Category Archives: Philosophy

Jun 10 2013

Two Years Ago Today

Me: Today is the two year anniversary for the blog.

You: Hey, Congratulations!

Me: Thank you. This is actually the third blog of mine, but is the first to last longer than 10 months. Of course, since I have taken breaks from posting several times during the two years, I can call it a win, but not an accomplishment as such.

You: That’s not true. Most blogs don’t even survive their 4:20 warranty.

Me: 4:20 warranty?

You: 4 posts or 20 days. The internet is littered with abandoned blogs. Over 95% of all blogs are effectively abandoned.

Me: 95%? Is that a real statistic?

You: According to a 2008 Technorati survey. I made up the 4:20 warranty though.

Me:  I had a feeling.

You: Sadly, the original source page for the survey is gone. I know how you find that important.

Me: It is important. You can’t trust other people to cite information properly.

You: Not all of us have the pedantism to get a PhD, but you’re right. Everybody has a bias. If you want to formulate your own opinions, go to the source.

Me: That’s the least of it, but I won’t lecture. … Not today anyway.

You: Good. You lecture people way too much for someone who gave up on education. So has your blog been everything you’d hoped it’d be?

Me: That’s an interesting question. I think so. Like most bloggers, 90% of the time I just want someplace I can put my thoughts out to the world. I understand that ultimately, I am flushing them into a virtual ocean of information. One or two people, which may or may not include myself, will read my words and then they turn into digital jetsom forever sinking under the next digital layer.

You: Wow. You sound depressed.

Me: Ha! Not at all. I’m just not delusional about my place in the universe. There’s an Urban Myth that (for some reason people believe) there are more people living now than have ever lived. This is ridiculousness. I have read estimates that the total number of people who have ever lived is between 80 and 120 billion. Here’s a recent survey that comes up with 107 billion. Because of evolution, definitively answering the question “when was the dawn of man?” is not easy to answer.

You: You said no lectures.

Me: Sorry. As I was saying, I accept my place in the universe. More specifically, human history. If we accept the estimate of 107 billion people having lived, how many of those people can you even name off the top of your head? A few hundred? How many are even named in history books? A few thousand, maybe a few tens of thousands. that means less than .0001% of all people to have ever lived have made any impact on history what-so-ever, and the rest, impact or no, will never be remembered.

And yet so many people dream about having 15 minutes of fame? Why do you think crappy reality shows are so popular? Most claim it’s a guilty pleasure. The truth is, deep down, most people know their impact on the human condition will be insignificant. Watching a bunch of no-talents tempermentally act out at the behest of a director gives them hope they too can be remembered. After all, if you can’t be legitimately famous, you may as well be repugnantly infamous.

You: That’s bleak. You sure you’re not depressed?

Me: Really. I’m fine. Just because I’m not filled with blind hope and unrealistic optimism doesn’t make me a negative person.

You: I think it might. Either way, I’m not sure I fully accept your premise. Not all reality television revolves around the negative side of the human condition. There’s shows like Survivor, So You Think You Can Dance, and American Idol. Well, if you ignore the preliminaries. But if your premise is true, what’s to stop the millions of reality TV viewers from running out the front door and becoming the next Bonnie and Clyde?

Me: You mean aside from morality, ethics, and an evolved penchant for communal survival? Or can I just use that as my answer?

The truth is, most people want to be famous and enjoy the concomitant benefits without having to deal with the negatives. Yet paradoxically, the biggest benefits to being famous are also the worst negatives.

You: What’s that?

Me: Expectations and responsibilities. When you’re famous, others have expectations of you. Most people love being adored, though there is a constant pressure to live up to whatever made you famous. You are expected to go beyond those boundaries and are expected to somehow be magically qualified in other areas as well. After all, if you’re special, you must be special in every way. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what people expect whether they realize it or not.

Since most people look to avoid unnecessary responsibility, they wouldn’t be able to handle being famous or expert in anything. The truth is, most people can not even handle the expectations and responsibilities that are required to become an expert, let alone to actually being at expert. And as such, they will never approach fame or infamy. You can take that as the principle reason so many blogs fade away even before they’ve begun. Almost anyone can get a bur under their skin and feel compelled to write a few times. The self-imposed expectations and responsibilities to reproduce and surpass those results are usually more than they can endure. So they quit.

You: You must think you’re something special for making it two years then.

Me: Yeah right. Being in the top 5% is so special considering we’ve already discussed that less than .0001% of us will ever make an impact. As I said in the beginning, this is my third blog, so I’m only a two-time loser. Actually, based on the Technorati criteria of not having posted in a four month period, this blog has already died twice and been reborn. That’s better than…

You: Don’t go there.

Me: Fine.  What I’m getting at is this: I know this is it for me and I’m okay with that. I write and blog because I enjoy it without obligation. I’ve tried to use this site as a platform or vehicle for my writing, but after two years I’ve come to realize that’s not me and probably not what I want. I’m fine with what I have and what I do. I’m pretty sure I don’t want all the expectations and obligations of actual fame.

I’m still open to infamy though.

Apr 12 2013

The Huffington Post is Gay

Me: The Huffington Post really has a tendency to fly off the deep end. Check out this article.

You: Vaccines Produce Homosexuality?

Me: Crazy right? Some old Italian (so-called) doctor still thinks being gay is a disease. Some days I just can’t wait for these old bigots to kick the bucket so their lame prejudices can die with them.

You: That’s a little harsh. You can hardly blame the elderly for their prejudices. It’s the way they were raised. Fifty years ago, being gay was practically synonymous with being a pedophile. Is it any wonder they have such differing opinions.

Me: This isn’t a differing opinion. It’s morally wrong.

You: I’m not disagreeing with you on that point. But from their perspective, if being gay is akin to pedophilia, can you blame them for thinking that being gay is the morally wrong choice?

Me: Yes. They need to update their world view. Homosexual behavior is nearly universal in the animal kingdom.

You: Come on. You know most people don’t stay abreast with current scientific news. Especially the Baby Boomers, an entire generation of elderly and soon to be elderly, with a world view filled with skepticism for authority figures, like scientists.

Me: Don’t get me started with the Baby Boomers and their New Age – Egalitarian – Everybody’s opinion is equal bull crap. Some people become experts and their opinions bear more weight than others. They should deal with it.

**SHOUTS** Hey old people: Science! It works bitches!

Getting back on point, this isn’t new news. I first started hearing about traits of homosexuality being universal over a decade ago. This research has been ongoing since the 80′s. That’s 25 to 30 years they’ve had the chance to acquaint themselves with modern science and reality in general.

You: Try not to alienate too many people will ya? I thought you wanted people to read this blog. Your thoughts are all over the place. What point is it you’re trying to make?

Me: Hmm, what point indeed… I think I’ll go right back to to the top: The Huffington Post. I firmly believe printed news is effectively dead. Which means those of us who want quality news are going to have to look for it online. Unfortunately, the masses tend to shun actual science news. Even worse, most people will head straight to the low hanging fruit when it comes to news aggregation. I think it’s the responsibility of modern news organizations to report the news accurately. They should filter out obvious nonsense.

Just because someone writes a press release, it doesn’t mean you have to print a story based on that press release. On the contrary, you could even print a story saying: “Hey! Look at this old bigot and his fake scientific bologna.”

You: Now who should update their world view? Besides, the article isn’t uncritical. The author states, “Some of Vanoli’s arguments, however, have been disputed for more than 30 years.”

Me: True, but not really true. This style of reporting is uncritical in my opinion. By treating “all opinions as equal” this automatically lends credibility to a guy who is an obvious fraud as a doctor. Consider his own words:

“The problem will especially be present in the next generations, because when gays have children, the children will carry along with them the DNA of their parent’s illness. Because homosexuality is a disease,…”

He’s talking as if being gay is a disease that one can contract, but he’s also talking as if being gay is genetic and passed on through DNA. Which is it?

You: In his defense, their are some diseases that can be passed on from mother to unborn child. But I get your point, most of those diseases are passed through the blood and if being gay is a disease that passes through the blood how does it also get passed through DNA? Of course, you’re also missing the point that gay people don’t breed in the numbers that heterosexual people manage, so how are we going to be inundated with gay people in the coming generations?

Me: Oh, I wasn’t forgetting that. I just found it too obvious to mention. Like if being gay is passed through the blood, say from mother to child, why don’t EMT’s, doctors, and nurses who get exposed to other people’s blood suddenly become gay?

You: I’m sure he’d say that heterosexual people so exposed are adults and already have their sexual identity set, or something along those lines.

Me: That’s called “special pleading“. It’s a logical fallacy that people should be taught to see through and respectable news organizations should reinforce proper logic in their readers by asking the “next question” rather than taking his comments at face value. There are plenty of experts out there that can refute this guys nonsense and expose it for the mystical mumbo-jumbo that it is.

I’m not even a medical doctor and I can see through this crap. What’s wrong with the reporter? You see, I do live in the real world, and I know most people aren’t going to critically read that article. Which means that even if they don’t buy into it, they’ll have the nagging suspicion that maybe, just maybe, there might be something to what this quack says when very obviously there is not.

You: So what do you suggest? People stop reading the news?

Me: No. People should stop reading generic news aggregation sites like the Huffington Post. I know they’re convenient, but getting your news from more specialized sources, written by appropriate experts that take a more critical look at the news can only improve one’s understanding.

You: Basically, you’re asking people to push themselves mentally? You got out of education because the average student all but refuses to intellectually push themselves and you want people to do it with their daily news because it’s good for them?

Me: Yes?

You: I thought you said you were living in the real world?

Apr 3 2013

The Corporate Touch – A Vendor Contract of Responsibility

You: You’re not going to go on another rant are you?

Me: I don’t know. I think it’s building though.

You: I don’t understand why anyone would go on a rant like you do. I don’t even know why you’re so upset. It didn’t happen to you.

Me: Maybe not. But we’ve all been there. At some time or another, with some company or another, we’ve all been there.

You: Probably, but just ranting about it doesn’t solve anything. If you want to change something, you have to act on it.

Me: That’s not true. Every piece of social change starts with people just talking about it. If people don’t talk about it first, then most don’t even realize there’s a problem.

You: Fine. Go ahead.

Me: I’ll start with a brief description of my friend’s problem: I’ll make everything anonymous, because the actual companies involved aren’t important. This sort of thing happens all the time, and scandals have been discovered where presumably reputable companies rip-off their own customers. Take American Express and Bank of America for example. 

Anyway, my friend recently bought a new cell phone online direct from one of the major cell companies. Somehow the Carrier screwed up and charged her debit card twice totaling over $500. As a result one of her checks for under $50 to a local grocery store bounced. She should have had plenty of money in her checking account, but due to the error, the bank is going to charge her $35, the grocery store is going to charge her $25 and post her “bad” check on their wall of shame. Now she’s being charged for fees greater than the value of the check. Of course, to add insult to egregious injury, she had to spend over an hour on the phone arguing with the carrier about whether or not she was charged twice. When they finally admitted their mistake, all she got was an apology and a promise that the money would be refunded to her account within a couple of weeks. Weeks to get her money back!

You: It’s egregious.

Me: Don’t be patronizing. My friend, along with two-thirds of this country lives paycheck-to-paycheck. Just because you may be one of the persons in three who doesn’t have to worry about it, doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.

You: True, but it’s not the problem you’re currently ranting about.

Me: Fair enough. What I’m really ranting about is the lack of protections people have against these sociopathic corporations.

You: Did you watch “The Corporation” recently? (Aside: YouTube Link)

Me: I haven’t seen that in years. Like any documentary, it’s a bit agenda oriented, but it does make some fair points. Now stop interrupting! You’re screwing up my chi!

You: Sorry.

Me: As I was saying, I think consumers should hold corporations accountable for their actions. I think their customers should respond in kind, tit-for-tat.

You: How so?

Me: Whenever you open a bank account, sign a cell phone contract, TV cable contract, all those types of corporate contracts where you are forced to agree to their policies, extra fees, etc. I think someone, presumably a lawyer, needs to draw up a contract where the company has to sign to get you as a customer. A contract that will hold the company liable for their mistakes and dare I say, punish them for when they screw a customer over.

You: You speak as if your friend is without recourse.

Me: She has options. Mostly, she’ll have to go to the store and the bank and explain things and HOPEFULLY, they’ll understand and not charge her the extra fees, but they are under no legal obligation as far as I know. Maybe they are, but I doubt it. If she is forced to pay the fees, and the carrier won’t readily give her the money to cover the fees, her only option is to sue the national carrier in small claims court. She’ll win, but how much time and effort is that going to take? What recourse does she have for her time?

We have Customer Agreements, why is it the customer doesn’t have a Vendor Agreement available to them? A document stating the company is responsible for their mistakes and requires them to make good on those mistakes, posthaste, lest they start paying extra fees.

You: You’re dreaming.

Me: I may be dreaming now, but if people are going to demand a minimal level of social responsibility to protect the little guy/gal, it has to start somewhere. Someone has to start the conversation.

Mar 21 2013

Some Days

You: What are you doing?

Me: Uhhh-I’m looking to procrastinate from working.

You: You really should get to work.

Me: I know. I’m rationalizing that I don’t have a lot to do until I get to the courthouse later this afternoon.

You: I see. But, if you’re not going to do some real work, why don’t you get some writing done?

Me: I was just thinking that. I thought a quick blog post might get the writing motor running.

You: How’s that been going? The writing, not the blog post.

Me: Alright. Not as productive as I would like, but I’ve managed to get in three thousand words this past week. So I haven’t been completely useless.

You: Not bad. It’s at least a little something.

Me: Still, if I’m going to procrastinate, I really should learn to be productive with my procrastinations. You know, rather than watch TV or some other time waster, like a browser game, or some other mindless nonsense, I’ll do some cleaning, or go to the store. Other things I generally budget time for, I’m trying to get done during my unproductive periods.

You: That’s probably a good idea.

Me: Thanks. … You’re being awfully nice today. Why is that?

You: Nice? What do you mean?

Me: You’re not being critical, sarcastic, or ironic.

You: That’s being nice?

Me: For You, it kind of is.  Besides, some days, I think that’s as nice as the world gets.

You: **Sigh** Sadly, you’re probably right… About the latter, not the former.

Me: That’s more like it. Contrariness for its own sake.

You: Whatever.

Me: Something has to be bothering you. You’re much too subdued.

You: I don’t know. Maybe it’s just one of those days.

Me: What does that mean? I’ve never really understood what a “those days” are.

You: Like I said. I don’t know. Ever have a day where you’re sort of uninspired; Not up or down; Not happy or sad. You’re just Being. You’re just numb.

Me: Sure. We all have “those days”. I think those are the days where it’s most important to motivate yourself into doing something. Preferably something you enjoy. If you can push through, be productive. Make yourself enjoy the day in spite of yourself. I think those days are the most satisfying. It’s like you took a little something away from the soul-sucking aspects of the world and gave it back to yourself.

You: Hmmm. **Nods** I like the sound of that. You should get on that.

Feb 16 2013

Procrastination

You: Hey? Didn’t you say you were going to write a post about procrastination last night?

Me: Huh? … Uhm, yeah, I guess so.

You: Well? Where is it?

Me: Uh, well, I thought it might be more clever if I waited a few days.

You: Seriously? What were you really doing last night?

Me: Well, it kind of started in the morning.

You: As any good procrastinator does. Go on.

Me: I was side tracked, … somehow and found myself on Kickstarter. Do You know what that is?

You: Of course, it’s a website where people can go to help get funding for creative projects. Say an artist, a writer, a painter, whatever, has always wanted to do a personal pet project, but money is an issue. They can start a project on Kickstarter, offer rewards stemming from the project, to people who donate.

Me: Exactly! I decided I should be a patron of the arts. I donated to Gabriel Böhmer’s novel, Beetle Days. After all, maybe I’ll want to do a Kickstarter project one day. I should invest in the system. And if I don’t ever start a project, then I helped out a fellow human being fulfill their dream. The best part, if a project doesn’t meet the minimum funding the creator asks for, then none of the people who promised backing are charged, and alas, that’s the end of the project. So not everyone gets their dreams fulfilled, but at least it’s a way for modern day creative types to find themselves a benefactor. It’s called crowd funding.

You: Okay, not bad, but you said this was in the morning. What did you do last night that stopped you from blogging?

Me: **Sigh** Way to stay on point. You can be pretty sharp. Anyway, in the late afternoon, the project was funded so I went to check the page out. From there, I started looking at other projects.

You: You spent the whole evening looking through Kickstarter projects?

Me: Don’t be silly. I started looking through the board game projects.

You: Board games?

Me: Yeah, I’ve always enjoyed the classic style board games like Checkers and Chess. I remember sitting down as a teen and searching for the shortest possible game in Chinese checkers using ten marbles and no opposing army. My best solution was 32 moves.

You: Why waste the time? There’s always an opposing army.

Me: Why do people sit around and play solitaire? To procrastinate. To waste time.

You: Touche.

Me: By the way, it was only in 2008 that George I. Bell proved that the shortest game possible for solitaire Chinese checkers is 27 moves.

You: Did you just link to an academic paper on Combinatorics?

Me: He also showed that with opposing armies acting cooperatively, rather than opposing each other, the shortest game is only 30 moves. Think about that. There’s 20 marbles in such a game and they each have to move at least once!

You: Hmm, okay I admit that’s kind of interesting as trivia, but you didn’t spend your whole evening reading that paper did you?

Me: No, I came across a message board, a forum, where people discuss the creation of these types of board games.

You: **Groan**

Me: Since I am trained as a mathematician and I almost opted  to get a PhD in Computer Science instead, I got sucked into the discussions about classic games being, for the lack of a better mundane word, computable. By that, I mean algorithms and/or databases of moves that allow a computer to play perfectly. Think back at how lame computers were back in the early and mid 90′s. Even back in 1992, Chinook, a checkers program lost in a series of games to the World Champion, 4 games to 2 (with 33 draws). Chinook’s two wins against Dr. Tinsley, a professor of mathematics (of course), represented Tinsley’s 6th and 7th loss since 1950! Unfortunately, a rematch was never completed since Tinsley passed away in 1994. The creators retired the program when they realized no human could beat it. Finally, in 2007, computers finished the task of “breaking” checkers. Chinook now plays the perfect move every time. Go try it.

You: Why would I want to play a checkers program that plays perfectly? No thanks. Besides, you’re just paraphrasing a NY Times article.

Me: Yeah, but I read it back in 2007. I knew where to go to find it so I could at least get the facts straight.

You: Alright, so you were looking into discussions about people computing board game stuff and you read about this all evening? How sad…

Me: Not exactly. I admit I read for a couple of hours, but then I came across a game that was compared to chess, though it’s really nothing like chess other than it’s played on an 8 by 8 square board.

You: Are you going to go on a long soliloquy about chess now?

Me: Uhm, … No?

You: NO.

Me: Suffice it to say, that there is so much human created chess theory over the past 150 years, the game is getting to be “played out”. It is not uncommon for grandmasters, the best players in the world, to run through essentially memorized sequences with nothing new being played until each player has moved thirty or more times. More than two-thirds of these games end in a draw. It almost seems as though the only new theory that’s being created, though rarely, occurs in games between computers. Chess is fine for the every day player, but the best in the world have kind of dried up the field.

Stop rolling your eyes. That’s the short soliloquy on chess. The game I was fascinated by is called Arimaa. Two things make this game special. The first, solves the chess problem in that the player is allowed to set up his or her own pieces. Thus, creating strategies from a fixed starting position is solved because there are no fixed starting positions. The second, is the simplicity. The rules are even simpler than chess. It can be a bit trying to teach a four or five year old to move the pieces in chess. The abstract interactions between pieces that all behave differently is a bit daunting for most children at that age. In Arimaa, all the pieces move the same, one square up, down, left, or right.

You: So how is Arimaa more complex than chess?

Me: First off, for each turn, a player can make up to four moves. You don’t have to play all four, but you do have to move at least once. There is a hierarchy to the pieces: Elephant, Camel, Horse, Dog, Cat, and Rabbit.

You: Sounds like a kids game.

Me: Quiet you. The truly interesting thing about Arimaa is that a larger animal can push and pull smaller enemy animals. You don’t capture opposing pieces by moving and taking over the square. There are four “traps” on the board. You capture pieces by pushing or pulling your opponents pieces into the traps. Even though the Elephant is the biggest piece and cannot be pushed or pulled, it is the rabbit (akin to the pawn in chess in that you have 8 of them) that is the most important piece. A player wins by getting one of their rabbits to the far side of the board. Of course, you can also win by trapping all 8 of your opponents rabbits, thereby making it impossible for them to win. And finally, you can win by immobilizing all of your opponent’s pieces. If they can’t move, they lose.

You: Doesn’t sound so hard.

Me: It’s not. But like any game, there are some subtleties that go into making it interesting. Like when a trap captures a piece. (The trap only works if there are no other friendly animals nearby.)   And if a smaller animal is next to a larger animal, that piece is frozen, unless it has a friendly animal nearby. (Nearby = up, down, left, or right. Nothing acts diagonally in this game! See, it’s nice and simple.) The freeze rule prevents smaller animals from running from a larger animals without help.

You: So you spent your evening learning to play a kids game? Worse yet, a kids game that teaches them it’s okay for larger animals to bully smaller animals?

Me: Now you’re just twisting things. It’s not a kids game. Several thousand adults regularly play this game online. Considering how hard it is to market classic style board games these days, that’s a pretty impressive number.

You: How do you know it’s not several thousand kids?

Me: Because the game was invented by Omar Syed. He has degrees in Computer Engineering and Electronic Engineering. He designed it specifically so that it would be impossible for current computers to crack the game without new advances in computer science and artificial intelligence. There is nothing elegant about the way computers have solved checkers and currently analyze chess. The program simply looks through millions of moves and counter moves until it determines the best one. The number of moves a computer would have to analyze to determine the best one in Arimaa is beyond current technology’s ability to brute force it’s way through. Thus, new methods of getting computers to analyze information will have to be created. Necessity is the Mother of invention, after all.

You: **Fake snoring sounds** I no longer care why you didn’t post last night. Just end this would you.

Me: Alright, let me just finish by saying that in order to encourage other computer scientists to be interested in this particular problem, Omar Syed has offered a $10,000 prize to anyone who can create a program that can beat three chosen humans best two out of three games against each opponent. The challenge will remain open until 2020. After ten years, the humans are still undefeated. :)

You: **Sigh** …hooray…

Jul 14 2012

Prediction: Dislikes – No Thanks – Not Interested

The interactivity of the internet has really changed the past couple of years since the “Like” buttons arrived on the scene. Honestly, I don’t use them at all, with the exception of liking other people’s blog posts. Mostly, I do that because it has become inappropriate to leave two-word comments like: “I agree”. And I must say this convention keeps the blogosphere a bit less cluttered, so I’m all for it. Besides, since I have lost so many brain cells to the internet, I have to confess an odd fascination of clicking through the “like” pictures every now and again after I read a blog post. I.e., there’s great time wasting in them thar links.

As I’ve said before, I don’t really see the value in Facebook, and I’ve been too lazy to get into twitter (but soon,… soon).  Because of my anti-FB predilections, I assume this is why I don’t bother with the more general likes that can be found on essentially every page these days. I admit it. I ignore the number of likes. They don’t tell me much, except that if I were a stats nut I could probably come up with formulas that tell me what percent of page views “likes” represented. So, don’t care…

What I’m curious about is how long it will take before the “Dislikes” button comes out. When it comes to regular pages, most sites aren’t going to want to post how many people disliked the page, unless the point of the page is to be controversial and anti-establishment in some way. Then the number would be worn like a badge of honor. Besides, no one likes negative people anyway.

However, I do think the “dislike” button is coming soon to an internet near you.

Why?

For the same reason the like button has become so ubiquitous. It’s knowledge, it’s quantitative, and thus has value. Any extra knowledge that can be garnered from you, businesses will want to know about it. Businesses like Amazon, and…, and… Wait, is there any other place to buy stuff online?

Well, those places too.

I believe “dislikes” are on the horizon. They may be disguised as “No Thanks” or “Not Interested”, but they will essentially yield the same information.

When I was browsing Amazon this morning, I noticed (which happens once in a while) all the “suggested” stuff and “Best Sellers”, and it occurred to me that I wasn’t interested in any of it. This is information Amazon would want to know, and thus, one day they are going to get it. If I could click a “not interested” button for “Fifty Shades of Grey”, they could blast me with something that is actually marketed toward my demographic.

As usual, I may be behind the curve on this one, but that is my prediction for the day*.

.

*This statement does not suggest or imply that I will ever make another prediction. Results of prediction are not guaranteed. If said prediction becomes actualized in any fashion, this result is no guarantee of future results on, as yet, unactualized predictions.

Apr 14 2012

Hey! Acknowledge Me! I’m Over Here! Again!

I work in a hotel. Actually, it’s a large inn with a restaurant and someday soon a bar. I work the front desk, which I’m sure in a large chain like a Holiday Inn or some such, you get to sit around, answer the phones, and wait for people to check in. Where I work, the person running the front desk is more like the quarterback to the hotel, because you’re playing host for the restaurant and concierge for the hotel while answering the phones and checking people in. You have to be able to multi-task and queue tasks in your mind so you can jump from one task to the next without getting too far behind or forgetting things.

The most surprising aspect of this job is the number of people that require you to acknowledge their existence EVERY SINGLE TIME they walk by the front desk. They may take two, three, or four trips to unload their vehicles and put stuff in their rooms. They may come out of the restaurant to use the bathrooms. Each time they walk by, they have to make eye contact, nod their head and if this doesn’t elicit some sort of reaction they’ll say, “Hey,” or something else that will force you to respond in turn or be socially rude. Of course, as the front desk attendant, I’m not supposed to be rude. In fact, being in the service industry, I should be the exact opposite of rude. So I acknowledge their existence.

But I have to ask what the deal is with these people. Why are they so insecure that they have to be noticed every time they enter a room? Or is it something else? Is it some sort of psychosis? Or did I not learn a social norm as a child that I should have?

I can’t say. I have no common point of reference. I try to go as unnoticed as possible when I check into a hotel. If I’m out traveling or on vacation, the last thing I want is to be bothered by strangers, and certainly not every time I walk into a room.

What about you? Are you the person who has to be acknowledged wherever you go? Or is there something wrong with me?

Apr 7 2012

Meta Thoughts On My Own Novel.

It has taken me a bit longer to get to this post than I would have liked. Actually, I’ve rewritten it a couple of times because it just didn’t turn out the way I envisioned it. Not that I’m saying this post will be a work of art, but it is time to get something out there for April. After all, it is the 7th!

I’ve blogged about genre fiction before in my post where I complain about Pacing and Coincidence. I’m sure the average reader does not agree with me on that one. They might agree with me in principle, but if they’re reading the story, they want the coincidences that make the story snappy. That is, unless they like the exact opposite where a story meanders about going on and on without a whole lot of anything happening. (My complaint with epic fantasy.) In one of the podcasts that I listen to, one of the speakers recently talked about George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. He said one of the subtexts he enjoyed about the first book was that “oh my, winter is coming!” in a world where winters could last a decade this could be important. Then he says, “Now I’m reading book six, and winter’s still coming…”. Mind you, Martin’s books are behemoths and definitely not “snappy” in their presentation. If he’s writing six books before the change of a season, I’m not interested.

In my book Dim Speak, I tried to keep things on the middle ground in terms of pacing and coincidence. Though, Dim Speak is a parody at heart and I’m trying to mock some of the these tropes. I do have some “coincidences” in my plot which I pawn off on one of my characters whose magical Gifts include the ability to read omens. She usually refuses to discuss them, so they become plot coincidences in my eyes. I found this to be the best way to advertise the coincidences that often go unmentioned in other stories. A way of playfully pointing out similar things I have read in other books that made me ask WTF?

In terms of fantasy and its magic, far too often I see characters get into a situation where, they come across problem “X”, if only they had some sort of magical solution “Y” they’d be saved. And of course, it just so happens someone in the group has solution “Y*”. It may not be exactly what they need, but conveniently enough, it’ll do. When it comes to this sort of problem solving in stories, I would prefer Harry Dresden’s “I’ll just burn everything with my fire rod and sort through the ashes later” approach because at least it is honest from a story telling perspective. We know Harry can do this and he does it all the time.

In my opinion, any solution that involves magical means really needs to be set up delicately. Everything my main character, Chip, manages to do with magic is something you saw him practice or happened to him earlier in the book. He’s a beginner, so any solutions he comes up with had better be simplistic. And honestly, this was my thought process as I wrote the story. I put him in a situation and asked, “Okay, based on what he’s learned so far, how can those lessons get him out of this danger?”

On the other hand, I did force my main character into another fantasy trope that annoys me. (Mind you, this complaint is often not true in epic fantasy!)  The protagonist is often an orphan never having known their parents, or their parents passed away while they were young. That’s if the protagonist is young, if the character is older they tend to be estranged from the parents or their relationship is at a point where everyone is ready to move on, “Time to make your own way in the world my son/daughter,” says the father/mother. Either way, there is no parental subplot. They’re just not involved in the story. In epic fantasy, one or more parents are alive and part of the “droning on” of the story.  The relationship between protagonist with both parents becomes added intrigue, subplottings, and so forth.

I wanted to defy this trope, so in one of my earlier drafts, travel was possible with the earth dimension. (In short, when Chip was brought through the barrier, it broke and allowed dimensional travel again.) I wanted Chip to have a relationship with his parents that wasn’t estranged or filled with intrigue. Just two parents dealing with a teenager who he could control plants in another set of worlds. The problem was that there was very little story to be had by adding in these characters with so little dynamic. They bogged down the plot more than I was willing to let it get bogged down, so I had to cut them. In the end, I cut off travel/communication with earth entirely, but not before removing both parents from Chip’s life at an early age.

I guess some tropes are there for a reason and even I can’t find an excuse to avoid them. It took me some time to learn that lesson, and I had to write the story to see why it wouldn’t work, but it was a good lesson to learn.

Mar 28 2012

Meta Thinking

The word “Meta” gets thrown around a lot and just so we’re all on the same page as to what it means, I’ll explain simply. A meta discussion is nothing more than a discussion about a topic. Two posts ago, I asked, “What is a Story?” That discussion was a “Meta-story” discussion because we were asking questions about stories.

My follow-up post, “What is a Critique?“, in a manner of speaking is a meta-meta-story discussion because we were discussing things about the way people discuss (i.e. critique) story telling. Theoretically, we can ponder on up the meta-chain of thinking by discussing topics that discuss topics which discuss topics, but as you can see, the thinking gets abstract fairly quickly and I’ve noticed most people don’t like discussing things in the abstract, or at least not as abstractly as a mathematician like myself.

Back in 1931, a mathematician/logician named Kurt Godel (He was Albert Einstein’s best friend late in life and purportedly one of the few minds Einstein thought quite highly of) used statements of mathematics along with meta-statements to show what has famously become known as “The Incompleteness Theorem”. To keep things ultra-simple, this theorem showed that not all statements that can be made in a mathematical framework, have a proof within that framework.

What does that mean? It means that, in math, we can make statements that are true, but we can never prove they are true. Similarly, we can make statements that are false, and never be able to prove they are false.

It was a very disturbing revelation for mathematicians. They had hoped that everything that was true, could be demonstrated to be true and that which is false  could be demonstrated false. Imagine spending a large portion of your life on a problem only to find out that it has no solution. That is, unless you completely change mathematics itself.

So why have I been thinking about all this Meta-think?

It’s strange, but I was wondering if story telling was formal enough so that one could write a story that is uncritqueable?

I know. It sounds silly. But if you define your system properly, theoretically Godel’s theorem might apply.

The only problem is that it really can’t. A critique is not a simple bifurcation between approval and disapproval, like mathematical statements being provable or unprovable. A critique is a continuum, a scale of like and dislike. So no matter how much you formalize storytelling, you’ll never be able to write a story that is uncritqueable.

Unless we decide, i.e. create a framework where a critique is either approval or disapproval, then maybe we have a shot.

I know what you’re thinking. We can always say we like every story, and then there are no uncritiqueable ones.

I wouldn’t be satisfied with that. We’d have to be honest in our critiques or else, what’s the point? (Though I’m sure you’re already thinking that thought about this post. See, I told you most people don’t like thinking abstractly.)

So how would an uncritiqueable story read?

I don’t know.  Apparently, I wouldn’t be able to make an opinion on the work.

Which, oddly enough, has happened to me before. Perhaps, I’ve already read the uncritiqueable story.

Alright, need a takeaway? A payoff for reading to the end of this post?

I guess my point is, think about the way you think about story telling. What are your thoughts and beliefs about the way a story should be told, and maybe this will improve your story telling.

Next time, when I get a chance to write, I’ll discuss some of my thoughts on story telling itself.

Oct 2 2011

Pacing and Coincidence

I have to say that maybe this is more of a complaint about the way writer’s write these days rather than actual advice to the reader.  After all, we like what we like and a little whining from me isn’t going to change all that, but here it goes.

The rule of thumb in writing a story is hook the reader and keep the story moving.  Each sentence is supposed to either build the character or push the plot.  Everything else is simple self-indulgence for writer (if not the reader) and is supposed to be removed during the editing process.

This sounds great in theory, but in practice, what happens is I get “paced out”.  I need a breather.  I want the writer to insert a bit of reality and in reality, we aren’t on the go most of the time.  What often happens instead is the next scene comes about because of some “random coincidence”.  One person leaves the protagonists home, and rather than letting the main character take a shower, watch a little TV, and wind down a bit before the phone rings, it rings two seconds after the person left and the protagonist is off again.  Either that, or it takes just long enough for the protagonist to navel gaze on matters and the phone ringing brings them out of their reverie and then they are off.

I see this sort of thing in The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.  I enjoy the books.  Love them.  But after reading three of them in four days, I finally sat back in my chair and sighed, “Wow, another convenient plot coincidence that keeps Harry Dresden on the move.”  Worse yet, I get to listen to him complain about how tired he is, but has to keep going.  My hero.  Please let me reiterate this is a complaint I have with a series of books I like a lot.  I just think the story would be just fine without all the coincidences that just so happen to continually raise the stakes and the pacing.

I know what you readers are thinking.  I get enough real life in real life, I don’t need to read about it.  I don’t even need to read hints about it.

I agree with this as well.  After all, reading is about escapism.  Unfortunately, you really learn about someone by what they do during the mundane times in their day.  Character building is crucial in a story.  If the characters are not engaging we put the book down.  Readers will forgive a lot of bad plotting for interesting characters.  Unfortunately, we don’t learn the true nature of these characters we are interested in.  We read about them when they are stressed, on the go without sleep, and their guards are up.  Are authors afraid we won’t like their characters as every day people?

Now the opposite end of the spectrum is Epic fantasy, Space Opera, or pick any genre with a Dickensian style writing.  This stuff drones on and on about the mundane surroundings essentially turning the world itself into one of the main characters.  You would think I’d be happy as a pig in shit over this type of writing, but the truth is, I stop paying attention and I suddenly don’t know what’s going on.  I can only “read” this sort of story as an audio book.  And that’s because I can stop listening and focus on something else while the boring parts stumble on by.

Take for instance Stieg Larsson’s triology starting with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.  I picked this up as an audio book so I could listen to it while at work.  Thank goodness I made that choice!  I had to shut my brain off fairly regularly to get through this one.  And again, I really liked the story, but honestly, I didn’t need to know about the specs on one of the ancillary characters expensive laptop.  Too much information!  Especially since the laptop as described was thoroughly outmoded five years.  Now he’s dated the novel.  Whereas if I had just been told it was an expensive kick ass laptop, my mind would have taken care of the rest.

I guess I’m just looking for something in the middle.  A little moderation is all.  As far as this being advice for the reader, pay a little more attention to the plotting and pacing of the next few novels you read and see if you don’t agree with me.