Computer-Based Time-Wasting Stuff

More ways I have been wasting time:

1. The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form.

One fine example:

In the Great War, the British-led nations
Looked poorly on Deutsch appellations,
Renaming their pets
With staunch epithets:
German Shepherds turned into Alsatians.

Umm...here's an actual more-informative link on Alsations from Wikipedia.

2. Uncyclopedia is awesome fun, too. Like the wonderful article on Anonymous.

3. The Ultimate War Simulation

This thing does have an agenda, which becomes quite apparent in 17 -19 when it gets very specific and stops razzing even slightly bipartisanly. And some bad language. But I found it quite humorous (excepting 18 and 19) as a depiction of the general mess that war is. And of the unrealism of computer ‘war’ simulations.

4. Webcomics!

Some rather famous ones:

• Sluggy Freelance -- read this -- all 7 years -- if nothing else. Time travel, vampires, laser guns, demons, murderously-inclined rabbits, evil conspiracies, and much, much more.
  
• 9th Elsewhere -- psychology, muses, cute flying hippos, and overall a suspenseful-but-warm-hearted story
  
• Order of the Stick -- D&D parody that’s highly humorous even if you don’t have a clue about the game
  
• Safe Havens -- ok, so it’s not an official webcomic…but who’s counting? Mermaids, high school, genetic experiments, computers, politics, dyslexia, ghosts, and siblings. Regretably no archives.

And some not-so-famous ones that probably no one in their right minds should like:

• Thistle Salad -- highly incomprehensible, but also highly addictive. Unique design.
  
• Wish3 -- well-scripted story about a generational curse
  
• Bulletproof -- "angsty 21st century mercenaries fight for their lives" -- not a bad description, actually...
  
• Netherworld -- rather confusing at first, but this thing has grown on me. Lots of theology and who-knows-what-else.

Music, Books, and More (I'm Not Dead!)

So...um...what have I been doing lately? Aside from only being able to be on the computer about 15 minutes a day...

Music

• Harmony and Voice Leading
  
• Counterpoint in Composition
  
• Listen and Sing
  
• EarMaster -- computer ear training program
  
• Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Barber -- preparing audition material

Marie-gets-sidetracked-in-the-300-section-of-the-library Books

• Sociology (John C. Macionis) -- actually, I have something like the 1st edition. :-/
  
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
  
• Amish Society
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
  
• Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News
  
• The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro (well -- this was the one I was TRYING to find at the library, but found out that they didn't have. I screamed something about black and white us-good/them-evil we-righteous/they-bad steryotyping after seeing advertisements for this thing last semester. Then got my head back together and decided I'd read the thing).
  

Books that sidetracked me from the checked out books:

• Galileo's Daughter (Dava Sobel) -- haven't gotten this one either, but it's what we have to read for the retreat next semester
  
• A Knight of the White Cross (GA Henty) -- umm...this book had so many problems style-wise I hardly noticed the plot. Usually Henty is at least passable.
  
• Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra -- doh! These make sense now! Maybe I'll make it through the third one this time! Knowing a bit about Medieval cosmology, Augustine's take on evil, and Lewis's general word-pictures of things REALLY helps. Two years ago these books were just plain weird. Now they're pretty cool.
  Secondly and more importantly -- WHY has no one done a comparison between His Dark Materials and The Space Trilogy? It would make a hell of a lot more sense than comparing them to Narnia. Eldil = Dark Matter, for one thing...
  
  
• "The Most Pitiful and Pathetic Story in the World" -- umm...21 single-spaced 12pt font pages of...something...that two of my little sisters and their friend cooked up, and read to me over dinner in a dramatic interpretation. I gave them an authoritative quote to stick on the front of it: "...a disturbingly fascinating sociological exercise in community-building." Or "James Joyce, as a kid, on drugs, after reading Lord of the Rings."

Stuff I'm hoping to get entries up on sometime:

• The Most Pitiful and Pathetic Story in the World
  
• Star Wars (um...yes. Still have the rough draft of this lying around).
  
• Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo
  
• GA Henty -- what to watch out for, what to read, what to avoid
  
• Fanfiction
  
• The Credo

Me, “The World”, and other fun stuff like that

Some tentative conclusions after a couple months (well -- probably years) of head-banging on a lot of this. And after a year of college.

Last post aside, I have suffered a bit of cultural disjunction since coming home. Blue jean skirts and courteous boys and Bible studies and fellowship and all that are cool. But I do rather disagree with what seems to be the general underlying outlook on non-Christians and interaction with them. ("They're the evil world, of course they'll hate you and disagree with you, just ignore them, you don't have to have an answer for everything, how many atheists do you run into in real life, anyway?") Substitute in "non-conservatives" and "evil liberals" for things relating politics.

Anyhow...

a) I live right smack dab in the middle of the "world."
Or, if I don't right now, that's the trajectory that my life is headed in. I'm in college, for starters...and there is a pretty good possibility that I’ll transfer at some point, and most likely not to a Christian college (not that Hillsdale is, one, technically...). I'm in "higher education," and will be for at least the next 6-8 years. I have a bad habit of intermittently lurking discussion boards right now. I run into -- or am going to run into – those EVUL liberal/atheist/progressive people all the time. They're people I am -- or am going to -- eat lunch with, study with, talk with, and be colleagues with for a good many years. They are not some insane, screwy, virtually-1% of the population that I'll never meet in real life. (goes looking for charts of statistics...)

b) Some people can be right smack dab in the middle of things, and still manage to ignore and insulate themselves from it. In all honesty and sincerity -- awesome for them. But I can't.
Stuff I run into out here gets to me. It disturbs my nice, neat, pretty view of reality. It eats at my brain until I hammer it out, understand it, and maybe add at least another layer of subtlety to my thinking. It is fascinating, depressing, and exhilarating all at the same time. I have a LOT of trouble ignoring things once I've let myself become aware of them.

c) I wouldn't have it otherwise -- either a) or b).
I'll keep living in the middle of things, and I'll keep trying to wrap my mind around the stuff I run into. I'd like to think I do so because it's the way God hardwired my personality and brain -- not everyone finds all this "fascinating, depressing, and exhilarating," but I do. There are other explanations for this, but I'm pretty much finally at peace with the "brain hardwired this way--and that's OK" way of looking at the matter.

Either way, it's still an "I will," not an "I can't help it" (I've used "can't" mostly to get across my very strong persuasions on the matter). Even hardwiring is changable. I'd be in bad faith (ooh! cool technical term I finally found!) if I said otherwise.

Point c) aside, and at the very least, all these people I run into are my neighbors, and I owe them the common decency of trying to know them and understand them. I've seen my lunchroom habits over the past year, and I do think there's something wrong with them. Since when did "be in the world, not of the world," mean "you must wall yourself off with your nice Christian friends and wait for the Kingdom to hit"?

Get Your Hands Off My Subculture!

After trying to be vaguely rational or calm about all this, I've given up. If there's no opprobrium over "f*** Bush!" as an argument, then I think I can be irrational for a moment, too.

Ahem. I have five siblings. I wear long skirts. And blouses. With tennis shoes, too, when I go walking. I was (mostly) homeschooled. And you know what? Bother the rest of the world. I like it. I like my big family, I like my bluejean skirts. And I bloody well like boys opening doors for me. Hanging out with families like the Grubens, the Robinsons, and VanderHamms is awesomely fun. And young men who are articulate, responsible, and who I can bloody well look up to are cool.

Getting a little defensive? Yes I am! We're a nusto, screwy subculture, and we've got plenty of problems. But it's my subculture, I tell you! There's a bit of cultural pride and identity going on, here. We can mock and poke fun at it and laugh at it -- but woe betide you presumptuous, ignoramus outsiders if you start in on it.

"Oh! The poor girl! She's being repressed!"

::snorfle:: OMG! Save me! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

It's opportunity cost, man. Stupid, idiotic, unavoidable opportunity cost, if you want to get all analytical about it. Every time you choose one thing, you're sacrificing the possibility of a ton of other things. I can't major in both music and history to the level I want to. I ditched the history major. My mom couldn't both have a military career and devote all the time that she wanted to her family. She ditched the behavioral science job. We've made our choices and decided our priorities. So get out of our lives. (Please).

Bother. And before there's some sort of reverse-'Somebody Else's Child' Syndrome going on, it's not predestinationishly inescapable...not in my experience, at least.

Morosely Bemused Head Banging with No Reolution in Sight

Alternatively titled "I throw down some things on paper with vague intentions of maybe someday expounding a little upon them." Or maybe, "Hoozah! Depressing merry-go-round worldviewing again!"

1. I wish I were Amish. Or an African tribal warrior. Things would be a whole lot easier.
   
   
2. Ha! I'm not!
   
   
3. I'm not one of those "minds of peculiar structure" (27th paragraph) George Washington talks about either. Too prone to rationalization (in the bad sense).
   
   
4. And bother sticks and stones. Name calling really does get to me.
   
   
5. Why? Because it's unjust? Because it's blazingly inaccurate? Because it's true and I don't want to face it?
   
   
6. Why can't we all just get along?
   
   
7. Maybe I should just start being -- I can't think of an equivalent not-so-offensive word, so I will use this one -- asshole as well. It would be cathartic.
   
   
8. Chesterton is cathartic.
   
   
9. Yes, that would be a logical fallacy. But it's rather funny.
   
   
10. And these are the sorts of people I'm going to live and study with for at least the next eight years of my life. Lucky Amish who can afford to ignore all this. [the thread is gone now...if memory serves me, it was basicially Dawkins "gerin iol." On steroids, with people saying governments need to step in and rescue children from religious homes.]
    
    
11. Ignorant bliss is underrated.
    
    
12. "On Merciful Inconsistency." (Thanks to Laura C. for telling me about her paper).
    
    
13. I need to memorize the Bach fugue and learn the Barber Excursions.
    
    
14. Hypothetical Person: "What right do you have to be talking about any of this? I'm a frigging history and religion major! You're studying piano performance!"
    
    
15. Blue.
    
    
16. Science has a track record, people. Deal with it up and stop the bashing.
    
    
17. And could someone give me a bloody definition of this "science" thing? Bother the demarcation problem. And bother 3-paragraph answers. I want a 300-page thesis, minimum.
    
    
18. Everyone likes black and white us vs. thems.
    
    
19. Alas in my naïveté to think that everyone valued calmness and civility in discourse.
    
    
20. If you can't beat them, join them? "Checkerboards and bullet holes! I'm right and you're insane!"
    
    
21. What in the bloody blazing hell is "fascism"? 300 page theses preferred (see above).
    
    
22. The vicious trilemma (fourth post down) strikes again. "With me," "ignorant," or "evil." No room for honest disagreement.
    
    
23. Humans are a messed up, inconsistent, biased, irrational mess. What can one do? Mal the unmalleable? Gnash one's teeth in rage? Weep in sorrow? Laugh? Roll with the punches? e) all of the above?
    
    
24. "They set up a perfect version of the world, and when the world fails to adjust itself to their expectations, it's no wonder they become angry and bitter." (I will eventually find the author of this).
    
    
25. Utopia = no place
    
    
26. Alternatively..."The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." (Shaw)
    
    
27. It's all bemusedly tolerant fun and games until people start getting hurt.
    
    
28. Things are always better after a hour's run and a shower.

Peter Pan 2003 Movie (Spoilers Throughout)

Intro
One of the best parts of this movie is somewhere near the middle of the climactic battle. Peter Pan and Hook are flying around the ship taunting and swiping at one another, and Pan's pretty much gotten the better of Hook, having just thrown him up against a sail. Then this starts:

Hook: "I know who you are!"
Peter (laughing, grinning, taunting, and being the typical Peter Pan): "Yep! I'm the best there is!"
Hook: "No -- you're a tragedy!"

And the great thing?
1) Hook is right.
2) Peter knows it.

Dark, complex, and surprisingly meaningful
I loved this film. First off, all the lead actors are excellent. They're believable, they've got incredible chemistry, and they make a semi-absurd story WORK. There's no camp or inauthenticity. They strike a pretty serious, semi-humorous tone, and they carry it through with perfect believability. This is no Dungeons and Dragons.

It helps that this Neverland is now a dark and menacing place. Shadowed jungles, midnight seas, evil mermaids...you name it. When people are in danger, they're in danger. You can get killed and die horribly -- not in a fun cartoony way, but damnedly forever and for real. You'd better know what you're doing, and you'd better have all your wits, caution, and courage about you. It's the first time I could truly appreciate Peter Pan's skill and survival. (Really -- why have a hideout if you don't have to really worry about hiding from anything?)

It also helps that Hook has glorious Satanic menace to him. He's intelligent, he's charismatic, and he's got no compunction against murder.

But what made this movie for me is the fact that Peter is conscious. Sure -- 99.5% of the time he's full of bravado and fun. But if he's about to die, he knows it; if he's hurt by Wendy's leaving, he knows it; if his whole view of the world is collapsing, he knows it. This isn't the animated Disney version, where he's an oblivious, mocking sprite the entire time. If something serious is happening, he gets serious.

I don't know if this is what the book is like. I really don't care. I LIKE this version of Peter Pan -- a boy who glimpses the greater complexity of adulthood, and rejects it. I'm glad Hook is NOT right in his initial view of Peter. I'm glad there's the whole sequence where Hook becomes surprised that Peter might actually be able to love. I like the fact that Peter is vulnerable, not an inhuman, godlike, imperturbably grinning being.

It's not overdone, and it's not melodramatic. (He's 99.5% bravado and fun, after all). But it's the .5% that makes all the difference in the world, between a free-frolicking animated Disney mess, and the quite serious and wonderful film that Hogan has made. We don't get blank, carefree incomprehension on Peter's part. He sees and chooses of his own free will.

Wendy is excellent as well. For the first time, I understood the weight of the "growing up" tension in the story. It isn't loneliness for home that ultimately pulls her back. It's the realization that beyond the childhood feelings of laughter, capricious fun, anger, and danger, there's something deeper and fuller and grander.

Sure -- the movie isn't perfect. There are some rather forced jokes and lines thrown in. I didn't care for some of the minor character acting. It's clunky at the start and drags at the very end, and the music is soaring and distracting in several inopportune places. But given the amazing number of things that could have gone wrong and didn't, I'm not complaining. The depth, buildup, and consistency of the characterization works. I greatly enjoyed it, and consider it one of this week's better-wasted 2 ½ hours.

The New SATs

Ann Hulbert has written an excellent article about the writing section of new SATs, going after fundamental problems in the argumentation structure. (Copied below, in case you don't have access to the site).

Unpersuasive

"Is it more important to follow the rules exactly or to base your actions on how other people may be affected?"

"Are people motivated to achieve by personal satisfaction rather than by money or fame?"

Even if you don't have a high-school junior in your house, you may have guessed that these are sample topics for the essay portion of the ''new SAT.'' The recent debut of the tripartite SAT Reasoning Test -- the official name of the revised college entrance exam that now includes writing along with math and critical reading -- has not lacked for news media coverage. Already, the 25-minute persuasive essay has replaced the discarded analogies as the SAT's hot-button feature, but its significance has yet to be fully appreciated. By instructing students to champion their own points of view on the spot, the new requirement may well reveal less about their prose skills than about our take-no-prisoners culture of argument.

Ever since its postwar ascendancy, the SAT has stood as the pre-eminent symbol of the nation's educational values, and even its democratic virtues. The elevation of writing in the SAT hierarchy, a step up from its former status as one of many achievement-test subjects, is supposed to signal that effective communication skills matter in our global information age. It is also intended to convey a neo-sputnik message: teachable talents, not just the innate aptitude that the old math-verbal SAT claimed to measure, are at a premium in an ever more competitive world, so schools had better shape up. Nobody believes in a writing gene; the addition of the new writing component of the SAT (and harder math problems and more reading passages, too) shifts attention to the caliber of preparation and the quality of thinking going on in America's classrooms.

But the SAT essay, to say nothing of the controversy it has occasioned, might well make you wonder about the rhetorical and reasoning habits being peddled (and modeled) to students. Critics of the writing exercise have wasted no time in finding fault with its scoring methods and its ''formulaic and superficial'' approach to the craft. The National Council of Teachers of English, among others, condemns what it sees as a narrow equation between ''good writing'' and ''correct writing'' and laments that the essay requirement may squeeze self-expression out of the classroom. One director of undergraduate writing at M.I.T. has disparaged what he found to be a nearly direct correlation between an essay's length and its score. The more verbose, the better; content, he has suggested, is irrelevant.

These complaints are overblown. It would be surprising if essay length didn't correlate with scores, given that ''developing'' ideas is the point of the exercise. And surely prolixity isn't too great a temptation when there's so little time and only two pages to fill. As for fastidious usage, graders are in fact told not to be ''Eats, Shoots & Leaves''-style sticklers about what are, after all, rough drafts. The savvy Kaplan test-prep guide's advice to prospective essay writers is ''Don't stress yourself out worrying about grammar and punctuation if they are not your strongest skills.''

The real problem with the SAT persuasive essay assignment isn't what it conveys about spontaneity or style but what it suggests about how to argue. Students are asked to ponder (quickly) a short excerpt of conventional wisdom about, say, the advisability of following rules, and they are then instructed to ''develop your point of view on this issue.'' But if the goal of ''better writing'' is ''improved thinking,'' as the College Board's National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges has pronounced, perhaps it's worth asking whether practice in reflexively taking a position on any potentially polarizing issue is what aspiring college students -- or the rest of us -- need most.

As those sample essay questions at the start reveal, and as any test-prep book will confirm, at the homiletic heart of the SAT writing assignment is the false dichotomy. The best strategy for a successful essay is to buy into one of the facile premises that inform the question, and then try to sell it as if it were really yours. Essayists won't be penalized for including false information, either, according to the official guide for graders. ''You are scoring the writing,'' it instructs, ''and not the correctness of facts.''

False analogies, of course, were an old SAT staple, but at least test takers got credit for picking only the true one. By contrast, the test-prep industry bluntly says that a blinkered perspective pays off on the essay -- and nobody knows better than the professional SAT obsessives. ''It is very important that you take a firm stance in your essay and stick to it,'' insists Kaplan's ''New SAT.'' Practicing what it preaches, the prep book doesn't let go. ''You are not fair and balanced! (Well, you should be fair, but definitely not balanced.)'' Kaplan drives home the point yet again, just in case. ''What's important is that you take a position and state how you feel. It is not important what other people might think, just what you think.''

This doesn't bear much resemblance to an exercise in critical reasoning, which usually involves clarifying the logic of a position by taking counterarguments seriously or considering alternative assumptions. The English teachers may worry that in the rush to prepare for the SAT expository essay, personal writing will get short shrift in schools. In fact, self-centered opinion is exactly what the questions solicit. ''Don't panic and write from the opposing point of view'' is Kaplan's calming advice.

You have to hand it to the College Board: the new essay seems all too apt as training for contemporary social and political discourse in this country, and for journalistic food fights too. But don't colleges want to encourage the ''strengths of analysis and logic'' that the Board itself has said are so important to ''the citizenry in a democracy''? Out in the ever more competitive world, it is hard to communicate if the only side of an argument you can hear is your own.

Ann Hulbert hits it right on. A blinkered perspective, a take-no-prisoners approach, a fundamental false dichotomy -- these are among the LAST things that a "critical reasoning" test should be teaching.

I've some sympathy for questions like those. They can be useful exercises; they teach certain skills. In 4th grade, I had to write "3-point persuasive paragraphs." Around 7th grade, I had to do exercises almost exactly like those SAT questions. They are quite good at teaching you to select evidence and focus your argument.

But that's all they are. They're purposely artificial, rather like those exaggerated arm motions you do at the piano when you're trying to learn certain passages. By 11th grade, you should have gotten beyond such artificial constructs.

I think an argument can be made that this fits in nicely with the trivium concept. I'd have no problem seeing those questions on a 7th grade test; it's a perfect dialectic-stage prompt. It's great for the age when you're developing your "debating" skills and forms, and when such exaggerated exercises are valuable teaching tools. But it is condescending and embarrassing to a kid in the rhetoric stage, who has hopefully transitioned into a more mature and critically nuanced type of writing.

So seeing this on an SAT is rather troubling. As long as students are aware that this type of question is an artificial exercise, I'm fine with the idea. Even 11th graders can benefit from a bit of review in argument format. But if this sort of essay becomes seen as the ultimate goal of writing, I start having some serious problems.

Will teachers, under pressure to prepare students for the SAT, take the time to emphasize this distinction between exercise and ultimate goal? Forgive me for being pessimistic and cynical. They'll want students to do well on the test, and they'll spend a good deal of time drilling the type of writing that prepares students for the test. Implicitly or explicitly, aggressively partisan writing will get priority over training in nuance and balance. For good or for ill, exams like the SAT have the power to set the standards for what is taught and emphasized. In this case, I'm not liking the emphasis.

I would hate to answer questions like those in the article. Just look at the first one. Not only is it a false dichotomy, but it's also a horridly leading question. Who is going to argue that you should "follow the rules exactly" instead of "basing your actions on how other people may be affected?" Just to be obstinate and contrary, I would have been quite tempted to start arguing for the legalistic side, even though I'd have to have MUCH better arguments than if I argued for situational ethics. I would also be tempted to spend the whole essay pointing out that the question was leading and presented a false dichotomy.

However, as I am more motivated by money in this case (college scholarships!) than by personal satisfaction and principles, I would instead wince and give them sort of answer they wanted.

All and all, I'm not looking forward to more generations of students primed to the principles of blinkered, one-sided argumentation. Not that I'm not faulty myself; you should see some of my high school papers, and the Constitution papers I rolled out this semester! But I'd like to think that we were headed away from that sort of thing, not toward it.