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_________________________________________________________________ 05/24/07 squatsI've decided to add squats to my exercise routine. This move is also known as the king of compound movements. Everyone should do it. Very simple, just squat down and then stand back up. Do 50 a day if you don't put some weight on your shoulders. I told my mom to do it and three months later her cholesterol dropped back to normal range. I don't know if that's actually causal. In any case, I feel like my legs aren't properly exercised even though I do jog up the hill. 13:43:40 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 05/18/07 the solutionSeems like pontification helps, at least to a certain extent. I think the answer to the question, WHY do theory, is similar to the answer given to a girl when she rejects you. Well, if you think theroy is not worth anything then please, by all means, don't bother with it. But it WILL be your loss. I'll always find someone else who's willing to collaborate and we'll do a better job in whatever we do than you ever could. Thank you! The interesting thing is that it seems having a HUGE ego is the solution to every problem in life. Self-help books call that "confidence". I don't have to justify my existence. AT ALL. 07:05:57 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 05/18/07 the limits of theoryI went on a dinner with a few of the postdocs and a faculty member. They all do experiments for a living. After a few glasses of wine and the foie gras, the true colors started to come out. For some strange reason they all loved doing experiments. They professed this love that they see something new that nobody has seen before, on and on. Of course, the conversation turns touchy immediately when they start to tell me to do experiments. And that is when I felt, quite acutely, that my existence necessarily requires justification every step along the way, that support is not there, to say the least of it, if not outright hostility towards what I do and how I live, and that at the end of the day we are just all out looking for ourselves. It's a depressing conversation. Every postdoc is staunchily narcarssistic about his own work. I can't see the light, toiling years of life away in some little dark room, working on a problem so little that it's almost petty, learning a technique that becomes obsolete just as you start to learn it. I can't imagine that experimentalists not having some sort of crises of faith all the time. At least when you do math you'll know you are right after you are done. And that you'll be right forever. I can't find the balance between pushing something (in the case, my career) and trying to be modest and open-minded about other people's careers. Often I feel that experimentalists, in their hot-headed stubborn narcarssism, don't know how to analyze their own data, and scientific progress is hampered. But a thoerist can hide in his own cacoon of abstraction. Waking up at 4AM and unable to sleep afterwards seems to be indicative of the kind of intellectual quicksand--yes, not just muddy waters, not just thickets of thorns--hidden vortex of a painful, suffocating death, that is so unbearable. You won't find validation from your peers. Oh no. It's about getting the best of them. I mean, who's going to get funded in the end? I'm so sick of having to justify my own existence. Scientists are so cagey. The questions are so NOT interesting. I just want to get out. 06:04:55 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 04/17/07 Turnandotsaw this as a last minute surprise at the Met. It's a very interesting piece. This actually makes me think quite deeply about art in the 20th century. There are two general tendencies as history moved towards modernity. One is globalization: Puccini looks to China for inspiration, even incorporating real Chinese tunes, one that I can chant as a Child--This is akin to Picasso going after Japanese wood carvings and African totem sculptures. Second is fragmentation: by fragmentation I mean a polyglot style, a mixture of lots of incongruences without clear resolution. Again Picasso. Again Puccini. Life without resolution is probably THE most prominent signature of modernity. What is the signature of life AFTER modernity? It's a combination of globalization and fragmentation. Or rather, it's welding the fragments with desparate cultures--Philip Glass's Satyagrapha was featured in the same playbill. Modernism looks inward. Postmodernism looks outward. So now what? Where do we look in the 21st century? 21:27:35 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 04/16/07 illusion of jealousyhere's a story you'll love. i went to a party a while ago, and saw this guy, J, and thought he's hot--I had a man crush on him. Then my gf said that she wanted to go to Ecuador with some guy, N. I wasn't sure who N is and I thought N = J and suddenly got nervous. J's so hot! What if he snatches my lady some dark drunken night in some lascivious south american country! lo and behold, i went over the photo albumn with my gf and we both realized that all this time i was jealous of the wrong person! It kinda makes me think about how illusions develop--illusions develop not because certain things look similar to each other--J looks nothing like N, as far as I understand it. Illusions develop because of internal fears and anxiety, states of mind--a network abberation--the lens that you look through that suddenly becomes curved. Things that you think are true and that make you nervous are most prone to that kind of illusory attacks--emotional things, personal things, intimate things--most vulnerable furry creatures. Kinda like ripples over water. That spring rain that makes you feel calm and thoughtful all the while, the wetness, eyelashes, damp hair, strawberries and cheese--a bit sweet, a bit sour, a bit salty, a bit savory. Now I'm describing a kiss. A kiss has a nose to it. It's like a glass of good wine. A good kiss is a story with a long, gracious character arc. It's like a firefly. It flickers. 00:23:22 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 04/13/07 racial preferences in dating, revisitedJohn Tierney wrote this on his blog, TierneyLab. This study was conducted by a UofC B-school prof, and the results, though perhaps depressing to some, are not entirely unexpected. During a speeddating session,
And, when these odds are translated into dollar amounts,
I think the points are pretty obvious at this point. A staggering quarter of a million dollars. I think we now know why you don't see certain combinations very often. Women have strong racial preferences, for whatever reason, and it's hard to compensate for them. On the other hand, I would venture to say that the number of Asian men who make more than $250,000, proportionally, vastly exceeds the number of black men who make more than $150,000. And that is why, counterintuitively, you see more of a certain set of combinations in certain select social circles than you would otherwise expect. 17:47:39 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 04/10/07 bumpersticker
So a certain Elizabeth Sutherland of Massachusetts, US. purchased a post-postmodern bumper sticker for the exorbitant price of $5.99. And since the "overhead" at the capitalistic evil empire known as Cafepress for that particular item is $2.99 I end up making $3.00, a whooping profit margin of 100%. I haven't checked my account for ages and this is the FIRST ever purchase from this wesite. Whoever you are Elizabeth, THANK YOU!! Thank you for being a fan. I promise that I'll churn out the best post-postmodern nonsense in the coming years, if not decades. And for the rest of you readers out there, please contribute! Buy a T-shirt! Buy a thong! Support the indie artists! World peace! Save the whales! 19:33:45 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 03/11/07 the lives of othersthis turns out to be quite a thought-provoking film. Let me just outline a couple of the things that occured to me. Firstly, don't believe in anything whole-heartedly. Always have that skepticism. Always allow practical examination of different circumstances. Don't ever believe something so strongly that any means can justify the end. This is particularly relevant in the current political atmosphere, where a anything-is-allowed mood permeates the post-terror free world. Secondly, never underestimate the complexity of people and what they are capable of. And be tolerant. Actions, sometimes egregious, can be attributed to things out of one's control. Blaming and judging is making the mistake of mis-attribution, the delusion of the free will, the desire to believe that mirage of independance. We never live apart from where we are, and we can't be understood without enumerating where we come from.
Thirdly, and most importantly, is my self-reflection of this world. Our world. The West. The other side. Back when the government was oppressive, at least you had something to blame when you were unhappy--the crushing regime, the ruthless secret police, so on and so forth. But in this world of ours, if you aren't happy, what do you have to blame? That's why unhappiness is now classified as a mental illness. Suicide is not some rebellious act of courage. It's a state of pathology. Blame your genes, and maybe your parental upbringing, if you still believe in Freud, who's by the way going out of fashion. The Free World owes you nothing and is never responsible for you panic and pain. For some people at least, life is a sad and empty place no matter what side of it you are coming from. For some others, the world is a place for a good fight. And the rest of us? We just want to hold hands, fill our stomach, have a good warm bed in which to sleep and fuck. We might not have as good of a story to tell, but at least we'll be a little bit happier. That's the only thing that's remarkable about our world. The only thing. 03:10:53 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 01/10/07 celebrity in WH: SUVjogging in this perfect mid Jan weather minding my business, I suddenly saw a row of trailers. Figuring it's some TV show shooting in Washington Heights I didn't take too much mental note of it. Then suddenly I saw Christopher Meloni, or what I think of as him, jabbering incessantly to his co-star from the salacious Law and Order franchise. I almost doubted that it was him, but the female costar was much easier to recoginize. First things first, the dramatic makeup is much less attractive in person. He was also much shorter than the camera made him out to be, as often commented by celebrity chasers. I didn't yell out, "Yo Mr. Meloni, huge fan from Oz here, saw you piss into a bucket." Figured that wouldn't be appropriate. After all we are strangers and I didn't want to bother him when he's working. It makes me think though--it made my day and totally took my mind of a earlier, much darker train of thought. This Warholian society--the rush bestowed by our artificial royalty is so grand, so eerily therapeutic--amazing piece of work, I tell ya. Also, I think if i really wanted to, I might have been able to make it in Hollywood. Who knows? 13:40:40 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 12/25/06 suburb musicToday I was listening to Maurice Ravel's first piano concerto, and I have a little revelation. Anybody who's interested in 20th century music at all but is afraid of atonality should listen to this piece. Basically, it's christmas day and the little strip mall near my parents' house is completely closed. Vast empty parking lot in that misty southern winter rain. Then you listen to Ravel, and you think, jazzy. And somehow the misalignment in the slow tempo and the dramatic chromatism represents this: this make belief place, all these pretty little buildings and trees and lights and flowers, no one was around. it's very indie-film-esque type of feeling. the whole place is fake, but fake in a way that's not annoying. Like a white lie. The the beautiful sunset that's being mistaken for a sunrise. Something about it that just moves me, I guess. But so unreal and Ravel captures that unreality so well. And it occurs to me that those who don't appreciate 20th century music are missing this big piece of the puzzle. Our life. Simulacrum. Madonna tries to get at it, but she's much less effective and less elegant. And it makes me think about how much I'm enjoying life now because at least i can walk around and listen to Ravel and think about life and ruminate over all these things...verisimilitude...i always confuse that word with vicissitude...ah...high school etymology. Being sad doesn't do as good of a job of feigning profundity in our age of antidepressants. A big vocabulary can do that job so much better. Don't hate it. Embrace it. The spirit of Noel.
23:20:26 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 12/18/06 trigger and bachThose who know me know that I could be neurotic at times, esp. triggered by yet ANOTHER thesis defense this month. Though more often than not I'm capable of not letting that neurosis get the better of me. What's my secret? This has gotta be the world's most pretentious anxiolytic. Although I think it probably works as well as Valium. I prescribe Bach. The key is to follow the lower registers. Often the lower voices are even more beautiful than the main motif. It's just you and Bach, and nothing else matters. The universe is ticking. There is no word, no image, an utter lack of anything material. This very lack of something than the gain of anything is the key to a happy life, I think. Very Zen. Very Upper Middle Class Upper West Side secular Jewish... Of course, sipping herbal tea on the side helps too... 14:59:21 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 12/04/06 zealot atheistRichard Dawkins, the enormous personality that makes me want to capitalize his name, has become bigger than Jesus, rather like John Lennon. Although, considering the number of people who aren't Christian (>5 bil) is at least twice as large as the number of people who are (2 bil?), I suspect Jesus wasn't that big in the first place. I mean, how many people had the smallpox vaccine? Jenner's bigger than Jesus. my little tagents... Anyway, the point is, this guy is becoming more like the head of a weird cultist church. He has groupies. Man, i love the life of a po-mo public intellectual. These days we aren't even persecuted anymore. This is not like Aung San Suu Kyi here. We are talking some serious rock star fame and fortune. Ain't it grand? As far as religion itself goes, being a pretty staunch agnostic, I think nontheless there's some practical reason for its critique. Religion as a cultural artifact, like TV shows or food, is sort of interesting. I mean when I was in that church in that Mayan colony in Mexico with pine needles and chickens and Coca-Cola, you just gotta laugh and cry at the same time. There's something cool about that. It's related to my perverted love of Toby Keith (really, the whole having two first names as your full name thing turns me on...) "The Angry American--courtesy of the red white and blue" is, in a way, similiar to African tribal chants. 11:40:35 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 11/18/06 lacrosse debacleI just finished an old article in the New Yorker about the Duke psuedo-scandal. The end of the story was basically that none of the DNA matched and the players were basically exonerated. This makes me think about the injustice those folks must have endured. With regard to athletes I'm not terribly liberal/PC or whatever. people just assume that they are bullying brutes who can't talk about anything intelligently. Is that true? Somestimes I wonder...what is going on in a jock's brain? Very curious indeed. Are they really stupid or just lazy or just inarticulate or what? The jocks I've met though are mostly not bad people. That is, at least they are not fake to any significant degree, unlike some of the pseudo-intellectual i encounter. The competition for who's smarter than who seems terribly fierce in this world of mine and it gets unbearably tedious. Really, Keikergard or whatever is not worth reading. It's much better to read a summary of Derrida than Derrida himself. (aka postmodernism for dummies, etc) I still can't decide if the life of the body or the life of the mind is more important. But I think the cool thing about knowing lots of trivia is that at least you won't get bored too easily, or bore others. Philosophy can be extrememly boring. This is why medical school is so awesome. 21:49:07 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 11/12/06 metro-NFLerso...in a galaxy far far away...i was watching football all day drinking beer. I also cleaned my room a bit and bought a couple of plants. Just when the Bears vs. Giants game was about to start I realized something truly horrid: I was sipping herbal tea, in a cup on top of a *coaster*, while typing on my MacBook and burning African sandlewood incense. The whole scene is so jarring it's comical. I don't even like Grossman. Though I love Urlacher, I don't know why. It's totally a man crush thing. Yes. This is how a New Yorker from North Carolna spend his Sunday evening. Ah I'm so relaxed... 20:09:37 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 11/11/06 Webster NightmareI had the honor/misfortune of finally getting into the renowned New York megaclub/disco. It's so...juvenille. Most of the folks there are the skater type, weird T-shirt wearing, funky hair spawning. And I really wonder how many of them are underage and outta town folks. It was just plainly unpleasant. Was it cause i'm too old and can't appreciate the lasers and flashy barely clad women dancing on stage? And, by and by, the foul teenage dancers...i dunno, I feel old and...classy?! Is that possible? Magaclubs are like Walmart. There's just something very lower middle class unsavory about it. God if i could only quit thinking about everything in Marx for one second.... 02:31:59 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 11/09/06 the evil of Ms. Saigona Village Voice article prompted me to write about this topic. I've told a couple of friends why I actively dislike dating women of the Far East extraction. I told my friends that "they had a certain expectation for me," that I'm unwilling to fulfill. And for a while I couldn't quite articulate what that expectation is. I think I know now what it is. It's the terribly outdated, exploitative attitude that she ought to hold off sex till the man (especially, modified with much racism, "of her own kind") has proven himself "worthy to be a husband." Of course I generalize and there are many liberated Asian women out there who I'm more than willing to date, but...just for the sake of argument the point is the following: through unpleasant personal experiences, and through the word of mouth of my elementary school classmates living in Shanghai (a city supposedly much resonating with The West), the unanimous consensus is that an Asian girl, when dating an Asian guy, wants him to do things for her in exchange for sexual favors, or the eventual possibility thereof. Of course, the men take advantage of it and invariably expect a virgin wife. Any women who were inadvertantly deflowered by some random acts of passion, or even crimiality, would be rather criticized (if not ostracized.) This is all well and fine, and can be all subscribed to cultural traditions, though I do suggest a heavy dose of Simone de Beauvoir and some late 20th century sex-positive feminism. The problem is that when the so-described virgins see a white man, she invariably no longer cares about the so called "cultural traditions" and gives up sex ever so easily. She realizes that she can't withold sex with his white paramour because in that case he can afford to dump her like a bag of rocks. This is a bit of hypocrisy, which is fine, I mean who isn't a little hypocritical these days. But, it is also using sex, especially the female sex, as a money bag. It's fine if you are a certified sex worker. But it's really not okay if the social mores at large is structured as such. An 18th century conception of female sexuality, so outdated, it is as close to Islamic fundamentalism as you can get. This is not simply the fault of the women, of course, the men needed to be blamed as well. The problem looms large in these halfway cultures, transitioning painfully between modernity and antiquity (a bit of a weird diction, I hope I don't do the Greeks any injustice). Communist China, for instance, embraced certain "communist" values. But Marx has no explicit sexual politics and the social standards for sex are still very much 18th century, though thankfully it is getting better. The corollary is a prescription for those guys of various ethnicities who demand a virgin and can't get laid. Get over yourself already. I'm not talking about the religious folks. I'm talking about you, the mainstream liberal shy Jewish/Asian/mixed race guy who thinks women are all fragile wallflowers. Sex is a wonderful thing between two consenting adults, a biological necessity, not some whimsical act of divine ever so rich in amorphous religious symbolisms. That's called superstition. If you are born in the late 20th century and really believe that men and women should have equal Rights and responsibilities, please act like it. 10:27:11 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 10/25/06 the second treatise of this and thatI was reading Russell's commentary on Locke last night. He's a pretty good writer. The most interesting part is where he talks about how the US adopted Locke's system most wholeheartedly, as opposed to most of the European powers. The key, he said, is that Locke represents this particular "Scottish" strand of utilitarian thought. Locke's emphasis on private property as above all else may seem a bit trivial, almost petty and debased. But in the end, that practical "petit bourgeois" mentality has brought more happiness than any of the exalted ideologies and catechisms. I think as much as people tend to criticize the US, there's something to be said about the Founders, and the Northeast liberal elite, and their Jewish-Irish-Italian-Asian striving immigrant offshoots. This topic can be elaborated upon, as we can all see in David Brooks's "Bobos". 15:48:00 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 10/14/06 reason and a way of lifethe one thing that differentiates the freethinker from the ideologue is that the freethinker doesn't assume the responsibility of conversion, and that "truths should be self-evident." If a rational argument is correct, it's backed up by evidence and logic and it's "naturally" convincing. No leaps of faith is necessary, except that you have to believe that things that make sense are better than things that don't. the problem though, is that this spirit can be transformed into a somewhat noxious ideology, and this has been variously observed by postmodernists. Except they don't necessarily propose any way to draw the line between what is tenable and what isn't. These are not trivial questions I think that can be resolved easily, so thankfully as long as we keep an open mind not too much injustice would be done 19:19:27 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 10/04/06 social support networkA peculiar discussion with a Jewish office mate made me think about certain things. All the various rituals and holidays and *cultural* traditions are tied either into a person's ethnic composition, religious belief, or some other form of mass-action type of sociological mechanism. Did Thoreau ever celebrate Yom Kippur? We need a truly, new secular system of new traditions and new ethos. At least I do. It's interesting because communism is basically an attempt to do so, but it failed miserably. The reason, I think are two fold. First, even though it is supposedly secular, it is still dogmatic and based on a specific set of catechisms. Secondly, the rituals are based on arbitrary conventions (i.e. the first of may is the day of labor). What we need is a sort of *natural* festival system, that incorporates elements of the natural world and possibly some humanity history aspect. The birthday of Chopin? Tolstoy? Hell yah. All things *ethnic* has a certain humiliating sense of Brown vs. Education to it. 10:55:20 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 09/22/06 grey's anatomy is the worst show on TVI've said it before and I'll say it again. O-M-F-G. CAN YOU *BE* a little more soapy! And that Patrick Swayze, should be called Patrick Sleazy... ridiculous plot. ABC is so evil. /end of tantrum 20:51:10 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 09/22/06 youtubeit's one of those days when I just sit in front of the computer...the zen of it all, the zen of it all 15:29:51 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 08/30/06 a bend in the riverone of the Naipaul's more mature works, I think. So well-written it's shocking, in this day and age. Not a shred of unnecessary flowery prose of any sort. Yet the sparse but enormously effective way emotion is communicated...man the thing that made me think though is one place Indar said certain something about how Americans are just like everyone else, some good, some bad, etc. I feel somehow exonerated. or was it one of those "you bet your mama you are right" momemnts. art like this sort of disrupts you way of thinking about your place in the world. It makes you want to escape, in a way. Different people read completely differently into it. P.S., missing Dimitri made me watch Rudy by downloading it off the web. I guess I can see how he's totally enamoured. It was pretty manipulative, but at the same time I guess I can feel it. It was that repetitive rejection bit that is pretty resonating. The other thing is, I felt like this sort of, very very Americana type of thing, really portrays this very simple and idealistic way, in a certain sense very admirable, child-like spirit. When I was 22, I was already so jaded that I wouldn't even blink at anyone telling me if he wanted to do something his whole life and he'd do anything for it. I've seen "greatness". (I was thinking, what the hell would by my version of riding a bench in the stadium? Sitting somewhere in Stockholm listening to some retarded lecture I've heard a hundred times? I couldn't control my laughter.) Greatness, it's sort of overrated, banal, comical. Just to think that there are people out there who still would do anything to get into ND, let alone the various desperate FOB parents getting their Urkel-like monster children H-bombed. This is why Woody Allen is so great. Life is a comedy masquerading as a tragedy. 00:03:29 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 08/27/06 capricious againone of these days I'll have to start some sort of benzo. This oscillation, mostly due to irregular physical arrangements...and really only one big problem. The problem is that nobody cares. Or Depakote...some repulsive anticonvulsant...Gating gating gating. Schizophrenia is disregulating gating. Larry's flashy idea. Depakote for a schizo. It even rhymes. find a goose. goose, such capricious creatures. I cry when i think about it. Seriously sometimes I wonder if a great guy like me should be tortured like this. Then I split into a multiple personality. Get a grip, the other voice says, look at the African boys who have nothing but a skeleton. It's all well and good and everything. I can't tell anybody. And plus even if I do, it's not like anyone can do anything to help. God sometimes I begin to think that Dimitri Islam might be right. This learned hopelessness. I even constrained myself in this lingo...Derrida is so right. Everything's in the language. Hug thyself, thus spake the great Jedi...mince that smile and stop thinking so much. Really, nobody cares. Fuck. Ha-ha-ha. I feel like Henrik's Doll 23:15:42 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 08/18/06 lightnessit's often the case in this world that you suddenly feel really alone. people whom you think really cared about you, or had affections for you suddenly leave you in a cold sweat, dreadfully cold and detached like crazy motherfuckers. Familiar characters become unrecognizable. The truth of the matter is, everyone has an agenda, and the affection is merely part of that agenda. Someone said, why can't people just get along and wish the best for others? I pointed out to him that women go crazy after the swashbuckling, trailblazing tramplers. Evolution seems to offer a distinct advantage for those who have that unseething selfishness ingrained in them, a bit more than that mildly dull collectivist ethos of the Old World. Who discovered gravity? The really sad thing though, is that you feel as if nobody really cares to even listen to your wretched wails. Of course, your parents would, 'cause they are your parents and their mere existence is but a cause of yours. But, why bother your old parents with your sappy sentimentality? They've been through enough as it is. Your true friends? Same logic. So, the internet presents itself as some silent sounding board for this braying ass, late, late into the night. Even in the high tide of that solitude, I suppose I can think of the Walden Pond and feel just a bit content. At least I'm not the first, and surely I won't be the last. I think my best quality has to do with my ability to console myself. Should I feel a bit guilty? Where the line between being a push-over, and being an asshole? I guess if Professor Confucius couldn't tell till he was fourty, I shan't feel bad about it when I'm but a youngling. 01:12:41 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 08/10/06 lazinesssometimes i'm SO lazy that i don't even want to type. so i end up going to the same websites that get stuck in my address bar. 01:42:26 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 08/07/06 social circlesI swear one day I'm going to write a book about this, after I carry out a complete and unbiased investigation of the neural substrate of this interesting phenomena. I was submerged in various conferences recently and the blog is thus not as updated. the basic situation is thus: people who want to be friendly to you try to count you in as some sort of exclusive group. This is particularly prominent in a dating scenario. I met this girl from Shanghai a while ago, born and raised, talked in pure vernacular Shanghainese. I speak this dialect too, and during dinner she disclosed to me her contempt towards, what can be roughly translated into, "people from the provinces." Clearly if I were of that sort she would never have said things like that. Similarly, a Chinese American girl whom I've met recently exclaimed with much consternation, "what kind of Asian are you?" She was pointing fingers at my lack of interest in Hong Kong popular music and Karaoke. I blame it all on my parents. What's funny though is that what immediately becomes transparent to me: I don't belong to EITHER of these groups. The content of a particular subculture is meaningless to me. It's the depth: how much arcane detail can you go on and on? It's this antithetical ideal that people should live to know, rather than just live to live, pursuing some cunningly professionalistic goal. The sort of thing my parents are demonstratively against. What kind of immigrants are THEY. They've created a monster of misfit. My father is particularly egregious in such pretentious inclinations. At least my mother sometimes tells me how much money such and such's kids make as "IT professionals" (read, pathetic stereotypcial programmers) at such and such investment bank. Still, she can't hide her contempt and that golly gee gratuity when they became of aware of me working with a Nobel fucking laureate. Considering my 80 going on 90 grandmother wants me to analyze my life critically with a combination of Marx and Keynes, I think this pretentious streak is pretty much welded into my DNA. Is this a blessing? Should I get a bowtie and a French hat? Where is MY circle of pettily pretentious semi-conservative realists? I mean, seriously, even when I talk to a Chinese person I want to talk about some arcane footnoted translation of Du Fu and how it's so amazingly cool that Vikram Seth went to Tibet. FUUUUUUUUU 02:35:30 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 07/10/06 dramaI don't blog about magazine articles often, but there's this really great article in the newest (7/10) issue of New Yorker about an arabic American FBI agent and his trials and tribulations. Full of emtional elements, great drama, lots of action, lots of suspense. Someone somewhere in LA NEEDS to make this into a movie. Articles like this make me not want to watch most of the movies around, as they are clearly superior. 12:03:36 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 07/05/06 the need to go onsometimes I think just waking up and be able to do anything every morning makes you a hero. every note from Mort Feldman's quiet, orthogonal piano piece. every drop of sweat. every keystroke, every word. every chaotic, dreamily intermingled idea. You and I, have to write, have to play, have to taste and listen and belong and whimper and emerge unscathed and unafraid of that ennui, that daunting, cooling boredom that we claim to be ours in order to survive. it's never easy to live, even when sometimes the only reason to do it is to somehow make it sound better than it actually is. sometimes, the only reason is memory. 22:19:57 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 06/20/06 transformersjust very quickly scanned Emanuael Derman's "My life as a Quant". God, so boring. He tried really hard, but god he's such an awful writer. The memoir was filled with technical langauge and things i care very little about. He should've talked more about people, or philosophy or gossip or anything in between. Instead, he talks science. He writes people in a very vague way, "such such trained as a scientist but now a trader, it was stimulating to walk upstars and to hang out with the aggressively humorous traders around him..." how stimulating? what details? he follows this with long paragraphs of "creation of elegant C++ object-oriented blah blah blah" and diagrams of probability distributions. I can sympathsize with his unhappiness for doing something that had seemingly no future. A geek is a geek, even if he makes millions of dollars and become a partner, he's still a geek. Scary thoughts, ain't it. Also this is exactly the sort of example for how popular science books should NOT be written. 21:27:56 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 06/19/06 gangs and mobsThis weekend I was watching the HBO original series Oz. It was wildly entertaining. It's a more difficult series than The Sopranos, I think, because most of the stuff in the series concerns things that are less familiar and it's more plot driven than character driven. In some ways, however, it is more successful on an artistic level because it shows a more complete picture of many many interacting characters and stories in a subculture. The problem with this approach though is that individual episodes become sprawling. Suffice it is to say, an audience will develop certain preferences. It's harder to sympathsize with members of a gang, for instance, because that kind of life style is so far from mine. It's easy, however, to sympathize with a drunk lawyer. I think if the shower completely focuses on Tobias Beecher, for instance, it would have been much more popular, but it would lose much of its artistic edge. Tony Soprano, on the other hand, is such a presence that you are naturally drawn to his character regardless of what happens in the plot. This sort of popular appeal is important, but not necessary, for a good series. It sort of also exposes a natural racism in me. The first impression of a character is incredibly powerful. But if you actually sort of stare at the characters a bit more carefully, you find that the acting is actually not all that great most of the time. There's a very subtle "over-the-topness" associated that you can detect in "method" based drama like this. This effect is weaker in some more skilled actors (such as Falco) and more pronounced in others (Tergesen). The dynamic range obviously is important, but within a range some actors are simply more believable. This is not to say that Tergesen is a bad actor. His script is extremely difficult and has a huge range. It's just that the second time you watch it, if you watch things more carefully you start to appreciate little things. And I think in this regard Gandolfini is incredibly skilled in his intrepretation of nuances, because for his role he has to both have a large range and stay real in every role. As far as the writing and stylistic elements, both have these long shots that get draged on, plot features borrowed from documentaries and independent cinema. I think the American audience really has become more sophisiticated in the years. Lots of shows on network TV now use this type of "art film" presentation, and I appreciate that. But for some reason that doesn't work for network TV. The reason, I think, is because of the commercials. There needs to be a very focus storytelling that can't be disrupted. I think we might need another model for commericals. 15:03:11 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 06/11/06 yellow convo[01:33:45] helmaster9: why do you want a gf? 01:42:05 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 06/10/06 letter to the editorDear ... This E-mail, being written at 3:00AM, is sort of a rant. Nevertheless, I think you might just be the right person to talk to about some of these gnawing problems of mine. The issue has been a long-standing on my part. I seemed to have lost all sense of what constitutes good writing and what doesn.t. The problem has two parts. Firstly, I'm at a loss of what is actually worth writing about. It seems to me that there are certain "fashionable", often ideologically polarizing subject matters, extending from narratives to criticism and theory, that characterize the content of much of academic writing. People who are high up there in humanities departments write about a set of things that not that many people actually care about. Yet, somehow that is nominally considered to be worthwhile within academia. That's how people get tenured. I feel like if I had a new idea regarding criticism and theory, it would be excruciatingly difficult to get it out there, particularly if it's somehow not consistent with the prevailing ideology. Secondly, I find much of today's academic writing to be poorly written stylistically. (That is, by Zinsser's standards, which I find very agreeable.) I don't know if you would agree with me on that or not. And yet badly written, obfuscating articles get published in prestigious journals all the time. I often feel like I can write a better term paper when I read one of those. And then I google the author and he/she is some highfalutin endowed chair at Harvard. Is this indicative of an extreme instance of content over style? Or am I missing something important? Is it true that being a good writer doesn't even matter when your content is of a certain nature? (Controversial? Fashionable? Politicized?) This is a personal struggle. I feel like I can't write sufficiently well stylistically and don't have enough patience to perfect that craftsmanship to be a professional writer, and yet there's something unique that I can offer in terms of participating in the general academic discourse, in terms of bridging scientific inquiries, esp in cognitive sciences, to the sort of work that people in social sciences or even literary criticism are doing. But I have no idea how that would work or how I should even begin to work on that as some sort of long-term goal. And because of the above-mentioned problems I have with academic humanities disciplines at large, this effort has been more aggrevating than anything else. I was deeply inspired by E.O. Wilson. It now feels like the two cultures are, if anything, growing farther apart. Any comment would be greatly instructive, I think. S 03:12:34 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 06/10/06 national enternainmentwent to my second Yankee's game ever. here's what's interesting: normal people talk differently and look differently. New York has a pretty neat demographics: red haired Irish and black eyed Italians mixed with a couple of Asians and oodles of Hispanics. All mingled in that rough-around-the-edges tawk. I've been in the ivory tower for too long and it feels like i'm losing touch. everybody talks in that midwestern reporter tongue. too many books to read, not enough time. suck at piano takes forever to practice. just shoot me. 02:08:25 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 06/05/06 Monkeythe elevator operator at the 181st 1 train station had a (translated) copy of Wu Cheng'En's Journey to the West on his little table counter. He's black/hispanic. Just when you thought the flow of culture is only one way following the tide of Westernization, a little thing like that catches you off guard. Ah life. 00:06:19 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 06/04/06 the da vinci codethis is exactly why you need to have people telling you that a movie sucked, then you go see it. it was pretty entertaining, but the story totally didn't square away. Just think, if Isaac Newton believed that Jesus had a daughter wouldn't he want to tell everybody about it? We have lots of important people here and the catholic church was waning in its influence at the onset of the age of reason, and there wouldn't be any reason this whole story wasn't exposed earlier. In any case it was much more entertaining than I thought it was going to be. On the other hand, it was also long and tedious, full of dialogues. I can see how people didn't want to see it. That is, normal people. 02:22:50 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ 06/04/06 checki don't think this works anymore. 02:20:09 | Comment/Question _________________________________________________________________ My summary of neuroscience articles |
