Back for two seconds, peeps. Just long enough to share an absolutely lovely piece of poetry, composed in the main by my brother and I.
At supper, the family was discussing hackneyed poetry and my brother said that under no circumstances could the line, “The rain hides my tears,” be considered hackneyed, as it expressed too ineffable an emotion. At least that was what he would have said if he hadn’t started laughing in the middle. We then proceeded to compose the following glorious poem, trading line for line:
The rain hides my tears,
The thunderclouds represent my fears,
The moon through the clouds leers,
I am mocked by my peers,
I am the son of a parent who had too many beers,
I am only one of society’s cogs and gears.
At this point in time my sister helpfully inserted:
Alas, I wish I could plug my ears.
This cutting criticism of our innermost feelings and our creativity was intolerable:
Your mocking scorn, it sears,
My brother made a gallant attempt to return to the poem:
My death draws near, it appears,
...but our dad ended it with a climactic final line:
My head is cut off by a giant pair of shears.
We should totally publish in Poetry.
31 January 2010
Politeness Wins The Confidence Of Princes (And Me)
Extra, extra, this just in! There are polite people on the nets!
I am having a discussion in the comments section of my last post, and some people are radically disagreeing with my position, yet everyone is maintaining decorum. There’s been no name-calling, no swearing, no unreasoning flaming... I confess myself amazed! I think a little bit of my faith in humanity has been restored; I’ve never seen a conversation such as the one we are having actually be a conversation before. Usually it’s just people that refuse to listen to each other talking at the air. But we have clearly reasoned arguments on both sides!
I do so love talking with intelligent, polite people.
I am having a discussion in the comments section of my last post, and some people are radically disagreeing with my position, yet everyone is maintaining decorum. There’s been no name-calling, no swearing, no unreasoning flaming... I confess myself amazed! I think a little bit of my faith in humanity has been restored; I’ve never seen a conversation such as the one we are having actually be a conversation before. Usually it’s just people that refuse to listen to each other talking at the air. But we have clearly reasoned arguments on both sides!
I do so love talking with intelligent, polite people.
30 January 2010
The Return of the Ape-Man (yet again)
Hello everyone! It’s the weekend! I love the weekend because I have more time to study without worrying about working. Have I just revealed what an interesting life I lead? Oh well. When I have my degree, I will become a world-famous code-cracker. During the course of my career, I will be hired by the government to work in the intelligence community. In my spare time, I will decode the Voynich manuscript, and using the secrets found within, I will be able to alter the fabric of reality so that superheroes actually exist!
Why has this become my new goal? I was reading a superhero webcomic. This one, in fact. Heroes Inc. It’s written by Scott Austin, an American from Scandinavia who is also part Cherokee who lives in Finland. The Cherokee must have emigrated to Scandinavia (an unspecified country) and then had a kid who emigrated back, got citizenship, didn’t like it, and scooted for Finland, near as I can figure.
Ok, so I don’t get it either. But in any case. The comic is as a whole very well done. Beautiful drawing and colouring (most times), plot on the upper end of webcomics and superhero webcomics especially, Obama is super-whitified… oh, yeah, and this brings me around to something that stuck out at me like a sore thumb. Besides the white Obama. (Compare skin tone, did he even use a different colour for shading the white dudes?)
This guy is working with old-school comic heroes. To keep true to form, there’s bound to be a bit of hangover racist styling in character design. I can ignore bad physics (and chemistry and math and biology), jeans that hug every curve, women that don’t age at all like women really age (or like the men do), muscles showing through clothes that should never be that pliable, and so forth. It’s superheroes.
At the same time, he’s made changes in places. Look at Blue Buck. Blue Buck looks like a white dude. He’s Cherokee. The only thing that indicates his Native American-ness is a blue feather hanging from his helmet. (You can’t be Native American without a feather.) He isn’t one of those firey redskins, say from Disney or something. He is updated for modern sensibilities.
Now, there is a black dude, and a key point here is that he is, as far as I can tell, not a golden age hero. He’s new, invented for this comic. The black dude is called Lawrence, and… I missed if he has another name. I guess his superhero power bit is more an innate part of him than the rest. Or the government just doesn’t care if anyone knows who he is, he can shift for himself, deflecting all the flack that must have come his way at one point.
Lawrence has the very nice superpower of hulking out. There’s another character that fights for the Nazis (the bad guys, fortunately) who has the same power. Here he is.
Ignoring that all the black men I ever saw in comics (and, if you would like to argue that there are some that are not this way, I am sure you are right: but all the popular, visible ones that I know are this way, which tells you something) have some kind of power that revolves about super-improvement to “natural” characteristics—e.g. strength, speed, or connection to animals—Lawrence has bad luck with his superpower. Lawrence has the unenviable capability of turning into a giant monkey. Yes, a monkey. Look. Monkey.
Now, that big white dude seems a bit short on brain-bits, to be fair. But honestly, a giant monkey? Lawrence SMASH! Savagely. Look, people even notice. Him savage. I wonder if it’s because he is a savage? Black people always are less cultured than everyone else!
You can’t even recognise him. He becomes inhuman. Just a great big ape; there are no features on his tiny little head that bear any resemblance to what he used to look like as a human. Doubt me? Here he is, old. (All black men look like Samuel L. Jackson.) Here he is, young. The white dude, on the other hand, is definitely human. Big, but no elongated, knuckle-dragging arms, no pea-sized head, no instinctive savagery.
The question that I wonder is: was Lawrence designed this way on purpose, or was Scott just so used to seeing the entirety of black men in comics this way that it was actually accidental? And which would be sadder?
Why has this become my new goal? I was reading a superhero webcomic. This one, in fact. Heroes Inc. It’s written by Scott Austin, an American from Scandinavia who is also part Cherokee who lives in Finland. The Cherokee must have emigrated to Scandinavia (an unspecified country) and then had a kid who emigrated back, got citizenship, didn’t like it, and scooted for Finland, near as I can figure.
Ok, so I don’t get it either. But in any case. The comic is as a whole very well done. Beautiful drawing and colouring (most times), plot on the upper end of webcomics and superhero webcomics especially, Obama is super-whitified… oh, yeah, and this brings me around to something that stuck out at me like a sore thumb. Besides the white Obama. (Compare skin tone, did he even use a different colour for shading the white dudes?)
This guy is working with old-school comic heroes. To keep true to form, there’s bound to be a bit of hangover racist styling in character design. I can ignore bad physics (and chemistry and math and biology), jeans that hug every curve, women that don’t age at all like women really age (or like the men do), muscles showing through clothes that should never be that pliable, and so forth. It’s superheroes.
At the same time, he’s made changes in places. Look at Blue Buck. Blue Buck looks like a white dude. He’s Cherokee. The only thing that indicates his Native American-ness is a blue feather hanging from his helmet. (You can’t be Native American without a feather.) He isn’t one of those firey redskins, say from Disney or something. He is updated for modern sensibilities.
Now, there is a black dude, and a key point here is that he is, as far as I can tell, not a golden age hero. He’s new, invented for this comic. The black dude is called Lawrence, and… I missed if he has another name. I guess his superhero power bit is more an innate part of him than the rest. Or the government just doesn’t care if anyone knows who he is, he can shift for himself, deflecting all the flack that must have come his way at one point.
Lawrence has the very nice superpower of hulking out. There’s another character that fights for the Nazis (the bad guys, fortunately) who has the same power. Here he is.
Ignoring that all the black men I ever saw in comics (and, if you would like to argue that there are some that are not this way, I am sure you are right: but all the popular, visible ones that I know are this way, which tells you something) have some kind of power that revolves about super-improvement to “natural” characteristics—e.g. strength, speed, or connection to animals—Lawrence has bad luck with his superpower. Lawrence has the unenviable capability of turning into a giant monkey. Yes, a monkey. Look. Monkey.
Now, that big white dude seems a bit short on brain-bits, to be fair. But honestly, a giant monkey? Lawrence SMASH! Savagely. Look, people even notice. Him savage. I wonder if it’s because he is a savage? Black people always are less cultured than everyone else!
You can’t even recognise him. He becomes inhuman. Just a great big ape; there are no features on his tiny little head that bear any resemblance to what he used to look like as a human. Doubt me? Here he is, old. (All black men look like Samuel L. Jackson.) Here he is, young. The white dude, on the other hand, is definitely human. Big, but no elongated, knuckle-dragging arms, no pea-sized head, no instinctive savagery.
The question that I wonder is: was Lawrence designed this way on purpose, or was Scott just so used to seeing the entirety of black men in comics this way that it was actually accidental? And which would be sadder?
25 January 2010
Bad News And Me
I received some very bad news today. I did not break my diet and eat to comfort myself, as has happened in the past, and I collected myself so that I appeared normal when teaching, and I have already formulated four plans, ranked in order of desirability, to deal with the problem. I am now carrying on with my life. I am proud of myself.
Also, to my friends (you know who you are) and my sister: I could not have done any of this without you. I am immensely grateful.
Also, to my friends (you know who you are) and my sister: I could not have done any of this without you. I am immensely grateful.
25 December 2009
The Cake Is A Lie
I made my brother's birthday cake today (took me only five hours *die*) and I have to say:
This was a triumph! I'm making a note here, HUGE SUCCESS!
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction with how this cake turned out. Anyway, it was great: so delicious and moist!
This was the recipe I used:
one 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix
one can prepared coconut pecan frosting
3/4 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
one cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup butter or margarine
1 and 2/3 cups granulated sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
Don't forget garnishes such as:
fish shaped crackers
fish shaped candies
fish shaped solid waste
fish shaped dirt
fish shaped ethel benzine
pull n' peel licorice
fish shaped volatile organic compounds
and sediment shaped sediment
candy coated peanut butter pieces; shaped like fish
one cup lemon juice
alpha resins
unsaturated polyester resin
fiberglass surface resins
and volatile malted milk impoundments
9 large egg yolks
12 medium geosynthetic membranes
one cup granulated sugar
an entry called: "How To Kill Someone With Your Bare Hands"
2 cups rhubarb; sliced
2/3 cup granulated rhubarb
1 tablespoon all-purpose rhubarb
1 teaspoon grated orange rhubarb
3 tablespoons rhubarb; on fire
1 large rhubarb
1 cross-bore hole electromagnetic imaging rhubarb
2 tablespoons rhubarb juice
adjustable aluminum head positioner
slaughter electric needle injector
cordless electric needle injector
injector needle driver
injector needle gun
cranial caps
And it contains proven preservatives, deep penetration agents, and gas and odor control chemicals that will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue.
This was a triumph! I'm making a note here, HUGE SUCCESS!
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction with how this cake turned out. Anyway, it was great: so delicious and moist!
This was the recipe I used:
one 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix
one can prepared coconut pecan frosting
3/4 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
one cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup butter or margarine
1 and 2/3 cups granulated sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
Don't forget garnishes such as:
fish shaped crackers
fish shaped candies
fish shaped solid waste
fish shaped dirt
fish shaped ethel benzine
pull n' peel licorice
fish shaped volatile organic compounds
and sediment shaped sediment
candy coated peanut butter pieces; shaped like fish
one cup lemon juice
alpha resins
unsaturated polyester resin
fiberglass surface resins
and volatile malted milk impoundments
9 large egg yolks
12 medium geosynthetic membranes
one cup granulated sugar
an entry called: "How To Kill Someone With Your Bare Hands"
2 cups rhubarb; sliced
2/3 cup granulated rhubarb
1 tablespoon all-purpose rhubarb
1 teaspoon grated orange rhubarb
3 tablespoons rhubarb; on fire
1 large rhubarb
1 cross-bore hole electromagnetic imaging rhubarb
2 tablespoons rhubarb juice
adjustable aluminum head positioner
slaughter electric needle injector
cordless electric needle injector
injector needle driver
injector needle gun
cranial caps
And it contains proven preservatives, deep penetration agents, and gas and odor control chemicals that will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue.
09 October 2009
Socks And Sandals; Or, Fashion Smells
Today, I noticed my Real Analysis professor wearing socks with his sandals.
Le gasp, right? I mean, what a dork! You can totally tell from ten miles away that he's a math professor, because, like, only a completely fashion blind person would ever pull a stunt like that. And they were white socks with black sandals. It just keeps getting worse!
Perhaps it is a sign that I myself am a math dweeb, but my first thought on noticing his white socks was not the amused and condescending-to-math-enthusiasts disapprobation that a non-math-dweeb friend of mine expressed. I thought first, "Wow those are clean!" Then I thought it was very considerate of him to wear them.
Why would I think that, when I risk going blind from the appalling fashion faux pas? Because feet smell. When people walk around in southern California for the better part of a day, their feet sweat and smell even more.
And when fashion-conscious people neglect to wear socks with their sandals, they treat everyone around them to the trendy and chic toe-farts emanating from their voguish footwear.
Yeesh, gross.
Le gasp, right? I mean, what a dork! You can totally tell from ten miles away that he's a math professor, because, like, only a completely fashion blind person would ever pull a stunt like that. And they were white socks with black sandals. It just keeps getting worse!
Perhaps it is a sign that I myself am a math dweeb, but my first thought on noticing his white socks was not the amused and condescending-to-math-enthusiasts disapprobation that a non-math-dweeb friend of mine expressed. I thought first, "Wow those are clean!" Then I thought it was very considerate of him to wear them.
Why would I think that, when I risk going blind from the appalling fashion faux pas? Because feet smell. When people walk around in southern California for the better part of a day, their feet sweat and smell even more.
And when fashion-conscious people neglect to wear socks with their sandals, they treat everyone around them to the trendy and chic toe-farts emanating from their voguish footwear.
Yeesh, gross.
08 October 2009
Of Such A Malefactress As This
I’m back, after a year. I’m not sorry. Welcome again, dear reader!
I’m supposed to be blogging about my vacation. A couple months after it happened. But I’m frightfully lazy when it comes to condensing a whole month of my life into words, so I’ll get around to that eventually. In installments, here and there. Yep. That way, I can make people who read my blog just to find out what I said about them at least skim the rest of my stuff. You shall be inundated with the trivia of my life.
This post is to inform everyone of the details of my car accident that I just had. Yes, just, like three hours ago or so. I’m writing this as I wait for the cops to show up, actually, so it was about 40 minutes ago, but I won’t post it until I get home. I’ve made a note to myself to carry a book in my car at all times in the event of this sort of thing ever happening again. CHP is slow, and having nothing to do but sit and think about an accident sucks. Imagine big hairy lion testicles, with your lips firmly clamped around them. That’s what this is like.
Anyway, the accident. It was like this. I was minding my own business, just going along in my own lane, when suddenly a big-rig flopped over right in front of me. Naturally, I braked and attempted to steer to the side so as not to hit it. All my efforts were in vain, however, as the top of the truck came off and thousands of crates of bananas spilled free: the force of the impact shot them free of their skins and they hurtled at my windshield, smashing and obscuring my vision. The skins were sucked under my tires and there was a hilarious slapstick moment while the wheels spun ineffectually on the banana peels. Then I hit the big-rig, my car pinwheeling comically into a pile of fruit as I bounced off.
What? That’s really how it was!
Ok, fine, it wasn’t. I hit a car on an off-ramp from the freeway. Since I rear-ended him, for some reason this makes it my fault. I completely fail to understand this, I must confess. He was in my way. It’s his fault for being there.
I have determined the positive and negative sides of this accident as I wait for CHP. It’s been 45 minutes since I placed the call now, so I’ve had a bit to think.
Positives:
1) This will teach me to be a less arrogant driver (but not less angry).
2) The other driver was not injured.
3) His car did not suffer more than a dent about 3 centimetres wide in the back bumper, and the back bumper moving down about two millimetres. Very inexpensive, considering what it could have been.
4) He was a very nice man about it. Really very gracious, considering that it wasmy his fault.
5) He was driving a company car on work business. That means, should he change his mind about being injured, worker’s comp will trump private insurance in paying for it. Phew!
Negatives:
1) My insurance rates will go up.
2) My insurance rates will go up.
3) My insurance rates will go up.
4) I no longer have a perfect at-fault-accident-free record.
5) My insurance rates will go up.
6) My car is totalled. I have to explain this one: it’s not actually totalled as in un-drivable. It’s totalled in that the repairs to fix it are more than the car is worth, so my insurance will not pay for the fixups. They’ll pay me the value of the car. Which is not much. Woe is me!
7) My insurance rates will go up.
Ok, so that was as far as I got before CHP finally arrived. I’ve thought more about the accident since them. Yes, I am currently fixated on it. Wouldn’t you be?
The other guy left before the accident report was filed. CHP took too long getting there: get this, they drove past the accident to the next exit, saw no one there, and figured we had left. It was only when I called to find out why the heck it was taking so long that they went “Oops, haha, our bad” and sent an officer to the right place. So the other guy had left by then. Which is great for me, because if he could drive off and didn’t feel injured enough to wait to tell the officer, it’ll be better for me if he changes his mind about being injured later.
You may think I seem paranoid on this point, but I was in an accident where another car ran into me. It was in a garage, at maybe 2 miles an hour, and all that happened was her tire left a streak in the paint of my fender. That person started saying it was me that ran into her and oh how she huuuuuurt. After she had told me she was fine, and the accident was her fault, and it was a ridiculous little accident anyway. 2 miles an hour cannot hurt anyone! That went away without a fuss once my insurance company found out that she was uninsured and unlicensed.
But my sister was in an accident where the guy claimed millions and millions of dollars of injury, and she was at fault in that one. Her lawyers had to hire a private eye to follow the guy forever and prove he was full of poopy before that went away, and he still got a couple hundred grand anyway. (His lawyer cost more than that so he ended up in the hole. This is called karmic revenge, I believe.)
So, I’m very paranoid that people will sue me if I run into them with my car, which is one reason why until today I have never run into anyone with my car. I’ve done it on a bicycle, though. A fun past-time, running over people with my bicycle.
What was my point here? Oh, right. The guy left, so he doesn’t have a good case if he tries to sue. That was my point, yes. And the accident report will back me up on this.
Oh wait! No, it won’t, because the officer didn’t want to take one, when he finally showed up an hour and a half later. I couldn’t force him to write one, so I had to leave without that nice secure feeling that I did my bit to cover my ass. It made me sad.
To finish this post, I will just remark that I am being punished out of proportion to my crime. I have to take California public transportation until the damage to my car is assessed, seeing as how it’s not legal for me to drive at the moment. It’s that headlight dangling by the wheel. But after the assessment, I have the option of either continuing to take public transportation (and sponge rides off dutiful family at 6 in the morning two days of the week since pubtrans hasn’t got any busses that early) or riding around in my car which I can’t afford to fix properly and so will have duct-taped into legality. And here was me thinking there wasn’t anything that could be done to my car to make it look more white trash than it already was.
Under the circumstances, is there anything that could be more humiliating? I might as well stitch a big red A for Accident into all my collars.
I’m supposed to be blogging about my vacation. A couple months after it happened. But I’m frightfully lazy when it comes to condensing a whole month of my life into words, so I’ll get around to that eventually. In installments, here and there. Yep. That way, I can make people who read my blog just to find out what I said about them at least skim the rest of my stuff. You shall be inundated with the trivia of my life.
This post is to inform everyone of the details of my car accident that I just had. Yes, just, like three hours ago or so. I’m writing this as I wait for the cops to show up, actually, so it was about 40 minutes ago, but I won’t post it until I get home. I’ve made a note to myself to carry a book in my car at all times in the event of this sort of thing ever happening again. CHP is slow, and having nothing to do but sit and think about an accident sucks. Imagine big hairy lion testicles, with your lips firmly clamped around them. That’s what this is like.
Anyway, the accident. It was like this. I was minding my own business, just going along in my own lane, when suddenly a big-rig flopped over right in front of me. Naturally, I braked and attempted to steer to the side so as not to hit it. All my efforts were in vain, however, as the top of the truck came off and thousands of crates of bananas spilled free: the force of the impact shot them free of their skins and they hurtled at my windshield, smashing and obscuring my vision. The skins were sucked under my tires and there was a hilarious slapstick moment while the wheels spun ineffectually on the banana peels. Then I hit the big-rig, my car pinwheeling comically into a pile of fruit as I bounced off.
What? That’s really how it was!
Ok, fine, it wasn’t. I hit a car on an off-ramp from the freeway. Since I rear-ended him, for some reason this makes it my fault. I completely fail to understand this, I must confess. He was in my way. It’s his fault for being there.
I have determined the positive and negative sides of this accident as I wait for CHP. It’s been 45 minutes since I placed the call now, so I’ve had a bit to think.
Positives:
1) This will teach me to be a less arrogant driver (but not less angry).
2) The other driver was not injured.
3) His car did not suffer more than a dent about 3 centimetres wide in the back bumper, and the back bumper moving down about two millimetres. Very inexpensive, considering what it could have been.
4) He was a very nice man about it. Really very gracious, considering that it was
5) He was driving a company car on work business. That means, should he change his mind about being injured, worker’s comp will trump private insurance in paying for it. Phew!
Negatives:
1) My insurance rates will go up.
2) My insurance rates will go up.
3) My insurance rates will go up.
4) I no longer have a perfect at-fault-accident-free record.
5) My insurance rates will go up.
6) My car is totalled. I have to explain this one: it’s not actually totalled as in un-drivable. It’s totalled in that the repairs to fix it are more than the car is worth, so my insurance will not pay for the fixups. They’ll pay me the value of the car. Which is not much. Woe is me!
7) My insurance rates will go up.
Ok, so that was as far as I got before CHP finally arrived. I’ve thought more about the accident since them. Yes, I am currently fixated on it. Wouldn’t you be?
The other guy left before the accident report was filed. CHP took too long getting there: get this, they drove past the accident to the next exit, saw no one there, and figured we had left. It was only when I called to find out why the heck it was taking so long that they went “Oops, haha, our bad” and sent an officer to the right place. So the other guy had left by then. Which is great for me, because if he could drive off and didn’t feel injured enough to wait to tell the officer, it’ll be better for me if he changes his mind about being injured later.
You may think I seem paranoid on this point, but I was in an accident where another car ran into me. It was in a garage, at maybe 2 miles an hour, and all that happened was her tire left a streak in the paint of my fender. That person started saying it was me that ran into her and oh how she huuuuuurt. After she had told me she was fine, and the accident was her fault, and it was a ridiculous little accident anyway. 2 miles an hour cannot hurt anyone! That went away without a fuss once my insurance company found out that she was uninsured and unlicensed.
But my sister was in an accident where the guy claimed millions and millions of dollars of injury, and she was at fault in that one. Her lawyers had to hire a private eye to follow the guy forever and prove he was full of poopy before that went away, and he still got a couple hundred grand anyway. (His lawyer cost more than that so he ended up in the hole. This is called karmic revenge, I believe.)
So, I’m very paranoid that people will sue me if I run into them with my car, which is one reason why until today I have never run into anyone with my car. I’ve done it on a bicycle, though. A fun past-time, running over people with my bicycle.
What was my point here? Oh, right. The guy left, so he doesn’t have a good case if he tries to sue. That was my point, yes. And the accident report will back me up on this.
Oh wait! No, it won’t, because the officer didn’t want to take one, when he finally showed up an hour and a half later. I couldn’t force him to write one, so I had to leave without that nice secure feeling that I did my bit to cover my ass. It made me sad.
To finish this post, I will just remark that I am being punished out of proportion to my crime. I have to take California public transportation until the damage to my car is assessed, seeing as how it’s not legal for me to drive at the moment. It’s that headlight dangling by the wheel. But after the assessment, I have the option of either continuing to take public transportation (and sponge rides off dutiful family at 6 in the morning two days of the week since pubtrans hasn’t got any busses that early) or riding around in my car which I can’t afford to fix properly and so will have duct-taped into legality. And here was me thinking there wasn’t anything that could be done to my car to make it look more white trash than it already was.
Under the circumstances, is there anything that could be more humiliating? I might as well stitch a big red A for Accident into all my collars.
03 November 2008
I Return (For Now...)
My last blog post was… a while ago. Many moons. So many, in fact, that I don’t remember how many precisely. As I write these posts offline and I’m too lazy to go and check, I’ll have to settle for inaccuracy. But after all those months, I’m back. And I’m writing about something interesting. I have an original topic to write about. Something no one has ever written about on their blog before. Ever.
I’m writing about the movies I just watched (by which I really mean watched two days ago).
Scintillating, no? No? Aw, man… Eh, well, original or not, it’s what I’m writing about, since I found a logical flaw with my opinion on abortion and my arguments about homosexual marriage aren’t fully concise yet. And neither of those other two topics were really original anyway, were they?
All right, so, I saw The Day After Tomorrow. What a barrel of laughs! First-rate comedy. My little brother told me afterwards it was a disaster movie, but I maintain it’s definitely a comedy.
I mean, there’s these huge tornadoes, monstrous things, touching down in Los Angeles all over the place. And helicopters are still flying?! Between the funnels? Obviously they did it for laughs. It’s the same thing with the reporters calmly filming these giant whirlwinds that are stripping high-rises of their exteriors and killing people around them left and right. We’re supposed to laugh at the absurdity. They even put a little inside joke in there, just for L.A. residents; LAX international airport—without any planes touching down or taking off, and no traffic, even though the tornadoes literally arose out of the blue within minutes.
And there were the wolves. And the fact that one of the main characters was married to a woman trying to impersonate Michael Jackson. And the Little Cancer Patient, the impersonator’s shaven-headed surrogate son who survives the end of the world. (By the way, have we never heard of triage, people? You know, the practice of culling people in a desperate situation, giving aid to those that will actually live before wasting time on walking dead boys? Except, of course, he couldn’t walk. He could lie in his bed like a very endearing but useless lump.) And the fact that the northern hemisphere rather suddenly goes subzero while the southern hemisphere is… untouched? There was simply so much put in the movie that strained credulity that they must have done it on purpose, as some kind of weird humour.
There was also the blatant preaching about global warming… don’t get me wrong, I think that greenhouse gasses are bad and so on. I just think that no one has any idea what will happen from it, and I think that this sort of climate change has happened before (little Ice Age, anyone?), and—you know, I’m going to delay my thoughts on global warming for another blog post lest this one get too long. I’m already at 477 words and counting. But the preaching and the heavy-handed irony—I just had to laugh at it.
At the same time as this was a comedy, however, it was also a tragedy. They. Burned. Books. I have never been as traumatised by a movie before. Ever. It was worse than Hostel. It was worse than Dungeons & Dragons. It was worse than Pirates!
But that’s not what I really had to say on it. I was really going to talk about something I don’t think the writers thought about when they wrote their script. Near the end of the movie, only the southernmost parts of the southern states are not covered in ice. The surviving Americans have crossed the Rio Grande and are refugees in Mexico. They would be illegal immigrants except that Mexico allowed them access after the President agreed to forgive all Latin American debt. I thought that was quite generous of the Mexican President to bargain like that on behalf of all of Latin America but at the same time I think he was quite stupid—he should have held out for more, what with the annihilation of all Americans as his bargaining chip and all.
But at any rate, there is a huge refugee camp in Mexico. It’s gigantic; it makes Hartisheik and Dadaab look like a family camping trip. And the president has set up shop there. Yes, that’s right, President not-Cheney (formerly Vice President not-Cheney, but he became president after President not-Bush died) is also a refugee. He, however, still commands the military, which saved some helicopters, and at the end of the story he sends them to New York to get the man who tried to warn him about everything. Oh, and anybody else who might have survived. Never minding how the devil they got there all the way from Mexico without refuelling (in Chinooks or similar models, too, which are supposed to have a range of about 500 miles…) or how they plan to get back, the President, in a televised broadcast that goes out exactly as the surviving people are being rescued, says that he’s done this. Specifically, he says, “I’ve ordered an immediate search and rescue mission to bring them home.”
Home. It sounds absolutely wonderful, doesn’t it? They survived, they’re alive, they’re going to go home. Everyone can be happy.
Except “home” is in freaking Mexico. What gives President not-Cheney the right to welcome them “home” to Mexico? Home implies ownership. It implies a sense of belonging, and so on and so forth. If he were simply welcoming them to the refugee camp, welcoming them back to the remnants of American society, that would be one thing. Or if he were anyone else but the leader of the aforementioned remnants, perhaps he could get away with welcoming them “home” to Mexico. But when it’s the President of the US, it seems a bit presumptuous to welcome anyone home to Mexico.
I wonder if the writers thought about that before they wrote it? Was it a feel-good line, or did they purposefully stick a statement with such shades of Manifest Destiny into the movie?
This all goes along with my pet theory about what happened the day after The Day After Tomorrow, by the way. I think that after America is frozen, the remnants of the US take over, or at least attempt to take over, northern Mexico. Yep, I think we just invade them and try to take the territory. Because President not-Cheney’s gratitude for Mexican hospitality aside, I don’t think Americans are equipped to become second-class citizens the way we make immigrants second-class in our society. I think we’d definitely have an armed uprising in that sort of situation.
Something that also occurred to me is that Catholicism and Islam would be the shapers of the future in the days after the end of the movie. White westerners being all dead (Europe was frozen too, see), China, India, Japan, &c. &c. being wiped out… We’ve got the Middle East left, and Latin America and Africa. I would love to see how that goes down, and what country fills the vacancy left by America.
But enough about The Day After Tomorrow. On to the second movie, Léon, The Professional. It’s about a hitman who takes in this girl whose entire family was shot to death right next door to him. She survived and is now going to be trained by him. And stuff. It’s really quite implausible.
The main thing I got from that movie is “never, under any circumstances, be poor in New York.” I mean, damn. People shoot off guns and everyone looks the other way? The cops try to kill people with RPGs? Holy cow. That leaves off obviously psychotic people in high positions in law enforcement with equally obvious thugs popping in and out of his office and… hmm. Well, that sounds kind of like Bow Street in the beginning but then again, this is America in the age of lawsuits and ass-covering. I really don’t think that someone quite so blatantly crazy would be high up in the D.E.A.
So there were some major flaws. But with a willing suspension of disbelief, everything works out. And it was quite a pretty movie; all the explosions were refreshingly noisy and destructive and the guns were awesome. Also Jean Reno and Natalie Portman did a fantastic job. Absolutely stunning; you could really believe that they were who they were purporting to be. Gary Oldman, however, managed to do something that I never really expected he would be able to do: he gave me to know the reason he was picked to play Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies. I always thought he was exceptionally ugly for someone chosen to play a man described as being devilishly handsome, and I never understood that particular casting. Until now. He’s actually handsome in Léon! If quite insane…
I think I would have liked the movie, though, except for two things. I think the first is fairly obvious. The main character’s a hitman. Who can root for a hitman? Sure, he’s nice to the girl and he saves her and whatnot, but… he’s a hitman. His entire life revolves around killing people he doesn’t know so that he can be paid. And not even very well: one person is worth $5000. That’s the price of a life. Cheap, isn’t it? And you know he’s killed many, many people because he’s got massive credit stocked up with the mob boss (theoretically; I’d like to see him try to actually extract his money…). And he teaches the girl how to heartlessly kill people, too. Sins of the surrogate fathers or something, I suppose.
So really, how can I seriously connect with him and root for him?
I can’t. Which brings up the second problem. I can’t really connect with the little girl either. She’s twelve years old, bloodthirsty in the extreme, and can’t wait to lose her virginity. She had to walk right past her slaughtered family without batting an eye and has been beaten and stuff, but… twelve years old and she wants to kill people she doesn’t even know just for practice and she wants to have sex with a man a minimum of four times her age?
Sorry, I can’t connect with that.
No matter how tragic the back-story, there are just some things I can’t excuse. Killing with no motive but money is one of them.
So there you have it. My thoughts on these two movies, both watched and written about when I should have been studying for Algebra… oh well. Can’t study all the time, no?
I wouldn’t see either of them if you haven’t already.
I’m writing about the movies I just watched (by which I really mean watched two days ago).
Scintillating, no? No? Aw, man… Eh, well, original or not, it’s what I’m writing about, since I found a logical flaw with my opinion on abortion and my arguments about homosexual marriage aren’t fully concise yet. And neither of those other two topics were really original anyway, were they?
All right, so, I saw The Day After Tomorrow. What a barrel of laughs! First-rate comedy. My little brother told me afterwards it was a disaster movie, but I maintain it’s definitely a comedy.
I mean, there’s these huge tornadoes, monstrous things, touching down in Los Angeles all over the place. And helicopters are still flying?! Between the funnels? Obviously they did it for laughs. It’s the same thing with the reporters calmly filming these giant whirlwinds that are stripping high-rises of their exteriors and killing people around them left and right. We’re supposed to laugh at the absurdity. They even put a little inside joke in there, just for L.A. residents; LAX international airport—without any planes touching down or taking off, and no traffic, even though the tornadoes literally arose out of the blue within minutes.
And there were the wolves. And the fact that one of the main characters was married to a woman trying to impersonate Michael Jackson. And the Little Cancer Patient, the impersonator’s shaven-headed surrogate son who survives the end of the world. (By the way, have we never heard of triage, people? You know, the practice of culling people in a desperate situation, giving aid to those that will actually live before wasting time on walking dead boys? Except, of course, he couldn’t walk. He could lie in his bed like a very endearing but useless lump.) And the fact that the northern hemisphere rather suddenly goes subzero while the southern hemisphere is… untouched? There was simply so much put in the movie that strained credulity that they must have done it on purpose, as some kind of weird humour.
There was also the blatant preaching about global warming… don’t get me wrong, I think that greenhouse gasses are bad and so on. I just think that no one has any idea what will happen from it, and I think that this sort of climate change has happened before (little Ice Age, anyone?), and—you know, I’m going to delay my thoughts on global warming for another blog post lest this one get too long. I’m already at 477 words and counting. But the preaching and the heavy-handed irony—I just had to laugh at it.
At the same time as this was a comedy, however, it was also a tragedy. They. Burned. Books. I have never been as traumatised by a movie before. Ever. It was worse than Hostel. It was worse than Dungeons & Dragons. It was worse than Pirates!
But that’s not what I really had to say on it. I was really going to talk about something I don’t think the writers thought about when they wrote their script. Near the end of the movie, only the southernmost parts of the southern states are not covered in ice. The surviving Americans have crossed the Rio Grande and are refugees in Mexico. They would be illegal immigrants except that Mexico allowed them access after the President agreed to forgive all Latin American debt. I thought that was quite generous of the Mexican President to bargain like that on behalf of all of Latin America but at the same time I think he was quite stupid—he should have held out for more, what with the annihilation of all Americans as his bargaining chip and all.
But at any rate, there is a huge refugee camp in Mexico. It’s gigantic; it makes Hartisheik and Dadaab look like a family camping trip. And the president has set up shop there. Yes, that’s right, President not-Cheney (formerly Vice President not-Cheney, but he became president after President not-Bush died) is also a refugee. He, however, still commands the military, which saved some helicopters, and at the end of the story he sends them to New York to get the man who tried to warn him about everything. Oh, and anybody else who might have survived. Never minding how the devil they got there all the way from Mexico without refuelling (in Chinooks or similar models, too, which are supposed to have a range of about 500 miles…) or how they plan to get back, the President, in a televised broadcast that goes out exactly as the surviving people are being rescued, says that he’s done this. Specifically, he says, “I’ve ordered an immediate search and rescue mission to bring them home.”
Home. It sounds absolutely wonderful, doesn’t it? They survived, they’re alive, they’re going to go home. Everyone can be happy.
Except “home” is in freaking Mexico. What gives President not-Cheney the right to welcome them “home” to Mexico? Home implies ownership. It implies a sense of belonging, and so on and so forth. If he were simply welcoming them to the refugee camp, welcoming them back to the remnants of American society, that would be one thing. Or if he were anyone else but the leader of the aforementioned remnants, perhaps he could get away with welcoming them “home” to Mexico. But when it’s the President of the US, it seems a bit presumptuous to welcome anyone home to Mexico.
I wonder if the writers thought about that before they wrote it? Was it a feel-good line, or did they purposefully stick a statement with such shades of Manifest Destiny into the movie?
This all goes along with my pet theory about what happened the day after The Day After Tomorrow, by the way. I think that after America is frozen, the remnants of the US take over, or at least attempt to take over, northern Mexico. Yep, I think we just invade them and try to take the territory. Because President not-Cheney’s gratitude for Mexican hospitality aside, I don’t think Americans are equipped to become second-class citizens the way we make immigrants second-class in our society. I think we’d definitely have an armed uprising in that sort of situation.
Something that also occurred to me is that Catholicism and Islam would be the shapers of the future in the days after the end of the movie. White westerners being all dead (Europe was frozen too, see), China, India, Japan, &c. &c. being wiped out… We’ve got the Middle East left, and Latin America and Africa. I would love to see how that goes down, and what country fills the vacancy left by America.
But enough about The Day After Tomorrow. On to the second movie, Léon, The Professional. It’s about a hitman who takes in this girl whose entire family was shot to death right next door to him. She survived and is now going to be trained by him. And stuff. It’s really quite implausible.
The main thing I got from that movie is “never, under any circumstances, be poor in New York.” I mean, damn. People shoot off guns and everyone looks the other way? The cops try to kill people with RPGs? Holy cow. That leaves off obviously psychotic people in high positions in law enforcement with equally obvious thugs popping in and out of his office and… hmm. Well, that sounds kind of like Bow Street in the beginning but then again, this is America in the age of lawsuits and ass-covering. I really don’t think that someone quite so blatantly crazy would be high up in the D.E.A.
So there were some major flaws. But with a willing suspension of disbelief, everything works out. And it was quite a pretty movie; all the explosions were refreshingly noisy and destructive and the guns were awesome. Also Jean Reno and Natalie Portman did a fantastic job. Absolutely stunning; you could really believe that they were who they were purporting to be. Gary Oldman, however, managed to do something that I never really expected he would be able to do: he gave me to know the reason he was picked to play Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies. I always thought he was exceptionally ugly for someone chosen to play a man described as being devilishly handsome, and I never understood that particular casting. Until now. He’s actually handsome in Léon! If quite insane…
I think I would have liked the movie, though, except for two things. I think the first is fairly obvious. The main character’s a hitman. Who can root for a hitman? Sure, he’s nice to the girl and he saves her and whatnot, but… he’s a hitman. His entire life revolves around killing people he doesn’t know so that he can be paid. And not even very well: one person is worth $5000. That’s the price of a life. Cheap, isn’t it? And you know he’s killed many, many people because he’s got massive credit stocked up with the mob boss (theoretically; I’d like to see him try to actually extract his money…). And he teaches the girl how to heartlessly kill people, too. Sins of the surrogate fathers or something, I suppose.
So really, how can I seriously connect with him and root for him?
I can’t. Which brings up the second problem. I can’t really connect with the little girl either. She’s twelve years old, bloodthirsty in the extreme, and can’t wait to lose her virginity. She had to walk right past her slaughtered family without batting an eye and has been beaten and stuff, but… twelve years old and she wants to kill people she doesn’t even know just for practice and she wants to have sex with a man a minimum of four times her age?
Sorry, I can’t connect with that.
No matter how tragic the back-story, there are just some things I can’t excuse. Killing with no motive but money is one of them.
So there you have it. My thoughts on these two movies, both watched and written about when I should have been studying for Algebra… oh well. Can’t study all the time, no?
I wouldn’t see either of them if you haven’t already.
01 June 2008
Sunday Scribblings: Curves; or, The Witch of Agnesi
I'm back after my work-induced hiatus! I read the prompt for this week’s Sunday Scribbling, and my first reaction was “what the hell?”
Not because it’s about curves, which is what it’s about, by the way. It was because of this sentence within the prompt: “In mathematics, the concept of a curve tries to capture the intuitive idea of a geometrical one-dimensional and continuous object.”
I wondered why it would have such an odd assortment of bolded words, plus things that are not continuous are called curves all the time around the math department at my university. So I, being the genius I am, went back to the prompt and discovered that the word “Winkipedia” was in fact a link to the Wikipedia article on curves. Then for no reason I thought of L’Hospital stealing Bernoulli’s work on curves, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion.
So I clicked the link and was taken to the Wikipedia article and, because I’m one of those special people who actually went and got a math degree, I understood this article. I knew exactly what it meant, except it was saying this bullshit stuff about curves. It was calling paths curves! The horror! And then I got to the part in the article where it says, Terminology is also not uniform. Often, topologists use the term "path" for what we are calling a curve, and "curve" for what we are calling the image of a curve. Aha! It all makes sense now! The fact that the article author doesn’t mention that most times the “curves” referred to are actually called “continuous mappings” is niggling but then again, it was probably an unemployed math graduate writing the article during unfilled spare time in the first place. You can’t expect too much.
But anyway, reading through the article, I see that the author pops down to the subject of the length of curves. I again disagree with his notation, since it’s much easier just to introduce the notion of polygonal paths over partitions of the [a,b] interval and go from there, but in any case, I can’t imagine anyone who didn’t already know this shit understanding it. It’s like out of nowhere he starts using supremums and Epsilon notation and mentioning Lipschitz-continuous and stuff. I don’t believe that supremums are generally introduced in undergrad math until upper division, and even then there’s usually three or four prerequisite upper division courses before you get there.
And then we get to the Curves in Differential Geometry section, and the author pulls manifolds out of the ass of mathematics, neglecting that you have to go through the mouth and esophagus and stomach and the entire rest of the gastrointestinal system to get there, and says it’s basic. Kind of makes you feel stupid if you don’t get it, doesn’t it?
This is a basic notion.
Well, yeah! Sure, that’s a basic notion! If you’ve spent four years of high school chugging through the mathematics programs to AP calculus and then a further four years in college devoted to a mathematics major and you took a topology course and 1) remembered what was said, 2) had a good enough teacher or book that you understood what was meant, 3) applied yourself to internalising it and 4) planned to continue on and make mathematics a part of your daily life. Then yes, it’s a basic notation.
But if you don’t fit that profile, it might as well be magical runes to you, mightn’t it?
Then I read further and the author casually mentions Ck, a notation and concept that was introduced to me in a course that was about half last-year BS (not BA, mind, BS, more rigorous degree) math students and about half graduate students. Oh yes. Basic. Moving on to Algebraic curves, there’s another basic notion, C(K). You’ll get bonus points from me if you can tell me the core difference between Ck and C(K). The last paragraph of this part looks mightily suspicious, like it was ripped from a textbook somewhere.
And the history of curves… dude. This part is full of half-assed shit. But whatever.
Moving on to more interesting topics than the criticism of the supercilious writing of one author by another equally supercilious one, let’s talk about how the Marquis de L’Hospital stole Bernoulli’s work! The great betrayal of one mathematician by another, scintillating accounts of how all of integral calculus was… all right, fine, it was early intellectual theft and L’Hospital got away with it because he was an aristocrat, so it was also the rich taking advantage of the poor. What else is new?
What about the Witch of Agnesi? The Witch of Agnesi, the curve yx2 = a2(a – y). It looks witchy, doesn’t it? The name arises from an interesting and quite disturbing story of repressed homosexuality and horrific murder.
Maria Agnesi, a young, disaffected woman who was the only daughter of Baron Ludmillio Agnesi, had learned to speak Italian, Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, German, and Hebrew by the time she was eleven. This unnerving display of intelligence frightened her father, and he forbade her to learn anything else. Higher knowledge was restricted from her, and she was locked in her room when it was discovered that she was secretly visiting the family library at nights and learning mathematics and physics.
She escaped from the prison her family had caged her in and fled the Agnesi estate and Italy entirely, disguising herself as a man and travelling to England. Here she caught the eye of a beautiful young noblewoman, who did not know that Maria was cross-dressing, and the two began a whirlwind romance that ended in marriage and, that night, shock and horror on the part of the noblewoman when she discovered that Maria was not, in fact, a man. Maria persuaded her to keep quiet and try and give the marriage a go, but in the end, the noblewoman was not able to persuade herself that Maria was the one for her. She fell in love with a nobleman and began to have an affair with him.
Unable to catch the eye of the woman she loved, Agnesi’s life went down the drain, and she once again had to flee when her wife’s paramour found out about her, this time right ahead of the hangman’s noose and charges of homosexuality and impersonating a man. She fled to Prussia, and it was here she first killed. About to be raped, she stabbed a man in his neck and he died. She carved the last equation she had learned before she left home, yx2 = a2(a – y), into his chest. She then began a murderous killing spree that spread across Prussia and Flanders, always carving that equation into the bodies of her victims. This equation, which looked mystical to people not in the know about math, and the knowledge that she was a woman (and of course in those times any woman capable of killing so many fine, superior men must by definition be in league with the Devil) inspired people to start calling her a witch.
When she was finally captured, she gave her name as Maria Agnesi and her last words before she was burned to death were “yx2 = a2(a – y).” She was actually silenced by an arrow to the throat because people thought she was calling on the Devil, and thus was spared the pain of burning to death. Ever since, the equation has been called, “the Witch of Agnesi.” Interesting, ne?
Actually, that’s pretty much entirely bullshit, except that she was called Maria Agnesi and she did learn all those languages. But in fact it’s called the Witch of Agnesi because the book that Agnesi wrote, Instituzioni Analitiche, was mistranslated: versiera (the versed sine curve) was mistranslated as “wife of the devil”, or witch (avversiera being the actual word for wife of the devil).
My story was more interesting. Or at least more fun to write. Anyway, I don’t really have much to say on curves except this. Curves are pretty. I like curves. Curves are my friends. My thoughts meander around crookedly just like they do!
Oh, and how many of you peeps understood that Wikipedia article? Honestly?
Not because it’s about curves, which is what it’s about, by the way. It was because of this sentence within the prompt: “In mathematics, the concept of a curve tries to capture the intuitive idea of a geometrical one-dimensional and continuous object.”
I wondered why it would have such an odd assortment of bolded words, plus things that are not continuous are called curves all the time around the math department at my university. So I, being the genius I am, went back to the prompt and discovered that the word “Winkipedia” was in fact a link to the Wikipedia article on curves. Then for no reason I thought of L’Hospital stealing Bernoulli’s work on curves, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion.
So I clicked the link and was taken to the Wikipedia article and, because I’m one of those special people who actually went and got a math degree, I understood this article. I knew exactly what it meant, except it was saying this bullshit stuff about curves. It was calling paths curves! The horror! And then I got to the part in the article where it says, Terminology is also not uniform. Often, topologists use the term "path" for what we are calling a curve, and "curve" for what we are calling the image of a curve. Aha! It all makes sense now! The fact that the article author doesn’t mention that most times the “curves” referred to are actually called “continuous mappings” is niggling but then again, it was probably an unemployed math graduate writing the article during unfilled spare time in the first place. You can’t expect too much.
But anyway, reading through the article, I see that the author pops down to the subject of the length of curves. I again disagree with his notation, since it’s much easier just to introduce the notion of polygonal paths over partitions of the [a,b] interval and go from there, but in any case, I can’t imagine anyone who didn’t already know this shit understanding it. It’s like out of nowhere he starts using supremums and Epsilon notation and mentioning Lipschitz-continuous and stuff. I don’t believe that supremums are generally introduced in undergrad math until upper division, and even then there’s usually three or four prerequisite upper division courses before you get there.
And then we get to the Curves in Differential Geometry section, and the author pulls manifolds out of the ass of mathematics, neglecting that you have to go through the mouth and esophagus and stomach and the entire rest of the gastrointestinal system to get there, and says it’s basic. Kind of makes you feel stupid if you don’t get it, doesn’t it?
This is a basic notion.
Well, yeah! Sure, that’s a basic notion! If you’ve spent four years of high school chugging through the mathematics programs to AP calculus and then a further four years in college devoted to a mathematics major and you took a topology course and 1) remembered what was said, 2) had a good enough teacher or book that you understood what was meant, 3) applied yourself to internalising it and 4) planned to continue on and make mathematics a part of your daily life. Then yes, it’s a basic notation.
But if you don’t fit that profile, it might as well be magical runes to you, mightn’t it?
Then I read further and the author casually mentions Ck, a notation and concept that was introduced to me in a course that was about half last-year BS (not BA, mind, BS, more rigorous degree) math students and about half graduate students. Oh yes. Basic. Moving on to Algebraic curves, there’s another basic notion, C(K). You’ll get bonus points from me if you can tell me the core difference between Ck and C(K). The last paragraph of this part looks mightily suspicious, like it was ripped from a textbook somewhere.
And the history of curves… dude. This part is full of half-assed shit. But whatever.
Moving on to more interesting topics than the criticism of the supercilious writing of one author by another equally supercilious one, let’s talk about how the Marquis de L’Hospital stole Bernoulli’s work! The great betrayal of one mathematician by another, scintillating accounts of how all of integral calculus was… all right, fine, it was early intellectual theft and L’Hospital got away with it because he was an aristocrat, so it was also the rich taking advantage of the poor. What else is new?
What about the Witch of Agnesi? The Witch of Agnesi, the curve yx2 = a2(a – y). It looks witchy, doesn’t it? The name arises from an interesting and quite disturbing story of repressed homosexuality and horrific murder.
Maria Agnesi, a young, disaffected woman who was the only daughter of Baron Ludmillio Agnesi, had learned to speak Italian, Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, German, and Hebrew by the time she was eleven. This unnerving display of intelligence frightened her father, and he forbade her to learn anything else. Higher knowledge was restricted from her, and she was locked in her room when it was discovered that she was secretly visiting the family library at nights and learning mathematics and physics.
She escaped from the prison her family had caged her in and fled the Agnesi estate and Italy entirely, disguising herself as a man and travelling to England. Here she caught the eye of a beautiful young noblewoman, who did not know that Maria was cross-dressing, and the two began a whirlwind romance that ended in marriage and, that night, shock and horror on the part of the noblewoman when she discovered that Maria was not, in fact, a man. Maria persuaded her to keep quiet and try and give the marriage a go, but in the end, the noblewoman was not able to persuade herself that Maria was the one for her. She fell in love with a nobleman and began to have an affair with him.
Unable to catch the eye of the woman she loved, Agnesi’s life went down the drain, and she once again had to flee when her wife’s paramour found out about her, this time right ahead of the hangman’s noose and charges of homosexuality and impersonating a man. She fled to Prussia, and it was here she first killed. About to be raped, she stabbed a man in his neck and he died. She carved the last equation she had learned before she left home, yx2 = a2(a – y), into his chest. She then began a murderous killing spree that spread across Prussia and Flanders, always carving that equation into the bodies of her victims. This equation, which looked mystical to people not in the know about math, and the knowledge that she was a woman (and of course in those times any woman capable of killing so many fine, superior men must by definition be in league with the Devil) inspired people to start calling her a witch.
When she was finally captured, she gave her name as Maria Agnesi and her last words before she was burned to death were “yx2 = a2(a – y).” She was actually silenced by an arrow to the throat because people thought she was calling on the Devil, and thus was spared the pain of burning to death. Ever since, the equation has been called, “the Witch of Agnesi.” Interesting, ne?
Actually, that’s pretty much entirely bullshit, except that she was called Maria Agnesi and she did learn all those languages. But in fact it’s called the Witch of Agnesi because the book that Agnesi wrote, Instituzioni Analitiche, was mistranslated: versiera (the versed sine curve) was mistranslated as “wife of the devil”, or witch (avversiera being the actual word for wife of the devil).
My story was more interesting. Or at least more fun to write. Anyway, I don’t really have much to say on curves except this. Curves are pretty. I like curves. Curves are my friends. My thoughts meander around crookedly just like they do!
Oh, and how many of you peeps understood that Wikipedia article? Honestly?
12 May 2008
Sunday Scribblings: Telephones
Telephones. That’s the prompt for this Sunday’s Scribbling. I suppose there are three things that I think about when I hear the word. I might as well tell you about them.
The first is magic. Telephones are magical. They can take your voice and instantaneously transmit it to the other side of the world, as clearly as if you were standing next to the person on the other end of the line. Obviously, this can only be attributed to magic. I’m sure that someone somewhere could explain to me (very probably in a condescending tone that would get on my nerves) that really telephones work by sending out electrical impulses that are received by the other end or what have you. I don’t know how they actually work, as you see. I think it’s magic. Because even if it were little electrical impulses and suchlike, how the hell do all the wires stay connected and the impulses all go the right places and furthermore, how do they travel that fast, and even further, how can they replicate my voice? I mean, they’re little electrical impulses. They don’t have vocal cords!
Oh, and mobile phones and internet telephony? You know, where it goes out over the wireless? How come that doesn’t get misdirected ever? Or does it? Do we send out signals in expanding spheres so that maybe sometime, some hundreds of years from now, archaeologists of the future will do their research into the more eclectic areas of our ancient culture by taking spaceships out a few hundred radio-years and tuning in with signal interceptors? I wonder if they’ll be able to reconstruct my social security number from the signals my mobile gave out when I pushed the buttons to enter it into the substitute-teaching network.
But anyway, like I said, phones are magic, without a doubt.
The second thing that I always think about when I actually think about phones, actually stop to consider them, is how much they’ve changed. I remember when mobile phones were these huge things as big as a couple of cucumbers stuck together. I’m 23, but I have a good memory. They were the thing back then, these giant mobile phones, and the coolest people in the movies had them. You knew they were cool because they had these high-tech phones. But today? Someone with a phone like that would be laughed at! These days, mobiles are as big as a couple of sheets of paper stuck together. And the things they can do! I have an iPhone, and it’s like having an extremely small laptop. Incredible. I wonder what those people with huge mobiles in the late eighties and early nineties would have said if they had seen it.
And the last thing about phones that always strikes me is this: Why are so many people married to them?! It’s like mobiles are the most important thing on earth. So many times I’ve been talking to someone and their phone rings and it’s “Oh, excuse me, I have to take this now.” What is that all about? If that happened in a personal conversation, it’d be considered so rude. You’re talking to your friend and suddenly another friend comes up and taps her on the shoulder, and they have a conversation between themselves, before the other friend leaves without so much as a hello. It’d be so rude. But it’s okay if it happens on a phone, because everyone seems to understand that phone calls must be taken. And I’ve gotten into cars with people, only to have to turn around and drive back fifteen minutes later because they forgot their phones. Because, you know, a person wouldn’t survive three hours without a phone.
But even despite this fanatical devotion that phones inspire in some people, I really have to say that I like them very much. They give me something to ignore that won't have its feelings hurt when I do. And they’re magic. You have to love magic.
The first is magic. Telephones are magical. They can take your voice and instantaneously transmit it to the other side of the world, as clearly as if you were standing next to the person on the other end of the line. Obviously, this can only be attributed to magic. I’m sure that someone somewhere could explain to me (very probably in a condescending tone that would get on my nerves) that really telephones work by sending out electrical impulses that are received by the other end or what have you. I don’t know how they actually work, as you see. I think it’s magic. Because even if it were little electrical impulses and suchlike, how the hell do all the wires stay connected and the impulses all go the right places and furthermore, how do they travel that fast, and even further, how can they replicate my voice? I mean, they’re little electrical impulses. They don’t have vocal cords!
Oh, and mobile phones and internet telephony? You know, where it goes out over the wireless? How come that doesn’t get misdirected ever? Or does it? Do we send out signals in expanding spheres so that maybe sometime, some hundreds of years from now, archaeologists of the future will do their research into the more eclectic areas of our ancient culture by taking spaceships out a few hundred radio-years and tuning in with signal interceptors? I wonder if they’ll be able to reconstruct my social security number from the signals my mobile gave out when I pushed the buttons to enter it into the substitute-teaching network.
But anyway, like I said, phones are magic, without a doubt.
The second thing that I always think about when I actually think about phones, actually stop to consider them, is how much they’ve changed. I remember when mobile phones were these huge things as big as a couple of cucumbers stuck together. I’m 23, but I have a good memory. They were the thing back then, these giant mobile phones, and the coolest people in the movies had them. You knew they were cool because they had these high-tech phones. But today? Someone with a phone like that would be laughed at! These days, mobiles are as big as a couple of sheets of paper stuck together. And the things they can do! I have an iPhone, and it’s like having an extremely small laptop. Incredible. I wonder what those people with huge mobiles in the late eighties and early nineties would have said if they had seen it.
And the last thing about phones that always strikes me is this: Why are so many people married to them?! It’s like mobiles are the most important thing on earth. So many times I’ve been talking to someone and their phone rings and it’s “Oh, excuse me, I have to take this now.” What is that all about? If that happened in a personal conversation, it’d be considered so rude. You’re talking to your friend and suddenly another friend comes up and taps her on the shoulder, and they have a conversation between themselves, before the other friend leaves without so much as a hello. It’d be so rude. But it’s okay if it happens on a phone, because everyone seems to understand that phone calls must be taken. And I’ve gotten into cars with people, only to have to turn around and drive back fifteen minutes later because they forgot their phones. Because, you know, a person wouldn’t survive three hours without a phone.
But even despite this fanatical devotion that phones inspire in some people, I really have to say that I like them very much. They give me something to ignore that won't have its feelings hurt when I do. And they’re magic. You have to love magic.
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