its a family recipe
2001-11-05 - 4:20 p.m.
The state of Maine is paying me $500 a semester to go to college in Massachusetts. I don�t get it either.
I did a bit too much work in my dictionary compilation of four-letter words. You can tell you�ve done too much work with small words when you start to pronounce the ones you do know incorrectly (in your head, of course). But this estranged mental state got me to thinking about transitive and intransitive verbs. Really, there can be no difference between the two. In my own language, I shall do with verbs as I wish, and care not about whom is being acted upon. If one wants to walk out in a field and compliment, without saying a word directly to anyone or anything in particular, one should be entitled to do so.
Related Sidenote: It makes so much more sense for the past tense of �help� to be �holp�.
�While I�m into the English language, I might as well write fer a bit about quotation marks. In MLA format, the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, but if you have inner quotation marks, they work as parentheses, relative to the first set of quotation marks (the punctuation is still inside.) The thing that really irks me about this system is that For essays and informal writings, I prefer quotation marks to follow the rules of parentheses (I usually follow my own set of rules in my writing *here*, because I get to write in whatever language variant I feel like.)
�They are essentially similar types of punctuation. We use brackets to set aside a part of a sentence that is necessary to the content of the sentence, but which didn�t really �exist�, so to speak. Likewise, we use parentheses to set aside a part of a sentence that is unnecessary to the content of the sentence, and which didn�t really �exist�. We use quotation marks to set aside a part of a sentence that was, at one point, spoken...so it did exist (although it may or may not be necessary, depending on what is said.)
�[If normal parentheses structure were used,] not in short quotes, but when someone were to continue talking over a couple paragraphs, we could just put the quote marks over everything they say, rather than making the reader scratch their head over why the author started with a quotation mark, and didn�t end the paragraph with one. Again, this may be alright for a long novella, where a character could talk for a whole chapter and you may forget that they are talking at all, it just gets too confusing for something short.� -To Say Nothing of Backslashes and Semicolon Cancer (okay, so i made it up.)
While I was in work study this morning, Don showed me how to ping the school network from a DOS shell. Quite entertaining.
I�m sure you�ve all heard about the anthrax in the US postal systems. Unfortunately, criminals just aren�t willing to be creative anymore. If anthrax lives for a long time in an envelope, how long would it last in a cookie? Not that I�m suggesting anything, mind you.
Yesterday, I stumbled onto a very primitive form of entertainment. http://www.acronymfinder.com and then just type in someone�s name, or something odd.
Freedom. What does it mean to you? You better know, because no one else has the �Right� to tell you just how it is. What do they mean, when they talk about �the Free World�? Certainly, the world is not any more free than it was in the medieval ages. The net �freedom� in an enclosed system is constant, by the not-so-eternal laws of physics. The people on Capitol Hill talk about the freedoms of the everyday American, but we�ve had Cuba�s balls in a death grip since WWII...Eventually, people will just have to wake up and realize that we�re all Human, and even lines that are drawn between those humans on maps made by humans can�t change that. Even extraterrestrial life could be classified as Human (but not, most likely, human). Birds, monkeys, dolphins, and even mosquitoes operate under the same mental laws. We�re made of the same �stuff�, both literally and metaphorically speaking. I decided to make myself write down my own definition of freedom, beyond the atomic sense of freedom of movement. That was over a month ago, and I think I�ve finally settled on something. To me, freedom (little f here, big F just blows my mind) is just another part of the science of behaviorism. Yes, I know Skinner would smack me upside the head and tell me that there is no such thing (and then tell me afterward that punishment is not a good means for reinforcement). In fact, there may not be a capital F. But yes, mental freedom can be expressed (albeit complicated to measure) by the diversity of one�s environment. In a Skinner box, rat A is provided with a lever. But rat B has two levers, thus giving it more options for choosing its next behavior. Behavior (and thinking), as a result, CAN be more varied, but this is not always the case. Eventually, rat B will choose one lever and use that one a great deal more than the other, even if both levers produce the same result. And then there is rat C, with no levers. Of course he has less freedom than rat A, but has nearly boundless freedom in that it has space in which to do things. Even without a lever, rat C can groom itself, chase it�s tail, scrawl calculus expressions on the floor, or chatter on about nothing to no one...and all of these things (while unrewarded by the scientist) may be just as �productive� as pressing the lever. It should also be said that rat C may choose to exercise more of it�s available freedoms than rat A (who may never think to chase its tail, because it is preoccupied with the lever). In �real life� terms, freedom is being able to treat yourself to your own type of �fun� on the weekends; it�s allowing yourself to go and do something different (like walking to your next class on your hands instead of your feet); it�s being able to go downtown (by car or feet of bike) and choose which newspaper to buy (or to not buy one at all). Basically, freedom is choice. Choice that is incorporated into the system in which we live. Obviously, we don�t live in a purely free society by my definition. Of course, there are laws, but even laws do not prevent the actions they guard against. More importantly, there are things which we choose not to do because we won�t allow ourselves to do them. To some effect, these restrictions may be helpful in our survival...but sometimes, you limit yourself to what people tell you to do. Some people have chosen not to choose.
As long as I�m on the topic of defining things, I thought I�d define �addiction�. I�ve said before that �we are the sum of our addictions�. What I meant by this, of course, is that addictions are not only essential to one�s personality, but on a very small level, constitute the reasons why we do whatever it is that we do. If you don�t believe that you are addicted to your everyday teeny-tiny behaviors, choose something you do every day and try to quit. It might be washing your face, combing your hair the same old way, checking your e-mail, or *gasp* watching television. Cold turkey. Frozen duck. My bet is that very few people who would be able to quit even the simplest of their daily behavior. Of course, there are always those that justify that they are not addicted because there is a functional �purpose� to doing these things. And that, of course, is the evidence of their addiction.
�The {TK-90X} was a clone.� -The Hacker�s Dictionary (a very entertaining read)
