Archive for December, 2008

Apologies for missing my regular Saturday post.  I’ve got a lot going on during Christmas vacation with my wife, and tomorrow we leave town for our delayed honeymoon.  I’ll try to post again this Saturday, but we’ll see.  Maybe we’ll get snowed in up in the Smokey Mountains!

*Apologies if this lands in your feed reader twice… Wordpress got all wonky when I hit “publish.”

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all. — Isaac Asimov

Amazing Stories!

Asimov might be accused of a certain amount of bias in this matter, but that doesn’t mean he’s incorrect.  Our “salvation,” in the cultural sense, does depend on the kind of speculation and imagination that our science fiction authors have made their life’s work.

Western society has spent the last century completely reinventing itself every five or ten years… “five” more frequently than “ten” in the last five decades, especially.  Most of our cultural metamorphoses have been centered around the preservation and distribution of data.  Once the nineteenth century had brought color photography and the radio, the stage was set for people to tinker, fiddle, jury-rig, and otherwise improvise all kinds of new and exciting novelties.

For a quick summary of the last 70 years of information technology, I recommend the list “Technological Milestones of the Computer Era” by Dennis F. Herrick.  I was originally going to post such a list here… but it was a long list in an already long post.

As we enter the new millennium, many of us are cancelling our home phone services, scrapping our MP3 players, leaving our digital cameras on the shelf, and tossing our pocket notepads in the recycling bins.  Why bother with all of that junk, when our cell phones have taken over these functions (and so much more) anyway?

The obvious question is, “where do we go from here?”  The obvious question, however, may not be the most important.  The question we might need to worry about is, “how can we prepare ourselves for the next century better than our ancestors were prepared for the last?”

Think about these examples:

• Identity theft apparently took our society by surprise… our responses to this threat have mostly been reflexive reacting rather than preemptive planning. 
• Identity theft of another sort was the topic of a recent post here on Shreds of Truth… send me your name and resume, and I will work you up a fradulent MySpace profile guaranteed to get you fired from your job, or your money back. 
• The concept of email security seems to have been ignored in our recent presidential campaign, and email has been around since the 1970s! 
• Even worse, we spent decades warring against the production and distribution of child pornography; now we buy our children camera phones so that they can produce and distribute it themselves.

I am no Luddite.  I love technology.  I especially love the responsible, thoughtful, and well-informed use of technology.  Unfortunately, technology sometimes develops so rapidly that our cultural understanding of it lags behind.

The dilemma:  how do we solve or prevent problems arising from the use of technology that hasn’t been invented?

The answer:  by conceiving of the technology and the problems it poses before the technology appears on store shelves.

 So, wait, that means we need to predict the future, right?  How can we know how a particular piece of technology will be (ab)used before it has become available?

Through science fiction, that’s how.

In the 1970s, Orson Scott Card had already envisioned a remarkably accurate version of the Internet — a global, computerized medium for sharing communications, news, and information.  In his novel Ender’s Game, he also correctly predicted some of the risks inherent in a global computer network:  trolling, anonymous abuse of communications systems, deliberately deceptive online profiles, malicious hacking, invasions of privacy, and so forth.

Ender’s Game was published nearly twenty years before the news flash arrived in most Americans’ homes that their twelve-year-old sons and daughters were chatting online with (and giving personal information to) dangerous pedophiles masquerading as middle-schoolers.

The reaction, more often than not, was “OH MY GOSH do you mean to tell me that some people on the Internet are LYING ABOUT THEIR IDENTITY?”  The shock was nearly tangible.  The outrage was nearly palpable.  And every forward-thinking teen who had read Ender’s Game had seen this (or something similar) coming for a long time.

Now… if you’re interested to see what’s coming within the next twenty years… and to think about how to protect your children from it… go read Charles Stross’s Accelerando.  To get your attention hooked, I’ll share with you the first few sentences of the novel, copied and pasted from the free (!) online version linked above.

Manfred’s on the road again, making strangers rich.

It’s a hot summer Tuesday, and he’s standing in the plaza in front of the Centraal Station with his eyeballs powered up and the sunlight jangling off the canal, motor scooters and kamikaze cyclists whizzing past and tourists chattering on every side. The square smells of water and dirt and hot metal and the fart-laden exhaust fumes of cold catalytic converters; the bells of trams ding in the background, and birds flock overhead. He glances up and grabs a pigeon, crops the shot, and squirts it at his weblog to show he’s arrived. The bandwidth is good here, he realizes; and it’s not just the bandwidth, it’s the whole scene. Amsterdam is making him feel wanted already, even though he’s fresh off the train from Schiphol: He’s infected with the dynamic optimism of another time zone, another city. If the mood holds, someone out there is going to become very rich indeed.

He wonders who it’s going to be.

(Accelerando e-book licensed under CC-by-nc-nd Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license by Charles Stross.)

Us.

I was standing in front of about eighty people, though I was not facing them, and I was wearing a rented suit, black, with white shirt and teal tie, and I was almost the guest of honor. 

The real guest of honor would come walking up the aisle any second. 

To my right, on either side of a fieldstone wall, were high windows, floor to ceiling, overlooking a patch of woods still bearing some of its autumn glory. 

To my left were two families waiting to be joined together. 

The pianist played beautifully but subtly, letting the moment happen without interfering. 

I tried to remember that breathing slowly and evenly reduced the chance of fainting.  I tried to remember to avoid the deer-in-headlights expression that I could feel just beneath the surface.  I tried not to remember that the wedding I was attending was mine. 

Ours. 

The pianist paused, the church fell silent, and then, with the first few notes of Vivaldi’s “La primavera” just beginning to ascend to the high ceiling, she appeared.

I forgot how to breathe.  My heart forgot how to beat… I could feel it stop, hesitate, shiver with excitement, and finally — just in time — step back into its now-hastened rhythm. 

I don’t know whether my gasp was audible.  I do know that to feel air swelling my lungs, to feel my heart pounding in my chest, and to see my bride proceeding up the aisle were the sweetest yet most terrifying sensations I have ever experienced.

She was perfect.

I nearly had tears spilling from my eyes even before she came close enough to see them.  When she stood not-quite-arm’s-length in front of me and I repeated my vows, I could barely see her.  How I kept raw emotion from spilling down my cheeks, I’ll never know.  And when her voice broke during her vows, there was barely a dry cheek in the building, although we — still — managed to contain our own tears, somehow.

We did cry, later.

(She is still perfect.) 

Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself… — Ephesians 5:33

Sorry for the short (and late) post today.  It’s been a busy day (and a good one).

Kids say the… yeah.  All these are real.

“Hey, guess what?  My grade went up from a 19 to a 57!  That’s awesome!“  — Looking at his football jersey, I wonder what happened to the “no pass, no play” policy.

“Do the Russians speak Russian, or do they speak European?” — This from a 9th-grade honor student.  Yay.

“I’m sorry for talking in class, Coach Mac.  I was explaining to her why she shouldn’t write ‘they made love at first sight.’”

“Man, I’m glad I’m not Japanese.  When they write an essay, they have to draw all those little pictures [instead of writing letters].”

Naive you are
if you believe
life favours those
who aren’t naive.

– Piet Hein

Again I’m guilty of skipping a bit in the sequence of sonnets. Unlike my leap from Sonnet 3 to Sonnet 18, my small hop from Sonnet 19 to 21 has nothing to do with seeking variety. This time, it’s simply because I’m still puzzling my way through Sonnet 20. (Remember, these interpretations are entirely mine — I am not consulting other scholars before writing them, so if I get stuck on a particular sonnet, I remain stuck until I figure it out.)

This much I have gotten out of 20: if Sonnet 19 could potentially be read as a love poem from one man to another, Sonnet 20 appears to be far less ambiguous on that point. The speaker of Sonnet 20 is probably male, and the object of the poem is almost certainly so.

Having said that, for Sonnet 21 (which is yet another poem of adoration), I’m defaulting in my interpretation back to “male speaker adores female object.” Regardless of whether an individual agrees that Shakespeare had intimate relationships with other men, all Shakespeare scholars (as far as I’m aware) agree that he definitely had intimate relations with at least one woman in his lifetime. This is, therefore, the most likely scenario with any particular love poem, unless that poem contains definite clues to the contrary.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

Sonnet 21

So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirr’d by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare’
With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems,
With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare,
That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.
O! let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fix’d in heaven’s air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

What I get out of it

Praising beauty?

Shakespeare opens Sonnet 21 by setting up a stereotypical “Muse,” or poet, inspired to write poetry by his “painted beauty.” This Muse’s poetry, Shakespeare imagines, would “proud[ly] compare” the object of such a love-song “with sun and moon,” “gems,” “flowers,” and all other “things” of “rare” beauty beneath “heaven’s air.” Such a poem, according to the Bard, would be recited by “every fair” lad to “his fair” lady (or vice-versa), as the flowery phrases would be worthy to be used by “heaven itself.”

Awww, how sweet.

Shakespeare (or the poetic speaker he creates) would not write such a poem. It is “not with me as with that Muse,” he points out; such a lovely bit of rhyme might be fine for another poet, but Shakespeare’s speaker has different ideas.

“Let me,” the speaker pleads, “truly write, […] my love is as fair as any mother’s child.” However, unlike the other, stereotypical poet’s affection, this love is not meant to shine “so bright” as the stars “fix’d in heaven’s air,” for all to see. Allow more flamboyant poets to “say more” about their loves if they wish, but Shakespeare’s speaker “will not praise” so extravagantly a lady whom he “purpose[s] not to sell.”

Is it relevant?

Yes. As a high school teacher I work, on a daily basis, with children convinced that their current boyfriends or girlfriends are the most wonderful people on Earth. Some of these kids, bless them, occasionally write a bit of love poetry to their beloveds.

Some of them want to show me, their always-supportive literature teacher, the poetic masterpieces they’ve created.

*sigh*

Usually the best I can manage is a smile and a nod and a “very nice.” Phrases like “eyes like the sun/moon/stars” or “hair like a golden waterfall” tend to figure prominently. (Ok, the waterfall one is my own work, written in the early stages of dating the woman I married three weeks ago. Shameful, ain’t it?)

If any of these lovestruck teens continue to pursue their poetic aspirations, I know (or hope) that they will discover the horror that lies within cliché, the stickiness of excessive sweetness, and the ultimate commercial failure of the “roses are red” genre of verse. Shakespeare’s poetry has survived for so long in part because he rejected and satirized that approach to writing love songs. In Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”) and related poems, Shakespeare’s wit utterly destroys the stereotypical poetry described here in Sonnet 21… which makes 130 one of his best-known and most-loved poems even now, four centuries later.

…The “hair like a golden waterfall” bit wasn’t that bad, was it? Was it?

To keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman.

Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.
– Proverbs 6:24-25

(Photo credit and license)

Good things come...

Patience is not a virtue I often witness in people these days.  Our instant-gratification culture has eliminated the need for patience in so many ways that we rarely practice it at all; combine our impatience with our increasing selfishness and the results can be devastating.

In my college classes we sometimes discussed a method of studying the ability to delay gratification.  A child would be placed in a room, sitting at a table.  On the table were a handful of M&Ms.  The child was told by the researcher that he would be left alone for several minutes, and if the M&Ms were still on the table when the researcher returned, the child would be rewarded with more.  If the child grabbed the M&Ms while the researcher was gone, there would be no reward. 

Once the researcher left the room, hidden cameras recorded the child’s actions.  Some children were grabbers; some were waiters. 

Most of the students I teach, I feel certain, would be grabbers. 

So. 

I must have been about ten years old when my grandmother waved me over to the easy chair where she had lately spent all of her time. 

“Take this,” she whispered.  I had to strain to hear her, but I knew that she was speaking as loudly as she could.  She handed me a twenty-dollar bill with one shaking hand.  “This is for your graduation.”  She looked at me.  I was obviously confused.  “I won’t be able to see you graduate,” she explained, leaning back and closing her eyes. 

When I got home, I put the bill in the top drawer of the chest in my bedroom… the same drawer where I kept bicentennial quarters, the occasional Canadian coin that a distracted shopkeeper might give in change, and my favorite pirate ring. 

I didn’t touch it again for three years. 

When I was thirteen, I came home from school one day to find that my mother had locked herself in the bedroom.  Dad was in the kitchen, sipping coffee — rare for a man who almost never drinks it.  He placed his mug on the table with the patient care he uses for every action.  “Your grandmother passed away today,” he said, making direct eye contact. 

I think my mouth fell open at the blunt statement.  After a moment, I found my voice.  “Which one?” I asked. 

“Your mother’s mother.”  He cleared his throat.  “We’ll be going up there tomorrow night for visitation.” 

That was all that needed to be said.  He returned to his coffee, and I went back to my room.  I opened the top drawer of my chest and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill — the one my grandmother had given me years before.  I sat on my bed, looking at the bill, for several minutes before returning it to the drawer. 

When I was eighteen, I graduated from high school.  On graduation night, after I got home, I pulled out the twenty-dollar bill and put it with the checks, gift cards, and other gifts of congratulations my relatives had sent.  After eight years of waiting, my grandmother’s gift had finally fulfilled its purpose.

We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it. — Abraham Lincoln

Since blogging about communication skills and other self-help topics seems to be such a popular activity these days, I thought I’d try it for myself.  Enjoy these:

6 Steps to Becoming a Better Office Communicator

1.  Be discreet

When making a personal call on your office phone, never mention co-workers by name.  It’s rude.  Use non-specific pronouns, instead.

Example: “Yeah, he did it again.  No, really.  I’ll tell you about it later… he might be listening right now.”  …or…  “You won’t believe what I saw her doing when I walked into the office this morning.”

2.  Acknowledge prior relationships with clients.

When you know you’ve got a client meeting coming up, pretend to answer a call on your cell phone.  As you walk into the meeting room, make a comment to your fictional listener that indicates the value of your relationship with the client.  They will appreciate the personal recognition.

Example: “I have to go; I’m about to have a meeting with _________. (pause as if listening) (explosive laughter) Yes, that one!”

3.  Reach out to newcomers.

Nothing is more isolating than being a new employee in an established firm.  When someone new comes to your workplace, be sure to welcome them as a friend.

Example: “Hey, new guy, come be my lookout while I raid the manager’s supply cabinet.”  …or…  “So she’s your new supervisor?  Wow, I hope that goes well for you.  Feel free to come to me if you need to vent.”

4.  Respect your elders.

Older and more experienced employees in your office have a wealth of information to share with you.  At the same time, however, they may not be current in the cutting-edge pop culture that you might mention in conversation, and that might make them feel uncomfortable.  When chatting with someone at least a decade older than you, remember to explain references to recent (post-MTV) cultural phenomena.

Example: ”This day is so bad, it’s like a Seinfeld episode gone wrong.  Seinfeld, if you didn’t know, is a New York-based sitcom about the fictionalized life of its eponymous starring actor, Jerry Seinfeld, and a number of his friends and relatives.  It’s pretty funny.  You should try it.”

5.  Leave them wanting more.

Don’t dominate — and ultimately destroy — the conversation by spewing out every thought you have in your mind.  Leave some topics of discussion for later.  One especially effective way to do this is by approaching the conversation by saying, ”I have (X number) questions to ask you” or “I have (X number) things to tell you”… and then leave one unsaid.  For the rest of the day, they will glance at you with an expectant and slightly uncomfortable look on their faces, wondering whether they should ask.

Example:  See above.

There you go, that’s it.  I hope that these six steps will lead you toward more efficient communication in the workplace.  Please note that I am not responsible for problems caused by the application or misapplication of the above advice.  Have a happy Monday!

P.S. Thanks (and apologies) to DeepFriar and Havi Brooks for unwittingly planting the seeds of this post in my mind.  Go read their posts; you’ll probably enjoy them more than you did mine.

We could ask him, but...

What a week this has been… “devouring time” has indeed seemed to feast on the hours and minutes of the last seven days.  So, here we are once again with Shakespeare Saturday.

One constant source of heated debate and controversy regarding Shakespeare is speculation about his love life.  It is known that he was married, probably to legitimize his bride’s pregnancy (their first child was born about six months after vows were exchanged).  He probably also took another woman as mistress for some time later in his life.

Some of Shakespeare’s poetry suggests an additional liaison.  Many modern readers and critics believe that the Bard had a romantic relationship with another male, and Sonnet 19 is one of a number of sonnets which apparently indicate this.  Another school of thought argues that Shakespeare may merely have been expressing strong but friendly affection; another argues that the sonnets’ speaker (their “I” and “me”) might not represent Shakespeare himself; yet another leans toward the familial-love interpretation I briefly mentioned when I discussed Sonnet 18.  As any one person’s opinion is potentially as well-founded as any other, given the few clues available, I invite you to decide for yourself as you read:

Sonnet 19

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d phoenix, in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O! carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
    Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
    My love shall in my verse ever live young.

What I get out of it

The God of Passing Time

Shakespeare’s poetic speaker addresses him- (or her-) self to an animated and malicious “Time.”  Time works destruction on everything in the universe.  It “blunt[s] the lion’s paws” and “pluck[s] the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,” rendering these fearsome predators ineffective in their old age.  It brings an end even to the ever-renewing life of the “phoenix.”  It forces the “sweet brood” of living creatures to be devoured by — figuratively, buried in –”the earth” that spawned them.  The seasons themselves are born (made “glad”) but then die (make “sorry”) as Time touches them.

Shakespeare’s speaker acknowledges this and accepts it — but one act is unacceptable and unforgivable.  Time must not ever commit the “heinous crime” of bringing age and ruin to the young man about whom the poem is written.  Fearing that Time will “carve” wrinkles into ”my love’s fair brow,” the poem’s speaker pleads for Time’s mercy.  “Draw no lines,” the speaker begs, in the young man’s face; ”allow” his “untainted” beauty to be appreciated by others.

The sonnet’s closing couplet, however, turns defiant.  “Do thy worst,” the speaker sneers, “my love shall in my verse ever live young.”  As with Sonnet 18, the poem is a memorial, a way for the poem’s object to live eternally young and attractive, thanks to the poet’s homage.

Is it relevant?

The short answer is, “yes.”  The long answer depends on your decision regarding Shakespeare’s intentions when writing this sonnet.

If Shakespeare is writing this to a romantic interest (either a real one, or an imagined interest of the poem’s speaker), the relevance lies in the fact that we always want our lovers (and ourselves) to remain as young, fit, and attractive as they were when first we met them (even though age may not lessen the love or desire).

If Shakespeare is writing this to a close friend, he may be empathizing with the young man’s fears of growing old, either because Shakespeare shared those fears or had already realized them.

Finally, if Shakespeare writes Sonnet 19 to his son or another relative, he may simply be echoing every father’s desire for his young descendants to remain children forever.

For honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years.  But wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age. — Wisdom of Solomon 4:8-9

(Grave: Photo Credit and License; Statue: Public Domain)

Sweet.

…crazy birthday, dear Aylad, crazy birthday to me.

This is, without a doubt, the most insane birthday I’ve ever had.  It is also the most special.

My beautiful, thoughtful, loving wife remembered that several weeks ago I was complaining that I wanted to play Guitar Hero II, but couldn’t afford the guitar controller… so this morning, as soon as breakfast was finished, she couldn’t wait any longer to give me a suspiciously guitar-shaped package and a game-case-sized gift bag.

She really is perfect. (more…)

My fingers itch...

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

My name is Aylad MacOdys…

Hello, Aylad.

…and I’m a gamer.

Thank you, Aylad, for sharing.

It’s true, I am.  I’m not a “serious gamer” or a “hardcore gamer” or what-have-you, but I would definitely spend hours each day playing video games if I didn’t have other, more important things to do (and a sweet, beautiful wife who knows there are always more important things to do).

Gaming is not my only pastime, by any means.  I’m also a reader, and recently a blogger, and I enjoy web design, and I occasionally like to indulge a bit of creativity in less digital realms.

Sooner or later, however, “the itch” finds its way into my head, and once there, it grows.  And grows some more.  And spreads.  And soon, I am back in front of one electronic device or another, pressing buttons and waiting for the satisfaction of completed goals.

Don’t listen to people who say that gaming is addictive.  They don’t know what they’re talking about.  Cocaine is addictive.  Gaming is GAMING. (more…)

First Edition

A friend gave me a book of Shakespeare’s Sonnets as a wedding gift last week (along with books of poetry by two of my other favorites, T.S. Eliot and Langston Hughes).  Gifts that are both thoughtful and personal are quite difficult for me to pick out… so I try to always give kudos when someone else gives me one.  Thanks!

After discussing the repetitive themes of Sonnets 1-3, I decided to skip ahead a bit.  My good friend, a Mr. Wiki Pedia, informs me that the first 17 or so sonnets share a common message… so, in my search for variety, I hereby skip to:

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

What I get out of it

(more…)