Remembering Holst, WITF, Strawser
Monday, 16 Nov 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

On this torrentially-rainy day, surrounded by boxes (I have moved in, but not arranged my things), and working on the opening of UniLives.com video uploads, I turned on a recording of The Planets, by Gustav Holst. This symphony is a popular crowd-pleaser at concerts for its recognizably-different movements, prominent use of a wide range of instruments, and strong melodies.

Today, listening to the symphony brought back memories of my first commute. When I was in eleventh grade, I began a regular drive to Lancaster Bible College for night classes. Over two and a half years, I studied composition, public speaking, psychology, and field ecology. Through its Sunrise/Sunset program, the college offered free courses to secondary students with promise, and to the elderly. Those courses were critically-important to my intellectual development, and I only now see the radical generosity of that program. (They still do it, and it's now called Jumpstart)

The drive was 30 minutes each way, and I would listen to WITF on the radio, most usually Dick Strawser, introduce me to so much amazing and wonderful music from the Western tradition. His informative introductions educated me about composers and opened the door on new worlds of human society.

Driving back one night, he played the Planets. I can remember the speakers inside my parents van battling mightily against the roaring storm outside, to the brass exuberance of Jupiter, the bringer of Jollity (Allegro giouoso).

Now living in Cambridge, where it's easy to attend concerts with famous ensembles and composers, and I have had opportunities to perform as well, those doors have been opened to me. I wish I had more time to participate.

In 2008, many of the familiar names and voices of WITF, including Dick Strawser, left or were let go. But Dick is still writing his wonderful music blog, and apparently continuing with his love of historial musical fiction with NaNoWriMo this year. He is Dr_Dick on twitter.

E-Lit Camp and More
Friday, 30 Oct 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Plans have finally come together for E-Lit Camp Boston, Dec 11-13. More information on Mark Bernstein's site.

In other news, my non-work life over the last few weeks has been a very technical one: Railscamp UK (thanks MrJaba!), and writing Wordpress plugins. Good news: I move into an apartment today after 9 weeks of sleeping on floors and couches. Hurrah!

University Lives Collection Launch
Monday, 12 Oct 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Last Thursday, we launched the University Lives Collection in conjunction with the announcement of the World University Rankings by the Times Higher Education.

Now it's time to finish the full site in preparation for our launch on November 16.

The Shepherd and the Table
Sunday, 11 Oct 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

In my triple life of software engineer, executive producer, and serial volunteer for things in Cambridge, one of my favourite activities is a weekly gathering with people from the Christian Graduate Society at Cambridge University. Some people in this particular study (there are many CGS studies throughout Cambridge) are Christians, some are not, but we are all interested in looking at and discusing the canonical texts of Christianity.

Our group recently started a blog, which I am editing. I thought you would enjoy reading this post, which describes a discussion we had about Psalm 23.

The first in a series of poems we have studied from the Psalms this summer, the 23rd Psalm is the the best known. In the English tradition, it has inspired poems by George Herbert, Isaac Watts (3 poems!), Henry Baker (whose version was sung at Princess Diana’s funeral), and hundreds of musical compositions by many famous composers, including Tchaichovsky, Pink Floyd (satirically), Rutter, and Leonard Bernstein (choirnet listing).

Reading poetry from another culture and time is a wonderfully rich experience with significant pitfalls. Our imagination fills in details, as it ought, and can bring up strong memories and ideas that we hadn’t been able to express before. As a piece of writing from another place, it reveals things about the perception of someone from that place. As a result, we risk either letting our personal response overpower the poem itself, or alternatively, keeping the poem at arms-length. When we read translated poetry, we unearth yet more richness and peril.

Since we have spent most of the year studying writings which attempt to explain ideas, we started this discussion with the questions, “what use is poetry to Christians? What role does it play in your life, and what would we lose if we got rid of poetry?” People discussed:

• Songs in public worship gatherings, and how lyrics written by someone else make it easier to affirm a shared understanding of the world, even when we’re too tired to think creatively.
• Particularly well-put phrases that stick with a person
• Moments when we feel like a poem expresses something we often wanted to say but never knew how, and that the poem somehow seems deeply true in a way we instantly recognize
• Ways that poetry gives us new ways to look at the world
• Opportunities to imagine ourselves in a position similar to the narrator, or to draw hope from the similarity of our situation to that of the narrator.

Next, we looked at the poem itself. It is customary in Christianity to focus considerably on David, who is said to be the author, or on the art of shepherding, or on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. In this study however, we decided to look closely at the poem itself.

The group made several initial observations about the poem:

• Psalm 23 was apparently a favourite song of religious pilgrims as they traveled to the temple in Jerusalem.
• Two clear extended metaphors: “The Lord” as a shepherd, and also as a host. The amount of detail in the metaphors seemed quite unusual in the Psalms.
• The use of present tense (”he leads”, “he restores”, “he guides”) suggests intimacy, or at least familiarity with The Lord, arising from his repeated goodness toward the narrator.
• The poem isn’t organised in the classic Hebrew couplet form. In fact, only a few parts of the poem follow the statement-and-elaboration form so common in Hebrew poetry of the period.
  • He makes me lie down in green pastures,
    he leads me beside quiet waters
  • You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
  • Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
    and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
• Apparently, “anoint” is not the word used of kings or of the messiah, but rather a reference to fatness and plenty. It can also mean “saturated”, in a probable pun connecting the overflowing cup with the anointing of God.
• “be in want” could also be translated “be deficient”. The Psalm is purposefully generic in ways that could be understood as ( other / more ) than simply material.
• The table “in the presence of my enemies” isn’t an scene of reconciliation but one of antagonism.
• “in the presence of my enemies” suggests that the hospitality metaphor is from a refugee’s perspective.
• The poem shifts from “he” to “you” when discussing the presence of the Lord in difficult times. (this also happens in Psalm 73, which we studied a few weeks later)
• The image of God as shepherd first appears in Genesis 48:12-16, when it is used by the historical character Israel to describe God’s activity in his life.
• Subsequently, the term is used of those who lead the nation of Israel:
• Of Joshua, when Moses hands over leadership to him in Numbers 27.
• Of David, when the people ask him to become king in II Samuel 5.
• Psalm 23 is a political poem, since the king— the “shepherd” of Israel— is declaring the Lord to be his shepherd.

After initial observations, we discussed a wide range of topics relating to this poem.

Some in the group shared stories about times when this poem was especially meaningful to them.

Others were keen to draw correlations to the life of David and specific moments in his life. Some were skeptical of this exercise, since we have no indication of the time the poem was written, and since the poem’s simple imagery and personal pronouns make it seem like it’s written for everyone to identify with, not just the king.

Some excitedly described comparisons between the shepherd and Jesus, who explicitly links himself with this poem in the gospels when he says “I am the good shepherd.”

One person thought that it is invalid to seek learning from the makeup of a metaphor, or from parallels in the text, unless the function of a poetic technique is intentional. Since authorial intentions from antiquity are opaque to us, we should take care building conclusions from features of the text which aren’t explicit statements. While we do and can draw conclusions or sentiments from a poem, it was argued, those outcomes are less valid than carefully constructed theological arguments or cross-referencing and correlating a text with other parts of the Bible.

Someone else, on the other hand, thought the poem illustrates power of literary metaphor to engage with the fundamental difficulty of perceiving God. In this view, this poem attempts to express the love of God, even though the life and thoughts of God are too great to be fully comprehended (Ps 139), and the love of God surpasses understanding (Eph 3). Accepting that the span between God and humans is too great for humans to reach, the poem compares this span to the relationship between a shepherd and sheep, between a refugee and a generous host. This vast difference is spanned by the Shepherd who cares for fundamental needs, illustrated by the water, paths, valleys, shadows, tables, cups, and homes. In this view, the poem demonstrates, by using the rhetorical device of metonymy, how to see an invisible God: just as we understand that “rod and staff” refers to the shepherd, that the table and the wine illustrate a generous host, we know God’s presence through the instruments He uses in the world.

Finally, our group discussed the end of the poem. The narrator expects to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Christians see our current lives as a journey in which we are led by God to follow the paths of righteousness, and hope for a life with him forever. Yet by illustrating the work of the Lord for those on the path of righteousness, the poem implicitly warns about how tragic life can be for those who chose against following him on those paths.

Although this discussion opened up many more questions than it answered, we all agreed that Psalm 23 presents an attractive view of knowing God, and that this Psalm carries special hope and comfort for Christians.

P.S. John Piper and Tom Steller have posted two fabulous sermons about Psalm 23 online on Desiringgod.org, which they preached in the 1980s: The Lord is My Shepherd, and Restful Words for Labor Day.

Plans For the University lives Collection
Sunday, 20 Sep 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Last weekend, I caught up with Sylwia Presley, in-between her preparations for the Oxford Twestival. She's one of the organizers of BarCamp Transparency Oxford 09, editor for Global Voices, and a social media / word of mouth ethics consultant for 1000Heads.

Our topic? How can the University Lives Collection reach out to students worldwide, and how might the way we set up the project affect our reach?

We had a great conversation about motivations. The people who submit videos will be people who take pride in their communities, who are looking for PR and poularity, who think the prizes are cool, whose professors are suggesting they submit videos, and who are driven to spread their viewpoints. In addition, we need to be aware of the the organisations and governments of which our participants are a part. Sylwia had some great ideas on how to make the site acceptable to such a wide range of groups while keeping our own integrity.

This led us to the question of censorship, moderation, and permission. This is an ongoing conversation for us, and Sylwia's experience with Global Voices and cyber activism will help us take into account the needs and risks of content producers. We want to be as open as possible, but we also want people to stay on-topic and will frown on inflammatory content.

As a result, we think we can probably open up the platform more than we initially expected, allowing people to post, comment, and vote on videos. We expect that there will be an approval / moderation arrangement for new videos, but we still have to work out the details ineternally and with Automattic.

We are definitely going to offer prizes, and there will be a way to vote for videos you like. We want to be careful however, to avoid getting Colbertized. So no details on the voting system have been decided yet.

Sylwia asked if we will accept videos from faculty. Our answer? That would be great! - though we will focus our limited marketing resources on students.

She was also wondering what countries we want to be involved. The short answer is 'as many as possible', but we have only so many people. Consequently, we're going to pick a few regions to focus on; for other regions, we're going to look for organisations or new volunteers/promoters to do the advertising for us.

We also talked about language and subtitling. We had initially planned to accept videos only in languages known by our team. Sylwia convinced us that we should accept videos in any language, so long as they're subtitled in English. JBL thinks we should be even more open than that, so we still have some deciding to do.

Even though we are already familiar with social media and online publishing, Sylwia has done a great job helping us think through important issues and make good plans. We're looking forward to more strategy conversations in the future.

For now, we're focusing on getting the initial marketing site up, fitting our visual designs into the technology, and organising our fabulous volunteers for what is going to be a huge marketing campaign.

if you would like to help out the World University Project or can suggest ideas or contacts for the University Lives Collection, please contact planning [at ] worlduniversityproject [ dot] org

Automattic, Inc. Sponsors the University Lives Collection
Friday, 18 Sep 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Great news! Those of you who have been following the World University Project will be delighted to hear that Automattic, the creators of WordPress and the team behind Wordpress.com, will be providing hosting and technology for the University Lives Collection!

This is the beginning of a new road for us as a charity. Ever since filming in Libya, we have been establishing the organisation and building support. Now it's time for action.

We have a lot to do. There are plans, policies, and designs to be made and finalized. Publicity is going to be a huge task. Happily, technology *won't* be a headache, due to the generosity of the people at Automattic.

We owe a lot of thanks to those who have been involved.

• The Trustees: Joao Pereira, Braphus Kaalund, and William Redfern, have provided helpful perspective and carried out the key decisions throughout this past year.
• Tom Isherwood has provided critical assistance, leadership, and support
• Gloria Dawson managed the project initially, in-between a triple life as a poet, an intern/consultant on humanitarian policy & advocacy at Oxfam International, and a research assistant in the House of Lords.
• Joshua Blanchard Lewis is the current project manager for the University Lives Collection. His hard work, sound advice, and keen ethical sensibility have been fabulous.
• Karen Collis has been a great encourager and supporter of the project, and has been a star of the cold calling and email campaigns.

Barcamp Transparency Oxford
Wednesday, 29 Jul 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

This past Sunday, I spent a day at BarCamp Transparency Oxford, at the Oxford University Club. It was truly fabulous. Many thanks to Sylwia, Marcus, and Ben.

Met lots of fabulous people, including Rob McKinnon, Wojciech Gryc, Brett Husbands, and Alejandro Ribo Labastida.

I also had a very helpful and thought-provoking conversation with Talal late into the night about how to be an academic that truly cares for people, especially students, in a whole sense. Inspirational.

Thanks to the sponsors:

• Google
• www.1000heads.com/
• www.dontreadmyblog.com/
• outmap.org/
• uk.moo.com/
• www.terminatetherate.org/

Jessica Rubart Gives Suggestions For Tinderbox Collaboration
Sunday, 26 Jul 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Following on my series of posts about collaboration and Tinderbox (especially the one about patterns for teams to follow), Jessica Rubart sent me this truly staggeringly-fabulous set of suggestions.

Jessica is an experienced team manager, and a researcher on the use of Tinderbox-like spatial hypertext for team-based activities. Her latest project (brilliant) is an app which uses spatial hypertext to plan Scrum Meetings (more about scrum).

• Meeting structure:
  • Describing an agenda (notes in a column)
  • Adding references to documents (e.g. URLs)
• Team structure:
  • Persons and groups, e.g. through a composite note
  • Organizations and persons, e.g. through additional composite notes and aliases
  • Persons and roles
• Process structure:
  • Task notes as composite notes containing relevant document references
  • Workflows, i.e. task notes, process links, and maybe links to team structure
• Group forming (E-Learning):
  • Group areas for joining
  • Group recommendations through agents based on profiles of persons in the model
• Project plan:
  • Priority lists through spatial arrangement (E.g. Task lists for persons with dependency links to other tasks)
  • Date attributes for tasks
  • Status adornments for tasks, e.g. within a person composite note
  • Scrum-like task boards using adornments for setting tasks states (a state could be an attribute) and an agent for generating a sprint burn down chart from a current task board (this is good -- Nathan)
• Goals
• Recent changes:
  • In addition to a description of changes it might be useful to include a status of the tinderbox file or an area, saying e.g. that a review of person or role xy is required.
• Landing areas:
  • Adornments for groups of people who get the notes by e-mail, which one drops there
  • Adornments as a kind of todo-lists for users work items can be dropped there; after a user has completed the work on an item, he/she can drop it on the todo-list of the following user.
• Cooperative access:
  • Use version control and visual diff :-) (by this, Jessica is referring to my ongoing work on comparing changes in Tinderbox files)
  • Further development could think about splitting a tinderbox file into several parts that could be put into a version control system separately. Then, those different parts can be locked by different people at the same time so that simultaneous work on different parts of the shared model is possible. Alternatively, one could use different files for each part. But then linking between those might be constrained.
  • Use application sharing for synchronous access, e.g. through WebEx (Nathan: This is a great idea)
• Brainstorming/Mind Mapping:
  • Use application sharing for synchronous sessions
• Mashups:
  • Composing notes from different files or different areas of one file
  • Providing a merged view of notes and resources on the web that somehow are related to the notes
• Overview:
  • Guided tour (this can be done with Tinderbox Demo/Tutorial format)
  • Reading advice (see above)

University Lives Collection Page Launched
Monday, 20 Jul 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Over the weekend, the World University Project site launched an announcement of the University Lives Collection:

We are hoping to hear about a successful grant application by the end of the month. In the meantime, we're looking for alternative sources of funding. If you or someone you know might be interested in sponsorship, contact the project. The project is expected to reach around 5k universities worldwide. We're looking for sponsors to:

• Donate your products as prizes
• Provide technology or marketing support
• Financially sponsor the project overall in a major way

Collaboration with Tinderbox
Monday, 20 Jul 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

This is the fourth post in a series on collaborating with Tinderbox and version management software. Previous posts discussed:

1. Tinderbox and Version Management
2. Backing up and Version Tracking with Git
3. Git, Tinderbox and Online Repositories

This post explains some practical ideas for how to actually use Tinderbox for collaborating, a template file on github, and lots of screenshots.

Contents of this Post

• When not to use online collaboration
• Introducing the Tinderbox Collaboration Template
• Workflow Overview
• Recognizing changes in diff (boring, and helpful)
• Patterns for Collaborating with Tinderbox

When Not to Use Online Collaboration

This post is about collaborating online, when the participants are in different places or working at different times, and need use of a shared repository for their document. If you're all in the same room, use a scribe. Mark Anderson, Robert Brook, and I have all found Tinderbox to be great help in meetings. This kind of collaboration really needs only one Tinderbox user.

The Tinderbox Collaboration Template

Ever since around 2004, when my brother and I gave a joint lecture on Parliamentary Procedure (fun!), and prepared the lecture by emailing Tinderbox files around, I have been collecting ideas on how to work together on a single Tinderbox document. The Tinderbox Collaboration Template includes the basics which I find helpful for any collaboration:

• Individual Prototypes for each user's own comments
• A personal space and note for each user
• A trash bin
• Notes
• Legend for Prototypes
• Meetings
• Recent Changes
• Metafilter color theme (Happy 10th!)

Workflow Overview

To set up the template, you can either fork the project on Github, or check out the project, and push it to the repository of your choice. From that point, you do the following things to set up the Tinderbox file with your team:

1. Give each person permissions to check out and commit changes to the project
2. Create a new personal space for each person, and a new set of comment prototypes for them
3. Each person (or a newcomer) checks out the latest version and jumps right in

When actually collaborating, the workflow looks like this:

1. Work on your stuff
2. git pull to checkout others' contributions when necessary
3. You should be the primary user of your personal space. Use it extensively, and only drag things out into the main areas when your things are ready to show the others, or if you need others' comments and contributions
4. commit and push your changes when you have something to contribute
5. commit, push, and pull often, to prevent conflicts (this is contrary to software dev practices, where everything has to work. This is a document, not a computer program, so this shouldn't be a problem)

Recognizing Changes in Diff

GitX will show you changes you have made. GitHub will show you changes which others have made. Since GitHub and GitX only know about XML and don't understand Tinderbox, the output of diff can be confusing.

Over time, you will can a sense for what it all means. I hope these screenshots of diff can help give you a head start:

• New Links Added
• Boderer and Color Changes (GitX)
• Border and Color Changes (GitHub)
• Two Notes Added Next to Each Other
• Attributes Added, Text Added to note
• New User Attributes Added to Tinderbox Document
• New Color Names Added to Tinderbox Document
• Document TextFont Preference Changed
• Adding and Annotating a Picture in Map View

Patterns for Collaborating with Tinderbox

The following set of recommendations are based on my experience, so if you have further idease, please write.

• Don't limit yourself to one file. In cases where lots of changes are being made frequently, it might be best to have a separate file for each person, and to designate one person to keep a composite document up-to-date. If you all share the same prototypes, it should be simple to drag notes across Tinderbox documents.
• Recent Changes is your friend. If an agent produces too much noise, then ask people to create a "Recent Changes" area in their personal space. Before they commit and push a set of changes, they can create aliases of important changes and drag them onto the recent changes landing area. Much quicker than describing the changes, and it also gives others ready access to what each person thinks is important.
• Independent master files like this one simplify the task of starting new things. As people develop generally useful features within their project files, drag those features into your master repository so you have ready access to them when you start your next collaboration.
• Split large documents into sub-notes, so people can work on different parts without stepping on each others' toes. Nakakoji View is your friend.
• What to do when you try to push something and Git complains about a merge conflict (giving the error "needs merge"):
  • Git creates three files- your old local copy, the latest version from the repository, and a mutant hybrid of the two which you need not worry about.
  • Open up your local copy
  • Open up the repository copy
  • Find the things in your local copy which you have changed, and drag them over into the repository copy. (because while you know what has changed in your copy, you don't know what has changed in the repository copy)
  • Save As the original filename
  • Delete the extra files
  • git add, commit, push
  • (this is an ugly solution.I'm working on a better one (a) (b))
  • Always remember to commit before you pull
• Want to record who went to the meeting, or who should be working on X? Simply drag aliases of their personal space into an area.
• Tinderbox is great for arranging things just how you tend to think. If you bring that attitude to the common spaces in a collaborative file, you will spend more time explaining than collaborating.
• Messy things with lots of lines and structure are often hard to understand. Seek simplicity, and don't be afraid to have lots of clear, simple areas. In Tinderbox, choosing a few relevant things to show is often harder, and more valuable than just dumping everything on the rest of the team.
• Deleting is bad. Deleting other people's stuff is really really annoying. You might end up deleting something with 50 aliases and render your entire project incomprehensible. Just drag something to the side, or use the Trash Can if you must.
• You know this already, but do remember that sometimes you just need to go out to the pub, share a sandwich, or pick up the phone.
• Write me if you have other good ideas you think I should share

Git, Tinderbox, and Online Repositories
Tuesday, 30 Jun 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

This is part three in a series of blog posts on backup, version control, and collaboration using Tinderbox. Prior posts include:

1. Tinderbox and Version Management
2. Backing up and Version Tracking with Git

This post will explain how to use an online repository, and how to collaborate with others. The next and final post will suggest some patterns for multiple users to collaborate online using Git.

Online Repositories: Github, Unfuddle, and Codebase

In addition to using Git to track the history of your own materials, you can also use it to share your materials with others and collaborate with them. Many good online services exist to make this task simple. Three that I like are:

• Github(free, if you let the public see your project, and a fee for private repositories)
• Unfuddle (commercial, private repositories- I use this for my own projects)
• Codebase (also very good commercial option)

Good Explanations on how to use Github

Well, I was going to write something about setting up a github account online, but then I found these two excellent resources:

• Pragmatic Bookshelf Insider Guide to Github (35 mins video)
• Setting up a remote repository using GitHub and OSX, by Jasen Mathai

Using those resources you should be able to:

1. Sign up for an account with Github or some other service
2. Generate your public and private key (for security and authentication)
3. Push the contents of your local repository onto github or some other service

The online services themselves are very helpful (especially Github) and will walk you through each step.

Especially with Mathai's article, you should read it thoroughly before starting, because he often explains the simple option only after explaining the complicated way in great detail.

If this all seems too technical, hang in there. Once you set up the online repository as described in these articles, you can still continue to use GitX in the same way I described before.

Once you have set up a remote repository, you will only need to use the Terminal in order to run two commands: git pull, to fetch the latest version from github, and git push, to update Github with your latest commit. This will be easier if you installed Shell Here, earlier. If you have, simply:

1. Navigate to the folder
2. Press the "Shell Here" button which you have set up in Finder
3. Type the git command you need to run

Backing up and Version Tracking With Git
Saturday, 27 Jun 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

In my last post, I explained why using Tinderbox properly with version management software has been tricky. In brief, two Tinderbox files can be identical in content, and yet have a very different file structure. That has confused tools like git and Subversion, which expect changes in the files to indicate changes have been made to the document.

This post will explain how to use Git to back up and track the version history of your Tinderbox documents. In the post after this one (which I will post this weekend), I will demonstrate how to collaborate using Github, Unfuddle, or some other online repository. The final post in this series will look at specific options for using Tinderbox with Git.

Preface: Ways to Share and Back Up

• Finder Litter was my strategy before GIt. This involved making copies of documents at sporadic times, at various points of development.
  • The folder for this weblog is littered in this way. I have "Lifebox", "lifebox copy", "Lifebox Copy.tbx", "Lifebox copy 1", "Lifebox.bak", "Lifebox.orig", "Lifebox-xrefered-to" , and a "baks" folder full of other copies
  • These backup copies get messy, and it's hard to tell from the "Date Modified" which ones are older, since the date changed when I copied the files from my old laptop
  • These backup copies no longer work, since they are now out of sync with the current version of the template files, which are now themselves cluttered about all over
• Time Machine, which comes with every Mac, will back up your files automatically. This is great. But it has some downsides:
  • There is only blunt control over what goes into the archive
  • You don't control when things go into the archive. While you may wish to archive things at certain key points in development, Time Machine will do it on a regular, timed basis. You might really wish to go back to where you were at midafternoon, but Time machine will take you back to the night before
  • To address the timing issue, you have to resort to Finder Litter, which will just get compounded over numerous Time Machine backups
  • There is no facility for sharing
  • Time Machine is OK-ish for personal backups. But it won't help you with sharing materials or working with documents which you live with over time
• At $99 a year for 50GB and a free 2GB option, Dropbox seems like a great way to back up and share your files-- so long as you're online with a good connection when you need to work on things
  • If you look at the instructions in this post and think that they're maybe too techie for you, Dropbox is a fine alternative.
  • note: the recent Tinderbox fix over line order will likely lead Tinderbox files to take up less space on Dropbox
• Git is "a free & open source, distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Every Git clone is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on network access or a central server." With git, you can:
  • Keep a version history of your things on your local computer
  • Decide which things are important to backup and version
  • Decide when the snapshots are made
  • Keep related files in sync
  • Create branches (of things like templates), in which you experiment with something you may not wish to keep, and then merge them into the main history when you decide to keep it, or just revert to the main history if you decide against it.

Step 1: Obtain Git

There are two ways to install Git on OSX:

• Git OSX Installer (Leopard Only)
• MacPorts (Recommended, but very techie)
  • MacPorts makes available a large number of useful GNU and other Free / Open Source software on your computer. To install, you will have to install Apple's XCode first, then run the MacPorts installer. You will need to sign up for an Apple Developer Connection account (quick and free) to access XCode.
  • After you hae installed MacPorts, run the following command from a Terminal:

You should download GitX, a very helpful tool.

You will definitely want to get "Shell Here", by John Daniel and Marc Liyanage, since you will probably end up using the Terminal at some point or other. This button, when you add it to the Finder, will open a Terminal in the current finder window (installation explained here).

Step 2: How Git Works

(note: why read my blog post when you can read Swicegood's helpful book, Pragmatic Version Control Using Git ?)

Most of what you need to do will happen within GitX. There is also a helpful article on the GitX website, which is slightly more helpful for people who already have repositories.

• First, initialize a repository. From GitX, select File->New and select the folder you wish to track.
  • Git will store all of its version history hidden inside this folder.
  • If you delete this folder, your backup is deleted
  • If you copy this folder somewhere, your backups and version history also gets copied
• Next, commit files to the repository, which tells git which files you want to backup and track. To do this, you:
  • Click the "commit" button, or select View->Commit from the menu. GitX will switch to "commit view" (click to see screenshots, with annotations).
  • To preview a file before committing it, just click on the file. Tinderbox files probably seem incomprehensible unless you know XML.
  • If you already have a repository and have already committed files, GitX will highlight files which have changed, let you compare differences, and decide if you wish to commit those changes.
  • After previewing the files, drag them into the "staged changes" area to show which ones you wish to commit.
  • To help you find your changes later, Git permits you to add comments to your actions. My comment here is probably more verbose than necessary.
  • Click "Commit" and your files will be added to the repository
  • If you go back to "History View", Git will show the history of your archive much like stops on the rail line.
• Whenever you want to commit something new to the archive, or just tell Git to update its archive to the most recent version of a file:
  • Use the File->Open menu to select the folder
  • Select "Commit view." Git will show all of the files which have changed, or been added.
  • Repeat the steps you used to commit your files initially.
• If you want to recover a file from your history, simply drag it from the "History View" into the Finder. If you want to use that older version in your archive:
  • Commit the current version
  • Overwrite the current version with the historical one you just dragged into the Finder, and commit again. Git will then archive the file you decided not to keep, while also letting you start again from an older version.

This post is long enough, and I need to prepare for Hypertext 2009. I will write from Milan late next week about how to collaborate using Git. There will have to be a fourth post about how to use Tinderbox with Git.

Tinderbox and Version Management
Thursday, 25 Jun 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Earlier this month, I took a careful look at version management for Tinderbox files. My paper at this year's Hypertext conference will be about comparing spatial hypertext collections, so I was curious to see just how well Tinderbox worked with existing solutions, such as git and SVN.

Badly, it turns out. But it's not the fault of Tinderbox.

Tinderbox files are stored in XML, a plaintext format which is easy for other programs (like my Web Viewer) to load.

In theory, the Tinderbox XML files should work well with Version Management software. The tools are designed for plaintext, and Tinderbox files are plaintext. Perfect!

Unfortunately, the XML standard breaks some assumptions of version control systems. In most plaintext formats, the order of the lines is significant. Code is executed line by line, so software such as git and SVN treats the reordering of lines as a change. In some parts of XML however, the order of lines is insignificant. In those cases, changing the order of the lines does not imply a significant chance to the XML. Such changes confuse version tracking systems.

Tinderbox follows the assumptions of XML. Two saves of the same tinderbox can look very different. As a result, git and SVN get very confused. This flickr gallery demonstrates just how confused version control systems can become:

I discovered this issue in advance of Tinderbox Weekend London, where I was speaking about version history, backups, and collaboration with Tinderbox. So late on Saturday night, Mark and I had a conversation at Spoons (yeah, I know), and he offered to look into it.

Last week, I had a chance to look at beta versions of the next release of Tinderbox. These betas output consistent line order, and work smoothly with the version control systems I have tested.

(in the next post, I explain how to set up and use Git on the Mac)

Wagn
Saturday, 20 Jun 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Wagn is wiki as it ought to be.

Meditation on Christ as King
Friday, 19 Jun 2009 :-: ["Permalink"] Our Father God,
of all the ways you have given us to understand your care for us--

perhaps none is as troubling as
God the King

Even we your church,
[who have committed to risking all to follow your rule ]
prefer autonomy,
though your loving decrees are at our fingertips
We are your citizen ambassadors
yet we tend to mistrust kings
preferring ideologies, democracies, bureaucracies
instead of total power

We worry about bloodshed and oppression caused by kings,
and you are a God of bloodshed -
even Jesus spoke of presiding over
the slaughter of those who resist his rule

If you were not righteous
we would be just to resist your rule
even if this world were rightfully yours

But we see that our sins, our rebellion
the rebellion of the devil, and the curse
have polluted the world with great ills and injustices
and that the world you made
will only be restored
through your righteous judgment and loving rule
not ours.

Help us come to grips with your loving kingship.
Help us, like Christ, humble ourselves
in your mission of mercy,
sacrificing our interests
in love, generosity, and gospel witness
to grow that future multitude
which will celebrate your power and love
in the heavenly kingdom

Without your grace,
we are corrupt ambassadors.
Correct and guide us in love and truth
and we will praise you,
our chief hope in a troubled world,
even as we struggle to understand and accept you,
now, and forever, Amen.

The Coffeehouse
Monday, 8 Jun 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

It is spring. I am in a dusty little cafe, tucked into a corner of art-deco, post-industrial America: the rafters are lined with a few hundred hanging coffee mugs, above scattered tables and scattered people-- old books, old laptops, an out-of-date menu on the chalkboard. Quote of the week: "I thought Goth was over," by "Acey". Next to it, scuffs of chalkdust form the shape of a rose.

The barista is writing about Barthes, dictionary open. A dude in the corner is working on a short story. He's covered in tattoos, and his extremely relaxed girlfriend's kisses. A couple of old hippies are reminiscing about that time when they truly *experienced* pure music.

"I wish I had a tape recorder back then," one of them says.

Someone new walks into the cafe.

A head appears from behind the cloudy-grey ibook in the couch.

"Hey- I remember you from City View; You know, my second, third, and fourth first drafts were all written there. A cup of coffee, an appetizer, a few cigarettes, and some beers into the evening, and there you have it. 3am. I write everything in notebooks, you know."

"Badass."

I had forgotten what it's like to be around people who read, write, and think about ideas out of raw thirst.

Departure
Saturday, 30 May 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Tonight, ater performing for the wedding of my friends Paul and Solveig, I will be leaving the UK for two weeks.

The implications of this are:

• I will not be able to take on anything new, or handle WUP requests
• I will be able to catch up on the existing email backlog
• Emberlight and other Tinderbox related items are expected to advance

See you in mid-June!

Literary Studies Now
Saturday, 23 May 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

On April 27, 2009, a number of gradstudents and fellows met up at University College, Oxford for Literary Studies Now. Our aim was to discuss recent and upcoming issues within literary studies (flickr).

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting about this interesting gathering- drawing from my own notes and including text, commentary, and bibliographies from the other attendees. Feel free to participate in this conversation by emailing me.

Wagn: A Stretchtext Wiki
Friday, 22 May 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Yesterday at the office, we discussed creating a wiki for sharing documentation. I have been looking around for a decent wiki on Rails. The more info we put onto the Wiki, the more we will have to worry about

• Losing track of what is in it
• Letting things get out of date

I think that Wagn, a Rails-based wiki, may help us stay DRY while providing handy tools for monitoring the state of information within the wiki.

Wagn is a card-based wiki. Cards can link to or include information from other cards. Comments may also be added to cards.

Cards have a type. For example, the image type makes it easy to upload images into a specific document, and also to share that image into several documents. The file type works similarly.

One of the most useful types is "search". Using this feature, it will be possible to embed a search into any document. For example, I could create a home page for my account which automatically searches for "chat", "performance test", and "user interface". When I log in, I would then be able to see recent changes to documents referring to those topics.

Oh, it also does rich text editing, which is a nice plus when you're in a rush.

Unhelpful Visualisations
Monday, 18 May 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

I have been posting an occasional series to the office email about unhelpful visualisations.

Having been fascinated by good qualities of The Cambridge Phenomenon influence map (1) (2), I then wrote about the Star Wars influence map:

Today, I came across another unhelpful diagram: a history of information, a stacked graph which apparently displays data on media users since 1800. This beautiful and impressive diagram shows the transitions between epochs of news history: newspapers slowly supplant word-of-mouth, television and radio start edging in, and by 2020, thin bands of online options -- websites, blogs, social networks, social news, and targeted news-- completely supplant the old world.

The design elements of authority are all there to support belief in a coming future of targeted news: evenly spaced labels, vertical bars for each label, and specific datapoints for each medium for each labeled year. The graph tells the whig history of media as a story of inevitable progress from one new medium to the next. Next to the progression of newspapers, television, and websites, social news and targeted media look like sure winners in the next decade.

The graph, however, is a fabrication. Baekdal cites no actual sources for his graph(although he says the last 10 years are based loosely on what he has seen from "probably" 1000 surveys he has conducted. For data about life before 1990, he interviewed people and googled some stuff). But even if it were properly researched, it would be deceptive at best:

• Time is stretched inconsistently: the intervals between labels begin at 50 years, then 20, to 10, 5, 2, 1, and then 5. With time made so flexible, we cannot trust the implicit argument of progress, which relies on the visual similarity of subsequent regions of color. When questioned about this, Baekdal said, "I fail to see how the scale of the graph can be seen as a lie. You can clearly see each year."
• The total sum remains constant: The last 200 years have seen vast increases in media audiences: literacy, communications technology, and the rise of the gobal middle class have all expanded the pool of media consumers. A study that recorded socioeconomic data alongside media use would be able to display or (possibly) adjust for population growth within that group.

To be fair, there is no way to design the graph correctly. It is simply not honest to present non-quantitative opinions using means reserved for quantitative information. Although he argues in the comments that his graph is based on interviews, surveys, and "careful analysis", he finally admits that the "graph does not illustrate the size of the different forms of media. It illustrate their importance."

P.S. Notice how the color selection subtly supports Baekdal's argument. Newspapers, radio, and television have colors which contrast each other, while the electronic media "websites, blogs, social networks, and social news" all have similar colors. The eye naturally groups them, contrasting them strongly with television.

This Blog?
Thursday, 14 May 2009 :-: ["Permalink"]

Over the last year, I have been refocusing the nature of my writing. Since I studied at Cambridge, I have spent much more time focusing on individuals. Blogging can seem to be about the blogger, while writing emails lets me focus on others more easily.

Unfortunately, friends who live in other places have been at a loss. Furthermore, some of the more polished things I have produced over the last few years need to be archived.

Email's most tempting feature is the potential to permit multiple identities. Blogs encourage integrity because everyone sees the same one. People assume the written word is your final word. Questioned orthodoxies and scandalous thoughts can safely be shared with those best prepared to help- but there can be a strong temptation to keep keep ideological secrets.

Then there are the embarrassing posts. First, the ones that will never leave the massive "Drafts" area. Then the ones that did. I prefer however to be uncomfortable with what I have said and done. Keeping them online forces me to remember and pressures me toward honesty and integrity.

More recently, my work for the World University Project, Emberlight, and the knowledge Generation Bureau have reconnecting me with the wider world in exciting ways. While I don't expect to blog regularly, I expect to resume posting things of interest when appropriate.

Until June
Monday, 7 Apr 2008 :-: ["Permalink"]

A friend recently suggested that I write down my longing wishes-- and then experience some of them after I finish my comprehensive exams. I was at a loss. Life has recently been so much about deadlines, service to others, and big plans for the future, that I have completely forgotten what it means to wish for something, to plan for things which give me pleasure.

I can however, say what I miss:

• Musical performance
• Athletics
• Blogging

I can't wait to be able to sit down in two months' time, relax in a nice chair, think for myself, and write a blog post.

Pure luxury.

Until then, I expect to be mostly inaccessible.

Christian Missions
Tuesday, 19 Feb 2008 :-: ["Permalink"]

In an interesting blog post interview, Maggi Dawn, the Chaplain at Robinson College, discusses this week's visits to Cambridge by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Rowan Williams and John Sentamu. She interviews three people: Duncan Dormor (Dean of St John's College), John Binns, Vicar of Great St Mary's (the University Church) and James Gardom (Dean of Pembroke College).

When Maggi asked if this was similar to a Mission, Duncan noted that it was more in the order of lectures on faith and society rather than a presentation of Christian teaching which invites any kind of conversion. Binns pointed out that Christianity concerns the shape of all society, and that the (or one) ultimate end of Christianity is "what kind of communities we create" and "how we shape social policy." Gardom had this to say:

As someone who is currently participating in the Cambridge Christian Union's ongoing annual Mission (www.life08.org), I was interested in their comments. While I am excited about this lecture series at the university, I wish to respectfully disagree with Gardom on University Missions.

Gardom suggests that public events which present Christian teachings and invite personal change may once have been viable, but that something has changed to make this approach less effective. Things are certainly different-- I have heard of lectures in St. John's thirty years ago where up to 60 students would gather at once to consider the claims of Christianity. That is not the case today, but I do believe that the University Mission is still a powerful community expression of faith and a viable invitation to divine transformation.

Especially at a university, especially at Cambridge, a Mission is structurally the best way to get information about Christian teaching to the greatest number of people. Contemporary missions provide:

• A simple solution to the logistical problem of expertise distribution. The annual student-run mission is organised, well, by students, with the moral support and prayer of the religious establishment. As students, we attempt to love like Christ in relational communities of faith and nonfaith, but there are some areas where love means telling the truth about God, and in some of these areas, our expertise varies. By inviting speakers, we are able provide Christian teaching at a level of scholarship and clarity which exceeds our own and which reaches all parts of the university. This is the same philosophy behind this week's lectures--inviting archbishops and not undergraduates to speak.
• A hub for a variety of initiatives designed to be appropriate for the needs and interests of individuals. Print and web marketing, word-of-mouth, film nights, discussions at the debating society, discussion dinners, coffeehouse evenings. In our time, Missions are not designed to move people to a decision within the lectures; they are designed to open discussion. Most of the talks in the CICCU mission set out philosophical and methodological grounds for enquiry into Christianity and faith, alongside an articulation of that faith; only one talk included a strong personal appeal.
• A training ground for Christian community action. Since the CICCU is student-organised, it provides hundreds of students each year with practical experience in organisation, but also in how to integrate organisational efficiency with Christlike love.
• An occasion for remarkable Christian unity. While it is true that some people disagree with the ideological core of the Christian Union, it is perhaps the largest-scale non-denominational Christian activity in Cambridge and provides an occasion for students to consider their own approach to unity. This year's mission was held in three Cambridge churches of different denominations.

Is this model "broken" and ineffective? While it is true that larger venues might have been selected, each lecture was given to what seemed to me a nearly-packed venue. This visible attendance is just one manifestation of the sum spiritual and informational effect.

What about these other claims, that Christians must also be interested in questions of social and community interest?

As a student at St. John's, I have been excited about Duncan and Grant's Chapel's series on Christianity and social engagement, even if my own participation at Eden Chapel and work on the World University Documentary have stretched me too thin to attend very often.

I am also excited about this week's lectures, but I would hesitate to call them more or less "broken" than the Mission model. The lectures deliver ideas which were not included in our Mission, on topics of great importance. But structurally, they are less efficient. The lecture series is not designed to be sustainable in the same way as a Mission. CICCU and other initiatives (including Chapel!) are better designed to cultivate relationships and incubate long-term discussion focused toward active faith.

Other long-term initiatives in Cambridge would be the Faraday Institute (science), the Jubilee Centre (public policy), the Veritas Forum (an exciting new program of seminars and discussions), and the Christian Graduate Society (which has a strong International Development contingent), and Christian Heritage, which probably reaches more people with a broader international spread than all of these combined.

Thanks for blogging the lectures, Maggi!

Tragedy in Electronic Literature
Friday, 21 Dec 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

On 5 Nov this year, I gave lecture within the English Tripos to the undergraduates at Cambridge. Slides, audio/video, and lecture notes for "Tragedy in Electronic Literature" are now online. (please use the YouTube links when possible to save bandwidth)

This lecture site was available to students over a WIFI connection during the lecture. They could use it to look at the examples more closely, read supplementary material, and view the slides. The WIFI network was limited solely to the material I provided, since I didn't want attention to wander. I was very, very pleased when student questions combined material from the lecture notes/site with things I had said in the lecture. The site was built in Tinderbox, published with the Spatial Hypertext Publisher I recently built.

In the lecture space, I also set up several computers with examples, so people could try them out, but students were far more interested in talking than looking. Professor Poole and I were a bit disappointed at this, but in retrospect, it's nothing to be disappointed about. We can hardly complain that a cluster of students stayed to talk afterward until the building closed.

I owe thanks to many of people for this:

• Adrian Poole sponsored and supervised the lecture. His own interesting lectures and our consequent discussion on tragedy have been fascinating. His encouragement and confidence have been inspiring.
• Mark Bernstein first encouraged me to organise a panel at Hypertext 07 on Tragedy and Hypertext. He has, in general, been a great encourager over the years.
• Nick Lowe, Kieron O'Hara, David Millard, and Emily Short, who spoke at the conference panel. I owe a lot of ideas to this discussion.
• I am particularly indebted to Nick Lowe for his interesting book The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative, and to Emily, for her thorough review and fascinating description of tragedy-related Interactive Fictions.
• Clare Hooper, who got me to think about literary hypertext in the first place, whose enthusiasm refuses to be blunted, and who co-organised the ACM panel.
• Sarah Smith, who shared examples and ideas about tragic hypertext .oO(and for the unforgettable line: how many female Shakespeares does your play have? Ours has two)

I am now working on a related issue: moral dilemmas in interactive fiction, which is proving to be very interesting.

The Blanket-Man Surveys
Friday, 16 Nov 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

a new poem, written indoors on a frosty night...

"The Blanket-man Surveys"

A. Bottles, broken.
B. Stubs, spent.
C. Shoe shops, open.
D. Breadcrumbs, shredded- scattered on a patchy glove.
E. This testament.
F. All of the above.

Down to Camelot
Monday, 8 Oct 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

I watched the first few minutes of the film adaptation of "Anne of Green Gables" (starring Megan Fellows) today. The film is adapted from a bildungsroman by Lucy Maud Montgomery. In the story, the young poetry-loving orphan Anne Shirley, a mistreated foster-child servant-girl on the frontier, is plucked from a life of poverty and sent, accidentally, to a middle-class agrarian pastoral idyll. Literature shifts from being an escape from poverty to the spice of pastoral life. Anne's progress is emotional and relational, and her school friendships are a microcosm of the social hierarchies within the community of Avonlea. Mistakes, confessions, and aphorisms mark the ladder of her social progress, just as innocence, education, charm, and frank honesty take her to greater heights. Society is hierarchical for Anne; each new step toward the urban is a step toward greater wealth, privilege, and opportunity. We see no hint of urban suffering. When Anne reaches The City, we see only grand houses, balls, and yachts. Like Avonlea itself, Anne exhibits the graces which her upper-class friends see in the pastoral. She is a cleansing agent, the erudite and naive farmgirl who is in awe of their wealth and lifestyle, who teaches them to enjoy their privilege and introduces the sweet moral freshness of pastoral life into their rarified air. Where there is charitable, sacrificing love, it is toward the daughter of a millionaire, not toward other orphans as she once was. When she is drawn too dangerously far into the world of privilege, Anne goes back to Avonlea. A rose in the wild cannot be picked and live, no matter how pretty it might be in a crystal vase. Her morality, her frank honesty, her innocence and morals are entirely a construct of her social and natural environment; too much distance from their source strains her character. So she returns to the simple, relaxed middle-class pastoral of Avonlea, where the farms always produce, prices are affordable, friends have time to walk a mile for some gossip, and moderate wealth preserves the illusion that an extra bit of lace or jewelry really is a precious, wonderful thing.

Anne of Green Gables is, significantly, a Canadian story. Avonlea exclusively contains white people who work their own land. The story carries no hint of the American vision of the rural, with its toiling, shrewd Yankee figure. There are no yokels or rednecks here. The orphan of American literature is not Anne Shirley; it's Huck Finn. As for pastoral idylls, the American analogue to Avonlea would probably be the colonial ideal of the gentleman farmer. That ideal however was forever changed by Washington and Jefferson, who in the popular imagination put politics, warfare, invention-- the welfare of the people-- ahead of personal interests.

Some days, I wish I were in Avonlea. I wish I lived in a world where I could sit on the porch, read Wordsworth, relax and be content. Here at Cambridge, I have access to beautiful idylls like Grantchester whenever I wish. Byron and Tennyson and Wordsworth and Woolf and Plath and countless others have often enjoyed cream tea in Grantchester, under the orchard trees.

But I can't be satisfied with afternoons at Grantchester. I know better than to seek ease. I have been given resources by God and many generous people; it is my duty and pleasure to administer them as best I can for the good of others and the glory of God. So I therefore press on with what energy I have to do what I can with the time I have been given.

Anne, like the Lady of Shalott, never makes it to Camelot. But I know that there is an idyll waiting for me, a place where I will lay down my burdens and find perfect rest. In the meantime, I will do my best to lay aside those weights which slow me down and run this life's race with determination and patience, not so I can win at life, but so others may find both life and hope.

May God have mercy on me if I do anything else.

Scones & Jam!
Saturday, 8 Sep 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

The Gourmet Scientist and I made some scones last week. I was knackered from many long bus rides and consequently forgot lots of ingredients. Problems of this magnitude can only be solved with Marketing! (tm).

Crystal blogged our attempts.

The Dangers of Writing
Friday, 7 Sep 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

Sometimes, when I read the religious writings of a great poet like Herbert, I imagine that he was an amazingly spiritual man, someone to be admired and imitated. This may be the case. But literariness is not next to godliness, and good theology doesn't naturally result in good living.

An example of this can be seen in the wonderful Biblical poem of Isaiah 38, written by Hezekiah, king of Judah, after his miraculous recovery to health. The poem is honest-- more honest about his personal sins than the prayer which led to his recovery--and seems theologically sound. He even creates a clever chain of literary conceits: life as fabric-- plucked away by wind, woven in the loom, rolled up and cut off for storage. Hezekiah's poem is a beautiful expression of contrition and praise. But poems are not people, for poems do not change. While writing, Hezekiah may have been sincere about the miracle of his recovery and the blessing of God's forgiveness. But when emissaries from Babylon come to congratulate him on his recovery, he shows them the family jewels rather than shares his faith in God.

Personal writing sometimes comes from a desire to preserve a lingering moment or emotion. In such cases, this contrast between our malleable life and the indellible pen is what draws us to the written word. Herbert mentions this frustration in the first stanza of The Temper:

Somehow, despite the way the variability of life can drive us to write and speak, we can think that a person's writings describe them. It's also possible, like Hezekiah, to think this of ourselves-- to think that writing brings closure, that a poem of thanks is an adequate substitute for thankfulness. Good writing and public speaking are the highest virtues if reputation is the essence of morality, but if human life or divine approval are the measure, our ideas are no more important than our everyday actions.

Thus, writing is dangerous for those who believe themselves too much, who also fail to heed their own advice.

Notes on Tragedy
Tuesday, 4 Sep 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

Note: DO NOT TAKE THESE NOTES TOO SERIOUSLY. MY IDEAS HAVE BECOME SIGNIFICANTLY REFINED SINCE I WROTE THIS. For more updated ideas, look at the page for my lecture on "Tragedy in Electronic Literature".

In preparation for next week's panel on Tragedy (1:30pm, Wednesday) at the 2007 Hypertext Conference, and to address some ideas raised in an exchange between Emily Short and Mark Bernstein(1)(2)(3)(4), I offer the following bits of commentary.

Issue One: Overlap between IF and Hypertext

In her first essay, Short narrates a little dialogue between IF practitioners and Hypertext writers. She draws distinctions between the technology and then suggests that hypertext authors (and implicitly, hypertexts and their underlying technology) prefer static works in which "the reader/user should not have any real agency"-- while IF on the other hand, if it doesn't give the reader/user agency, at least must always "teach the player how to interact".

This last statement is a useful distinction, and Short uses it as a jumping-off point to talk about agency and protagonists in tragedy and electronic works-- a very good and interesting discussion. But the dichotomy between Hypertext as static and IF as dynamic is a bit facile. When we ask our questions in a panel of IF and hypertext people, we have to do more than identify basic differences: we must understand the common ground which can provide opportunity for mutually constructive discussion.

It's easy to get lost in these discussions. We use a word like "agency", and the conversation becomes based on a confusion of terms. In this case, "agency" can mean many things which are not easily compatible, and I think this is one area which deserves further scrutiny.

A related area of common ground is the question of "who"-- questions about the characters, the writer, and the audience. This area is very thorny and complex, because it's so close to the heart of every creative work. Most writings of any kind differ on this point, which makes it a good common ground, since the possibilities vary enough to offer us many chances to learn from disparate works.

How do they differ? Let us consider for example, the question, "What is the narrator?", or "what is supplying us with the substance of the work?". In a film, it might be a camera, the editor, or a narrator character. It might be a narrator in a play, such as Chorus in "Henry V". In electronic works, the narrator might be the user interface, or perhaps a voice within that interface. In novels and poems, the narrator question has provided many PhD and book opportunities, most notably Booth's excellent book, The Rhetoric of Fiction. or one of my personal favourites, a work on using narrators for world-modeling in the novel, Langland's Society in The Novel.

Narrators change. They have varying relations to individual characters' thoughts. They sometimes deceive. They are sometimes deceived, even self-deceived, as Emma (and the Emma-narrator) is about her feelings for Knightely. Readers experience different kinds of affinity with these narrators. Some people, for example, find Coetzee's Disgrace disturbing because it not only invites the reader to associate with a rapist, but it also presents him to the reader as he does to himself-- as a nice, well-meaning erudite guy.

Within this issue of narrators, we can find common ground with the question, "How do authors signal the nature of the narrator?" Text-based interactive fiction, which sometimes doesn't bother with design, often distinguishes narrators using the techniques of stream-of-conciousness writers: by emphasizing changes in style at the natural breaks in the text (paragraphs, the command prompt). Instant Message poems use design elements to distinguish narrators and speakers. Hypertexts, whether spatial, transclusionary, or interlinked, are also design-rich and can tend to rely on design or the strong boundaries' of lexia to distinguish narrators (this incidentally, is where Short falls, well, short. She sees the challenge of organising large sets of links, but hasn't identified the complexities in hypertext of montage, design, UI, graphcs, etc, which many IF systems dispense with).

How does this provide common ground, and what does this have to do with Tragedy? If, for example, we agree that a certain relationship with the narrator is useful to a kind of Tragedy, we are then free to think about how that relationship can be established using the toolset available to each type of electronic work. The next section will provide an example of this.

Issue Two: Play the Protagonist or Ride Shotgun?

Aristotelian tragedy can't work if the player is the tragic character (Emily's Protagonist, Mark's Hero). It's just not possible. This kind of tragedy requires the reader/audience to realize that the tragic character is doomed before the character does. If you're going to have a tragic character and are trying to create this kind of effect, the reader must expect the tragic character to have a mind of his/her/its own.

Again, hypertext and IF present different potentials in relation to Tragic plays. In a tragic play, you often get lots of dialogue. Most of Oedipus Tyrannus consists of Oedipus angrily arguing with people as he completely fails or fears to understand the implications of what he hears. How might this work in electronic literature?

The Aristotelian model of "plot" and its relation to audience knowledge isn't the only kind of tragedy. Some theories highlight the role of suffering and reader empathy in tragedy, which is most notably discussed in Eagleton's Sweet Violence (too bad he can't be at the conference, though he's a prof at Manchester; I hope he was, at least, invited). Getting readers to feel sorrow is a difficult task, but the sufferer must be distant for us to wish to hold them close. Player death is frustrating, but it is not sorrowful if we have saved our game. Tragic violence and tragic suffering aren't about endings; they're about the challenges of going on. Thus, this kind of tragedy cannot put the player in the role of the sufferer.

The Death of Aeris in Final Fantasy VII and the death of Floyd in Planetfall are two examples of subsidiary characters whose deaths have evoked strong emotion. In both cases, the hero character has a responsibility toward the NPC-- but the works themselves are not primarily tragedy.

Sufferers fit nicely into popular understandings of Hegelian tragedy-- where different kinds of moral right are put in opposition. An electronic version of Philoctetes, I suspect, would make a very, very good hypertext or IF; it reminds me of a lot of the moral quandaries found in the very excellent Avernum series (which are a wonderful combination of hypertext and gameplay, and which manage player ignorance deftly). It would actually be possible to play Neaptolimus in an interactive version of Philoctetes, which itself is a story questioning the nature of objectives and quest.

Hamartia and Comedy

Mark and Emily got into a discussion of Hamartia, the fatal flaw, the sin, the error, the missing of the mark, and the relationship between Tragedy and other forms, such as Comedy. I hope, (for Mark especially), that this brief note is helpful.

Michael Bywater has a handy rule of thumb which is not entirely precise, but is quite handy. It goes something like this:

In the context of this question, Mark asks, "What would James Bond do, or wily Ulysses? They'd do something briliant, totally unexpected, something nobody would have thought of." Emily appropriately responds by noting that Bond and Ulysses are heroes, and that Mark is now out of bounds of the Tragedy question. She's partly right.

But we do know what Ulysses would do in a tragedy-- at least according to Sophocles. In Philoctetes, this hero is the villain, the person who, like the heroes of many videogames, is willing to cause suffering for others in order to achieve the objective given him by the gods. Tragedy often dwells on the fringes, in the aftermath, on the jilted, and on the suffering.

Philoctetes presents a classic videogame situation. The hero is asked to obtain an object to defeat the boss at the end. But the play presents a moral dilemma: the object is needed by the suffering Philoctetes if he is to survive. As an extra twist, it Philoctetes is marooned on an abandoned island-- not beacuse the game designers wanted an island stage, but because Ulysses's opportunism seems to have resulted in Philoctetes becoming stranded.

That's what happens to heroes in Tragedy.

Tragedy and The Happy Ending

For those of you who have not studied literature, it should be noted that tragedy is not reliant on whether the ending is "happy" or not. Some tragedies have no deaths at all.

Alienation Effects, Happening Effects, and The Screen

Brecht's ideas are interesting in electronic works, which sometimes attempt to be immersive. There is a tendency, I think it's fair to say, for IF to seek an immersive quality, but hypertexts rarely tend even toward realism. IFs tend to use commands like "Go North", wherease hypertext works tend to provide incomprehensible links, such as Dylan Kinnett's wonderful first options "Rock", "Paper", "Scissors" which are notable precisely for how much they remind the reader of an inability to control. Later options, such as "Win" and "Lose" retain this irony, reminding the reader that there is no way to escape the situation.

This varying affinity to the world of the story, which is connected to the reader's consciousness of the artifice of the story, is addressed in Peter Brook's paraphrase of Brecht:

I included this long quotation because the visibility and questioning of artifice is a very important theoretical, writerly, and technical issue within both electronic literature and tragedy. It is one of those areas of common ground which is expressed differently in different works. In Hypertext, the Happening effect can be achieved visually, through photos, footage, and fonts. In IF this is a bit harder. However, the alienation effect is easier, I think for IF writers, who must, as Emily noted teach their readers how to play.

Time Locks and Option Locks

This one came from a discussion with Michael Bywater. In many tragedies, things must happen at the right time, or time is short, or options begin to narrow. Time is usually one major factor which turns small mistakes into precipices, into Hamartia. Electronic literature offers interesting opportunities for restricting readers' options, but also a lot of challenges.

This question is thus very interesting, but I will leave it to further discussion, after quoting a wonderfully relevant fable by Kafka:

The Quest Model

A lot of stories and games create the illusion of player agency by using a quest model. Instead of proceeding linearly through prescribed Acts and Scenes, the reader concurrently completes a set of prescribed quests and subquests. How can this be employed for the purposes of Tragedy?

Understanding IF

Mark misses something about IF in his comments about the IF author having to be there before the reader. He says, "you rack your brains. And you come up with something incredibly clever, unexpected and far-fetched. Something perfect! But I'm just a writer, not a her: have I thought of your incredibly clever stratagem? If I have, you're deflated: it's not heroic after all, it was just a puzzle and you've supplied the correct answer".

Emily dismisses the deflation issue, but there's another misconception here: the idea that the author has to be there before you. In world modeling, just as in Card Sharp/Thespis, the author can be surprised by logical possibilities they have not considered. Each new rule, each new lexia increases the possibility for unexpected cleverness in readers. Also: Mark also makes the assumption here that IF is intrinsically puzzle-centred, which is not necessarily the case.

The question of puzzles in IF is interesting, and I think it could be fruitfully considered in relation to Brecht's ideas about alienation effects.

Education, Tragedy, and Brecht

Emily makes a very fascinating comment about IF in "IF In the ACM literature, Part Three":

Emily goes on to call this idea a "harsh puritanical" one, which I find odd, given the highly moralistic nature of Greek tragedy, which is still artistically satisfying, despite the fact that no matter how complicated and ambiguous it presented moral questions, it was still there to serve the state and prop up some kind of religious establishment. When I think "harsh puritanical" actions, I think about 17th century censorship, not about ideological creativity.

But that's only a minor point. I'm much much more intrigued by the following statement:

"is it still a game, or is it more of an electronic Socrates, sticking us with more and more contrived questions to make us see the holes in our thinking"

First, as I mentioned before, Tragedy sometimes sticks us with more and more contrived questions to make us see the holes in the tragic character's thinking. But also: it should be rather obvious that dialogue is not always Socratic. The question of what it is when it's not Socratic, especially when used in electronic literature, would seem to me to be something Ms. Short should be rather familiar with, especially given the somewhat moral nature of Galatea-- if you treat Galatea like she's a slut, she will respond to you like the perv you acting to be.

Further Questions

• Progress in many videogames is regulated by subquests. This allows certain freedom within the game world, while permitting certain actions to have a predefined, large influence on the state of the game. The accomplishing of the quest thus has more importance in some cases than the killing of a person. In Time in Greek Tragedy, De Romilly talks about "moments of crisis" in Tragedy-- points at which choices and information have greater importance. How well do these "moments of crisis" map onto game quests? Is this an opportunity or a hindrance for tragedy in Electronic literature (my instinct is that it's a hindrance, at least if the reader is the tragic character).
• Characters in tragedy often operate under constraints. C.f. time locks and option locks. Electronic works, according to Janet Murray, tend to be encyclopedic. Readers tend to follow every link, look at every component in a montage, explore every sub-cavern. Is exploration OK? Or does it undermine tragedy? How can this be managed in electronic literature? IF springs immediately to mind, but that's because IF presents the easiest solutions. How do you manage this in hypertext? (Avernum, as a hybrid system, might be helpful here)
• The encyclopedic tendencies of electronic literature can be used effectively, I suspect, in Tragedy, since critical ignorance is important to Tragedy. How?
• A related issue is The Desire to Stay in the Game. In both Hypertext and IF, there seems to be a tendency to want to stay in the game as long as possible, to keep reading as long as possible. "Premature endings" are losing situations. But death in Tragedy is a satisfactory, if not satisfying ending. How do we present possibilities of varying lengths without creating a hierarchy of outcomes?
• Electronic works can be huge. How do we make works with the potential for tragedy which legitimately present the tragic ending as a satisfactory one rather than "GAME OVER"? Or alternatively: should electronic tragedy have endings? Or, like Dylan Kinnett's "To Win, Simply Play", should we give them no ending at all, banish the reader to go over and over and over the tragic past like the traumatized sometimes go over our own tragic memories?
• How can we properly create a sense of loss in electronic literature?
• If we take a Hegelian position that Tragedy is about conflicting codes which resolve through the destruction of one or the fusion of both, can these "codes" be implemented in software, or should they just be expressed in the language of the work?
• Can more visual/geometric forms of electronic literature be tragic? Is it possible to have a tragic spatial hypertext? Or does the form preclude the possibility? In other words, is some kind of realism necessary for tragedy?

Distinctions on Agency
Tuesday, 4 Sep 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

(part of a larger discussion on Tragedy & Electronic Literature)

..It's easy to get lost in these discussions. We use a word like "agency", and the conversation becomes a confusion of term. The following is just a short list related to Tragedy, with a few Electronic literature questions thrown in:

• The theoretical potential of a character in the fictive setting. Can Oedipus delegate the task to Creon and go to his ranch to clear brush?
• The formal potential of a character in a work. In the Tragedy Oedipus Tyrannus, can Oedipus really avoid poking out his eyes, if it's to be a Tragedy?
• Whodunnit? The philosophical impetus of a character in a fictive setting. Did Apollo really make him do it (1330)? Plato's sockpuppet Socrates was very worried about the effects of unleashing these questions on society.
• What does agency mean in plays consisting primarily of dialogue, which were only just beginning to develop techniques of presenting action on stage?
• Does agency look different in electronic works consisting primarily of narration?
• In electronic works, can reader actions influence what happens, where 'what happens' is an abstraction readers create from the dialogue and narration? If so, what are the implications? (Nick Lowe would have things to say here).
• In plays such as Agamemnon, the commenting/narrating chorus does nothing; it fails to intervene to stop Aegisthus and Clytemnestra from killing Agamemnon and taking over the city. How does inaction work in electronic literature (time locks, option locks, but what if it's a hypertext?)
• What options do you give readers? No really.
• How do readers find out their options? Is ignorance a bug? Or are Rumsfeld's distinctions useful to writers?
  • Known knowns
  • Known unknowns
  • Unknown knowns
  • Unknown unknowns
• What are the relationships among reader knowledge, narrator knowledge, character knowledge, their statements, their narrations, and their "agency" within the work?
• How much of this is up to the writer, how much is up to the reader, and how much is up to the software developers in systems? In a world-modeled IF, the software developer leaves a lot to the reader, but writers' power in this is dependent on the software. IF authors often take pleasure from unexpected things players do with stories based on world models. But it is false to think that Hypertext gives authors hegemonic control over options. This mistake is made by people who naively think that hypertext is just links and lexia/nodes. Just as IF systems aren't just a set of preset If-Then clauses, hypertexts are not just links and nodes. Card Shark & Thespis(literary Adaptive Hypertext) are the World-Modelling equivalents in hypertext writing, enabling works based on rules and objects rather than solely author-predicted structures. Emily Short notes this in her fourth installment of IF in the ACM literature.

This list is merely an example of how a simple word such as "agency" could be understood in many different ways. These are very different, if related issues, which is why it's important to know what we're talking about. This ability to draw distinction permits us to find the overlapping areas more accurately.

Privilege
Monday, 3 Sep 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

Here at Cambridge, people sometimes talk about privilege and about how certain families and certain social networks tend to be more successful at reaching the university. Despite massive University efforts to provide equal opportunity and even provide extra opportunities for people from low-income areas, certain tendencies persist.

These issues are very complex, and some kinds of elitism are very good for an institution which is attempting to employ the best academics, provide the best resources, and produce the best graduates. On a simpler level, however, these social networks are very good for potential applicants. During the past year, I had the privilege of meeting the family of another student. We had a wonderful, wide-ranging conversation. Some time later, I received the following email about homework from the younger sibling of this student, who is thinking of Oxbridge applications soon:

(older readers should note that the quality of youths' online grammar and spelling does not necessarily reflect their skill with the English language. This example is very typical of current style, and based on our brief meeting, I would not be surprised if this student did very well at Oxbridge.)

During our prior discussion, I had explained to this student some very basic ecological issues more clearly than the teacher had-- something which is more likely to occur for those who know people from Oxbridge, or from any university. Now the student was asking for sources.

I could have sent sources, and it would not have been plagiarism. But instead, I sent some names and terms along with the suggestion that the student find the relevant sources. I don't know if the student will put them to good use or not. But making it harder for this student actually provides a greater opportunity to hone research techniques, skills which will provide a great advantage during secondary school and in Oxbridge applications.

This, I suspect, is a major part of privilege, and to be honest, if it means that students learn more, I have only a few specific reservations about it, but those have more to do with how to balance a university's impact on society in relation to the economic and regional diversity of its applicant pool and the quality of its production.

The (adj) X (prep) Y is Z
Monday, 6 Aug 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

One of the most common formulations found in academic English is the phrase, "The (adj) X (prep) Y is Z". The great tendency to do this is a major part of the verbose nature of academic English. One main reason for this construct's popularity is its use in spoken conversation, where it is used as a crowbar to pry into the conversation while the speaker is still figuring out what to say.

Another main use of this construct is to permit the subject of a sentence to follow what would otherwise be its direct object. The problem with a direct sentence is that, while the sentence, "Bill is fat, but James is thin" can compare Bill and James, it does not contain the same emphases as, "The difference between Bill and James is their weight", where the emphasised word is placed closer to the beginning of the sentence, as in "difference" in the former example, which is more important than the fatness or thinness of either individual. One other advantage of this construct is its ability to emphasise the adjective, as in "The least difference between Bill and James is their weight", compared to "Bill is fat, and James is thin, but that is their least difference", which requires an additional clause to perform what the former construct achieves in only one additional word.

Finally, the most academically-valuable, most abused feature of this sentence construction is the ease with which additional prepositional phrases and noun clauses, with yet more subclauses, asides, and commentaries of various kinds, may be appended ad infinitum, so long as the writer is careful to mind the transitions into subclauses and never traverse back up the tree of clauses more than two or three levels, which tends to confuse readers, who might find it difficult to remember which is the branch to which they are returning, although Milton famously used this technique to great success in the introduction to "Paradise Lost", which employs a cascade of dependent phrases and clauses to maintain a sense of forward motion and grand historical scope in the span of divine and human doings he summarizes in the admotion to the heavenly muse found in the work's first canto.

An Open Mind
Thursday, 19 Jul 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

It's much easier to have an open mind if you have an empty mind. At Cambridge, I have learned that detail is a necessary component of any good conversation, and that plenty of time can be "wasted" by people who have a general understanding of the question but are unable to distinguish key differences between similar things.

But as Christians, no conversation is "wasted" if we enter the conversation with the good and growth of the other person in mind. Not all people share our opinions. And not all people's opinions are as developed as ours; people also ask a lot of bad questions. If we put our own learning, or the integrity of the idea above the person we're with, we have failed our responsibility to love all people. If we just spend time together and contribute nothing to each other, we have failed our responsibility to love all people.

Christians have a double responsibility and a high calling in our thinking and discussion. Not only are we to seek truth and wisdom, but we are to stand firm in love and humility, in gentleness and generosity. We should be eager to learn and founded on truth, always willing to build on that foundation, and always willing to lift a stone in the constructive life of each person God blesses us to meet.

As If
Wednesday, 11 Jul 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

The two key words in Cole's notes for this painting are "as if". By itself, the painting provides no means of hope. The airy castles of "Youth" and the blissful garden of "Childhood" are far behind. There is no angel here. The only light, choked by dense clouds, only succeeds in putting peril into relief. Thus, "as if" is not a statement about the foolishness of the man's prayer; it is a statement on the nature of his faith, which seeks God "as if" he exists, when even light has failed.

At the St. John's College Christian Union, we are going through prayers in the Bible over the summer. This week's prayer, from Habakkuk 3, presents a similar situation to Cole's painting. How do we relate to a God whose majesty "made the nations tremble", who according to Habakkuk, torments the earth with judgement-- a God of plague and pestilence, who brings anguish and distress in his pursuit of total justice? And what good is faith when our emotion and experience fail to transcend but instead become barren or dismal?

Answers to these questions are not sufficient. Habakkuk's response is inspiring precisely because it's so ridiculous:

It's an extreme statement of faith to attribute both suffering and sustenance to the same person. Habakkuk continues:

This isn't so much a prayer as it is an outburst of desperation, resolution, and desire; not unlike a mantra. It holds Habakkuk to a standard, but to acknowledge need is also to insist upon God. Here, in this dire moment, heaven and earth must meet and work together for anything good to survive.

Many people live within societal desolation like that which Habakkuk or the protagonist of "Manhood" were facing. But as Christians, we are all refugees. And wherever we are, we must hold fast to our faith. For if we do not stand firm in our faith, we will not stand at all.

Time Personified
Friday, 11 May 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

When, in Midnight's Children, the character "Saleem Sinai" writes,

there is a comic element not found in the statement by Sophocles' "Philoctetes",

or Aeschylus, in "Agamemnon",

This is, in part the result of a kind of linguistic playfulness by Rushdie, one which heightens our attention to the shared space between the literal and the figurative. Within this space, Rushdie achieves a merged bathos and pathos, a critic might say.This may be true - but how does Rushdie do it?

In the quotations by Sophocles and Aeschylus, time only does one thing. For Philoctetes, it comes and goes. In Aeschylus, it cleanses. But in the Rushdie quotation, Time "settles down" and "concentrates" on something abstract. The statements, "Time settles in the importance of the moment" or "Time concentrates the importance of the moment" are serious, almost philosophical. But "Time settles down and concentrates on the importance of the moment" borders on comedy. A truly comic line might read like Pratchett: "Time settles down, concentrates on the importance of the moment, and opens a beer." Rushdie's semi-characterisation, however, leaves us hanging -- half chuckling, but also serious about this statement on time. Because for Aadam Aziz, this chance to expand his clientele is critical. On this day, slowness means intensity, not relaxation. Time settles down because Aziz cannot.

How shall I weep for you?
Friday, 27 Apr 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

In the Oresteia, the chorus exclaims to the body of Agamemnon, "O King, my king, how shall I weep for you?" Much later, Electra hesitates before his grave and asks, "What shall I say, as I pour out these outpourings of sorrow? How say the good word, how make my prayer to my father?" For she has truly been asked an unspeakable task-- to appease his spirit on behalf of the wife who murdered him -- "shall I say this sentence, regular in human use: 'Grant good return to those who send to you these flowers of honor: gifts to match the ... evil they have done.' "

In the 21st century, surrounded by invention, marketing, ritual, and cultural interpretation, we are unused to situations which have no response. We despise hesitancy because it reveals weakness and uncertainty. But Electra is uncertain about more than how to proceed; she sees little hope from under the harsh grief of living in a house of blood.

Unable to address her murdered father, Electra turns her voice to the gods. But if one struggles to speak about a death of a loved parent, how much more perplexing must be the details of a prayer to terrible powers which we cannot see, about which we only guess? With the guidance of the chorus, Electra finally speaks, calling to Hermes, the god of messages, the lord of the dead. When a response occurs, even the knowledgeable chorus becomes afraid.

In the South African novel Heart of Redness by Zakes Mda, a sect of Unbelievers visit a nearby village to borrow a ritual for the recall and purgation of sorrow. Although they are Unbelievers, they feel a deep need to connect with ritual, with a form of activity and its personal and communal effects. In this they differ from the characters of the Oresteia and very possibly from its original Greek audiences. For the ancient Greeks, invocations of the gods would have called forth genuine awe and fear.

Modern society analyzes and deploys the functions of ritual at the moments in life when the Greeks fumbled for appropriate responses to new and terrible situations. But their silences, as well as their placations and imprecations were in good faith. In the Oresteia, the ritual of killing is terrifying because it extends beyond the visible moment-- into generational time, beyond the visible world-- but in Bond's Lear or Kafka's In the Penal Colony, the terror in the ritual of torture is a finite moment of pain within an inevitable process of death, a process whose execution is clinical, whose form itself is worshipped. In one, tragedy is found in the value of life; in the others, terror comes from its devaluation.

"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," said Clarke, and the devices in our pockets do seem like magic. The structures of society enchant us into compliance. But while we may appeal to society for justice, wisdom, food, or healing, while we carefully phrase the rituals of our requests, we hardly fear the mailman like the Greeks feared Hermes. We don't seek to satisfy the gods; we seek the outcomes of the process. We don't try to placate the lord of the dead. We just want our mail.

This functional approach infects Christianity. We can argue and debate about form and ceremony so much that when we find ourselves in unfamiliar situations, we fail to worship. When we talk about music, we talk about the ways in which it works upon people, rather than the ways in which people can worship within its practice. We think of ritual as an external force of control upon a group, as a psychological trip rather than a way to acknowledge uncertainty, express the inexpressible, or reach toward the unimaginable. For even the things we know about God are mysteries and beyond our mastery.

The Christian who fails to feel worshipful and furthermore fails to worship in an Anglican Chapel may find more to condemn in himself than in the vaulted ceilings and fancy robes. Likewise, the person who is filled with awe within that chapel, or who is caught up in the thrill of a worship band must watch carefully, lest true worship be stifled by the overwhelming moment. Dabblers who enjoy the experience of forms of worship must be careful lest they find what they seek.

Doctrine and teaching can also douse worship. But not all dissection is murder. Feynman rightly points out that knowledge of a flower's function can increase one's awe and appreciation of its beauty, just as the functional enumeration of the mechanisms of torture heighten the dramatic apprehension of Lear's ordeal.

The spirit of Agamemnon never appears, never validates the ritual and resolve of Electra and her brother Orestes, but their grief, hatred, belief, and conviction-- which so recently struggled to find expression in ritual-- are expressed in an act of revenge. Even if the form of their ceremony was insufficient or ineffective, their true feelings and belief in the divine are very real. They don't need the ritual; they need their father, they need the gods. Their father never appears, but Orestes still acts on the word of the oracle, in the will of the gods.

For the Christian, revenge is hardly a virtue, but good faith is. My study of classical literature has given me new insight on the nature of faith and form. I have learned that when we ask "how shall I weep for you," the statement's heart is neither "how" nor "weep", but instead "for you". May I find a way to live this truth.

Dwelling in Possibility
Friday, 27 Apr 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

A colleague and I recently discussed international society and the commonalities shared by diplomats, scholars, researchers, and others who have reached a certain level of attainment and ease in the world. We wondered if they might relate to each other with more ease than they relate to people from their place of origin. We wondered if it might extend beyond the newspapers, novels and shared society, stretching to their sense of possibility.

It's a wonderful thing to dwell in possibility, to feel the clear blue expanse, to spread one's hands without fear. Such people are able to exercise agency within this wide-open world. Their reputation, knowledge, social skills, and tactical acuity complement an aura of confidence whose mere presence itself unlocks many doors.

Education, society, and the funds to maneuver bring a kind of pleasant comfort to one's days. One is able to read, discuss, and eat without worry, to breathe deeply and enjoy each moment of life's precious cordial. It's a wonderful thing to wake up in the morning, to exercise for health and recreation, to stop at Starbucks to redeem a gift card for a relaxing morning with a novel, to saunter over to a sociable afternoon meeting, and to know that this is my work. To call the Wordsworth society dinner one of Cambridge's rare consolations is to participate in a pleasant, knowing imprecision; if the satisfactions of my academic course are the low points of my current lifestyle, I can have no true dissatisfactions.

Such must have been the life for the retinue of the generous king Belshazzar. Having inherited a vast Middle-Eastern kingdom of great learning, administrative efficiency, and lavish provender, he decided to reward his nobles and celebrate his situation with a grand party. Special table service was used: rare and beautiful goblets and massive laveoirs overflowed with wine and other delicacies. The conversation must have been exquisite.

I can imagine the subdued enthusiasm as brilliant scholars, young suitors, and elegant ladies tossed and caught witty conversation, now circling, now sweeping through the gliding weaves of color and excitement. The older set probably sat and watched the youths' activity in satisfaction and fond memory.

But this evening would not be all blue skies and bon-bons.

The story, found in the ancient book of Daniel and other sources, describes the effective collapse of one of the world's great empires -- in a single day. When Daniel is summoned to speak with Belshazzar near the very end, he tells of the king's father Nebuchadnezzar, and how this previous king had come to grips with the fragile reality of privilege and the need for wise use of power. The next king was no stranger to wisdom; his terms of conquest are considered the very first charter of human rights.

The Jewish book of Amos also contains a warning for those who enjoy great privilege:

As a Christian, I see all life as an expression of the power and blessing of God: sunrise, breath, conversation, an embrace, a smile, a brisk challenge, a sorrow, a warm tea, and an evening's rest. Life in a supernatural world elicits wonder, awe, and fear. Neither confidence nor possibility are based merely on individuals in society, their environments, and their histories, but on an unseen power. In many Greek tragedies, people are consistent and the gods capricious [or at least inaccessible, which amounts to similar confusion]. Awareness of vast power without a knowledge of its aims would indeed be terrifying. And yet the element of fear is not absent from an understanding of the Christian God of love and constancy. Even the great are loved for their rarity, for the fragility of their passing light. A name which endures is precious because its owner cannot.

I have been trying to learn what it means to be humble, to be aware of my limitations and to show my constant need for Christ while still carrying out the excellence and faithfulness which His grace enables and demands, while still living a disciplined, professional life which achieves success, on which others can rely, which fails neither my associates nor my Divine Lord. Especially at Cambridge, my fellow students need to see the value of brokenness, for that is our natural state. And yet the power of Christ is his ability to mend, his ability to uncover and heal wounds which we might never notice, to grant us an integrity which we never thought possible, to lead us to satisfactions which we cannot fully imagine.

I could desire this for marketing purposes, but that would be hypocrisy. I desire it for myself, lest I like Belshazzar drink the wine of false celebrations on a day of downfall, lest the coffers of my life are opened to find me wanting.

So I pray for wisdom, but even more, for action, for a vision of the celestial, for discipline and for love.

I sit exams in less than a month. My current task is clear: to prepare so well that I am able to keep one eye on the needs of others and put a hand to their growth and good success.

CICCU Rep to St. John's College
Thursday, 26 Apr 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

I have accepted, along with Tina Faranda-Bellofigli, the position of Christian Union Rep to St. John's College. We will be organising and coordinating Christian events within St. Johns. But our work is service; the reality of our efforts and desire is not that of leadership but enablement.

When John Stott was at Cambridge, the Christian Union chose not to ask him to be involved in the formal organisation. As his biographer Timothy Dudley-Smith notes, "Oliver Barclay, President at the time, had the wisdom to see that while John Stott could always be available for consultation over matters of policy, choice of speakers and so on, his time was better spent out of committee rather than in it..."

Although I often enjoy administrative efforts, I have always been very uneasy and even skeptical about the such things in relation to assumptions of power, personal virtue, and the community of faith. But if Tina and I can provide a framework and a social network for the incubation of truth, personal spiritual growth, mutual support, and outward love of Christ's people, then I am happy to book rooms and write emails.

Emphasis and Metre
Thursday, 5 Apr 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

Patterns in poetry are often established in order to break them-- in the same poem. For example, in Richard, Duke of York, Shakespeare uses this to good effect:

Here, Shakespeare does more than just set up a pattern with "so many", but also with a progression of time, from minutes to hour to hours to days, etc... When it returns to minutes, this is unexpected, and the line is highlighted.

This can also be done in metre. A poem with iambic metre might go like this:

Here, the first two lines establish a pattern of iambic rhythm. In the third line, this serves to highlight the word "my" over the word "dear", when the stresses were the other way around in the first line.

But sometimes, a poet does something unusual, in which our tendency to read the line might actually go against the tendencies both of the metre and the natural rhythm of the phrase. Consider, for example, this excerpt from "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," by Yeats...

The first two lines begin with stressed syllables, which creates a tension in those lines, since the poem begins somewhat with a solid iambic tetrameter. But what about the second two lines of this excerpt? Should the emphasis be placed on "my" our on "country" ? If you follow the pattern which Yeats established in the first two lines, the emphasis should fall on "my". But if you follow the tendencies of the [English] Language, the emphasis should be on Country. This is precisely the dilemma which Yeats is highlighting in the poem; to the discerning reader, the same dilemma is present in the language, in the metre itself as in the plain statements of the poem.

The Long Life of "Of English Verse"
Tuesday, 3 Apr 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

In Waller's poem, "Of English Verse", the final stanza reads:

The precision in the articulations of "d" and "t" in "the date" contrast with the smooth continuity between "of" and "fading" (which are pushed together by the shared f, not separated), which word group is softened by the leading vowel, taking the edge off the repetition of trochees, thus making "beauty" a pulse rather than a drumbeat, one whose dipthong attempts to stretch it out, but whose final vowel itself, like beauty or poetry, must fade.

The semicolon is our space to mourn. But Waller's metre is more sophisticated than that. Though he depicts it with feeling, Waller does not wish to dwell on the time of beauty or on its fading, but rather on the quality of present love. The movement of the final line-- the tension between the tendencies of the iambic pattern and the habits of normal pronunciation-- reverses the normal relative emphasis of "long-lived" from "long" to "lived", depicting in the metre the argument of the poem: that to write in and for a "lived" present is the best which English poets can do, and that this best is not a gruding limitation, but is in fact rather lovely.

Resampling my Experience
Monday, 2 Apr 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

I have probably been writing more over the last few months than ever. But most of my work has been in emails to select groups of people. I'm finding that writing to individual audiences allows me to be more lazy with my thoughts, but to also rely on the assumptions and knowledge of others and the context of our previous conversations.

But I think it's only fair to start sharing some of this with you, especially because I need to start remembering things in preparation for upcoming examinations. From an email last week....

I have recently been watching Man with a Movie Camera and realising the complex relationship footage has with truth in light of the kinds of lives led by its subjects and audiences. In an industrial or agrarian society, where material conditions and activity are not only the prominent elements of life, but could be perceived visually, it's somewhat possible to use footage as Vertov suggests. His international language is not, as he presumes, film, but rather the international language of technology and labor, based on experience and inference. Without a way to recognize the signs, his film would merely be visual art. Certain formal themes would remain: those related to motion, form, perception, juxtaposition, and time.

But much would be lost, has been lost. But how would we depict life in white collar, developed societies? The visual no longer can address this, not just because our technology has become a series of general-purpose black boxes (signs are more powerful, less specific. What can a computer stand for?), but also because our work is very linguistic, and because we clothe ourselves in aesthetics. If Vertov were trying to depict London today, he would have to include diagrams, hypertexts, all kinds of models and representations, based on the international languages of science, statistics, and visual marketing, on landscape, on forms of experience (the play, the swim, the business report, the murder). We are people of signs

I think it's time I revisit Tufte, but think more broadly, in relation to form, art, and nonfiction.

Hosting
Monday, 26 Feb 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

I invited friends to visit me one evening this week. I am going to play them a movie. We are going to eat dinner. We are going to talk. I know the ideological underpinnings of the movie; I know the conversation we are going to talk. I want their opinion, want to add their talk to my own. I want them to create an opinion and expect that in doing so, they will shift their patterns of thought toward mine.

They are interested in each other. I am interested in their interest in each other. This will bring them together, create a memory, perhaps an ideology, which brings them together, to some degree, in mind and purpose.

Notice how spare descriptions of ordinary events make them seem insidious. In Woolf, they often seem to suggest an unbalanced nature.

Tinderbox Web Viewer
Wednesday, 3 Jan 2007 :-: ["Permalink"]

I have just finished the first beta of a Tinderbox web viewer. It's a series of PHP scripts (thanks, Clare and Bill, for inspiring this!) which will load a Tinderbox file and recreate the Map View online. (Click here to load the Tinderbox Map Viewer)

I am going to try to package it soon, but I'm buried with work. I basically just need to make a configuration file and then just zip everything into a package file. Setting the system up for your Tinderbox files will be ridiculously-simple.

Milgram -- On Computers!
Wednesday, 27 Dec 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

This is a response to an article in Nature which describes the findings of Mel Slater in "A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments".

The study states,

This, it seems to me and my trusty sidekick Logic, is quite silly and rather dangerous.

It has been clear for a very long time that at is very real to us. It was as much a debate to Plato and Aristotle as it is to us today. Immersive environments are interesting precisely because they offer a different kind of correspondence to reality. It is both silly and illogical to suggest that

1. this test is valid because it recreates the conditions of the original study
2. this test is ethical because it fails to recreate the conditions of the original study

It *is* true that the more recent test measures something different than the Milligram test. It is an interesting result. But if the Nature article and the scholarly publication are any indication, the researchers seem to completely misunderstand what it is that they're actually measuring.

Jeremy Bailenson is quoted as saying that "What Slater's research is showing is if you make your virtual reality good enough, you can go back and ask all these questions".

This is silly. This is *not* what Slater's research is showing. The significant difference between Slater's research and the theatrical simulations of the past is not the fact that these are computer simulations. The difference is that Slater's research is not a double-blind. This is freshman stuff. Don't they understand this?

This simple logical failure allows them to mischaracterize the ethical question. The ethical question with in Milgram's study did not rest in the actors who pretended to be tortured. It resided in the double-blind nature of the test and its moral/psychological impact upon those whom the test encouraged to torture other people.

By telling subjects about the test, Slater ruined the results and destroyed any useful correspondence to Milgram's study. If his test is valid, then his results seem to indicate that even in the absence of a double-blind, people take this stuff seriously. This supports the argument that Slater's test was also unethical.

But we can't really know, because Slater introduced too many new variables. If he just wanted to test the double-blind effect, he would have used actors, as did Milgram. But he also introduced a virtual reality system. So his results have to do with the nature of double-blinds, but they also have to do with the believability of virtual reality.

Bailenson seems to think that virtual reality is believable enough to give us insight into human reactions in the actual situations simulated. But this is the central issue with Milgram's study: whether simulation is ethical or not. Replacing human actors with digital actors does not change the ethical problem. If it is someday established that humans react to certain digital environments in nearly-identical ways to physical reality, then the potential for unethical testing increases, due to the greater possibilities of simulation. Would it then be possible, for example, to recreate rape in a digital environment, measure the results, and claim ethical high ground since physical rape is not perpetrated? Of course not. The Milgram study provides a case of far better simulated realism than any computer will ever be able to create. And anyone with any basic understanding of Internet culture has likely read the 1993 case study, "A Rape in Cyberspace", which suggests that even textual encounters can have a significant psychological impact, a conclusion supported by Slater's research.

The popular misconception that videogames and televisions, by merit of their nature as simulations, are effectless, is dangerous and troubling. If they were truly nonexperience, they would not be popular. Each year, hundreds of computer games put millions of people in situations even more ethically questionable than that of participants Milgram's famous study.

IMHO, Slater is trolling. It's the good ol' funding and publicity garnering standby of "let's do X -- with computers! "(in space, underwater, with six foot tall dancing cockroach hobos, etc). The latest, most depressing variant of this is the Arden Project, which has almost nothing to do with theatre or Shakespeare's plays. Why can't people obtain a basic idea of the issues they're dealing with? And why do other people fund them? Sigh.

I'm just getting warmed up. Rest and further study have resulted in such gems as "Why Christians Need to Read The Communist Manifesto". But I'll let that wait for a future date.

Also note that I had the reprise on simulation and stimulation ready to go in my blog queue several days before I came across this issue. Weird, eh?

Simulation and Stimulation - Reprint
Thursday, 21 Dec 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I just revisited a post from last year on the disciplines of study. It's worth another read.

In my quest for optimum output, I tread the wire between two elements which must both be optimized: time and my mind.

For example, do I go to sleep or keep working? If I go to sleep, I can do more work today. But if I keep working, will my mind continue to output thinking at a reasonable rate? I know the dangers of excessive late night work; I think I'm working hard, but late night work often goes at a slower rate. Drowsiness can be mistaken for flow.

The first great mental challenge of my life was to acknowledge the weirdness of my brain and give it enough time to complete complex tasks. Instead of sitting in front of the math problem, crying until my mind caught up, one early mentor suggested I doodle.

It was my first introduction to a basic mental technique: give yourself time to do the job. Aided by some math videos where I saw the equations performed on a board, I clung to the concept of time for years.

To this day, time management is one of the most important parts of my life. A much more complex inner equation leads to the daily allotment of time. Into it goes a set of tasks I wish to accomplish, the set of possible locations, and a sense of my mental state. Based on these variables, I choose where to go, how to get there, and what to eat.

This is because I have added a study of the mind to the concepts of basic time management. In high school, I would just sit in front of the computer, waiting for the ideas to come. They came much more slowly back then. No doubt my mind is much stronger, but I have also honed my methods.

In this, one must be very specific about the object one wishes to achieve. For example, many of my friends believe that they work best under pressure. Thus, they choose to write papers the night before. In reality, they do not work best under pressure. They work fastest under pressure. Their best work would take much, much more time to complete. This, of course, demonstrates their priorities. Something else must be much more important to them.

Among the last-nighters, there are also people who wish to do quality work, but are stuck. Like the student who writes the first reasonably-logical thesis which comes to mind, they stick with the mental disciplines which they encounter by accident. And last-night pressure is the easiest mental stimulant to discover; even many highly-motivated, highly-intelligent people stop here.

The last-night mindset is deceptive. It seems the quickest and most intense of all mental effort. It may even be highly addictive. Highly social people prefer this method, since it frees their time for other, more important things. Fortunately, when I was young I read some advice against making this a regular pattern: (Samuel Johnson's early letter to Boswell).

So I looked for other paradigms of mental discipline. And I am still looking. For their nature and scope can vary widely. Hypertext, for example, has led to an important paradigm change for me. My thoughts on the unpublished Metaphysical poets have led to further distinct changes in my mental toolbag. There are several others, but I will only give one more example:

The next mental technique which people discover is a sort of self-conditioning.

I recently saw a cartoon in which someone offered herself a cookie if she were able to write 5 more pages. By offering herself a reward, she was trying to behaviorally condition herself to write more. This was a question of motivation.

The conditioning can become much more subtle when it looks like operant conditioning. It starts out by remembering a particular good study session. Any number of factors, such as sleep, nutrition, the topic itself, or any previous work on the topic may have contributed to this outstanding study session. But our imaginary thinker remembers that he was at coffeeshop X or in seat Y when the marvelous thinking occurred. Next time he wishes to study well, he will attempt to recreate that environment. In effect, they are trying to operant condition themselves to produce work; instead of salivating at the sound of the bell, they wish to think upon command. The utmost level of their art is seen in Act I of Beckett's Waiting for Godot. When Lucky's hat is put on, he is told to "think!" And he does, until the hat is taken off.

I know a hundred people who would think themselves fortunate to be Lucky, if only so they could spend the rest of their day partying.

I am eating a cracker as I write this. For me, taste and rote muscle movement also affect my thinking. For example, I often pace.

I have put a lot of thought into how music affects thinking. And this is not only because I spend large amounts of my day around specialists in music and psychology. It's because music is just about the most common conditioner in Western life.

Now that we live in a world were recorded music is readily available, music is often used in the attempt to induce certain thoughts or emotions. Malls, movies, telepones on-hold, nightclubs, bedrooms, and even babies' rooms are all places where we carefully select music to get a particular emotional/psychological reactions from ourselves and others around us.

The principles of conditioning also apply. Satiation, etc... The effects are staggering. Some research suggests that the massive amounts of stimulation available in our developmental stages may contribute to the prevalence of ADHD. Even if this is not the case, we have been affected: One of the most decorated honors students in Elizabethtown College's class of 2005 swore he could only study textbooks while watching TV and listening to the radio. Certain elements of religious tradition, such as the lighting of candles and incense, or the sole ceremonial use of certain colors, could also be seen as a form of self-conditioning.

Few people get beyond this type of discipline toward becoming effective in what they desire (I state this in general terms, because I realize that some may wish to put their mind to other things than mere study. For example, therapists may seek to maximize empathy. Artists and writers may wish to enhance their imagination, etc.). But to stay here is naive. It leads to an ever-narrowing corner, since conditioning creates ruts which become progressively more difficult to escape. Also, one can leave the goal for the stimulus (which is what Johnson wrote about). For example, someone who studies well in coffeeshops may continue going to coffeeshops for the enjoyable experience long after its mental usefulness has passed (because you get to know the people there, because the noise grows, etc.).

Most people think of these things in a superstitious manner. But it is useful to consider out the individual properties of each thinking arrangment. A case study analysis would unnecessarily lengthen this already-long post. So I will leave that to you.

(for example, the advent of recorded music has led to the widescale use of recorded music in the daily life of religious people. If recorded religious music really had the intrinsic effect that its proponents claim, we would have this amazingly-devoud population of religious people. Is this happening? If not, why not? What is the actual, long term effect of recorded religious music in the life of your average, music-listening devotee?)

There are other paradigms of self-awareness that specialize toward the thinking work I do. I have a small trove of carefully-edited methods, as I try to develop what I have and find new ways of doing.

It would be easy to reduce people to stimulous machines, self-conditioning ourself with stimuli and our brain's response to chemical reactions in our body. One could define religion, love, philanthropy, hate, war, and creativity with these terms. But...

Although I carry out my own development in a systematic, thoughtful way that acknowledges the physical and psychological aspects of my being, I know there is a spiritual element to life. I know that the Spirit and grace of God stand large in whatever measure of success my person has achieved.

In all this, let us not forget the spiritual things.

That was all background to this thought I had in the morning: should I play videogames or not?

The answer may surprise you, but it will have to wait for another post.

Back in Pennsylvania
Wednesday, 20 Dec 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

A young girl, the friend of a friend, is walking down a street when a man jumps out of a van, kidnaps her, and rapes her. After he discards her and she finds her family, she returns to cutting and other compulsive acts.

Evil is the reward of free will, the bitter dregs of our true liberty. Shine, righteousness! Shine somewhere... anywhere? Where is there good in this indifferent world? Fire and blood, and dire, dreadful deeds clash complacently, crush our mediocre, shuffled mumblings. Gashes gleam the crusted dusty armor-- but honor, goodness have dimmed, at best mouldering on the brick-a-brac shelves of dilettantes.

I am one of those dilettantes. On some nights, when the winter chill presses icy fingers against the windows, I sit at the fire with some cider and recite with the ancients the legends of glory. Sometimes I write an aphorism in my commonplace book. The candle goes out, and I sleep peacefully.

Annals of Spam, Pt III
Sunday, 10 Dec 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Have I mentioned how much I love spam? It truly is a literary genre of unique qualities. It is no small feat to frustrate Bayesian filters and remain interesting. People get hired to write this stuff. Someday, I want to make an anthology:

(previous: "I love spam", "The Philosopher Ballerina")

Rosebud
Thursday, 7 Dec 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] [soundtrack]

Vision in Politics
Sunday, 26 Nov 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Men of true wisdom who love their country will always hold dear a view of what their country is, and what it might be. What good father looks on his son and sees a schoolboy but not the man he will become? Not the wise father, who praises and encourages him while correcting his faults. The wise father, whose heart is stretched between the future and the present, holds his son back from tasks and temptations which he cannot yet handle, and sometimes spurs his son to confidence and initiative. But only the wisest can properly advise the once-in-a-lifetime chances, and few are strong enough to forbid when the heart says, "go".

Metafilter Meetup
Saturday, 18 Nov 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Although I didn't make it to the formal hall, I was able to meet some other MeFites at the Combination Room at Trinity last night, in-between judging for the Cambridge IV debate. Thanks for a lovely time, everyone!

Stories, MMoRPGs, and the End which Never Comes?
Wednesday, 15 Nov 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Mark Bernstein recently commented on Jill's and Diane's discussion of endings and MMORPGs.

Jill suggests that WoW turns endings into goals, "potentials you can achieve", and that the game gives you a chance to repeat the same story over and over again, perhaps more quickly, but with the same major plot elements.

Then Jill (and eventually Diane and Mark) look at the story from the perspective of television. IMHO, that viewpoint misses the interactive nature of the story and considers it to be something that is devised by some hand on high and experienced in a fixed way by a set of consumers. It's easy to think this way, when the main elements of plot are common to all viewers: the same kinds of enemies, the same character classes, different people doing the same things. Mark wonders, "are we just harvesting gold and arresting 500 villains?" But people aren't doing the same things.

The story of MMORPGs resides in the main plot elements as much as the story in Greek tragedy resides in the main plot elements. When they go to the annual Dionysian festival, the people already know about Agamemnon; they already know about Oedipus. They know what happens. The tragedies are often just small bits taken from the bigger stories whose basic plot remains the same. Why bother seeing the same sub-story again? Because the interesting parts of story reside in-between the "key" parts of the plot. That's why we get away with three renditions of the story of Electra by three Greek playwrights in a short period of time. And they don't fall flat. The essence of story is anchored to the "main" parts of the plot, but the interesting things often happen in-between.

But this comparison doesn't even fully work. MMoRPGs let us think beyond the idea of the gamemakers as authors. Diane realizes this (and more) when she asks,

Although the "game world" may go on, perhaps even in a cyclical way (like life, like Athens), stories in WoW have definite beginnings and endings. (People do tend to index experiencein terms of events and episodes.) I hear gameworld stories all the time. When I go to the cafeteria and meet my MMORPG-playing friends, they never tire of telling me about their adventures hunting Chinese farmers, or taking out some monster. WoW has renewed the oral tradition. When I hear them, I imagine it as a taste of the storytelling in Mead-halls during the time when stories like Beowulf were first told. For them, the main plot elements (I killed X monster) are only checkpoints, something to keep track of the really interesting parts. They talk about who was in the group, how they behaved, what expected things occurred, what they didn't expect. They describe the battles in detail. But some stories aren't even about the battles or quests -- did you hear? Ed just sold his helmet and bought two hundred fireworks. It happened this way... For these people (and I'm sure plenty of others find other reasons to play), WoW gives them a chance to tell stories, to have something interesting to say, something interesting to share, something to argue about. And, just as in the Greek plays, they are happy to relive the same stories in different ways. But unlike the Greek plays, these are their stories, no matter how many others experienced similar ones.

Yesterday, I told some postgrad friends a story about shopping for things with which to bake bread. The plot looked like this:

• I go to Sainsbury's, buy wheat and yeast.
• I can't find a casserole dish.
• I wander central Cambridge,
• I go to Mark & Spencer; they don't have a casserole dish.
• I go to the Grafton Center and buy a casserole dish at that specialty cookware shop.
• I go home and make bread.

They looked at me with incredulity. "What's the point?", I imagine they wondered. Most of us go shopping several times a week -- at the same stores. Then I let loose my final line.

"See! This is what gradschool does to you. It makes something like that seem like an adventure."

I had them in irons.

This, of course is not a General Theory of All MMoRPG playing, because people play for different reasons. Jill's post comes from the competetive side of gaming, where the interest lies in goals and things to accomplish. But sometimes, I play games just because I want to kill time, or because I feel like seeing explosions, or want to see what happens if I increase my character class, or talk with other people, or whatever. But sometimes I just like the idea of being elsewhere.

Jill says that "World of Warcraft isn’t about puzzles, it’s about hard work, navigation, strategy and mastery." Sure, but is that all? It includes these elements, but are they the only (or the key) things that make it interesting?

Goals are a big part of games, because they leave us with a satisfying place to stop playing, a point in the game where it's possible to let go, and thoughts about game won't reach back into the physical world (someone should write about this phenomenon, about the psychology of moving between worlds). But just as story doesn't have to be about success and survival, games don't have to be Story(tm), any more than a walk in the botanic gardens, or drinking tea with a friend has to be Story. Sure, somebody had to plan the garden and maintain it, but even in such a contrived place as a botanic garden, with pathways and glasshouses, it's still just life.

Magnetic Realitism
Thursday, 9 Nov 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] [soundtrack]

Lileks is right. Irony is to blame. Fifty years ago, manly companies like IBM had their own songbooks(mp3), symphonies, glee clubs, and dresscodes which required men to wear garters out of professional pride.

The music is now silent at IBM; the IBM band stopped playing in 2001.

Lest you think that loyalty and tradition are so dead that no hope remains, Bank of America continues the tradition.

Negative Ads Update
Wednesday, 8 Nov 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

It's comforting to know that the people who make negative ads are nonpartisan, so long as you have money to spend.

That's right. Love your country so much that you will spend billions of dollars to win, win, win, using cynicism about citizens as a thinly-veiled excuse to deceive.

The Democrats have won many seats on a platform of negation and non sequitur. This creates a tenuous political situation. What will they do with their power?

The Game
Monday, 6 Nov 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

When life is treated like a game, we all lose. Right now, the National Republican Campaign Committee (organized and chaired by House Republicans) has deployed an electronic system to annoy and discourage citizens with telephone messages which pretend to be from Democrat marketers. If people hang up, the system will call them right back, giving the impression that Democrat marketing is obtrusive and annoying, when the true perpetrator is the Republican machine.

Bad faith campaign tactics, which I have observed to the shame of both Republicans and Democrats, are tearing the last shreds of faith and goodness from the bleach-dry bones of our society. Have we become so good (at politics) that we have no more need for virtue or respect?

I am reading Tragedy right now. Why should I bother? I can read in my own country a thousand recurring wrongs which tragedy could not begin to utter.

Home and Vision
Friday, 27 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I don't feel like I'm away. I live in a nice house in a nice setting, walk on tree-lined streets to a new faculty building, and then spend the evening at a place which is hundreds of years old.

This morning, while working to improve my knowledge of linguistic history/theory, I came across the poem enscribed upon the Statue of Liberty.

I cried. Where have we lost our way, we Americans? At what point did the dream of America the Beautiful disappear? When did we give up? Or did we err when we lost the spirit of the statesman, when we, the descendants of the tempest-tost decided to close the golden door of generosity in order to continue a dedication to personal gain?

I am living in a system designed to separate people, designed to convince them they are important, where argument and assertion are more valuable than questions. Some days, I long for the open arms and golden doors of my homeland. But in our time, the arms are cold, hard, rigid. The glowing hearth which shone behind the door has been replaced by a gilt facade with no knocker.

Our ascendance as a superpower now leaves us wondering what to do next, even as we undermine our great initiative through short-term chess. The politics of problem solving and electioneering pragmatics have stripped us of vision; of ideas which help us see ourselves and our purpose in a new light, ideas which transform *and* motivate us. But maybe it's no longer possible in a pluralistic society. Maybe we are so busy talking we forget to listen.

Why are all the idealists only angry and cynical? What have we done to ourselves? Is there no way forward?

Each day at Cambridge is a treasurebox; I have inadequate hands, my discipline is weak, and my satchel far too small. Pray that my days be filled with wisdom, discipline in excellence, a sharp mind, and warm generosity.

Chalabi at the Cambridge Union Society
Friday, 27 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Wednesday, Ahmed Chalabi spoke at the Cambridge Union Society, of which I am a member. Although I have not followed the Iraqi political situation closely, many of my friends have done so, so in order to satisfy their curiosity, I have posted a transcription of my notes from the evening.

• Chalabi at the Cambridge Union, Oct 25, 2006.

Note: Any corrections or additions would be welcome.

Calcification
Friday, 13 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

The powerful opportunity found at Cambridge University is also the most pernicious weapon levied against the soul.

When students arrive, they find themselves in awe and often respond by attempting to frame their own life and achievements in the best possible manner. But it is a dangerous mistake to overextend the crust.

Now, just over one week into the academic schedule, some students are filling the void with titles and responsibilities, solidifying their confidence, adequacy, and perhaps even superiority even as they only begin to realize the full weight of their academic responsibilities. Foam and sponge fill cavities quickly, but can they stand fast in the full forces of life?

A strange base of outward confidence fills up the attitudes of students who have only been here a short while. A little more experienced, I see the fragility of their nascent thought, just as no doubt others see in me. But while I count self-doubt essential to reach the positive outcomes of an inner dialectic, I am uneasy about its marked absence in many others. Perhaps this is the curse of discussion and thought: Since I come from an environment where intellectual conversation is scarce, I hash things out inside. For these, who are rich with opportunity for discourse, the clash of strong assertion squeezes out the truth. Yet I would not have it squeezed upon the ground merely because the juicer cannot drink.

For the moment, I am playing it safe. I have turned down one very tempting/prestigious opportunity, and am avoiding others.

But while I don't carry the same uncertain confidence as those freshers who marvel at being here (how odd that I should find it natural, comfortable, and enjoyable), the unceasing voice of avarice whsipers gently, "what if?"

Badsey Childrens' Letters
Wednesday, 11 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

From an addendum to the marvelous website: Letters from the Badsey County School children, 1933.

Ideas
Wednesday, 11 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Too many ideas, coming too quickly. This is awesome. It will take me years to process everything.

Today, as I was reading Sophocles, I enjoyed a piece of delightful lemon cake baked by Liz, our joyful, generous welfare officer at the SBR. It made me think of a comment from Dr. Poole, who noted that our experience of tragedy is much less visceral than that of the Greeks who first saw the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes. In the words of my housemate Matthew, "Oedipus puts out his eyes with his mother's brooch, and you think grief, grief. And then you take another bite. Cake. Cake."

Another thought:

We live in times where machines are making life easier for us, where we have to create new jobs and devise new markets because we run out of things to do, because necessary products and services become so cheap we can't afford them.

Hang on Sloopy
Tuesday, 10 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] [soundtrack]

Sent me by my good friend Kyle Kopko, who was wondering why one of the fight songs of the Ohio State University football team was also the state rock song -- indeed, the only official rock song of any state in the good ol' US of A. ( I don't think I even need to tell you the name of today's soundtrack)

What I find most unique, and in some ways kind of disturbing, is the resolution the Ohio General Assembly passed in 1985 designating “Hang on Sloopy” as the official rock song of the State of Ohio (by the way, Ohio is the ONLY state to have an official rock song). The following is the actual content of the House Resolution. It is not a joke. They really passed this resolution as-is. You can tell folks here take their legislative duties seriously.

Tired of Pleasantries
Sunday, 8 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I have had my fill of pleasantries. The store of empty words wanes: light, music, laughs keep us from noting the ever-wearying ways.

The problem with truth is that it is ruthless. It may indeed be noble to cast off the vestments of empty intelligence and strained smiles, to shake off the dust of all that which homogenizes intellectual bits of dubious provender. Of such noble souls are those whose dry bones line the floors in the chamber of enlightenment, who achieve their quest and share it only with the dead.

First Lectures
Thursday, 5 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I sat in on a first set of lectures today. Amazing. If there was ever any doubt that I should be studying for an undergraduate degree at Cambridge, that doubt has disappeared. Elizabethtown College was just what I needed to be opened to a world of inquiry and creativity and introduced to the disciplines of formal intellectual pursuit. But at Cambridge can be found a level of refinement and quality I never heretofore imagined.

I was initially rather skeptical about the very idea of lectures, since it brought to mind large lecture halls and boring presentations. But I find (at least within the faculty of English) that the lecturers are so capable and artful with their turns of phrase, and so completely full of content that an hour passes by with amazing rapidity. I understand now how full term can be a mere 8 weeks. The quality and quantity of information during those weeks must be massive.

I have four finely-written pages of notes --I will have to move to Tinderbox, if I am to keep up, although I actually write in some cases faster than I type, since typing tends toward transcription rather than the adaptive rephrasing/summary which is required by the slower process of handwriting-- but here are some ideas culled from the lectures.

• The idea that the universe began with words is quite radical. It is one thing to describe something which already exists, but how can language describe the very things which give words their meanings in our minds?
• Tragedy (and I suppose much of literature) brings moral ideas to specific situations. Tragedy from the past reminds us that the idea of social progress is in some ways naive; humanity still faces the same deep problems with which the ancient Greeks struggled.
• What is criticism? Giving reasons for our reactions to something. Why do it? Why seek others' responses?
  • To gain assurance that we share a common experience
  • To find ideas unique to others, thus improving our world view
• "Good criticism holds moral and technical qualities of literature in tension" --D.S. Logan
• "We read literature to modify our modes of experience and -- I'm sticking my neck out here -- live better." -- D.S. Logan
• More Logan: Why study literature and engage in practical criticism?
  • To help us get the full significance of communication
  • To guard us from being duped
  • To sharpen our historical insight (history is most immediate, most alive through the literature of a time)
  • To become aware of the limitations of the ideas of our own age through the discovery and evaluation of the attitudes and assumptions of the past.
• Just like science, literary studies strive for a consensus which it knows will never be reached, but which produces a swath of interesting and useful ideas in its path.

and my personal favorite:

• Stupidity and perceptiveness coalesce in interesting ways. (D. S. Logan)

Matriculation Service
Thursday, 5 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

The matriculation service, held in the chapel on Tuesday night, was amazing. The president spoke, we sang hymns, heard the choir perform Britten's "Te Deum," and even were treated to a quote by Douglas Adams,

(at this point, the chaplain Clive, noted, "Mind the size of a planet, indeed". I think only one other person got the reference, but we were both trying very hard not to laugh.)

What a way to begin the term! The scripture passages were from I Corinthians 13 and Luke 12.

We also heard choral music of Brahms ("How lovely are thy dwellings") and the hymn "Now Thank We All Our God," which I had previously used as the theme song for my graduation from high school.

To live in this place, study in this place, develop in this place must be among the most awe-inspiring yet strengthening experiences possible.

Education revisited
Sunday, 1 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Yesterday, I asked how to escape the trap of education as an agent of indecision.

After posting to the blog, I opened up the copy of The Intellectual Life of the British Working Class I had just purchased. The answer was right inside; Jonathan Rose very eloquently describes the great liberating and empowering role of literature in the lives of everyday people. Throughout history, countless people of action and consequence (and no doubt many more equally worthy people of which we have never heard) have been opened to a world of learning, ideas, and attainment through the inspiration and enlightenment brought through reading the great works of literature and religion.

Books, of course, are inanimate. To grow, we must take action: read and enjoy books; think and speak and write about them. There are also dangers. On one hand lays the pitfall of becoming a dogmatist uninterested in the growth of others. On the other, the soft marshes of escapist art lure with the pleasant fragrance of decaying minds at ease.

But reading opens new worlds to us, new ideas, new ways of thinking. And the education we find within their frame allows us to step into the picture to live more thoughtfully, more fully.

More on this later. I have a full week ahead of me. Auditions, inductions, matriculation, photographs, and numerous meetings. But I feel refreshed, ready, and enthusiastic about my studies. If I can keep true to the principles and spirit of true learning within a framework of action and Christian love, roofed with the solid grace of God, I can indeed greet my challenges with a smile.

My First Supervision/Assignment
Sunday, 1 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Today, I received my first assignment, for the Literary Criticism paper. The assignment?

1. . Pick a poem
2. . Write a 1,500 word essay about a single word found in the poem.

I can't wait :-). Thanks, Dr. Martin, for all the help on explication.

I'm also to take a look at "7 types of ambiguity" by Empson.

English program background
Sunday, 1 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

As an undergraduate, my time will be split among lectures and supervisions. At least two times a day, I will be attending lectures on topics relating to the paper I'm reading. Technically, I am able to attend any lectures I wish in the entire university. In reality, I expect to only go to lectures specifically related to my course -- at least during the first term.

I'm reading for two papers during Michelmas term, so I have one supervision some weeks, and two supervisions on others. During supervisions, I get together with that paper's supervisor and 1-3 other students reading for the paper to discuss the week's readings for about an hour. Then I go into a private session with the supervisor to discuss a paper I have sent him around 48 hours prior.

• Michelmas Term Background: Cover Letter | Modern Lit Reading list | Literary Criticism Reading List |

Education Commences
Sunday, 1 Oct 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

This week, called Fresher's Week, involves a great number of meetings and orientation sessions. Much partying is had by all, although I have been enjoying quiet times perusing a book or listening to Miles.

Ready to begin.

Dinner in hall is immaculate and delicious.

Education
Saturday, 30 Sep 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] For many young people, additional education is a synonym for indecision. How do you suggest I escape this ersatz sense of purpose to live more wisely?

The Arts
Tuesday, 26 Sep 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] When I opened the Bible for some reading today, my eye fell upon a particularly strong marking I had made in it some months ago. It was from Amos 6: It goes on to essentially say that these are the people who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes. They are clever. They are talented. They enjoy great wealth and opportunity. They are involved in the arts in a respectable manner, which is indicated by their similarity to David, a poet and greatest of the Jewish kings. The problem is not that their wealth (which they probably didn't earn) or skills are evil. The problem is that their hearts are not in the right place, for they are "not grieved over the ruins of Joseph." I am not sitting on a bed of ivory, but I do have very nice accommodations (yes, I finished moving in yesterday, thanks to generous Christians who gave me cutlery and dishes). Friends sent fruit, cheeses, candies, gift certificates and other pleasant things. Porters and officials are friendly; and bedders and maintenance staff genially helpful. Several times a day, I fall to my knees from gratitude; I am overwhelmed. Yet pray for me, that I do not fail to remember the important issues and needs of my own time, that I would not amass grace without channelling that goodness toward others who have more needs than I. Pray that I would focus properly on my studies, and train well in the discipline of spiritual good. Grieving over deplorable things is better than obscuring one's eyes with trivialities, but the best life also involves faith, action, and endurance. Pray for me.

The Ark
Saturday, 23 Sep 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] Over the last week, I have been staying at The Ark, a bed and Breakfast operated by Marianne and Bartow Wylie. It's proprietors, who are Christians, are marvelous: both gracious and kind. The B&B is quite well-kept, and the other guests also seemed quite pleased with the accommodation. As is my habit for people who have shown me generosity as hosts, I wrote them a poem.

Trusting yourself
Thursday, 21 Sep 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] It's odd, isn't it, that we can't trust ourselves. But it shouldn't be, right? We are, I suppose, finite, and by definition unable to fully comprehend or accomplish the best course of thought and action. It is often when we feel most competent that we are the greatest danger to ourselves. Yet a lack of confidence can be our biggest mistake. Then there are the vulnerable times, when it seems like there is little to ground us, to hold us down, or to hold us together as a person. We also need friends, but while they sometimes introduce stability and progress, they also introduce a greater level of uncertainty. The classic examples, of course, are the emotional times, immediately after breaking up, leaving home, or losing a loved one. But reason also can blind itself when we desire strongly, when we wish to achieve, or when we trust in dubious information because it fits our preconceptions. There is, of course, always God, unchanging in a changing world, relentless in love. But He is wise and true, and His actions are always the best, which makes Him seem capricious in our changing world. He does not exist to inspire competence, but rather aims to inspire trust. For now, my existence and continued success rely completely on new friends I barely know, an institution which I have not yet formally joined, the machinations of bureaucracy, and a God whose acts are never far from my sight. So far, all has been well.

• People have been generous, patient, courteous, and kind.
• The staff at St. John's College, Cambridge have been so accommodating and helpful, it nearly takes my breath away. Better yet, they do it with a smile.
• Bureaucracy is my new friend (Sorry B3). It's quite a comfort to read policies, travel the hierarchy, and accomplish official tasks, such as gaining bank accounts, arranging medical details, and purchasing insurance. The personal touch might be nice for people who know a culture well, but I, a newcomer, would fail dismally unless the rigid systems of order and process were in place.
• By arriving early, I obtained the time to complete these tasks at a reasonable pace, which makes my transition a relatively calm experience.

Speaking of which, there are more forms to complete. Hooray!

Tinderbox Stretchtext Writing System
Wednesday, 20 Sep 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] As I have dealt with issues relating to jet lag, I have been quite frustrated with my lack of clear focus and thought. But that hasn't kept me from releasing the Tinderbox Stretchtext Writing System. The demo should be self-explanatory, but I'll include an excerpt... Enough already. Don't read about it any more. Look at the demo!

Here
Saturday, 16 Sep 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] I'm here. Despite a number of very large near-setbacks that loomed quite large, everything is very very smooth. For several years, as a college student in my own home area, I enjoyed a very strong flexibility and power to accomplish. Everything was familiar. Accomplishing something or getting out of a jam was simply a matter involving logistical calculations using the resources available. Now these resources have been stripped away. I am now much more reliant on those who I know very little, but most of all, upon Christ. He is my savior, my rock, my trust. Whatever occurs, I can be confident that it is not a mistake. I can operate within the flow with joy and calm because His love surrounds me. And that, my friends, is enough to make anyone feel at home, no matter how far one has traveled.

Albion Awaits
Thursday, 14 Sep 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] I leave in just a few minutes. It has been a very, very, very trying week, but also a very rewarding one. My server went down Tuesday, for which I am grateful, since it gave me a chance to upgrade and fix before I left for England. Speaking of which, I need to bid farewell to family. But you, gentle readers: you will surely stick with me across the Atlantic, won't you?

Respect
Saturday, 2 Sep 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] I find myself continually discouraged by the human tendency to respect the ideas and life of others solely on the merit of the originator's age, credentials, or prestige. On one hand, there is never enough time to verify all ideas necessary for life, so one must have some sort of metric. On the other hand, I have seen far too many people hoisted to a place of authority by their own canards, which they lob into the minds of the unsuspecting public. The true scholar's occupations are discovery and education, not a pedantry or marketing. In the U.S. at least, research and thought have been reduced to a means of obtaining employment and respect rather than obtaining useful answers to honest questions. People usually only quote academic research in order to further entrench their preconceptions, but respect can work in other ways as well. I have sometimes observed a basic human tendency for some to look at certain other humans with a measure of awe. In the academy, this is often exhibited by those with little education toward those with advanced degrees. But at younger ages, it often occurs along the metric of age. Young teenagers often look at 20-somethings with a measure of respect and awe. To them, we seem more confident, more experienced, more individual, more cool, when in reality, we are ordinary people who are trying to deal with the realities and drudgery of adult life. For example, my friend Nate Eagleson is one of the very best people I know. But he is not cool. He isn't fashionable, doesn't ever want to be fashionable, and is more honest than to try to gain coolness by pretending to be uncool. He's somewhat shy, and when he talks to people, it's because he cares, or because they have something interesting to say. For him, ideas of style, fashion, or coolness just get in the way. But he can't escape the aura; Nate plays in a band, wears black clothing, and when he keyboards, puts on leather cutoff gloves. Does it matter that black is practical, or that he only wears the gloves because his style of playing would otherwise leave his hands a bloody mess? No. That just enhances his cool. I also can sometimes suffer from a similar obstacle in conversation and life. As I accomplish more, demonstrate further promise, and reach positions of greater influential leverage, I find that the number of people interested in using me to forward their cause increases. I will have none of it. If I do something, I want it to be judged on its own merits. If I tell you something, I want you to weigh it on its own merits. If I am mistaken or wrong, I beg you to tell me. I refuse to play the game, because real life matters far too much to me. I refuse to speak or publish, just because I can, or because it might be good for my career. I most greatly desire to speak and act only that which truly matters. I could not dare less. Life is too deeply meaningful, our quantity of quality truth so small, and the needs of our world too great for me to waste thought and breath on the shaky lattices of reputation or personal gain. Trust is one of our most meaningful, rare, and fragile gifts; I refuse to stripmine such a precious jewel.

Light = Right
Friday, 1 Sep 2006 :-: ["Permalink"] Last February, I wrote about the usefulness of compact fluorescent bulbs. I am now proud to announce that my family has installed 20 incandescent lights with compact fluorescent bulbs in our house. This change will save us many dollars a year in energy costs (and yet more additional savings over time, since fluorescent bulbs last longer). According to a recent EnergyStar Report: Will you too change your light bulbs to make a better world? It's easy and cost-effective.

Prescience
Thursday, 31 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I have always enjoyed playing card games with my grandparents. Today was one such marvelous time. In this photo, my grandmother contemplates her next move.

Antipodes Indeed
Wednesday, 23 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Hours spent carefully culling difficult but fruitful texts.

If you suggest a work of popular fiction, I find myself asking...."is there a movie?"

May I Never...
Sunday, 20 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

May I never be so smug in the slack tension of academic comfort and electro-grunge populism that I publish paragraphs like:

Distress^TM On Tag

Tune-in to the rhythm of the Hive. Gainlevels fluctuate and balance between the racks: digital greens, the soylent ganja of the Artsifarian Order, cinder into plastic smog. Streetside, the atmosphere is acrid with Antipodean ersatz, the feature-points of Bizarro proles, ranks of working-class pants shilled to the vicariously second-hand.

Whoops.

Letters Trickle
Tuesday, 15 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

slowly into words, converge and junket into my mind, funded by the prospects of impending education. Writing returns, one sentence at a time. Like this:

Trade marks pass through memory of time like frames from a disjointed flipbook, the hash maps of aggregation and decay. The Man's couture is a harlequin patchwork, the hallucinogenic collage of some illusive financial dream.

Time Crunch
Monday, 14 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Almost exactly one month from now, I board a plane headed for the London Heathrow Airport and bid my native land farewell.

I have much to complete before arriving at Cambridge, and time is short. So I am calling a moratorium on (almost) all goodbyes and other social interaction until just before I leave. I'm going to have to say no to any events I do not initiate. It's a hard choice to make, but it's necessary.

I have always felt the hounds of time nipping at my heels, and never more so than now. Sigh.

We did it!
Saturday, 12 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

We made it! 32.5 miles! (we were running late and cut off 1.5 miles, which turned out to be a pretty wise idea.

The hike was a great test for my brand new Canon Powershot S3 IS. The camera is marvelous (photos on flickr).

Susquehannah
Saturday, 12 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Today and I, my father and I attempt a 34 mile day hike along one of the legs of the Appalachian trail. We don't know if we have the endurance or the muscle (or the rest -- it's 3:51 A.M. eep!) to pull it off. But it's a good challenge, and it's reasonably possible.

Here we go!

Words upon the Wing
Wednesday, 9 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Phrases, the fragments of stifled fantasies, flutter and drift from the atmosphere of my informal thoughts like unfinished faces, the phantoms of friendships never quite begun.

Brief feelings unfurl, fade, and disappear. In the vacuum, filaments of life blaze free, then unglow their fire.

If only...

Only there is no if.

Ethical Questions
Wednesday, 9 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I used to think that hypothetical ethical questions about extreme cases or large-scale problems mattered. I used to think that they help us answer the everyday questions.

I was wrong.

A few weeks aog, I solemnly announced to some close friends that I, at some time in my life, am highly likely to commit some form of treason against the United States of America.

They were, of course, quite surprised. Their surprise melted into interest when I stated that since

1. the definition of treason includes giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States and
2. as a Christian, I am dedicated to giving comfort and aid to all people, as if I were doing it to Christ.
3. Thus: if I come across people who are enemies of the United States, my duty to God is to care for their spiritual and physical needs.

The topic moved on to pacifism, and again, I suggested that it would be unwise for me to kill an attacker in self-defense, since I don't know the state of his/her soul.

As I drove home that evening, I was strongly rebuked by the Holy Spirit. Why had I said those things? For the growth of my friends? No. It was from pride, that they might think me a more loving person, and for the entertainment of a good argument/discussion.

"But it's true!" I protested.

"That may be so," the voice of righteousness replied, "but do you truly love others?"

I thought for a while.

Then I saw the important truth. Whether or not I am willing to inconvenience my country for the good all people, I have not been willing enough to inconvenience myself for the good of others.

It may be true that I might embrace death so an attacker might live. I might respond well in extreme situations. But such hypothetical questions distract me from the reality of my daily sins, of the times I am not willing to give up desires, accomplishments, or routines to meet the deep needs of those around me.

I apologized to my friends, and I apologize to you.

Responsibility
Monday, 7 Aug 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Growing up, I was always the quiet one, the melancholy, overweight, forgetful child who was sensitive but irresponsible. I cultivated bad habits. I ate too much. I was frequently told that I didn't have what it takes, that my personality type or my character didn't match the needs of a world which demands excellence.

I have never liked to be pigeonholed.

On this monday morning, I feel so very far away from home. During college, I learned much about noting details, of getting things done, of reaching accomplishment. I can go to meetings, make plans, and find a way to achieve. I have been trusted with the time and money of others, and I have done my best to administer such trusts with care. Somehow, the things I touch seem to succeed.

What happened to the little boy? Somewhere along the way, I wiped my eyes, dried my nose, and got to work. But have I also lost my capacity for delight?

Footpads of Experience
Thursday, 27 Jul 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Lots of walking around and thinking and praying. I miss this luxury.

Btw, my previous post was far too selfish, a mental diversion from the path. I should know better than to derive satisfaction from experience. But sometimes, life gangs up on us, or we gang up on life, or both we and life gang up on God. One of the above.

Life (if it can be measured) is measured in faithfulness to God. To be honest, I have not been faithful. I have been distracted and stupid, dishonest with myself and proud and selfish. But as I look at the mosaic of my last year, I see the work of Christ more clearly. And that, above all, makes me most satisfied. Let's hope it accelerates.

(000---[ ___ ]---000)
Thursday, 20 Jul 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

An odd day today. On one hand, suggestions that the true, natural, and right shades of thought will always be the ones to come from direct contact and derivation with my faith, and that since all things are moral in some way, I should consciously develop a Christian moral understanding of all thought and life. Later, the statement that I sometimes scare people with my religion thing.

I'm seriously considering the option of giving the blog a rest. It's a useful counterpoint to more thorough study and thought, but right now it feels like a moon without a planet. To be honest, my last remotely-interesting post was April 23. I just don't have the heart to write any more half-baked ideas.

I want to do something useful, something substantial, not build more imaginary stones onto an unsteady structure plagued by the entropy of materialist philosophy. Nor do I wish to duct tape a Bible onto everything in sight. I spent my months chasing scholarships, and though I received one, I'm nagged by the suspicion that I might have done something useful during that time. Having received some press, some money, and some respect, I see that a person's character and work means more than his/her reputation. But this isn't true, because a quality reputation of integrity and kindness is also a result of character and good work. Sigh, I'm worried that I no longer have the imagination, drive, or heart to carry out the right life.

I'm just some guy who likes puzzles and beautiful things and who would rather, frankly, think about stuff in an air-conditioned building than drive a forklift in the hot warehouse. For some reason, people like what I say, so they let me stay inside. (to be fair, I have discovered that warehouses are an amazing venue for uninterrupted thought in a place where you get paid to exercise. Not a bad deal at all, unless perhaps, you have no other options)

But that's not the whole story. As a person who believes God, I'm struck by matters of conscience and good living. I see how dumb it is for me to sit around all day long and solve fun puzzles for the rest of my life. I see the experience of others and notice injustice, pain, deep joys, and the confusion (for good and ill) that comes with discovering life. So I can't sit still for too long.

And yet, I'm not even creating or solving good puzzles right now.

Fidgeting, in the body or the soul, doesn't produce progress. But I think that careful efforts of true conscience, when executed with equal diligence and energy, are the true wonders of the world.

Gaaah. It's all words, words words.

• putters off to do something useful. This is what I get for reading Feynman instead of sleeping*

The Death of Me
Sunday, 16 Jul 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Two years ago, I suggested that the removal of my desk would be a very difficult ordeal.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.

Thanks, Hacksaw.

Legs, my Dear Watson
Sunday, 16 Jul 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Ash, one of the mail employees at Etown College, just blogged their recent experiment to send a leg through the mail.

This, of course, put me in mind of "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box," by Arthur Conan O'Doyle. (Last year, I completed listening to unabridged audio recordings of the entire corpus of Sherlock Holmes stories by Doyle.)

One might also think of The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb. Odd, how appendages seem to figure prominently into some of the more grotesque of Doyle's mysteries (by the way, Wisteria Lodge does exist as an award-winning guesthouse in Cornwall).

Speaking of boxes, I just spent a week cleaning, packing, and planning for my Sept. departure to England. I'm eager to leave, but for now, I'm even more eager to enter upon a two-month plan of study and preparation.

That earlier, wilder image
Sunday, 9 Jul 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

In less than 10 minutes, I leave for the Appalachian Trail.

No, I'm not hiking the whole thing; I'm just spending my day out on the trail. It's part of my summer plan to follow the spirit of the poem William Cullen Bryant wrote to his dear friend, the painter Thomas Cole, before the latter traveled to Europe to study:

Sonnet, to an American Painter Departing for Europe
by William Cullen Bryant

(from a very lovely page about the poem and the relationship betweeen these two men)

A Forlorn Wish
Saturday, 8 Jul 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Life would be quite nice if we knew real people half as well as we know the average character in a story.

The Family
Friday, 7 Jul 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

On July 4, a friend took a phot of my family; it will likely be the last time we will have been together for quite some time, since my brother lives in SC, and I'm going to England. It was a blessing to be together again.

The Annals of Empirical Research, Pt 1
Saturday, 1 Jul 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

When I arrived home today from an invigorating (bicycle ride)/(code session), I was surprised to note that the only person in the entire house was a small japanese beetle. Since I well know the metaphysics of small creatures, I was loath to harm the creature, but rather quite interested in learning what I could from this winged visitor.

Thus, I embarked upon what I hope will be the first of many successful works of empirical research.

The following diagram should properly illustrate my results:

It has now been empirically determined that that it is possible for a Japanese Beetle 19.5 inches in the time it takes J. Nathan Matias to stretch, shower, shave, and dress.

Of course, this is only a theory. It is not something that is easily repeatable. And it is true that naysayers may easily ask that most difficult of questions: "Were You There?" Sadly, I must admit that I was not, and that I only surmise the beetle to have walked. It is also theoretically possible, I suppose, that it might have eaten dinner in a five star restaurant while I was showering.

This focus on small-scale life is probably a result of discovering Calder's Circus.

Diminishing Returns
Friday, 30 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I have entered that odd recursive zone of sleeplessness and crazy schedules in which the amount of sleep is no longer proportional to the time needed to get things done, but rather is a logarithmic function of the consecutive days spent in focus on sleep-deprived endeavours.

A simple request, Redux
Tuesday, 27 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Last night, I posted an email someone wrote me about the possibility of citing my work for an assignment. I suggested she look elsewhere. So she asked the obvious question: "Where?"

It was a tough question:

Of course, the snotty English Student reply would be that my reader should have begun writing earlier. This is true. But then I wondered...could I actually find some good resources online? Here's my reply:

You may be out of luck, but I hope this email provides some useful suggestions.

The scholarly system usually "produces knowledge" via books and journals. When print technology was the best around, this system ensured the free flow of information. In theory, new ideas would get published in journals, passed around to all those interested, and discussed in further articles. Then, ideas which stood the test of time (or those whose authors had enough social capital) would often be published in book form, then reviewed again, etc... This system ensures that ideas are looked over by specialists in thte field before given too much respect in print. Critics say that this method is job security for drivel-drivers, and that peer review can be totally inadequate, but I think that there's a significant percentage of good thought to be found through this process.

Now we have the Internet. More people want access to this information, and they want it now. Unfortunately, copyright laws and the The Process of Academic Thought(tm) make online publishing quite difficult. The classic books on the topic are all on paper, with the publishing companies rather unwilling to make them available for free. Furthermore, the demand to digitize old works of literary criticism is rather low.

However, there is some hope. Try the following strategy:

• Electronic Journals: Check with the school with which you are taking the online course. They may provide you with access to electronic journals through their library website. If this is the case, that is your best chance. If you are normally a student at a different institution, check with their library to see if you can do so. Elizabethtown College, my alma mater, provides this service to current students.
• Nearby University Libraries: This is your second best option. If you can reach a university with an open stacks library, you should be able to use their resources, which will definitely include books and journals on medieval literature.
• Online resources: This is very touchy. Good, reliable online sources are hard to find. Since you're writing about medieval literature, I suggest you start by looking at the following resources:
  • Marginalia's Resources for Medievalists: Marginalia is the website of the Cambridge University medieval literature society.
  • Rhodes College publishes the ORB, an Online Reference Book for Medieval studies.
  • For online texts, you can find no better than the University of Virginia's etext library of Middle-English literature.
  • Fordham's Paul Halsall has done a marvelous job of collecting hundreds of sources at the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
  • Georgetown's Labyrinth should also provide some useful sources.

Most of these online sources will not be suitable to cite, since they will not be quality scholarship. They will probably contain summary material written by scholars who want to get the basic information online. Before you cite anything, make sure it has been published in print. If it has only been published online, make sure it has been part of a peer review process. Since you're writing a paper based very much on online sources, you will want to submit an annotated bibliography, which contains your reasons for trusting the sources you cite online.

I hope this helps!

A Simple Request
Monday, 26 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Feel-good word of the day? Facilitation.

I got the following email today:

I replied with the following email:

Thank you for asking. That was quite unusual and rather nice. But I have to admit that it's not all right with me. Teachers don't assign term papers because they want you to write a good paper. They assign term papers so you may experience the benefit of thinking through the process of writing a good paper. If you were to copy/paste or even modify my work without citing me, you would be doing more than committing a large breach of integrity; you would be letting yourself out of the chance to learn from this experience.

Of course, I wouldn't recommend you cite my paper at all. Although my Gawain paper was in a sense placed into the scholarly arena via the presentation I gave at the ELL 2003 conference, I highly doubt your teacher would take my word as any sort of authority.

If do you want to benefit from my research, you may wish to look up some of the sources I cite in my bibliography. But make sure you tell your teacher that you're using my bibliography.

Academic integrity is very important to me. This area was where I made many of my major contributions to Elizabethtown college. I hope you are able to adequately complete your assignment while staying true to the ideals of integrity, honesty, and quality research.

I don't know what your situation is, but if you're feeling uncertain about this paper, the following tip might help. Remember: no matter how frustrating or difficult your assignment may seem, your teacher is there to help you. If you're confused or even just behind schedule, the best strategy is always to talk to your teacher. Your teachers are there to help.

Good luck with the paper!

Symphony
Friday, 23 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Words come awkward, as if huddling, malconent, in some dissenting portion of of my brain -- one which which disdains the ranks and wheels of my more regimented tenants: lines and lines of code.

Last night, neither the soft embrace of a deep couch nor the smiling words of a dear friend could convince my enervated mind to set aside the cadence of its weary feet.

But later that evening, my dragging march became a dance. During a rehearsal with the Hershey Symphony, the music soared. My mind had already been spent, my focus drained. But such strains live infused with the vitality of the soul.

July 4th, the symphony leads an evening of music and fireworks on the grounds of the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. I can't wait.

Tinderbox and XSLT
Tuesday, 20 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

After working with some XSLT form-building software at work, I decided to make an attempt to use XSLT to display a Tinderbox file. I was able to make a template to export the text of all notes in the file. I initially started with a Tinderbox version of Helen Keller's Light in My Darkness, but it's under copyright and I can't publish it. So I present: The Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America.

If you're using the latest versions of Firefox, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, or Safari, you should see this document as a regular web document. But if you look at the source, you'll see that it's just a Tinderbox file, except with the following additional line (it should be the second line in your file):

To serve Tinderbox files on the Web in this way, you just need to:

• add that line to your Tinderbox file
• download tinderbox.xsl and tinderbox.css
• copy them to the same folder as your Tinderbox file
• upload everything to your webserver

Point your browser to the appropriate URL, and...

I want to use the XSLT to recreate the hierarchy, but that will probably take another evening, as I'm still learning XSLT. If you have a way of doing it, please modify my XSL file and share it with me.

The Red-Tailed Hawk
Friday, 16 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I first saw this bird's droppings three years ago, while wandering about and enjoying the marvelous trees on campus. Over the past few years, I have only seen this Red-Tailed Hawk on a handfull of occasions, always in the summer, probably on its migration path.

Ever since I first saw it, I knew I wanted a photo. Now, three years later, I have one.

This massive bird is beautiful in flight.

Pride
Saturday, 10 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

A layer of dust lay on the plastic packs of instant coffee which were flopped over the tray in our hotel room. I picked one up.

"I wonder how long this has been here," I noted with disdain. After all, I work as a marketer for a specialty coffee roaster. The owner would have smiled approvingly.

If every breath is a gift, what right do I have to disdain a gift of courtesy?

Matrimony
Thursday, 8 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

In a few hours, I leave for Tunkhannock, PA, where I will have the great pleasure and privilege this weekend to serve as processional trumpet player and best man for my oldest consistent friend.

And me? Although I have been increasingly aware of the marvel, blessing, and beauty of God's plan for families, I remain firmly in the world of lame excuses, selfish goals, little time, brotherly care, stubbornness, geeky ineptitude, responsibility, and confusion which places me firmly in the "bachelor" category for some time to come.

Although I may never enjoy another person in romantic love, I look forward to continuing to enjoy the deep richnesses and lonely offices of love, for whatever my state, I will always wish to find True love.

The Kite has Landed
Monday, 5 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I'll post more info (and captions) in the coming days, but I just want to note that "Read for the Sky" was installed this evening.

I have posted the photos to flickr.

An Ominous Experience
Sunday, 4 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

I had just arrived back from a long bicycle ride. After taking off my helmet, I ran my fingers through my hair to remove any insects which might have been caught up in the excitement and come along for the ride.

A beetle, perhaps a centimetre long, fell on its back onto the white counter. Its tiny feet wriggled furiously, and I thought about Die Verwandlung.

I wondered at the urgency of the beetle's gesticulations, leaned my hand against the wall, and looked closer, since I was still light-headed after an intense ride. As my eyes slowly focused, I noticed that the beetle's legs weren't the only thing moving. I blinked.

The scene was quite grotesque. Three very small, reddish spiders were crawling over the body of the beetle, sharply prodding its outer armor with their poised appendages and vigorously applying their mandibles. The spiders were precise, like connoisseurs with coconut, yet they worked at a maddening speed.

Within seconds, the beetle's legs stiffened. The spiders (mites?) had pierced and neutralized a prey more than ten times their combined weight. I left them alone to their meal.

Making Websites in Tinderbox
Thursday, 1 Jun 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Someone recently emailed me with questions about making a website with Tinderbox and wondered out loud how I might be able to help. Here is what I wrote back:

I would be quite happy to provide advice on either a professional consulting basis or a more informal basis. As a paying client, you would have quicker access to me; I could also put time into training you or making templates for you. However, I'm also very content to give you some tips on an informal, unpaid basis. In fact, I'll include some suggestions right now.

(...read more...)

A Philosophy of Decadence
Monday, 29 May 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Mark Bernstein writes just about the most sensible thing I have heard in quite a while. Often, people who wish to avoid unhealthy food can strip a good thing entirely from their lives, or more frequently, go into binge cycles. Others (yes, you, my chocolate-obsessed friends) take their decadent pleasures whenever they can get them.

But such attitudes become meta-experience quickly, more about roleplaying and the experience of tasting or eating such things than actually savoring the thing they love. The abstainers abstain because they are abstainers. The Chocolate lovers (for example) eat chocolate whenever offered because, well they are chocolate lovers, and that's what chocolate lovers do. The binge eaters struggle between these extremes.

Mark, who got this idea from A New Way to Cook, by Sally Schneider, suggests an alternative. His example? Fat.

That, my friends, is the art of savoring. Say no to Bland Lard. Savor life instead.

To be honest, however, I'll still probably continue my habit of savoring salads and other meals composed primarily of vegetables. For me, such foods are an unending delight.

Memorials
Thursday, 25 May 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

This morning, I will play taps in the Memorial Day service held at a park in Mount Joy. There, we will honor those who throughout the years have sacrificed to make the United States a land of opportunity and freedom. The actions of our nation have often been mistaken, sometimes insidious. Our wars are not always just, and they are never pretty. But whatever the large-scale reason, the courage, and dedication of our troops have always been a great credit to our nation. And in the long run of the last two hundred or so years, I believe that our nation's military has been a powerful, effective force for good.

This September, I will begin a course of study in a country that wouldn't exist without the ultimate sacrifice of millions of civillians and military.

So I can study English literature.

Today's soundtrack is "America the beautiful," sung by the USAF singing sergeants.

It takes guts to love mercy more than life. May we all have the courage to do so.

Kites, and Roofs, and Cambridge, Oh My!
Tuesday, 23 May 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Life is happening too quickly to describe. But it is marvelous.

So I will just summarize:

1. Harbour Coffee's Online Store Just Went Online: www.harbourcoffee.com
2. Susan, Mims, and I just finished "Read for the Sky." We were just notified that our sculpture, "Read for The Sky" has been selected for display on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Capitol building!
3. Monday evening, my parents, Nate Wagner, and I replaced the fabric on the roof of my car, a 1989 Plymouth Horizon (can you believe? The backing was perforated! We just sewed on the new fabric!! It was brilliantly simple.). It looks beautiful!
4. Today, I eat lunch at The Cosmos Club, with the members of the committee which selected me for the Davies-Jackson Scholarship. I'm thoroughly looking forward to meeting them, especially at such a fine venue.

Life isn't always so rosy.

On Sunday, I sat in church with an elderly man who can only breathe with an oxygen tank. At one point, he was gasping for air and writhing. His glasses went flying, as well as his oxygen tank. I replaced them for him and fetched an usher. When asked if he was OK, the elderly man described how much he was enjoying the service.

Each breath is a headier gift than any of the blessings I describe here, and yet these gifts too are marvelous. I know I can never merit such things, but I will continue to do my best to administer the grace which I am constantly being given. For every breath is a gift.

Going Up to Cambridge
Friday, 19 May 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Last week, I formally accepted the Davies-Jackson scholarship, to read for the Affiliated Cantab in English Literature at St. John's College, Cambridge. I begin this two-year program in late September.

I have compiled more information about St. John's, the Cantab program, and my scholarship on the following page: In Which J. Nathan Matias goes up to The University of Cambridge.

Being Smart
Monday, 15 May 2006 :-: ["Permalink"]

Mark Bernstein recently quoted an excellent post by Kathryn Cramer about immigration issues, a post which also explores deeper questions. The quote slapped me in the face:

Last weekend, I spent an evening with a friend, lecturing him on all sorts of interesting things. I was exhausted, and I let my mind range. He was enthralled.

I talked entirely too much. It was quite impolite. Later, when I apologized, he demurred, saying that it was a fascinating evening.

But that doesn't make it right. I was being the person in Kathryn's quote, sans the blonde (we can't have everything).

Unfortunately, I have a tendency to do this semi-frequently. It's not consistent with true, Christ-like love. It is not the action of a priestly person who always looks to serve the needs of others. As a Christian, I should not revel in my intellect at the expense of others; rather I should revel in the truth of Christ and the Gospel more frequently.

To all of you whom I have treated in this manner, I apologize. One of you turned away from me in disgust (it hurt when you did so, but you were probably right. But why didn't you tell me?), but most of you became yet more interested.

So I need your help. Please keep me from slipping into this again.

I have derived a law: Smart people who win arguments often only prove the human inability to understand much at all.

If it were otherwise, people with little intellect, education or training would (from time to time at least) be able to win arguments against smart people. But complexity spoken by an intellectual looks more impressive than simplicity spoken by a simpleton.

There is always someone smarter than the smartest person.

** * **

This post began with Mark Bernstein. It shall now end with his finger. He has such a great way of putting things:

P.S. To B3: I still stand by my argument that 4'33, by John Cage, is actually a quality work, one with a poignant artistic message, and that it should be played more often. You can't get out of that one so easily.

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