Sometimes my thoughts have edges
Some sharp, some dull, but nevertheless
The demarcation of an objects end
Where space can resume and can invite other objects.
Sometimes the edges are vivid
But sometimes they blur or coalesce or meld
Like two proximal beads of water
Pulling at one another with a tiny miraculous force
And stretching out like psuedopodia
And bursting into an ovoid for just a moment
Before emerging into existence as round, supra-massive bead
All thoughts have one dimension: time
But I think some of my thoughts have more dimensions
Because some of my thoughts are larger than others (spatially)
And they bully other thoughts
Push them from awareness
Invaginate them and assimilate them
Destroy them and table them and holster them
Some thoughts are
Of me
Some thoughts are somehow not
Of me
I generate them sometimes.
These are the thoughts that are Of Me.
But some thoughts intrude; anxieties, worries, etc.
These are not Of Me.
I try to pin my thoughts
Like a bug wriggling on the wall
But they always crawl out from under the pin
And recede and de-objectify and evanesce back
To unawareness.
But at least, sometimes
If I keep them pinned for a beat or two
And fix my gaze just long enough
I can get them on paper.
Trapped forever as verisimilitude
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Some Tips On Taking the 6:18 New Haven Line From Grand Central to Larchmont by Yonza the Barbarian
The 6:18 New Haven Line train stopping at Mt. Vernon, Pelham, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Rye and Harrison will have all its seats taken by 6:15, so after 6:15 there is SRO. If you come before 6:15 and you are heading towards Larchmont, I have some helpful tips on maximizing your comfort for the ride home:
(1) Sit next to black people. Black people tend get off at Fordham or Mt. Vernon while white people tend to get off at Pelham, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Rye and Harrison. By sitting next to a black person, you maximize the chances that the seat next to you will be vacated early in the ride, thus allowing you more room to sprawl and reducing the chances of you falling asleep on the shoulder of the person in the adjacent seat, drooling on their neck, and being given an inconspicuous nudge awake, after which you spend about five seconds getting your bearings and then the humiliation sets in, and so you make sure to lean way towards the other direction when you rest your eyes but in doing so you just end up falling asleep on the shoulder of the guy sitting on that side, and so on and so forth.
(2) Sit next to women. The obvious: women tend to be more petite. Sitting next to a woman will give you more of a buffer zone, and thus more sprawling room. A less obvious benefit of sitting next to women is that they tend to have more respect for seat boundaries than men. When sitting next to a woman she will be sure to keep her body upright and will keep her coat, bag, and any other belonging neatly filed on her lap and is sure to tuck any over-spilling sleeves or cloth within the plane of the seat divisions. Men tend to have less respect for the seat divisions, and will often sprawl their legs as far as possible without making physical contact with your legs.
(3) Asses your tolerance for risk, and choose a bench accordingly. The 6:18 has two types of benches: three seaters, where there third seat is a half-backed-midget-seat, and two seaters. If you have your pick of either type of bench, first be sure not to pick the midget seat if you have another option. The midget seat might seem alright at first glance, but after you sit down and start getting sleepy and you see all the people around you leaning back in comfort, you become so desirous that you’ll often do a false head-lean, where, despite your better knowledge, you sort of lean your head back with a deluded expectation that there will be a cushion there to put your head and neck at ease, but of course the delusional hope is never realized and you get frustrated until your are completely consumed by the fact that your head has no place to rest, and all you can think about is your flimsy neck muscles propping up your head and all the effort you are putting in and how nice it all could have been if you just chose the seat with the back. Now: assuming you are wise enough not to choose the half-backed-midget-seat your next choice would be either window two-seater or window-three seater. I will not go into the advantages/disadvantages of choosing either (for the sake of brevity). Suffice it to say that either choice is rational, but the choice should be made according to risk tolerance.
(4) After you enter the vestibule, head towards the group of seats in the direction opposite to that which you were walking as you walked on the platform next to the train. By doing this, your path, from entering on to the platform in GCS all the way to your seat, should look like a cane; you are going straight down the platform and then Uing into your seat (e.g. if you are walking down the platform and the train is on your right, you make a right into the train door, then once in the vestibule you make another right and sit down in those seats). The reason why you should do this is because people, for some reason, tend to continue walking into the train in the same direction they were walking on the platform (e.g. if you are walking down the platform and the train is on your right, and you make a right into the vestibule, most people will turn left, thus heading in the same direction they were walking down the platform -- it looks like a cubing function). I’m not sure why people do this, but I suspect that it has something to do with a subconscious desire to continue on a similar a path as possible, like a psycho-kinetic version of momentum, I suppose. Anyway, by not falling for this psychokinetic blunder, you maximize your chances of having the seat next to you not taken, allowing you to sprawl.
(5) From my experience – this tip I’m a little less confident in than the rest – you want to go three-quarters of the way down the platform to find the car with the fewest people. The theory goes that some people are just lazy and so they take the first few cars, and some people think they will get the least-crowded car if they walk a little, so they walk about half way. But the people that figure they should walk three-quarters of the way are so hardcore that they figure they might as well go all the way, since surely nobody but them would be willing to walk that far down the platform, where –who knows! – there might be giant mutated rats, and breeds of cold war era dwarf-men that chose to hide in the GCS tunnel because of their apocalyptic predictions related to ICBMs and the like (and surely these are the people, who, when they existed in the supraterranean world, sat comfortably on the half-backed-midget-seats and all was right as rain), and so the brave souls can’t puss out at ¾ of the way. So then there is dearth of people who would go three quarters -- and only three quarters – of the way down the platform. Or so the theory goes.
Bon voyage.
(1) Sit next to black people. Black people tend get off at Fordham or Mt. Vernon while white people tend to get off at Pelham, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Rye and Harrison. By sitting next to a black person, you maximize the chances that the seat next to you will be vacated early in the ride, thus allowing you more room to sprawl and reducing the chances of you falling asleep on the shoulder of the person in the adjacent seat, drooling on their neck, and being given an inconspicuous nudge awake, after which you spend about five seconds getting your bearings and then the humiliation sets in, and so you make sure to lean way towards the other direction when you rest your eyes but in doing so you just end up falling asleep on the shoulder of the guy sitting on that side, and so on and so forth.
(2) Sit next to women. The obvious: women tend to be more petite. Sitting next to a woman will give you more of a buffer zone, and thus more sprawling room. A less obvious benefit of sitting next to women is that they tend to have more respect for seat boundaries than men. When sitting next to a woman she will be sure to keep her body upright and will keep her coat, bag, and any other belonging neatly filed on her lap and is sure to tuck any over-spilling sleeves or cloth within the plane of the seat divisions. Men tend to have less respect for the seat divisions, and will often sprawl their legs as far as possible without making physical contact with your legs.
(3) Asses your tolerance for risk, and choose a bench accordingly. The 6:18 has two types of benches: three seaters, where there third seat is a half-backed-midget-seat, and two seaters. If you have your pick of either type of bench, first be sure not to pick the midget seat if you have another option. The midget seat might seem alright at first glance, but after you sit down and start getting sleepy and you see all the people around you leaning back in comfort, you become so desirous that you’ll often do a false head-lean, where, despite your better knowledge, you sort of lean your head back with a deluded expectation that there will be a cushion there to put your head and neck at ease, but of course the delusional hope is never realized and you get frustrated until your are completely consumed by the fact that your head has no place to rest, and all you can think about is your flimsy neck muscles propping up your head and all the effort you are putting in and how nice it all could have been if you just chose the seat with the back. Now: assuming you are wise enough not to choose the half-backed-midget-seat your next choice would be either window two-seater or window-three seater. I will not go into the advantages/disadvantages of choosing either (for the sake of brevity). Suffice it to say that either choice is rational, but the choice should be made according to risk tolerance.
(4) After you enter the vestibule, head towards the group of seats in the direction opposite to that which you were walking as you walked on the platform next to the train. By doing this, your path, from entering on to the platform in GCS all the way to your seat, should look like a cane; you are going straight down the platform and then Uing into your seat (e.g. if you are walking down the platform and the train is on your right, you make a right into the train door, then once in the vestibule you make another right and sit down in those seats). The reason why you should do this is because people, for some reason, tend to continue walking into the train in the same direction they were walking on the platform (e.g. if you are walking down the platform and the train is on your right, and you make a right into the vestibule, most people will turn left, thus heading in the same direction they were walking down the platform -- it looks like a cubing function). I’m not sure why people do this, but I suspect that it has something to do with a subconscious desire to continue on a similar a path as possible, like a psycho-kinetic version of momentum, I suppose. Anyway, by not falling for this psychokinetic blunder, you maximize your chances of having the seat next to you not taken, allowing you to sprawl.
(5) From my experience – this tip I’m a little less confident in than the rest – you want to go three-quarters of the way down the platform to find the car with the fewest people. The theory goes that some people are just lazy and so they take the first few cars, and some people think they will get the least-crowded car if they walk a little, so they walk about half way. But the people that figure they should walk three-quarters of the way are so hardcore that they figure they might as well go all the way, since surely nobody but them would be willing to walk that far down the platform, where –who knows! – there might be giant mutated rats, and breeds of cold war era dwarf-men that chose to hide in the GCS tunnel because of their apocalyptic predictions related to ICBMs and the like (and surely these are the people, who, when they existed in the supraterranean world, sat comfortably on the half-backed-midget-seats and all was right as rain), and so the brave souls can’t puss out at ¾ of the way. So then there is dearth of people who would go three quarters -- and only three quarters – of the way down the platform. Or so the theory goes.
Bon voyage.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Preliminary Thoughts on Media Archetypes and Personality Types Through Time by Yonza the Barbarian
To what degree to media archetypes create personality types?
Subsumed questions:
(1) To what degree do we (intentionally or unintentionally) model our personality after media archetypes?
(2) To what degree do other people interpret our personalities so as to conform their interpretations to media archetypes?
Related questions:
(1) Assuming we are more media saturated in the present than we were in the past, is it safe to say that that personality modeling based on media archetypes is more prevalent and/or more pronounced nowadays? Does this imply that the distinction between the media and reality – specifically, reality pertaining to personality types – disintegrates as time goes on?
(2) Are questions about media archetypes and their relation to personality types as they change through time something that can be answered, or do these questions fall prey to certain Heisenberg Microscope-type paradoxes? I ask this because, what comes to my mind, is the fact that trying to discover things about the past requires some medium (e.g. a history textbook) and such a medium -- being human artifice and therefore unnatural – becomes the very archetype-creating instrument that is our subject of study. It would be like scrutinizing a brand of microscope for flaws in the lens, through a microscope of that same brand.
Tangential questions:
(1) Assuming it is even possible to make sense of the notion of “personality,”
[“And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others” Montaigne, Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions]
what are its components and how can we measure it? Do we measure it in tradition of behaviorism? But then what is the difference between the Actor and the Genuine?
(2) Is it possible that emulation of media archetypes doesn’t recreate personality, but acts as a personality-superstructure on top of a nonmalleable foundation? If this is the case, what can we call this superstructure? We couldn’t call it acting, because it seems more genuine than acting.
Subsumed questions:
(1) To what degree do we (intentionally or unintentionally) model our personality after media archetypes?
(2) To what degree do other people interpret our personalities so as to conform their interpretations to media archetypes?
Related questions:
(1) Assuming we are more media saturated in the present than we were in the past, is it safe to say that that personality modeling based on media archetypes is more prevalent and/or more pronounced nowadays? Does this imply that the distinction between the media and reality – specifically, reality pertaining to personality types – disintegrates as time goes on?
(2) Are questions about media archetypes and their relation to personality types as they change through time something that can be answered, or do these questions fall prey to certain Heisenberg Microscope-type paradoxes? I ask this because, what comes to my mind, is the fact that trying to discover things about the past requires some medium (e.g. a history textbook) and such a medium -- being human artifice and therefore unnatural – becomes the very archetype-creating instrument that is our subject of study. It would be like scrutinizing a brand of microscope for flaws in the lens, through a microscope of that same brand.
Tangential questions:
(1) Assuming it is even possible to make sense of the notion of “personality,”
[“And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others” Montaigne, Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions]
what are its components and how can we measure it? Do we measure it in tradition of behaviorism? But then what is the difference between the Actor and the Genuine?
(2) Is it possible that emulation of media archetypes doesn’t recreate personality, but acts as a personality-superstructure on top of a nonmalleable foundation? If this is the case, what can we call this superstructure? We couldn’t call it acting, because it seems more genuine than acting.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
A Critique of ‘Why did the chicken cross the road’ by Yonza the Barbarian
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.
There is a flaw in this joke. Let’s unpack it a bit to see why someone might mistakenly think it is funny.
Below I divide the joke into three events ordered chronologically.
(1) The joke teller (JT) asks a sincere question.
(2) The joke receiver (JR) hears the question, and thus develops a prima facie expectation that he will hear the answer to the question. Furthermore, JR develops an expectation – an expectation which is not semantically suggested by the question --- that the answer will provide him with some degree of knowledge that JR theretofore does not have. The prima facie expectation is expected because of the semantic structure of the question i.e. the “Why” implies that there is some answer that exists. The question, however, never explicitly calls for a knowledge-bestowing answer, but a knowledge-bestowing answer is expected due to general rules of conversation (that is, we expect that when we hear the answer to a question we gain information from the answer).
(3) The prima facie expectation is satisfied since the question was answered, but the conversational expectation of knowledge-bestowing is not satisfied since the joke itself, which premises the whole exchange on the fact that the chicken, in fact, did cross the road, already bestowed anything to be found in the answer in the question -- JR already knows that the chicken got to the other side by the time the answer is told; he knows from definitional deduction (i.e. “getting to the other side” is a concept that is contained in the set of the concepts in “chicken crosses the road”). This creates a “Well yea but that doesn’t tell me anything” cognitive milieu and it is this milieu that people consider humorous (even if you don’t laugh, there is still something that sort of clicks with an essence of humor when this milieu is induced).
Now that we see why the joke is [mistakenly] considered humorous, we can pinpoint the flaw; it is contained in step (3). One crucial part of step (3) is that we admit “getting to the other side” is a concept contained under “Chicken crosses the road.” The flaw is that the concept “getting to the other side” is not what the answer to the question is, the answer to the question is “ to get to the other side.” This first “to” that precedes “get” is crucial. To see the difference compare the two sentences
“The chicken that crossed the road got to the other side”
“The chicken crossed the road to get to other side”
The first sentence is more like what the joke should be, while the second sentence is what the joke is. The difference between these two sentences is that the first is purely scientific or descriptive, while the second sentence contains an alleged purposive action. The concept “chicken crosses the road” does contain “chicken gets to the other side” since a chicken that crossed the road must get to the other side because if it didn’t get to the other side then it would not have crossed the road. However, the chicken needn’t have had crossed the road “ [in order] to get to the other side.” In other words he needn’t have had crossed the road with the purpose of getting to the other side. For example, would you say that the pilgrims crossed the Atlantic to get to the other side? If you said “yes” you are wrong. They crossed to escape religious persecution; getting to the other side was incidental. To make the point clearer take the case of a surgeon: would you say that a surgeon performs surgery to stab someone’s body? Certainly not (I hope). The purpose is to cure someone of a sickness, and the stabbing is not only incidental but undesired (if docs could perform surgery without an incision they would).
The fact is, just because you did something doesn’t mean you did it purposively. So there is the flaw: since it is not necessarily the case that the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side the answer actually does bestow knowledge on JR, and thus makes step (3) ineffectual. The piece of knowledge you gain is that the chicken crossed the road for the purpose of getting to the other side. So you might have the following exchange
JT: Why did the chicken cross the road?
JR: Dunno
JT: To get to the other side
JR: Interesting. You know, I would have thought that the reason the chicken crossed the road was to escape avian persecution, but ya’ live ya’ learn.
But there is a shining ray of hope in all this. The fact is the intended funniness of the joke could still be constructed simply by altering a few words. The following is the edited, perfected, minted version of the classic quip:
JT: What happened when the chicken crossed the road?
JR: Dunno
JT: It got to the other side
JR: Oh, you jokster!
A: To get to the other side.
There is a flaw in this joke. Let’s unpack it a bit to see why someone might mistakenly think it is funny.
Below I divide the joke into three events ordered chronologically.
(1) The joke teller (JT) asks a sincere question.
(2) The joke receiver (JR) hears the question, and thus develops a prima facie expectation that he will hear the answer to the question. Furthermore, JR develops an expectation – an expectation which is not semantically suggested by the question --- that the answer will provide him with some degree of knowledge that JR theretofore does not have. The prima facie expectation is expected because of the semantic structure of the question i.e. the “Why” implies that there is some answer that exists. The question, however, never explicitly calls for a knowledge-bestowing answer, but a knowledge-bestowing answer is expected due to general rules of conversation (that is, we expect that when we hear the answer to a question we gain information from the answer).
(3) The prima facie expectation is satisfied since the question was answered, but the conversational expectation of knowledge-bestowing is not satisfied since the joke itself, which premises the whole exchange on the fact that the chicken, in fact, did cross the road, already bestowed anything to be found in the answer in the question -- JR already knows that the chicken got to the other side by the time the answer is told; he knows from definitional deduction (i.e. “getting to the other side” is a concept that is contained in the set of the concepts in “chicken crosses the road”). This creates a “Well yea but that doesn’t tell me anything” cognitive milieu and it is this milieu that people consider humorous (even if you don’t laugh, there is still something that sort of clicks with an essence of humor when this milieu is induced).
Now that we see why the joke is [mistakenly] considered humorous, we can pinpoint the flaw; it is contained in step (3). One crucial part of step (3) is that we admit “getting to the other side” is a concept contained under “Chicken crosses the road.” The flaw is that the concept “getting to the other side” is not what the answer to the question is, the answer to the question is “ to get to the other side.” This first “to” that precedes “get” is crucial. To see the difference compare the two sentences
“The chicken that crossed the road got to the other side”
“The chicken crossed the road to get to other side”
The first sentence is more like what the joke should be, while the second sentence is what the joke is. The difference between these two sentences is that the first is purely scientific or descriptive, while the second sentence contains an alleged purposive action. The concept “chicken crosses the road” does contain “chicken gets to the other side” since a chicken that crossed the road must get to the other side because if it didn’t get to the other side then it would not have crossed the road. However, the chicken needn’t have had crossed the road “ [in order] to get to the other side.” In other words he needn’t have had crossed the road with the purpose of getting to the other side. For example, would you say that the pilgrims crossed the Atlantic to get to the other side? If you said “yes” you are wrong. They crossed to escape religious persecution; getting to the other side was incidental. To make the point clearer take the case of a surgeon: would you say that a surgeon performs surgery to stab someone’s body? Certainly not (I hope). The purpose is to cure someone of a sickness, and the stabbing is not only incidental but undesired (if docs could perform surgery without an incision they would).
The fact is, just because you did something doesn’t mean you did it purposively. So there is the flaw: since it is not necessarily the case that the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side the answer actually does bestow knowledge on JR, and thus makes step (3) ineffectual. The piece of knowledge you gain is that the chicken crossed the road for the purpose of getting to the other side. So you might have the following exchange
JT: Why did the chicken cross the road?
JR: Dunno
JT: To get to the other side
JR: Interesting. You know, I would have thought that the reason the chicken crossed the road was to escape avian persecution, but ya’ live ya’ learn.
But there is a shining ray of hope in all this. The fact is the intended funniness of the joke could still be constructed simply by altering a few words. The following is the edited, perfected, minted version of the classic quip:
JT: What happened when the chicken crossed the road?
JR: Dunno
JT: It got to the other side
JR: Oh, you jokster!
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