to drink; that is her charming fault. I don't know that I am particularly charmed.
The critics of the show I have read on the web make much of Reba's relationship with the second wife, the very statuesque Norma Jean. The whole seems to be a gigantic digestive exercise, coming to grips with class difference, different cultural models of the family, different intelligence levels, communication between age groups.
Television is candy. I would not want this to be a weekly show I would be waiting for. There is an episode every day and I am starting to catch shows I have seen before. I also know that Reba's predicament is unreal. No Texas housewife would surf such a series of arrangements. All the elements are present in north American life but not together. And I am happy they are not.
TV NOTE 1
I have of late been watching everyweekday, an episode of Reba, an alledged sitcom about a monoparental mother with three children. I say alledged because the life situation Reba is living through strikes me as particularly humiliating and difficult. Her ex-husband lives a few houses down with his new wife and child while Reba is expected to march in solitary maturity. Country singer Reba McIntyre holds the title role, and the scene is upper middle-class Texas.
In real life, artists often do not hold university diplomas because their lives and work are the stuff that intellectual reflect on. William Shakespeare does not need a degree in English, as it were. Reba M. the accomplished singer may well be a match for a philandering dentist husband and then some but Reba the character in the sitcom is the poor soul who worked putting hubby through dental school only to be repudiated for a younger woman and a second family. This is serious business.
Brock the husband is in a semi-depression: the sub- text here being that he may have smoked pot in college and now finds himself in a pleasure deficit situation althoug his objective situation with Reba is excellent, and his second family all that a man might wish for.
So how are the two women to accept each other: with great difficulty.
The children are also a handful, the elder daughter pregnant in high school, and eventually to stay with Reba as the teen-age husband moves in. Implied here is that she might have gotten pregnant to 'catch' him - he is from a rich family - or worse, that there is a strange link with a father she finds more real than her mother: isn't that what the psychology of illegitimacy is meant to be. The'fat'her gets his assistant pregnant, a large 'fat' blonde reminiscent of the daughter.
So this is the set-up, along with a middle Wise-guy daughter with better marks at school, and a young male child. Maybe disconnecting from the father was the best way for Reba to stop having children.
So what does the show make of all this: in fact, not much. Six years of episodes merely shows it to us, under different lighting.
I like the set, which is always the same and has the feel of a theater set. The actors are also very much theater actors, especially the teen-age husband. There is Shakespearian ebullience in a lot of what goes on. And a lot of talk about positive emotion, family solidarity and the like. Reba is making the best out of an unliveable situation, the abnormal is presented as the new normalcy.
Reba likes to drink; that is her charming fault. I don't know that I am particularly charmed.
The critics of the show I have read on the web make much of Reba's relationship with the second wife, the very statuesque Norma Jean. The whole seems to be a gigantic digestive exercise, coming to grips with class difference, different cultural models of the family, different intelligence levels, communication between age groups.
Television is candy. I would not want this to be a weekly show I would be waiting for. There is an episode every day and I am starting to catch shows I have seen before. I also know that Reba's predicament is unreal. No Texas housewife would surf such a series of arrangements. All the elements are present in north American life but not together. And I am happy they are not.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The Obesity Issue
THE OBESITY ISSUE
NOTE 1
I am currently reading Pierre Weill's book, in French, "Tous gros demain",(Plon, 2007.) which would translate literally as "Everyone obese in the future", the idea being that obesity seems to have reached epidemic proportions, even in France. Indeed the book is very much concerned with the French situation, and Weill is a respected agronomist.
What makes the book interesting to me (here in Canada) is that themes which are well familiar to anyone who keeps up with the nutrition question are re-stated in a clear and sometimes novel fashion. Being an agronomist, Weill is not tied to correctness on discussing how to interpret the paleolithic record, or the meaning of current public health statistics. As someone who is trained to pronounce himself on how one would fatten domestic animals, he gives an absolutely hilarious and vivid view of the modern (female) shopper's dilemma at the supermarket. It helps one apply all that repetitive and ultimately tedious nutritional advice.
A glance through Wikipedia informs us that archaeologists have garnered some one hundred Venus figures across the European territory. Some are quite famous, for example, the Willendorf figurine from Germany. Many have suggested that these were perhaps fertility goddesses of some kind. Weill is a practical fellow: these figures are homage to the evolving capacity to store fat on the human body. Thirty thousand years ago, settled agriculture was still in the future but human populations did consume wild grains and nuts in the summer months. They would also be eating fresh grasses - greens to us - while the cold winter months would force the body to use up what had been stored in the summer months and the clan relied on occasional meat meals from the hunt.
As someone who has studied religion, I would go further and suggest that these figures were more in the direction of medical records or even archived information. These women are naked at a time when humanity had long been clothed. There is no reason to assume a paganism that is verging on the pornographic.
They are as well well-endowed primarily on the lower parts of their bodies, a form of obesity that comes from eating starches and sugars. Perhaps this is how fat one had to be to even think about getting pregnant.
The Willendorf Venus, from Wikipedia.
Much clearer in MY mind thanks to Weill's book is what the distinction between various oils is. Less saturated oils have lower melting points and are better for us; they can be used more readily by the body. Researchers refer to Omega oils because the last carbon in a carbon chain is paired with the last letter of the Greek alphabet. An Omega-6 oil has a hydrogen atom missing on the sixth arm from the last, an Omega-three on the third. The first set of oils (available to us from grains) are used by the body to produce enzymes that store food energy as body fat; the second,( available from greens) are used to make hormones that liberate stored fat. Weill contends that the optimal balance between the two in our diets should be five to one; we are currently consuming twenty to one. Hence the obesity epidemic.
Weill also discusses at length the issue of how the animals we consume are fed: there is no standard egg but what chickens will lay is a function of what they eat. Weill believes that the current planetary standardization of animal feed toward corn and soy to the detriment of local feed stuff (flax for France) is harmful because humans are consuming Omega-6 structures even though they believe they are eating well by consuming white meat.
It is hard for me to evaluate all the claims that are being made in his work but at least they make sense. An issue I will follow...
NOTE 1
I am currently reading Pierre Weill's book, in French, "Tous gros demain",(Plon, 2007.) which would translate literally as "Everyone obese in the future", the idea being that obesity seems to have reached epidemic proportions, even in France. Indeed the book is very much concerned with the French situation, and Weill is a respected agronomist.
What makes the book interesting to me (here in Canada) is that themes which are well familiar to anyone who keeps up with the nutrition question are re-stated in a clear and sometimes novel fashion. Being an agronomist, Weill is not tied to correctness on discussing how to interpret the paleolithic record, or the meaning of current public health statistics. As someone who is trained to pronounce himself on how one would fatten domestic animals, he gives an absolutely hilarious and vivid view of the modern (female) shopper's dilemma at the supermarket. It helps one apply all that repetitive and ultimately tedious nutritional advice.
A glance through Wikipedia informs us that archaeologists have garnered some one hundred Venus figures across the European territory. Some are quite famous, for example, the Willendorf figurine from Germany. Many have suggested that these were perhaps fertility goddesses of some kind. Weill is a practical fellow: these figures are homage to the evolving capacity to store fat on the human body. Thirty thousand years ago, settled agriculture was still in the future but human populations did consume wild grains and nuts in the summer months. They would also be eating fresh grasses - greens to us - while the cold winter months would force the body to use up what had been stored in the summer months and the clan relied on occasional meat meals from the hunt.
As someone who has studied religion, I would go further and suggest that these figures were more in the direction of medical records or even archived information. These women are naked at a time when humanity had long been clothed. There is no reason to assume a paganism that is verging on the pornographic.
They are as well well-endowed primarily on the lower parts of their bodies, a form of obesity that comes from eating starches and sugars. Perhaps this is how fat one had to be to even think about getting pregnant.
The Willendorf Venus, from Wikipedia.
Much clearer in MY mind thanks to Weill's book is what the distinction between various oils is. Less saturated oils have lower melting points and are better for us; they can be used more readily by the body. Researchers refer to Omega oils because the last carbon in a carbon chain is paired with the last letter of the Greek alphabet. An Omega-6 oil has a hydrogen atom missing on the sixth arm from the last, an Omega-three on the third. The first set of oils (available to us from grains) are used by the body to produce enzymes that store food energy as body fat; the second,( available from greens) are used to make hormones that liberate stored fat. Weill contends that the optimal balance between the two in our diets should be five to one; we are currently consuming twenty to one. Hence the obesity epidemic.
Weill also discusses at length the issue of how the animals we consume are fed: there is no standard egg but what chickens will lay is a function of what they eat. Weill believes that the current planetary standardization of animal feed toward corn and soy to the detriment of local feed stuff (flax for France) is harmful because humans are consuming Omega-6 structures even though they believe they are eating well by consuming white meat.
It is hard for me to evaluate all the claims that are being made in his work but at least they make sense. An issue I will follow...
Saturday, September 22, 2007
The Internet
The first time I opened a computer: I had just set up Windows to run and it was my first experience with any computer - the thought occurred to me that Bill Gates was God. This was quite a blasphemous idea and I apologized to Heaven for thinking it but the wonder of the computer and all it makes possible was very real. And computer culture is an achievement of the baby boomer generation - those of us who think of ourselves as a group, who have lived all our lives as supernumerary ruffians and rockers with aspirations to genius.
I am calling my blog Doxa - the Greek word for 'opinion' - and the word is not always a compliment. Doxa is often opposed to logos - knowledge - and I have never proffered an opinion I did not have doubts about. Indeed I seldom open my mouth without feeling like a complete idiot. Knowledge is such a wonderful thing, solid and true. It is, however, not proprietary: it doesn't belong to anyone in particular and cannot be considered an aspect of personality, what makes an individual unique. Doxa, on the other hand - the weird and wonderful world of personal prejudice, slant, view and experience - is the mark of an individual. Doxa it is!Those who create a personal web presence through chat use a fractured language that is very creative. I'm not going to use this mode of expression but would rather stick to the tried-and-true grammatically correct. Chat is fun but it degenerates quickly into pornography. There is sexual expression on the web - why should anyone be surprised about that - but it is sterile. Not for me... Maybe the odd emoticon once in a while :-)
Parenthesis: This 'not for me' position in the last paragraph sounds too rigid but it is meant with the greatest openness. Slang or cute expressions without the presence of the speaker is very poor in content: some very nice people communicate on the web but the tone is often that of a single voice, lost in space. I want to avoid that.
The written word has its own limitations as expression of self. 'Not for me' is the kind of thing I would never say in a real situation. I find it insulting, impolite, I do not like it when people say it to me. Yet when time comes to express an idea, there it is, part of my tool kit. I have a vague image of someone I know who thinks like that as I use it. I'm not sure whether this is a predominantly feminine experience but I often feel like I am expressing other people in my writings more than myself because of this: the picture puzzle I end up creating -my current doxa - is all mine, with consequences attending. But the elements are those of my environment.
Wikipedia is pure genius. One gets the absolute beginner view on anything on demand , and if something is not clear in one language, one merely skips to another. The NASA site allowed me to track the international space station with enough accuracy to see it go by at night; looking at the stars has been a new experience since then. GRAPH has allowed me to finally understand all that math that I have felt guilty about most of my life: sine(x) looks like this, 2sine(x) looks that, and here is sine(2x). At last...
MP3 music sounds like what it is: a tin drum and Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer's Night's Dream on midi is archiving for Mars, at best. (I am a real musician). I wouldn't mind hearing a Bach fugue done by a computer, however, and I listen to electronic music when working at the keyboard (for short periods: it clears the mind).
To sign off: a blog, I have concluded, is a spiritual quest, a means of sharing consciousness with others in a disinterested fashion. I hope to blog-in on a daily basis, post a little something everyday. Keeping a very public journal does force one to think of protecting one's privacy, though.
Let's see how it goes.
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