nor•mal (verb)
(physics & mathematics) pertaining to vectors, a vector or surface is said to be "normal to" another vector or surface if they intersect at an angle of 90 degrees (i.e. are perpendicular to one another)
Origin: Latin (normalis = conforming to the rules/a carpenter's square)
~~~~~~~~~~
Back from Reading Break. Clocked in ~50 hours of Pokémon. Didn't really do much else. Super tired to be back at school.
~~~~~~~~~~
Pertaining to Homestuck trolls: HOLY CRAP THAT'S COMPLICATED! (I read the linked article) But it seems amazingly awesome and very entertaining. I can see myself getting lost in it sometime in the future, for sure. I just need to find the time for it.
~~~~~~~~~~
I guess that's what I'm going to be talking about today. It's rather personal, I guess, but it's all that's really on my mind lately, and I don't have 3-4 hours it would take to try and cram all of my Pokémon obsessions (the only other topic on my mind atm) into one post today, so here goes.
Finding the time for stuff.
I dunno, but motivation and self discipline have always been huge problems for me; I'm (usually) hard pressed to do class work or really any work in general unless I feel like it. Sometimes everything seems like such a drag, completely dull, and wholly uninteresting. It really does have to do with my mood; if I'm in a good mood, I'm usually very productive and I find I learn more effectively, but if I'm in a bad mood or I'm upset, everything just disintegrates.
Lately, I've found that I'm not able to concentrate on anything like I used to be able to. I'm not very productive, I'm doing poorly in all my classes (I just got all my midterms back and all of them are B's or worse), and my hair is thinning (which is enormously alarming). I guess I'm just getting tired of living such a mundane life.
With all this fogginess, I haven't been able to find time for everything that I really want to do, because I feel guilty for not studying more because I'm not doing well in my studies, but I'm not doing well in school because I'm generally not very alert or motivated, which is generally because every day is just so depressing.
As I sit here, absently staring at the computer screen and keyboard in front of me, I wonder, am I really still here? Because how do I know that I'm really still living if I'm too numb to feel anything? To quote Hank Green's brilliant Anglerfish Song, "You simply do not feel what is always there/I ask my brain to entertain that pain is the same/that if I feel it all the time can I really call it pain?"
I used to say that sometimes the greatest battle is to keep on living. Some people would agree, saying "well that totally makes sense: there are people living poverty who have to fight for every single meal; they have to work their entire lives, just to meet their basic needs," and it's true, for these people, the greatest battle is indeed to keep on living: to find the next meal, to find another place to sleep, to make sure that you're not left behind as life keeps moving forwards. But sometimes life is not physically difficult, but emotionally difficult. Sometimes the greatest battle is to keep on living a life that gives you little to no satisfaction, when the joy seems to be sucked right out of the very air you breathe.
Someone once famously said that happiness is found not in the seldom moments of immense glory and triumph, but in the little graces in every day life. In biochemistry, we learned that for many proteins, only a very small percentage of its size is dedicated to performing its function; the reason why it has to be so big is because a protein's stability is the sum of a large number of tiny forces. That is, over 95% of a protein enzyme's amino acids have nothing to do with its function and everything to do with making sure it doesn't fall apart. In other words, a protein is only stable because a very large number of tiny forces/weak interactions between its amino acids hold it together; if proteins were small and had just the amino acids involved in performing its function (i.e. their size reduced by over 95%), because the weak interactions are so much fewer in number, it would not be enough to hold the protein together, and everything would just fall apart.
~Tim~
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Ubiquitous
u•biq•ui•tous (adjective)
present, appearing, or found everywhere
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tim, the residue of your penultimate post still resonates with me and continues to make noises in my head, but you already ranted about FE so now I have to catch up with you!
Anyway, I really liked what you had to say about FE and your devotion to it. I do take issue with something you said in the post before that, but first things first.
The fact that you care so much about the characters of FE above all else resonates with me not just because one of the differentiating factors of literature from escapist fiction is the fact that escapist fiction is primarily plot-focused, whereas literature is almost entirely Character-driven. I remember you telling me that John Green had trouble with plot but was great at character development, which is what makes him such a great writer. I'm not saying that plot isn't important (without it, we'd just be reading/watching/playing a psychological analysis), but without any real dynamic and rounded characters, the story falls flat and ultimately forgettable.
It's like looking at a picture of a mountain. Sure it's nice and pretty, but without any people in the picture, a history related to it, or a story to attach to it, it means nothing.
Anyway, so because of what you wrote, I felt compelled to explain my interest in Homestuck.
The format of Homestuck is interesting to say the least as it is presented in internet comic style, but every page link to the next frame/series of frames/animation (for special plot advancements) is preceded by a text command (eg. John: Look Out Window). The idea is to imitate the old-style text command games and give the reader a sense of being involved in the happenstances of the story, which is all written by the guy below.
There's so much self-insertion and fourth-wall breaking in the comic that it would make even post-modernist deconstructionists cringe. However, that's part of the fun of reading it, because the text commands and the plot-twists psyche you out and you never know what is really going to happen next.
However, what I really love about Homestuck is the characters, seen below:
The story revolves around these four kids who all play a game that leads to the destruction of Earth and their teleportation into the Incipisphere where they must be challenged by the constructs of the game to build their houses (which teleported with them) through the Seven Gates to reach Skaia, a crucible of unlimited potential. The Medium they enter is in the midst of a giant war between light and dark forces on the four planets they end up on and on Skaia itself.
Despite the numerous plot details of the game constructs, the politics of the two Kingdoms and the subplot of the Skaian exiles sent to Earth to repopulate it, the main focus is on the four kids and their development throughout the game.
It's kind of like The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe, but set in 2009 and with a dramatically secularized viewpoint. However, the story gets more complicated as the kids are trolled by a race of aliens who also played the game, but were thwarted at the last second by a rift in space which they blame the kids for.
The aliens, coincidentally, are a race of literal Trolls from a planet that was also decimated by the game and eventually repopulated by a group of exiles that tangentially assisted the trolls via secret underground computer labs planted by the game for that exact purpose.
The trolls become central to the plot and the complications of their relationships and interactions (with the kids as well as with one another) adds a fourfold layer to the story. I say fourfold for two reasons, one being the fact that there are 12 Trolls as opposed to 4 kids (Yes I know 12 ÷ 4 isn't 4, but just wait).
So the other thing about trolls is the fact that Troll romance works on Four Quadrants instead of just one. They are symbolized by a Heart (<3), a Diamond (<>), some Clubs (o8<) and a Spade (<3<). It's ridiculously complicated and it makes it very challenging as a reader to keep track of all the different relationships. Furthermore . . .
Actually, if you're really curious, just go here:
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?game=delete&s=6&p=004395
Anyway, so the whole direction with the Troll characters adds more depth to both the original characters as well as the whole concept of young teens trying to relate to each other while engrossed in life or death situations. The real story of Homestuck is about the people (and trolls) and how they interact with one another, which the creator has stated many times is his intention all along.
So it's a story of love, loss, friendship, betrayal, aliens, exiles, space, time, and above all growing up. The story has been updated daily for the past year and a half and although the ark of the story has only taken up one day so far, it feels like the characters have aged by many years, maturing alongside the complexity of the world(s) they traverse.
That's why I think it's so brilliant, but as with anything created by humans, there are some downsides.
We've talked a little bit in the past about how the fans of something can really alter whether you want to be apart of it. For example, looking at the fans of Twilight gives me a good indication of the subject matter in the books and whether I should read them or not. But that's not always the case (just because a lot of cereal killers liked The Catcher in the Rye doesn't mean I shouldn't have read it).
With Homestuck, there's a great mix of fans, from the passive to the passionate. And because it's on the internet, the dynamic goes deep into both extremes. There's a lot of fans of Homestuck that are really great and I would like to meet someday. On the other hand, there's also a lot of people who take the story far too seriously and raise a huge stink any time the plot takes a turn they don't care for. There's also this, which I won't comment on:
I would also like to point out as a warning that Rule 34 is VERY much applicable for nearly every aspect of Homestuck. I say this to warn you NOT TO IMAGE SEARCH ANY OF THE THINGS I MENTIONED IN THIS BLOG. Please, just don't do it. The internet is a scary, disturbing, and unsettling place.
But all that aside, it's still a well-crafted story that I enjoy every page of. Its main intention is humour and there are times when I've laughed out loud reading it (much to the confusion of my dorm mates). I'm invested in the characters and can't wait to see where the story goes next.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So there you have it.
And I haven't forgotten what I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I'm super happy that we agree theologically about what I said in the last post and I just want to clarify that you may totally disagree with me here and I completely respect you for that, that's why I talk to you in the first place (plus I love you!).
But I just wanted to point out that I do believe that the truth of God and His Kingdom is very much Absolute. Not by scientific and by effect, human, understanding, but because His Kingdom is not just something we believe in, but it is a reality of the whole universe. I'm not poo-pooing any sort of scientific observation or the scientific method; I think it is absolutely essential that we do all that we can to have a clear, unbiased understanding of the universe around us. I still want to assert that God's power is by no means dependent upon our ability to worship Him or by our faith in Him. God doesn't need us to believe in Him, He is the master of the entire universe. Faith is only important to Him as it pertains to our understanding of Him.
And that's what I think you were trying to say: that our faith is not an absolute truth in terms of how we are able to define "absolute" (seeing as we can prove nothing of our faith with scientific or mathematical means). Yes, we need faith and belief, but we can never be 100% sure based on any empirical methods that we have at our disposal. But the reality of God is more real than anything we perceive by our extremely limited sensory perceptions. He is absolute. Our understanding of Him is not. He is ubiquitous and appears in all things; we just can't prove of validate that by our own fishbowl understanding.
So yes, you were right, I just wanted to clarify and qualify that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Glad to here your midterms went so well! I have one coming up and one after the break, with a bunch of presentations and papers thrown in there, so I'm going to be up to my ears in work this week. But I have next week off! B's Mom is coming to visit, so they're going to be staying over for a few days, but I plan to do some much needed visiting and hanging out throughout that week if you're available!
See you soon Tim,
-Clayton
Anyway, I really liked what you had to say about FE and your devotion to it. I do take issue with something you said in the post before that, but first things first.
The fact that you care so much about the characters of FE above all else resonates with me not just because one of the differentiating factors of literature from escapist fiction is the fact that escapist fiction is primarily plot-focused, whereas literature is almost entirely Character-driven. I remember you telling me that John Green had trouble with plot but was great at character development, which is what makes him such a great writer. I'm not saying that plot isn't important (without it, we'd just be reading/watching/playing a psychological analysis), but without any real dynamic and rounded characters, the story falls flat and ultimately forgettable.
It's like looking at a picture of a mountain. Sure it's nice and pretty, but without any people in the picture, a history related to it, or a story to attach to it, it means nothing.
Anyway, so because of what you wrote, I felt compelled to explain my interest in Homestuck.
The format of Homestuck is interesting to say the least as it is presented in internet comic style, but every page link to the next frame/series of frames/animation (for special plot advancements) is preceded by a text command (eg. John: Look Out Window). The idea is to imitate the old-style text command games and give the reader a sense of being involved in the happenstances of the story, which is all written by the guy below.
There's so much self-insertion and fourth-wall breaking in the comic that it would make even post-modernist deconstructionists cringe. However, that's part of the fun of reading it, because the text commands and the plot-twists psyche you out and you never know what is really going to happen next.
However, what I really love about Homestuck is the characters, seen below:
The story revolves around these four kids who all play a game that leads to the destruction of Earth and their teleportation into the Incipisphere where they must be challenged by the constructs of the game to build their houses (which teleported with them) through the Seven Gates to reach Skaia, a crucible of unlimited potential. The Medium they enter is in the midst of a giant war between light and dark forces on the four planets they end up on and on Skaia itself.
Despite the numerous plot details of the game constructs, the politics of the two Kingdoms and the subplot of the Skaian exiles sent to Earth to repopulate it, the main focus is on the four kids and their development throughout the game.
It's kind of like The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe, but set in 2009 and with a dramatically secularized viewpoint. However, the story gets more complicated as the kids are trolled by a race of aliens who also played the game, but were thwarted at the last second by a rift in space which they blame the kids for.
The aliens, coincidentally, are a race of literal Trolls from a planet that was also decimated by the game and eventually repopulated by a group of exiles that tangentially assisted the trolls via secret underground computer labs planted by the game for that exact purpose.
The trolls become central to the plot and the complications of their relationships and interactions (with the kids as well as with one another) adds a fourfold layer to the story. I say fourfold for two reasons, one being the fact that there are 12 Trolls as opposed to 4 kids (Yes I know 12 ÷ 4 isn't 4, but just wait).
So the other thing about trolls is the fact that Troll romance works on Four Quadrants instead of just one. They are symbolized by a Heart (<3), a Diamond (<>), some Clubs (o8<) and a Spade (<3<). It's ridiculously complicated and it makes it very challenging as a reader to keep track of all the different relationships. Furthermore . . .
Actually, if you're really curious, just go here:
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?game=delete&s=6&p=004395
Anyway, so the whole direction with the Troll characters adds more depth to both the original characters as well as the whole concept of young teens trying to relate to each other while engrossed in life or death situations. The real story of Homestuck is about the people (and trolls) and how they interact with one another, which the creator has stated many times is his intention all along.
So it's a story of love, loss, friendship, betrayal, aliens, exiles, space, time, and above all growing up. The story has been updated daily for the past year and a half and although the ark of the story has only taken up one day so far, it feels like the characters have aged by many years, maturing alongside the complexity of the world(s) they traverse.
That's why I think it's so brilliant, but as with anything created by humans, there are some downsides.
We've talked a little bit in the past about how the fans of something can really alter whether you want to be apart of it. For example, looking at the fans of Twilight gives me a good indication of the subject matter in the books and whether I should read them or not. But that's not always the case (just because a lot of cereal killers liked The Catcher in the Rye doesn't mean I shouldn't have read it).
With Homestuck, there's a great mix of fans, from the passive to the passionate. And because it's on the internet, the dynamic goes deep into both extremes. There's a lot of fans of Homestuck that are really great and I would like to meet someday. On the other hand, there's also a lot of people who take the story far too seriously and raise a huge stink any time the plot takes a turn they don't care for. There's also this, which I won't comment on:
I would also like to point out as a warning that Rule 34 is VERY much applicable for nearly every aspect of Homestuck. I say this to warn you NOT TO IMAGE SEARCH ANY OF THE THINGS I MENTIONED IN THIS BLOG. Please, just don't do it. The internet is a scary, disturbing, and unsettling place.
But all that aside, it's still a well-crafted story that I enjoy every page of. Its main intention is humour and there are times when I've laughed out loud reading it (much to the confusion of my dorm mates). I'm invested in the characters and can't wait to see where the story goes next.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So there you have it.
And I haven't forgotten what I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I'm super happy that we agree theologically about what I said in the last post and I just want to clarify that you may totally disagree with me here and I completely respect you for that, that's why I talk to you in the first place (plus I love you!).
But I just wanted to point out that I do believe that the truth of God and His Kingdom is very much Absolute. Not by scientific and by effect, human, understanding, but because His Kingdom is not just something we believe in, but it is a reality of the whole universe. I'm not poo-pooing any sort of scientific observation or the scientific method; I think it is absolutely essential that we do all that we can to have a clear, unbiased understanding of the universe around us. I still want to assert that God's power is by no means dependent upon our ability to worship Him or by our faith in Him. God doesn't need us to believe in Him, He is the master of the entire universe. Faith is only important to Him as it pertains to our understanding of Him.
And that's what I think you were trying to say: that our faith is not an absolute truth in terms of how we are able to define "absolute" (seeing as we can prove nothing of our faith with scientific or mathematical means). Yes, we need faith and belief, but we can never be 100% sure based on any empirical methods that we have at our disposal. But the reality of God is more real than anything we perceive by our extremely limited sensory perceptions. He is absolute. Our understanding of Him is not. He is ubiquitous and appears in all things; we just can't prove of validate that by our own fishbowl understanding.
So yes, you were right, I just wanted to clarify and qualify that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Glad to here your midterms went so well! I have one coming up and one after the break, with a bunch of presentations and papers thrown in there, so I'm going to be up to my ears in work this week. But I have next week off! B's Mom is coming to visit, so they're going to be staying over for a few days, but I plan to do some much needed visiting and hanging out throughout that week if you're available!
See you soon Tim,
-Clayton
Friday, February 11, 2011
Residue
re•si•due (noun)
in biochemistry, it refers to an amino avid residue, which is the part of the amino acid that is left over after a dehydration reaction that links two polypeptides together; the residue therefore consists of the R-group (i.e. the remainder group), and the remnants of the carboxylic acid and amine groups.
Origin: Latin (residuum = the remaining/what is left over) via 14th century French (residu)
~~~~~~~~~~
YAY! MIDTERMS ARE OVER! It was a grueling week, interruptedin the middle by a day of illness, but it's finally over! AND NOW, READING WEEK!
Monday's midterm was Physical chemistry. Ew. I hate physical chemistry; it's more physics than chemistry, which sounds fine b/c I'm awesome at physics, except not, because it's chemistry, and chemistry has always been my weakest science. Needless to say, the midterm was slightly horrific. I hope I passed?
Tuesday's midterm wasn't too bad; it was on the Immunology section of my MICB 202: Introduction to Medical Immunology and Microbiology course. It wasn't too bad; I knew most of the stuff, and it was all multiple choice, but they had loads of really, really tricky questions. Half of the exam consisted of "Choose two of the following state that are true" and then a lot of them I had narrowed it down to three things, but only two of them were true, and you are only awarded points of you get the whole question correct, so that sucked.
I'd been battling a fever and symptoms of strep throat since Sunday evening, and at 4am Wednesday morning, the Streptococcus bacteria decided to punch me in the face. I ended up skipping school for the first time in my post secondary career in the hopes that one day off would be enough for me to recover so I could write my last two midterms on Thursday. Thankfully, it paid off; I was feeling almost cured by Wednesday night and I was healthy enough and of sound mind enough to trek to UBC Thursday morning to write my midterms.
The last two midterms were Analytical Chemistry and Biochemistry. Anachem was pretty straight forwards, so if I'm lucky, I'll have netted an A; if not, I'm almost sure I got a B on it. The biochem course I'm in is honestly a bit of a joke, but that might just be me; everyone else seems to be dying in it like they were in OChem last term. Oh well. It was a freaking two hour midterm that ended at 9 pm; so annoying. It was really straightforwards though so I think I did well on it. Hopefully. I can never tell with these things when I'm this tired and ailing.
~~~~~~~~~~
SO NOW ONTO THE TOPIC I'VE BEEN ITCHING TO WRITE ABOUT SINCE LAST WEEK:
FIRE EMBLEM!!!!!!11!!!1!!111!!!!1
To borrow a phrase from John Green: HOLY SNOOT DO I LOVE THIS GAME!
In my list of my favourite game series ever, I think Fire Emblem is only second to Pokemon and maybe Legend of Zelda, and that's only because I've loved and played those series longer than FE.
My obsession, as it has become, began back in 11th grade when I bought FE:PoR (Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance) off of my cousin. I had heard ravingly good reviews about it, and it isn't really considered THAT mainstream, at least to me, so I really wanted to try it out. From what I'd heard, it was similar to chess, only better, and I like chess, so I thought it would be fun to try.
[aside: the game titles are often abbreviated with "FE" for Fire Emblem followed by several letters from the game title, but they are can also be abbreviated to one or two words from the game title, for example, the ninth Fire Emblem, Path of Radiance, can be abbreviated as FR:PoR or is sometimes referred to simply as "Path"; Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is shortened to FR:RD or simply "Dawn"]
AND OH EM GEE DID THIS GAME BLOW MY MIND! I could not put it down! It was absolutely intoxicating! It was like nothing I'd ever played before, and it was just so incredible. When Dawn came out for the Wii, I absolutely HAD to have it, and now I'm going back and collecting the handheld games that I've missed. This month, I've acquired Blazing Sword, the very first FE game to be officially released in English in 2003, and I'm planning on getting Sacred Stones next month and then the newest one, Shadow Dragon for DS (which is the English remake and re-release of the first game; kind of like how Pokemon has released FireRed, Leafgreen, HeartGold, and SoulSilver versions over the past few years; they're essentially remakes, with a few extras thrown in. I suspect the two main reasons for remaking the first FE was 1. as like an anniversary sort of commemoration and 2. so that the English audience that has built up over the past 8 years can go back to the original roots of the series) over the summer.
There are many reasons why I love this series, and in order to fully explain why, I think this will take a form similar to a game review, of sorts, so here we go:
~Gameplay and Game Mechanics~
The gameplay in this series is very unique, at least, to me; I've never played a game like it. At the most rudimentary level, it can be described as akin to chess, but only rudimentarily so.
The game consists of a series of Maps where you control army units and play against the computer's army units. Each map is different in both layout and objective. Some maps require you to defeat all enemy units, some require you to claim a certain space on the map, some require you to protect a certain space on the map for a certain amount of turns, and some require you to defeat a certain enemy unit.
The game proceeds turn-wise: on your turn, you can move each of your army units once, and after you've finished moving all of your units, the enemy gets a chance to move all of their units, and so on and so forth.
Its immensely strategical, and very fun. Each map tests your ability to utilize your units in the most efficient manor possible in order to complete the objective. What I love about this game is that each level features a new map with different objectives, so even though the game mechanics are the same, it doesn't get repetitive or stale; each level gets you to think of new strategies, new ways to use your units, new ways to take advantage of the terrain (for example, spaces with sand will slow down land based units, spaces with bushes will increase your unit's ability to dodge attacks, etc).
I love strategic games, so this for me is like gold; I love the gameplay and game mechanics. They're very fine tuned both in the big picture (i.e. the way the game is generally played) and in the minute mechanistic details.
For example, I love the weapon and speed mechanic in this game; its so unique and so creative and so REALISTIC it gives me tingles. The way it works is this: your unit's Strength stat is mainly used to calculate how much damage it can do to an opponent's unit, but it also serves a second function: you can equip different weapon onto your units, for example, a Swordsmaster who wields swords can be equiped with an Iron Sword, a Steel Sword, or a Silver Sword, etc. Each of these weapons has a different strength (which adds to the damage your unit can deal) but it also has a different Weight. The Iron Sword, for example, has a weight of 6. If a weapon's Weight value is more than the Strength value of the unit wielding it, a penalty is put on that unit's Speed. For example, if a Swordsmaster with a strength of 9 wields a Steel Sword, which as a Weight of 11, since the Steel Sword's Weight is greater than the Swordsmaster's Strength, the Swordsmaster's Speed stat is reduced by the difference between the two (i.e. in this case, 11 - 9 = 2 so Speed is reduced by 2) I love this mechanic because it goes off a very realistic fact of battle: If you're wielding a weapon that's too heavy for you, you won't be able to move as fast compared to if you wield a lighter weapon. The game uses this mechanic to help control power and damage: Stronger weapons are usually heavier than weaker weapons, and some classes of weapons are heavier than others (e.g. axes are heavier than swords, which are heavier than lances, which are heavier than bows).
Furthermore, each of the games in the series (unless it is a sequal or prequal), features a whole new world with new regions and areas and maps. Each of these games also tweak the game mechanics slightly, so that even though the basics are more or less the same, some of the finer details differ to offer a new game experience to veterans. Each game tries new ways of presenting old mechanics in a way that makes it familliar yet fresh at the same time, which is amazing and I think has contributed greatly to FE's success and longevity.
~Music~
For a game that is mostly strategical and turned based, it has an awesome OST. In fact, my cell ringtone is one of the battle themes from PoR. Its dynamic, diverse, and honestly, it's like a Zelda OST. It's fantastic. I love it. Granted, some of the songs do get a tad annoying if you're stuck on one map for an hour and a half, but for the most part, it's really good.
~"Game Experience"~
This, right here, is the crowning jewel. Not only are Fire Emblem games amazingly fun to play and incredibly strategic, the game experience is second to none. The games (for the most part) have a polished finesse that Legend of Zelda games possess, and enormously good replay value. It all revolves around one simple fact.
Fire Emblem sets itself apart from all other games in its turn-based tactic-like genre because of one simple thing: Characters. In every other game I've seen that uses a similar gameplay system with turn-based army strategy, the game basically consists of practically faceless units. In those games your army is composed of people you recruit or hire, but other than a sprite on the screen, they're basically meaningless; when you need more, you can always hire more.
That is not the case in Fire Emblem. In this series, every single unit you use has a name, a story, a personality, a character. They have feelings and emotions and back stories and side stories and motives and each one of the units that can join your army is distinctly different from all the others.
It is this one fact that changes the whole gaming experience, because 1. it sets the stage for FE games to present amazing story lines and 2. it leads to a lot of secondary consequences in the game mechanics.
Perhaps the greatest thing that drew me into this series in the beginning was its plot and storyline.
I, as a person, will only pour my love and devotion into a form of entertainment if it is the very best; it must me pristine, and one of the most important criteria is that I must fall in love with the story and the characters involved in the story, and that story must be complex. The stories I love the most involve the present being a culmination of events in the past, and characters that draw experiences and stories from the past into the present, bringing a multi-layer history to the story; its one of the reasons why I love Harry Potter and Legend of Zelda so much (in Harry Potter, the entire series exists because of what Voldemort did before Harry was born, and I love that the lives of James, Sirius, Remus, Severus, Dumbledore, and Voldemort all play a huge role in how the current story plays out; I love how you get to not only know Harry, but know the lives and times of the people involved in his life and how it affects the current situation. In Zelda, its how the events of legends in the past affect the present evils and dangers).
This is where Fire Emblem blows everything out of the proverbial water. Its story and plot is incredibly intricate and complex. It weaves an epic tale of continents plunged into war and dishevel, of young men and women who fight to protect what they love, of great evils, great heroes, heroines, and villains. Most always the current plot is a culmination of events, some ancient, some recent, and tensions and political disputes that reach into the past to affect the present. As the game goes on, the story unfolds and the plot becomes ever more intricate, ever more mysterious. The plot and the amazing amount of character development create a sense of familiarity. Playing this game is almost like reading a book with interactive challenges between chapters (in fact, the levels are called Chapters). It's got mystery, action, fantasy, and a little bit of romance all bundled together. The characters make me laugh, cry, giggle, scream in frustration, and heartbreak.
To top it off, this amazing level of character development leads to a swath of ingenious and unique game mechanics.
The most pertinent is, of course, the issue of "lives." In Fire Emblem, if a character dies in battle, he or she is dead. Gone. You can't use them again unless you restart the chapter. Once he or she is dead, they're gone from that file. If a main character that's critical to the progression of the storyline dies, either you get a Game Over, or they're removed from play (they still are alive, but you can never use them in battle again). This totally affects the strategics of the game: if you don't want to lose your characters, you have to be careful of the risks you take in battle.
Another example is the Support game mechanic. In each game, certain characters can forge friendships with other characters by doing certain things on the battlefield. Increasing the strength of the friendship (i.e. the level of the Support) gives those characters bonuses in battle if they are within three spaces of one another (i.e. if two characters with Support are fighting near each other, they can get boosts to their Strength, Speed, Defense, Avoid, etc). Every time you increase the Support between two characters, you get a short cut scene where the two characters interact with a lengthy dialogue that reveals more about each character's back story and personality, so Support not only helps you in battle, it is a major character development tool. It also lends a great amount of replay value to the game because each character is limited to the number of Supports they can have (usually, 5 Support levels; each friendship has 3 support levels, so you can choose to have one support level with 5 different people, or level up the support with one person three times; the higher the support level, the stronger the bonus you get). In this way, it is impossible to see all of the support conversations in one playthrough; each playthrough thus has the potential for the player to learn more about a character and his or her connections to the other characters in the game.
One of the games, Fire Emblem (4): Geneology of the Holy War, takes the Support mechanic to a whole new level. Geneology is a game that takes place in two parts. Part one features a bunch of characters and a story line, which is all fine and dandy, and in this part, not only can you forge friendships with the Support mechanic, you can even make certain characters fall in love and get married during part one. Each character has several possible spouses, and its up to you to decide who falls in love with who. AND THEN! Part two takes place one generation later, where the main character is the son of the main character in part one, AND 75% OF THE CHARACTERS IN PART TWO ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE CHARACTERS IN PART ONE. This means that the characters you get to play in part two depend on which couples you chose to marry in part one: each unique couple will have unique children with unique personalities and stories! That means if you made person A marry person B, they will have children X and Y, but if instead you made person A marry person C, they will have children W and Z instead, and now in part two characters X and Y don't exist (because A didn't marry B) and characters W and Z exist instead. Isn't that crazy?!?!
This is the main reason why I love Fire Emblem: I love the characters and the story. Like I said, playing Fire Emblem is like reading a book, where in order to get to the next chapter in the story, you need to complete a level. It's so fun and so engrossing. The characters are really what made me fall in love with the series, and its not cheesy or stereotypical at all; its very complex and it, like Battlestar Galactica, offers thoughts and notions on interesting moral and political issues too. It's amazingly fun and awesome to play, and because each game features a whole new world with a whole new story and brand new characters, each game is never the same as the last.
~~~~~~~~~~
Anyways, I think this post is long enough ^_^ I'm looking forwards to finishing up Blazing Sword this week, and then finding a copy of Sacred Stones. I hope you're doing well out there ate TWU; I hope I can see you soon.
~Tim~
in biochemistry, it refers to an amino avid residue, which is the part of the amino acid that is left over after a dehydration reaction that links two polypeptides together; the residue therefore consists of the R-group (i.e. the remainder group), and the remnants of the carboxylic acid and amine groups.
Origin: Latin (residuum = the remaining/what is left over) via 14th century French (residu)
~~~~~~~~~~
YAY! MIDTERMS ARE OVER! It was a grueling week, interruptedin the middle by a day of illness, but it's finally over! AND NOW, READING WEEK!
Monday's midterm was Physical chemistry. Ew. I hate physical chemistry; it's more physics than chemistry, which sounds fine b/c I'm awesome at physics, except not, because it's chemistry, and chemistry has always been my weakest science. Needless to say, the midterm was slightly horrific. I hope I passed?
Tuesday's midterm wasn't too bad; it was on the Immunology section of my MICB 202: Introduction to Medical Immunology and Microbiology course. It wasn't too bad; I knew most of the stuff, and it was all multiple choice, but they had loads of really, really tricky questions. Half of the exam consisted of "Choose two of the following state that are true" and then a lot of them I had narrowed it down to three things, but only two of them were true, and you are only awarded points of you get the whole question correct, so that sucked.
I'd been battling a fever and symptoms of strep throat since Sunday evening, and at 4am Wednesday morning, the Streptococcus bacteria decided to punch me in the face. I ended up skipping school for the first time in my post secondary career in the hopes that one day off would be enough for me to recover so I could write my last two midterms on Thursday. Thankfully, it paid off; I was feeling almost cured by Wednesday night and I was healthy enough and of sound mind enough to trek to UBC Thursday morning to write my midterms.
The last two midterms were Analytical Chemistry and Biochemistry. Anachem was pretty straight forwards, so if I'm lucky, I'll have netted an A; if not, I'm almost sure I got a B on it. The biochem course I'm in is honestly a bit of a joke, but that might just be me; everyone else seems to be dying in it like they were in OChem last term. Oh well. It was a freaking two hour midterm that ended at 9 pm; so annoying. It was really straightforwards though so I think I did well on it. Hopefully. I can never tell with these things when I'm this tired and ailing.
~~~~~~~~~~
SO NOW ONTO THE TOPIC I'VE BEEN ITCHING TO WRITE ABOUT SINCE LAST WEEK:
FIRE EMBLEM!!!!!!11!!!1!!111!!!!1
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| Game art from Fire Emblem (9): Path of Radiance |
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| Cover art from Fire Emblem (10): Radiant Dawn (sequel to FE:PoR) |
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| Game art from Fire Emblem (7): Blazing Sword [prequel to Fire Emblem (6): Sword of Seals] |
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| Character art from FE:BS |
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| SSBB: Ike (from FE:PoR/FE:RD) and Marth [from Fire Emblem (1): the Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light; remade for DS in English as Fire Emblem (11): Shadow Dragon and its sequal, Fire Emblem (3): Mystery of the Emblem] |
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| Character art & screenshot from the opening intro to FE:PoR |
In my list of my favourite game series ever, I think Fire Emblem is only second to Pokemon and maybe Legend of Zelda, and that's only because I've loved and played those series longer than FE.
My obsession, as it has become, began back in 11th grade when I bought FE:PoR (Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance) off of my cousin. I had heard ravingly good reviews about it, and it isn't really considered THAT mainstream, at least to me, so I really wanted to try it out. From what I'd heard, it was similar to chess, only better, and I like chess, so I thought it would be fun to try.
[aside: the game titles are often abbreviated with "FE" for Fire Emblem followed by several letters from the game title, but they are can also be abbreviated to one or two words from the game title, for example, the ninth Fire Emblem, Path of Radiance, can be abbreviated as FR:PoR or is sometimes referred to simply as "Path"; Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is shortened to FR:RD or simply "Dawn"]
AND OH EM GEE DID THIS GAME BLOW MY MIND! I could not put it down! It was absolutely intoxicating! It was like nothing I'd ever played before, and it was just so incredible. When Dawn came out for the Wii, I absolutely HAD to have it, and now I'm going back and collecting the handheld games that I've missed. This month, I've acquired Blazing Sword, the very first FE game to be officially released in English in 2003, and I'm planning on getting Sacred Stones next month and then the newest one, Shadow Dragon for DS (which is the English remake and re-release of the first game; kind of like how Pokemon has released FireRed, Leafgreen, HeartGold, and SoulSilver versions over the past few years; they're essentially remakes, with a few extras thrown in. I suspect the two main reasons for remaking the first FE was 1. as like an anniversary sort of commemoration and 2. so that the English audience that has built up over the past 8 years can go back to the original roots of the series) over the summer.
There are many reasons why I love this series, and in order to fully explain why, I think this will take a form similar to a game review, of sorts, so here we go:
~Gameplay and Game Mechanics~
The gameplay in this series is very unique, at least, to me; I've never played a game like it. At the most rudimentary level, it can be described as akin to chess, but only rudimentarily so.
The game consists of a series of Maps where you control army units and play against the computer's army units. Each map is different in both layout and objective. Some maps require you to defeat all enemy units, some require you to claim a certain space on the map, some require you to protect a certain space on the map for a certain amount of turns, and some require you to defeat a certain enemy unit.
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| A screenshot of a player moving one of their cavalry units from FE:PoR |
Its immensely strategical, and very fun. Each map tests your ability to utilize your units in the most efficient manor possible in order to complete the objective. What I love about this game is that each level features a new map with different objectives, so even though the game mechanics are the same, it doesn't get repetitive or stale; each level gets you to think of new strategies, new ways to use your units, new ways to take advantage of the terrain (for example, spaces with sand will slow down land based units, spaces with bushes will increase your unit's ability to dodge attacks, etc).
For example, I love the weapon and speed mechanic in this game; its so unique and so creative and so REALISTIC it gives me tingles. The way it works is this: your unit's Strength stat is mainly used to calculate how much damage it can do to an opponent's unit, but it also serves a second function: you can equip different weapon onto your units, for example, a Swordsmaster who wields swords can be equiped with an Iron Sword, a Steel Sword, or a Silver Sword, etc. Each of these weapons has a different strength (which adds to the damage your unit can deal) but it also has a different Weight. The Iron Sword, for example, has a weight of 6. If a weapon's Weight value is more than the Strength value of the unit wielding it, a penalty is put on that unit's Speed. For example, if a Swordsmaster with a strength of 9 wields a Steel Sword, which as a Weight of 11, since the Steel Sword's Weight is greater than the Swordsmaster's Strength, the Swordsmaster's Speed stat is reduced by the difference between the two (i.e. in this case, 11 - 9 = 2 so Speed is reduced by 2) I love this mechanic because it goes off a very realistic fact of battle: If you're wielding a weapon that's too heavy for you, you won't be able to move as fast compared to if you wield a lighter weapon. The game uses this mechanic to help control power and damage: Stronger weapons are usually heavier than weaker weapons, and some classes of weapons are heavier than others (e.g. axes are heavier than swords, which are heavier than lances, which are heavier than bows).
Furthermore, each of the games in the series (unless it is a sequal or prequal), features a whole new world with new regions and areas and maps. Each of these games also tweak the game mechanics slightly, so that even though the basics are more or less the same, some of the finer details differ to offer a new game experience to veterans. Each game tries new ways of presenting old mechanics in a way that makes it familliar yet fresh at the same time, which is amazing and I think has contributed greatly to FE's success and longevity.
~Music~
For a game that is mostly strategical and turned based, it has an awesome OST. In fact, my cell ringtone is one of the battle themes from PoR. Its dynamic, diverse, and honestly, it's like a Zelda OST. It's fantastic. I love it. Granted, some of the songs do get a tad annoying if you're stuck on one map for an hour and a half, but for the most part, it's really good.
~"Game Experience"~
This, right here, is the crowning jewel. Not only are Fire Emblem games amazingly fun to play and incredibly strategic, the game experience is second to none. The games (for the most part) have a polished finesse that Legend of Zelda games possess, and enormously good replay value. It all revolves around one simple fact.
Fire Emblem sets itself apart from all other games in its turn-based tactic-like genre because of one simple thing: Characters. In every other game I've seen that uses a similar gameplay system with turn-based army strategy, the game basically consists of practically faceless units. In those games your army is composed of people you recruit or hire, but other than a sprite on the screen, they're basically meaningless; when you need more, you can always hire more.
That is not the case in Fire Emblem. In this series, every single unit you use has a name, a story, a personality, a character. They have feelings and emotions and back stories and side stories and motives and each one of the units that can join your army is distinctly different from all the others.
It is this one fact that changes the whole gaming experience, because 1. it sets the stage for FE games to present amazing story lines and 2. it leads to a lot of secondary consequences in the game mechanics.
Perhaps the greatest thing that drew me into this series in the beginning was its plot and storyline.
I, as a person, will only pour my love and devotion into a form of entertainment if it is the very best; it must me pristine, and one of the most important criteria is that I must fall in love with the story and the characters involved in the story, and that story must be complex. The stories I love the most involve the present being a culmination of events in the past, and characters that draw experiences and stories from the past into the present, bringing a multi-layer history to the story; its one of the reasons why I love Harry Potter and Legend of Zelda so much (in Harry Potter, the entire series exists because of what Voldemort did before Harry was born, and I love that the lives of James, Sirius, Remus, Severus, Dumbledore, and Voldemort all play a huge role in how the current story plays out; I love how you get to not only know Harry, but know the lives and times of the people involved in his life and how it affects the current situation. In Zelda, its how the events of legends in the past affect the present evils and dangers).
This is where Fire Emblem blows everything out of the proverbial water. Its story and plot is incredibly intricate and complex. It weaves an epic tale of continents plunged into war and dishevel, of young men and women who fight to protect what they love, of great evils, great heroes, heroines, and villains. Most always the current plot is a culmination of events, some ancient, some recent, and tensions and political disputes that reach into the past to affect the present. As the game goes on, the story unfolds and the plot becomes ever more intricate, ever more mysterious. The plot and the amazing amount of character development create a sense of familiarity. Playing this game is almost like reading a book with interactive challenges between chapters (in fact, the levels are called Chapters). It's got mystery, action, fantasy, and a little bit of romance all bundled together. The characters make me laugh, cry, giggle, scream in frustration, and heartbreak.
To top it off, this amazing level of character development leads to a swath of ingenious and unique game mechanics.
The most pertinent is, of course, the issue of "lives." In Fire Emblem, if a character dies in battle, he or she is dead. Gone. You can't use them again unless you restart the chapter. Once he or she is dead, they're gone from that file. If a main character that's critical to the progression of the storyline dies, either you get a Game Over, or they're removed from play (they still are alive, but you can never use them in battle again). This totally affects the strategics of the game: if you don't want to lose your characters, you have to be careful of the risks you take in battle.
Another example is the Support game mechanic. In each game, certain characters can forge friendships with other characters by doing certain things on the battlefield. Increasing the strength of the friendship (i.e. the level of the Support) gives those characters bonuses in battle if they are within three spaces of one another (i.e. if two characters with Support are fighting near each other, they can get boosts to their Strength, Speed, Defense, Avoid, etc). Every time you increase the Support between two characters, you get a short cut scene where the two characters interact with a lengthy dialogue that reveals more about each character's back story and personality, so Support not only helps you in battle, it is a major character development tool. It also lends a great amount of replay value to the game because each character is limited to the number of Supports they can have (usually, 5 Support levels; each friendship has 3 support levels, so you can choose to have one support level with 5 different people, or level up the support with one person three times; the higher the support level, the stronger the bonus you get). In this way, it is impossible to see all of the support conversations in one playthrough; each playthrough thus has the potential for the player to learn more about a character and his or her connections to the other characters in the game.
One of the games, Fire Emblem (4): Geneology of the Holy War, takes the Support mechanic to a whole new level. Geneology is a game that takes place in two parts. Part one features a bunch of characters and a story line, which is all fine and dandy, and in this part, not only can you forge friendships with the Support mechanic, you can even make certain characters fall in love and get married during part one. Each character has several possible spouses, and its up to you to decide who falls in love with who. AND THEN! Part two takes place one generation later, where the main character is the son of the main character in part one, AND 75% OF THE CHARACTERS IN PART TWO ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE CHARACTERS IN PART ONE. This means that the characters you get to play in part two depend on which couples you chose to marry in part one: each unique couple will have unique children with unique personalities and stories! That means if you made person A marry person B, they will have children X and Y, but if instead you made person A marry person C, they will have children W and Z instead, and now in part two characters X and Y don't exist (because A didn't marry B) and characters W and Z exist instead. Isn't that crazy?!?!
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| Tibarn - FR:PoR |
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| Edward - FE:RD |
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| SOREN! - FE:PoR. Possibly my favourite character ever. |
This is the main reason why I love Fire Emblem: I love the characters and the story. Like I said, playing Fire Emblem is like reading a book, where in order to get to the next chapter in the story, you need to complete a level. It's so fun and so engrossing. The characters are really what made me fall in love with the series, and its not cheesy or stereotypical at all; its very complex and it, like Battlestar Galactica, offers thoughts and notions on interesting moral and political issues too. It's amazingly fun and awesome to play, and because each game features a whole new world with a whole new story and brand new characters, each game is never the same as the last.
~~~~~~~~~~
Anyways, I think this post is long enough ^_^ I'm looking forwards to finishing up Blazing Sword this week, and then finding a copy of Sacred Stones. I hope you're doing well out there ate TWU; I hope I can see you soon.
~Tim~
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Noise
noise (noun)
undesired perturbation or disturbance that obscures the clarity of signals being measured.
Origin: from Latin: nausea
~~~~~~~~~~
Noise, in the scientific sense (especially in the physical and analytical sciences), is anything that interferes with the signals scientists are trying to measure. For example, lets say an astronomer is trying to map the orbits of the planets in the night sky. If you've ever tried star gazing in the middle of a city, you'll find that you won't be able to see very many stars, but if you went stargazing in the middle of the ocean, or while camping in in a national park, far away from civilization, you'll be able to see many many more stars. This is because the lights in the city - street lights, car lights, lights in houses, etc. - interfere with the light coming from stars and planet, and because these city lights are stronger, they "cancel out" the light coming from the sky, so you can only see the very brightest of celestial bodies. This is an example of noise (in the scientific sense): the light made by humans is noise because it interferes/obscures with the light (from the stars and planets) that you want to see.
I do not know which came first: the scientific sense, or the contemporary sense of the term, but if you think about it, the contemporary sense of the word (i.e. noise having a sound connotation), but it fits. I believe I heard a rumour that "noise" entered the contemporary vernacular when used to describe telephone conversations, in which some long distance calls where sound quality was poor, and they called the interfering sounds "noise" because it was a sound that disturbed/obscured the clarity of the sound you want to hear (the other person's voice).
~~~~~~~~~~
TEEHEE sorry for the glibbiness of some of the vonerdwords I've used in the past - most of the vocab I come across in the sciences is totally and completely unused in typical vernacular; I realize that it sometimes comes across as glibby; I'll try my best to have more user friendly vonerdwords (on a separate, totally unrelated note - do you enjoy today's vonerdword? =P). I hope those posts didn't make me sound like too much of a glib (on another completely unrelated note - I seem to enjoy employing the word "glib"; I hope I haven't used it incorrectly/my incessant conjugation/suffix adding didn't violate the laws of English grammar... too much...)
TEEHEE Yes, I am a HP nerd, but not as big of a nerd as other people I know (I'm thinking mainly of Leah). I really appreciate your effort and your thoughtfulness.
Teehee I've been meaning to get into Battlestar Galactica ever since you made known to me the joke "Beets, Bears, Battlestar Galactica" to me all those years ago in band class, but I unfortunately haven't had the time; one of these days I'll have to sit down and go through the series; it sounds fantastic.
I totally understand your sentiments pertaining to not being a glib; I have the same worries. I think the use of "higher language" is, however, inevitable in the sciences, as we need such language to be able to effectively communicate concepts, ideas, or principles. Despite this, scientists do put in a lot of effort to try and make scientific literature understandable. Last year I had to take a course called Eng 112 - University Writing, and there I learned that although academic writing uses difficult terminology, this necessity can be offset by certain techniques, such as frequent interjection or asides, that aid the reader.
And yes, you may be so bold to say so; I feel the same way about our friendship. As John Green once said, it is our attempt to claw our way out of our own minds in order to understand other, and it could not be any more true than for the friendship that I have with you. As I've said before, ours is one that I've never had with anyone else, and I'd be extremely hard pressed to find another that is so filled with a desire to love and understand one another (I love you).
I totally agree! We must be even more careful with the way we phrase things in blog form than in person because we are robbed of body language, facial expression, and intonation to relay our sentiments.
I must, however, confess that I'm not totally comfortable with your position on the Absolute truth of God; not because I disagree with it (because I don't disagree) but more with the way it sounds. Absolute Truth has the connotation of being quantitatively provable and being true in all instances and for every single person; I know that this is the "classical"/"standard" definition of Absolute, but when you're a science major, these things are hard to shake. I'm just having a hard time redefining "absolute truth" in a way that allows me to make the statements you put forwards acceptable. When you say these things, it sounds very much like the extreme conservative christians who condone the burning of the Qu'ran and such, which I know that you are not one of because of our past conversations. It just sounds very contradictory to the thoughts that CS Lewis put forth in The Silver Chair (with which we both agree). I would argue that we cannot QUANTITATIVELY prove our truth, rather, it becomes true because we BELIEVE it to be true; its strength lies not in its physical proof, but in the faith that we put in it; in essence, out truth is powerful and true because we believe it to be so.
As a final note, I want to say that the reason I revere and respect Mr. Moorhead so much is because he played a critical role in helping me define my Faith and guided my understanding of what it means to make your Faith your own; for this, I will always be indebted to him. But also, I acknowledge that ever since grade 8 I've been awestruck by the magnitude of his (excuse the language) bad-assery, which is a contributing factor.
~~~~~~~~~~
I wish I had the time to talk about Fire Emblem here, but this post is already quite long and I have need to studying for my midterms next week. The Fire Emblem game I ordered at the beginning of January arrived last friday, and I haven't been able to put it down since; needless to say, I can already feel my grade average dropping XD Oh well, what can we do? I have too much of an addictive personality and too little self discipline to do any better =P I'll let you know how my midterms went next week on friday (my last midterm is late thursday evening).
I hope you are doing well and your schooling is going better than mine is.
Chat soon,
~Tim~
undesired perturbation or disturbance that obscures the clarity of signals being measured.
Origin: from Latin: nausea
~~~~~~~~~~
Noise, in the scientific sense (especially in the physical and analytical sciences), is anything that interferes with the signals scientists are trying to measure. For example, lets say an astronomer is trying to map the orbits of the planets in the night sky. If you've ever tried star gazing in the middle of a city, you'll find that you won't be able to see very many stars, but if you went stargazing in the middle of the ocean, or while camping in in a national park, far away from civilization, you'll be able to see many many more stars. This is because the lights in the city - street lights, car lights, lights in houses, etc. - interfere with the light coming from stars and planet, and because these city lights are stronger, they "cancel out" the light coming from the sky, so you can only see the very brightest of celestial bodies. This is an example of noise (in the scientific sense): the light made by humans is noise because it interferes/obscures with the light (from the stars and planets) that you want to see.
I do not know which came first: the scientific sense, or the contemporary sense of the term, but if you think about it, the contemporary sense of the word (i.e. noise having a sound connotation), but it fits. I believe I heard a rumour that "noise" entered the contemporary vernacular when used to describe telephone conversations, in which some long distance calls where sound quality was poor, and they called the interfering sounds "noise" because it was a sound that disturbed/obscured the clarity of the sound you want to hear (the other person's voice).
~~~~~~~~~~
TEEHEE sorry for the glibbiness of some of the vonerdwords I've used in the past - most of the vocab I come across in the sciences is totally and completely unused in typical vernacular; I realize that it sometimes comes across as glibby; I'll try my best to have more user friendly vonerdwords (on a separate, totally unrelated note - do you enjoy today's vonerdword? =P). I hope those posts didn't make me sound like too much of a glib (on another completely unrelated note - I seem to enjoy employing the word "glib"; I hope I haven't used it incorrectly/my incessant conjugation/suffix adding didn't violate the laws of English grammar... too much...)
TEEHEE Yes, I am a HP nerd, but not as big of a nerd as other people I know (I'm thinking mainly of Leah). I really appreciate your effort and your thoughtfulness.
Teehee I've been meaning to get into Battlestar Galactica ever since you made known to me the joke "Beets, Bears, Battlestar Galactica" to me all those years ago in band class, but I unfortunately haven't had the time; one of these days I'll have to sit down and go through the series; it sounds fantastic.
I totally understand your sentiments pertaining to not being a glib; I have the same worries. I think the use of "higher language" is, however, inevitable in the sciences, as we need such language to be able to effectively communicate concepts, ideas, or principles. Despite this, scientists do put in a lot of effort to try and make scientific literature understandable. Last year I had to take a course called Eng 112 - University Writing, and there I learned that although academic writing uses difficult terminology, this necessity can be offset by certain techniques, such as frequent interjection or asides, that aid the reader.
And yes, you may be so bold to say so; I feel the same way about our friendship. As John Green once said, it is our attempt to claw our way out of our own minds in order to understand other, and it could not be any more true than for the friendship that I have with you. As I've said before, ours is one that I've never had with anyone else, and I'd be extremely hard pressed to find another that is so filled with a desire to love and understand one another (I love you).
I totally agree! We must be even more careful with the way we phrase things in blog form than in person because we are robbed of body language, facial expression, and intonation to relay our sentiments.
I must, however, confess that I'm not totally comfortable with your position on the Absolute truth of God; not because I disagree with it (because I don't disagree) but more with the way it sounds. Absolute Truth has the connotation of being quantitatively provable and being true in all instances and for every single person; I know that this is the "classical"/"standard" definition of Absolute, but when you're a science major, these things are hard to shake. I'm just having a hard time redefining "absolute truth" in a way that allows me to make the statements you put forwards acceptable. When you say these things, it sounds very much like the extreme conservative christians who condone the burning of the Qu'ran and such, which I know that you are not one of because of our past conversations. It just sounds very contradictory to the thoughts that CS Lewis put forth in The Silver Chair (with which we both agree). I would argue that we cannot QUANTITATIVELY prove our truth, rather, it becomes true because we BELIEVE it to be true; its strength lies not in its physical proof, but in the faith that we put in it; in essence, out truth is powerful and true because we believe it to be so.
As a final note, I want to say that the reason I revere and respect Mr. Moorhead so much is because he played a critical role in helping me define my Faith and guided my understanding of what it means to make your Faith your own; for this, I will always be indebted to him. But also, I acknowledge that ever since grade 8 I've been awestruck by the magnitude of his (excuse the language) bad-assery, which is a contributing factor.
~~~~~~~~~~
I wish I had the time to talk about Fire Emblem here, but this post is already quite long and I have need to studying for my midterms next week. The Fire Emblem game I ordered at the beginning of January arrived last friday, and I haven't been able to put it down since; needless to say, I can already feel my grade average dropping XD Oh well, what can we do? I have too much of an addictive personality and too little self discipline to do any better =P I'll let you know how my midterms went next week on friday (my last midterm is late thursday evening).
I hope you are doing well and your schooling is going better than mine is.
Chat soon,
~Tim~
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Glib
glib (adjective)
( glibber , glibbest )
fluent and voluble but insincere and shallow
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OK, I want to apologize for the UNCERTAINTY I caused with my last post. I had to intended to psyche you out with wanting to talk about BATTLE STAR GALACTICA, and then dramatically switch to HARRY POTTER (ooh, Harry Potter, Harry Potter, that's me) and TWILIGHT. I also want to thank you for using the word uncertainty seeing as it is way easier to work into a sentence than Binomial Nomencalture or any other word that gives my grasp of the English language a sudden burst of uncertainty (Just that easy).
I would also like to point out that, yes, I know how much you like Harry Potter, that was the inspiration for the post. I thought I was fairly big Potter Phan but then I met you and I'm very uncertain. Anydangway, sorry for the confusion, I'll try to clarify my post of any uncertainties and make my transitions more "flowy".
On that note, I sure do love BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. I mean, really.
However, I think I can work it into my post this time. I say, "I think" because I have no idea what I'm really even talking about at this point, I'm just sort of typing what comes into my head and hoping it makes rational potato.
But seriously, I want to talk about the word glib not just because it make smile when I say it or any of its derivatives, but because I think connotes any issue that so many of us in the academic world struggle with every day.
For example, look at the last paragraph I just typed. Why on Earth did I use words like derivatives or connotes? How necessary was it to use those words when I could have just said that we all can be glib? (Heeheehee). I think that being fluent and incessant can be useful, especially for rhetorical purposes when presenting or using apologetics, but if we bring those skills and techniques into our everyday speech, trying to sound exquisite and erudite all the time, we tend to alienate our strangers and even our friends.
Like, there was this one time when I was working at Day Camp and I had to tell a parent that their kid was acting out. We believed that is was because the kid didn't have enough to eat in their lunch, so I asked the parent to maybe pack some more food. However, I phrased it with too many "proper" words and I had a parent yelling at me the next day because they thought I was talking down to them.
By trying to sound too educated or using too many "fancy" words, I had made myself look pompous and arrogant. While this is not technically a glibber (Teehee) action, I think the act of trying to make yourself sound overly academic and intelligent can involve glib speaking and using what I regret to admit can be too advanced diction.
I think this relates to a fact that many people in academia have a hard time admitting, myself included: This is very little that separates an educated person from an uneducated person in terms of basic human interaction. No matter how much we learn, no matter what institution we attend and no matter how long we spend there, if we cannot learn the most fundamental elements of being human, than we may as well have quit halfway through high school. As humans, we need to learn to love and communicate. We cannot live a good life in this world without having the ability to act and grow upon these two fundamentals.
I know that if me and my brother don't communicate properly, then we can run into all sorts of problems, mundane (using the car without asking the other brother) and serious (not letting each other know how much we care about each other). While for some relationships, this can be fairly simple, while for others, especially with people you don't know, it can be a huge strain just to get the easiest of ideas across.
However, I know that the conversations we've had together, and if I may be so bold, our friendship as a whole, is based on that desire to show love to one another and to work at being understood. Even on this very blog we have to be careful to make sure we can properly communicate subjects in our areas of speciality are understood without coming off too terse, sardonic or condescending. Obviously this is something I've gotten in trouble for before, even by accident, so I want to control the way in which I communicate so I don't damage something even more precious than an Counselor-Parent relationship.
In English studies, we have to work seemingly endlessly on filling all the criteria of writing.
We must write in a way that is logical, factual and structured, but also beautiful, original and aesthetically pleasing all the while sounding sincere and honest. Whatever we write, be it an essay, a letter or even a comment on a facebook status, we must write in a way that makes sense with our personalities: not trying to sound more intelligent or distant than you could hear someone talk in real life. This is what good writing consists of: writing that anyone can read and understand. So I can read something by Nabokov or Faulkner and while I know I won't fully recognize all the words or understand the writer's full intention right off the bat, I can still get a general sense of what is being attempted and I can still follow the narrative or direction of the prose. The same goes with good poetry, properly-constructed legal documents and well-written blog posts. And, since language, despite how flawed and lacking it is in this role, is intended as the primary means by which humans try to convey ideas and emotions, this must also be true for any instance where we try to talk to people. So, this must apply IRL, as well.
This is the duty of the English major: to master this type of communication, both in and outside of writing so that we can truly become better communicators and by effect, better people. At least, that is what the original intention of education was.
I believe this is also true for all types of education, no matter what the field. I can't say how this is done in, for example, the sciences, because I have so little experience in that field that any attempt I would have to categorize the end purpose of these studies would be insulting and blunderous at best. But I know there is one. And I know that there are people out there who know it, recognize it and utilize it. There are people who have educations and actually are separate from the uneducated masses, not because of the knowledge the have required, but because of how they use it. This is the purpose of education in the highest sense: to train people to become better people. Better at communicating and better at loving.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I would also just like to say that I enjoyed reading your thoughts on uncertainties and I agree wholeheartedly with what you have to say. That's so true obviously for English and Philosophy, but even studies like History and Bio-Chemistry are not without their biases and uncertainties. Even mathematics and physics are put into question as they are all only based on our own perspectives of the universe (I'm thinking of the ol' fish in a bowl looking at a beam of light). In fact, how can I even know any truth behind what I'm typing right now, or what I believe and how that has influenced what I write here?
We can never know any of these things for certain, and that's part of being human. And this is where faith comes in.
I just wanted to note here that I love Mr. Moorhead and I love what he does for young minds (the sharp and dull-witted alike), however I do want to note that he was always using a postmodern perspective in everything that he taught. I believe that in order to have a better understanding of 20th/21st century beliefs, we do have to acknowledge this mentality and have a full grasp of it's basic principles (eg. The difference between Absolute Truth and just plain truth). But I think one of the reasons I never fully hung on to every word that he said was that I knew that he had only scratched the surface.
There is indeed an Absolute Truth, and we need to first abandon our first notions of what we think is absolute before we can truly grasp its magnitude. I believe that the Gospel — the news of the existence of the Kingdom of God present in our world, today — is the real Absolute Truth. But the issue is that we cannot prove it to be true, the reason why the modern world rejects the gospel and even scorns it for presupposing its truth over the philosophies of the modern age. This is why Moorhead was right in that we must admit that we cannot know the truth of the Kingdom in any sort of qualitative sense and he was also right in that we cannot know it in the sense of fully understanding it, just like we can never fully know ourselves or the other in a complete sense. However, by faith, we can know of the truth of the Kingdom of God and we can know of its existence and power in our world, here and now by faith and belief.
Moorhead himself is a Christian and he is aware of these distinctions, but he is also concerned about communicating these truths properly and effectively and not creating more uncertainties in the minds of some 150 already-flabbergasted young people. I believe that is the genius of that man in that he knows so much, but doesn't bombard teenagers without offering logical connections and a clear path that he is taking them on. Sure, he confused so many people (and I hope continues to do so), but he always offers the reasoning and directions to navigate the treacherous waters he knows that we all must embark upon.
These are the waters of the world, both physical and spiritual. Both carry a plethora of beasties and snares. But God offers us faith and reason as oars to pull ourselves through, the Truth of His Kingdom as the Lighthouse to guide us and His own son as the boat by which we are saved.
~~~~~~~~~~
So that's what I believe and I hope I have communicated in a better fashion than last post. If you wish to take any issue with what I say, I will defend it or clarify it to the best of my ability whenever is best.
Oh and yes, I didn't forget. The way in which this connects to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is this:
The show is about the last humans of a separate galaxy than our own striving to find a new home after their twelve colonies are destroyed by the intelligent race of robots they created themselves. The last 49,000 people travel aimlessly throughout space looking for a new planet suitable for habitation, all the while trying to fight off the seemingly random attacks of the hoards of organized Cylons. While the alternating threats of immanent and eventual death constitute the majority of the show's plot lines, the main motif of the show is the issues of faith and trust. The main characters have to learn to trust each other (which is made particularly different as there are 12 types of Cylon models that look exactly like humans), but they also must learn to trust the belief that they will eventually find a new home.
The issue of belief manifest itself more clearly in the latter seasons of the show as there begins a series of divine interventions that test and try the rapidly decreasing number of survivors. In fact, my favorite point of the show is right at the end *SPOILER WARNING* when one of the characters stands up to the notorious Cylon leader and asserts his belief in a higher power in control of all of their actions. When asked for proof (at gunpoint), the character asserts that he has seen angels (which he has), but has no tangible proof. Violence ensues, but later another character is forced to make a leap of faith by entering a random code she was given into the ship's FTL drive, not knowing where they'll end up in space (the potential of ending up inside a star or a black hole a considered possibility). She punches in the code to discover it takes them to . . .
Well, I think you get the general idea. The idea of a leap of faith is very powerful, particularly for me because I have never taken a very large one before.
I do love this show and I believe it was one of the most intelligent shows on television, which isn't saying a lot, I know. However, to finish the idea I started last post, I don't believe that it will ever have any literary merit or any elements worth studying based on this one simple reason: No one watches it.
If this show had any sort of impact, then perhaps this would be a different story. But I know that, for now, it will remain in obscurity, and I'm OK with that (even if Ronald Moore, the producer isn't).
So that's why I like it. I'd like to hear more about Fire Emblem and what makes its story so great to you, too.
I hope the midterm crunch won't be too hard! Maybe the faculty will realize what a large Asian population it has and reschedule?
Either way, I'm sure you'll do great! Don't get too bored with classes, try doodling like Crazy Math girl!
Oh and my break is on the week of Feb. 19th. B's Mom is coming here for that time. She's spending a day at my house and then they'll both go do some stuff together in Langley at TWU, so I'll be free for about a week, but I don't know if a longer road trip would work out. I checked and Whistler is booked, so we can't got there, but we can go to Washington or Oregon somewhere for a day or two with a group of people, perhaps?
Anyway, talk to you soon,
have a good weekend!
-Clayton
I would also like to point out that, yes, I know how much you like Harry Potter, that was the inspiration for the post. I thought I was fairly big Potter Phan but then I met you and I'm very uncertain. Anydangway, sorry for the confusion, I'll try to clarify my post of any uncertainties and make my transitions more "flowy".
On that note, I sure do love BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. I mean, really.
However, I think I can work it into my post this time. I say, "I think" because I have no idea what I'm really even talking about at this point, I'm just sort of typing what comes into my head and hoping it makes rational potato.
But seriously, I want to talk about the word glib not just because it make smile when I say it or any of its derivatives, but because I think connotes any issue that so many of us in the academic world struggle with every day.
For example, look at the last paragraph I just typed. Why on Earth did I use words like derivatives or connotes? How necessary was it to use those words when I could have just said that we all can be glib? (Heeheehee). I think that being fluent and incessant can be useful, especially for rhetorical purposes when presenting or using apologetics, but if we bring those skills and techniques into our everyday speech, trying to sound exquisite and erudite all the time, we tend to alienate our strangers and even our friends.
Like, there was this one time when I was working at Day Camp and I had to tell a parent that their kid was acting out. We believed that is was because the kid didn't have enough to eat in their lunch, so I asked the parent to maybe pack some more food. However, I phrased it with too many "proper" words and I had a parent yelling at me the next day because they thought I was talking down to them.
By trying to sound too educated or using too many "fancy" words, I had made myself look pompous and arrogant. While this is not technically a glibber (Teehee) action, I think the act of trying to make yourself sound overly academic and intelligent can involve glib speaking and using what I regret to admit can be too advanced diction.
I think this relates to a fact that many people in academia have a hard time admitting, myself included: This is very little that separates an educated person from an uneducated person in terms of basic human interaction. No matter how much we learn, no matter what institution we attend and no matter how long we spend there, if we cannot learn the most fundamental elements of being human, than we may as well have quit halfway through high school. As humans, we need to learn to love and communicate. We cannot live a good life in this world without having the ability to act and grow upon these two fundamentals.
I know that if me and my brother don't communicate properly, then we can run into all sorts of problems, mundane (using the car without asking the other brother) and serious (not letting each other know how much we care about each other). While for some relationships, this can be fairly simple, while for others, especially with people you don't know, it can be a huge strain just to get the easiest of ideas across.
However, I know that the conversations we've had together, and if I may be so bold, our friendship as a whole, is based on that desire to show love to one another and to work at being understood. Even on this very blog we have to be careful to make sure we can properly communicate subjects in our areas of speciality are understood without coming off too terse, sardonic or condescending. Obviously this is something I've gotten in trouble for before, even by accident, so I want to control the way in which I communicate so I don't damage something even more precious than an Counselor-Parent relationship.
In English studies, we have to work seemingly endlessly on filling all the criteria of writing.
We must write in a way that is logical, factual and structured, but also beautiful, original and aesthetically pleasing all the while sounding sincere and honest. Whatever we write, be it an essay, a letter or even a comment on a facebook status, we must write in a way that makes sense with our personalities: not trying to sound more intelligent or distant than you could hear someone talk in real life. This is what good writing consists of: writing that anyone can read and understand. So I can read something by Nabokov or Faulkner and while I know I won't fully recognize all the words or understand the writer's full intention right off the bat, I can still get a general sense of what is being attempted and I can still follow the narrative or direction of the prose. The same goes with good poetry, properly-constructed legal documents and well-written blog posts. And, since language, despite how flawed and lacking it is in this role, is intended as the primary means by which humans try to convey ideas and emotions, this must also be true for any instance where we try to talk to people. So, this must apply IRL, as well.
This is the duty of the English major: to master this type of communication, both in and outside of writing so that we can truly become better communicators and by effect, better people. At least, that is what the original intention of education was.
I believe this is also true for all types of education, no matter what the field. I can't say how this is done in, for example, the sciences, because I have so little experience in that field that any attempt I would have to categorize the end purpose of these studies would be insulting and blunderous at best. But I know there is one. And I know that there are people out there who know it, recognize it and utilize it. There are people who have educations and actually are separate from the uneducated masses, not because of the knowledge the have required, but because of how they use it. This is the purpose of education in the highest sense: to train people to become better people. Better at communicating and better at loving.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I would also just like to say that I enjoyed reading your thoughts on uncertainties and I agree wholeheartedly with what you have to say. That's so true obviously for English and Philosophy, but even studies like History and Bio-Chemistry are not without their biases and uncertainties. Even mathematics and physics are put into question as they are all only based on our own perspectives of the universe (I'm thinking of the ol' fish in a bowl looking at a beam of light). In fact, how can I even know any truth behind what I'm typing right now, or what I believe and how that has influenced what I write here?
We can never know any of these things for certain, and that's part of being human. And this is where faith comes in.
I just wanted to note here that I love Mr. Moorhead and I love what he does for young minds (the sharp and dull-witted alike), however I do want to note that he was always using a postmodern perspective in everything that he taught. I believe that in order to have a better understanding of 20th/21st century beliefs, we do have to acknowledge this mentality and have a full grasp of it's basic principles (eg. The difference between Absolute Truth and just plain truth). But I think one of the reasons I never fully hung on to every word that he said was that I knew that he had only scratched the surface.
There is indeed an Absolute Truth, and we need to first abandon our first notions of what we think is absolute before we can truly grasp its magnitude. I believe that the Gospel — the news of the existence of the Kingdom of God present in our world, today — is the real Absolute Truth. But the issue is that we cannot prove it to be true, the reason why the modern world rejects the gospel and even scorns it for presupposing its truth over the philosophies of the modern age. This is why Moorhead was right in that we must admit that we cannot know the truth of the Kingdom in any sort of qualitative sense and he was also right in that we cannot know it in the sense of fully understanding it, just like we can never fully know ourselves or the other in a complete sense. However, by faith, we can know of the truth of the Kingdom of God and we can know of its existence and power in our world, here and now by faith and belief.
Moorhead himself is a Christian and he is aware of these distinctions, but he is also concerned about communicating these truths properly and effectively and not creating more uncertainties in the minds of some 150 already-flabbergasted young people. I believe that is the genius of that man in that he knows so much, but doesn't bombard teenagers without offering logical connections and a clear path that he is taking them on. Sure, he confused so many people (and I hope continues to do so), but he always offers the reasoning and directions to navigate the treacherous waters he knows that we all must embark upon.
These are the waters of the world, both physical and spiritual. Both carry a plethora of beasties and snares. But God offers us faith and reason as oars to pull ourselves through, the Truth of His Kingdom as the Lighthouse to guide us and His own son as the boat by which we are saved.
~~~~~~~~~~
So that's what I believe and I hope I have communicated in a better fashion than last post. If you wish to take any issue with what I say, I will defend it or clarify it to the best of my ability whenever is best.
Oh and yes, I didn't forget. The way in which this connects to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is this:
The show is about the last humans of a separate galaxy than our own striving to find a new home after their twelve colonies are destroyed by the intelligent race of robots they created themselves. The last 49,000 people travel aimlessly throughout space looking for a new planet suitable for habitation, all the while trying to fight off the seemingly random attacks of the hoards of organized Cylons. While the alternating threats of immanent and eventual death constitute the majority of the show's plot lines, the main motif of the show is the issues of faith and trust. The main characters have to learn to trust each other (which is made particularly different as there are 12 types of Cylon models that look exactly like humans), but they also must learn to trust the belief that they will eventually find a new home.
The issue of belief manifest itself more clearly in the latter seasons of the show as there begins a series of divine interventions that test and try the rapidly decreasing number of survivors. In fact, my favorite point of the show is right at the end *SPOILER WARNING* when one of the characters stands up to the notorious Cylon leader and asserts his belief in a higher power in control of all of their actions. When asked for proof (at gunpoint), the character asserts that he has seen angels (which he has), but has no tangible proof. Violence ensues, but later another character is forced to make a leap of faith by entering a random code she was given into the ship's FTL drive, not knowing where they'll end up in space (the potential of ending up inside a star or a black hole a considered possibility). She punches in the code to discover it takes them to . . .
Well, I think you get the general idea. The idea of a leap of faith is very powerful, particularly for me because I have never taken a very large one before.
I do love this show and I believe it was one of the most intelligent shows on television, which isn't saying a lot, I know. However, to finish the idea I started last post, I don't believe that it will ever have any literary merit or any elements worth studying based on this one simple reason: No one watches it.
If this show had any sort of impact, then perhaps this would be a different story. But I know that, for now, it will remain in obscurity, and I'm OK with that (even if Ronald Moore, the producer isn't).
So that's why I like it. I'd like to hear more about Fire Emblem and what makes its story so great to you, too.
I hope the midterm crunch won't be too hard! Maybe the faculty will realize what a large Asian population it has and reschedule?
Either way, I'm sure you'll do great! Don't get too bored with classes, try doodling like Crazy Math girl!
Oh and my break is on the week of Feb. 19th. B's Mom is coming here for that time. She's spending a day at my house and then they'll both go do some stuff together in Langley at TWU, so I'll be free for about a week, but I don't know if a longer road trip would work out. I checked and Whistler is booked, so we can't got there, but we can go to Washington or Oregon somewhere for a day or two with a group of people, perhaps?
Anyway, talk to you soon,
have a good weekend!
-Clayton
Friday, January 28, 2011
Uncertainty
un•cer•tain•ty (noun)
(scientific) the margin of error associated with every measurement made.
Origin: Medieval English uncerteynte
~~~~~~~~~~
Scientific uncertainty, as it is defined above for the physical and analytical sciences, deals with the size of error that is associated with all measurements. I'm sure you remember the concept of error from Physics 11 and 12, yes?
If not, scientific error can be defined as the amount by which a measurement differs from the true value of what is being measured. This arises from the concept that we, as imperfect beings, can never measure or create anything that can measure anything precisely: our measurement never completely reflect the true value. This itself is connected to significant figures (sigfigs), bringing us back to the uncertainty of measurement.
For example, let's say we want to measure the length of a hippo's foot using a ruler: we put the foot on the ruler, and all is well until we look very closely, and see that the tip of its toe lies somewhere between the line for 10.47cm and the line for 10.48cm. What is the actual length of the foot? Our instrument is not precise enough to tell us exactly where between 10.47 - 10.48 the real length of the foot lies, and so we must make our best estimate. Let's say we decide that the foot's length is 10.473cm. This is all very well, but that can't be the exact, definite length of the foot because we had to guess the value of the last decimal place, the "3". This makes the "3" our first uncertain digit, because we are uncertain about the accuracy of this digit in the measurement.
Now we must determine our uncertainty, so we examine out ruler and assess our ability to use the ruler properly, and decide that our measurement probably contains 0.002cm error: this is our estimated error. That means that we are reasonably confident that the true value of the foot's length is 10.473 +/- 0.002 cm long (read as: "10.473 plus or minus 0.002 cm," meaning that we are reasonably confident that the true length of the foot lies between 10.471cm and 10.475cm). The +/- 0.002 is also called the uncertainty associated with our measurement.
For the sake of our example, let's say that the foot's actual, real, definite length is 10.474cm. Our measurement is off by 0.001cm: this is our absolute error. Error is thus associated with every single measurement. The more accurate we make our measuring instruments, the more accurate we can be. Measurements can be made in the lab that are accurate to 0.0001 grams, or 0.000000001 m, but the point is that no matter how accurate it gets, it is still not quite the true value.
~~~~~~~~~~
Uncertainty is our vonerdword today because I've been thinking about uncertainty in the non-scientific sense, as well as definitions, which connects me to my thoughts from my last post (sorry I didn't post last week, btw, I didn't want to post twice in a row, plus I had to do a lot of data crunching for my AnaChem lab). A number of things that have come to my attention/happened recently to stimulate thought on the subject of the validity of rules and definitions.
John Green made a vlog last week that echoed the sentiments of something Mr. Moorhead brought up in Eng12: reality and truth resist simplicity.
I realized that this is true for everything, whether it be religion, law, politics, science, english, and everything else in the world. Mr. Moorhead talked about how there will always be a gap between language and reality because no matter how hard one strives, language and words can never fully capture the real world. You can use all the words in every language in existence to try and describe something like the blistering hot sun shining down on a Costa Rican coffee plantation, or the warm glow of the sunrise on new years morn; the grandeur and spectacular presence of an ancient Japanese castle, or the sense of peace that comes with being with the most amazing friends on earth; even describing something as simple as the art on a card, but that description will never exactly be able to capture the reality; reality resists the simplicity of language.
In the sciences, reality resists our ability to describe it with words, scientific definitions, theories, mathematics, or even something as plain as measurement.
And so it is with religion. I've described to you on many occasions about how I'm trying to define my religion with two simple truths, and deriving the morals and laws I support or reject based on these truths, but I've recently realized that all of these rules I've been evaluating should not be treated as black and white rules, but sort of as guidelines, because the reality of the world resists my attempt to simplify it into "agrees with my truths" and "disagrees with my truths." The reality of the world resists my attemps to categorize and separate into groups, and urges me to consider each situation fully and independantly.
For example, something seemingly as simple as "One must not murder" can turn out to be something more complex than at first glance. My initial reaction to the statement "one must not murder" is to agree with it: murder disrepects the lives of others and violates their right to live their own lives. But imagine someone alone in their home, and a burglar breaks in and attacks the homeowner, and in an attempt to protect themself from being stabbed to death, s/he its the burglar over the head with a large heavy object (lamp, frying pan, baseball bat, miniature house hippo, etc), and the burglar ends up dying because of the injuries sustained from the blow to the head. Technically, the homeowner has murdered the burglar, but it was completely non-intentional. If one is to stand by their rule that "one must not murder," then the homeowner would be considered a murder.
However, I don't think that it is fair to put the homeowner in the same category as a person who intentionally goes out into the world and murders people for his/her own twisted pleasure. There are big differences between the two situations, and although they both technically performed the same act (the taking of another person's life), I am inclined to believe that the two are by no means the same.
In this way, even the most simplest of religious rules can only be a guideline to help us dictate how we live our lives, and in truth, we must consider each and every situation independently; we should try to avoid making large, general statements and then cement those statements as binding, because in truth there is no "yes" and "no," but varying degrees of agreement and disagreement.
~~~~~~~~~~
LOL k Clay, TOTALLY had to read your post like 3 times in order to understand what you were trying to say XD Good looooooord there were so manyh syntax, usage, and grammar confusions. Like, I completely didn't get that you'd changed the subject to Twilight when I first read that part, and I was becoming increasingly frantic because I thought you were bashing Harry Potter (which I cannot stand for; I LOVE HP!) TEEHEE I totally agree with you on that series; it will not last. There are very, very big differences between the Twilight and HP phenomena.
For one thing, Twilight is/was only really popular with females. Second of all, it doesn't even come close to the influence that HP held over the world.
Harry Potter is much more than a book, or a movement. It has become a part of the lives that it has touched. I first read Harry Potter in grade 3/4; I still remember buying Goblet of Fire at the Scholastic Book Fair in grade 4, and then following the rest of the books through high school. I grew up alongside Harry and everyone at Hogwarts. It was also a series for all ages: young kids and old wrinkly people alike could read Harry Potter and still enjoy it. The series was action, mystery, fantasy, and children's literature all rolled into one. It entertained while provoking (at least in me) thought about many things (for example, social structures and social perception during adolescence). This is something that Stephanie Meyer could never hope to achieve: her books are way too empty, the style is way to deprived, and they were written/published way to fast.
I will admit to having read all four of the books, and while they were entertaining, I really don't feel the same emotional attachment to it than I do to Harry Potter. There's just no comparison.
SO YEA... the week i made my last post, I went to see Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows pt1 with Asia and Kelsey, and I've been re-obsessed with it ever since: seeing as I read the 7th book over the winter break, I started the 6th book and rented the 6th movie last weekend; I finished the 6th book on Wednesday night and I'm 1/5th the way through the 5th book. Going through the series in reverse order is interesting; I'm finding a lot more stuff because the details of what happen next are fresh in my mind.
My obsession with the Fire Emblem series has also been rekindled over the winter break, so I'm in the midst of purchasing a lot of the old GBA games I can find b/c I'd love to play them; the plot and character development in this series is phenomenal!
Also: HOW IS TERM GOING FOR YOU? School's been rather dull this term so far. I'm enjoying some of my classes, but others are just such a bore. Midterm season starts soon, and it couldn't have been timed worse: the weekend of Feb 4-6 is Chinese New Years, but I have four midterms during the week Feb 7-12, which has got me rather alarmed. Oh well, at least reading break is the week after! Is that the same week you have reading break too? I hope so. I remember you mentioned that TWU likes to try to make reading break line up with Easter, but this year Easter is very late in April, so... If our reading breaks coincide, I totally thing we should go for a road trip! It'd be so much fun!!!
Anyways, I hope classes are going well for you!
Chat soon,
~Tim~
(scientific) the margin of error associated with every measurement made.
Origin: Medieval English uncerteynte
~~~~~~~~~~
Scientific uncertainty, as it is defined above for the physical and analytical sciences, deals with the size of error that is associated with all measurements. I'm sure you remember the concept of error from Physics 11 and 12, yes?
If not, scientific error can be defined as the amount by which a measurement differs from the true value of what is being measured. This arises from the concept that we, as imperfect beings, can never measure or create anything that can measure anything precisely: our measurement never completely reflect the true value. This itself is connected to significant figures (sigfigs), bringing us back to the uncertainty of measurement.
For example, let's say we want to measure the length of a hippo's foot using a ruler: we put the foot on the ruler, and all is well until we look very closely, and see that the tip of its toe lies somewhere between the line for 10.47cm and the line for 10.48cm. What is the actual length of the foot? Our instrument is not precise enough to tell us exactly where between 10.47 - 10.48 the real length of the foot lies, and so we must make our best estimate. Let's say we decide that the foot's length is 10.473cm. This is all very well, but that can't be the exact, definite length of the foot because we had to guess the value of the last decimal place, the "3". This makes the "3" our first uncertain digit, because we are uncertain about the accuracy of this digit in the measurement.
Now we must determine our uncertainty, so we examine out ruler and assess our ability to use the ruler properly, and decide that our measurement probably contains 0.002cm error: this is our estimated error. That means that we are reasonably confident that the true value of the foot's length is 10.473 +/- 0.002 cm long (read as: "10.473 plus or minus 0.002 cm," meaning that we are reasonably confident that the true length of the foot lies between 10.471cm and 10.475cm). The +/- 0.002 is also called the uncertainty associated with our measurement.
For the sake of our example, let's say that the foot's actual, real, definite length is 10.474cm. Our measurement is off by 0.001cm: this is our absolute error. Error is thus associated with every single measurement. The more accurate we make our measuring instruments, the more accurate we can be. Measurements can be made in the lab that are accurate to 0.0001 grams, or 0.000000001 m, but the point is that no matter how accurate it gets, it is still not quite the true value.
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Uncertainty is our vonerdword today because I've been thinking about uncertainty in the non-scientific sense, as well as definitions, which connects me to my thoughts from my last post (sorry I didn't post last week, btw, I didn't want to post twice in a row, plus I had to do a lot of data crunching for my AnaChem lab). A number of things that have come to my attention/happened recently to stimulate thought on the subject of the validity of rules and definitions.
John Green made a vlog last week that echoed the sentiments of something Mr. Moorhead brought up in Eng12: reality and truth resist simplicity.
I realized that this is true for everything, whether it be religion, law, politics, science, english, and everything else in the world. Mr. Moorhead talked about how there will always be a gap between language and reality because no matter how hard one strives, language and words can never fully capture the real world. You can use all the words in every language in existence to try and describe something like the blistering hot sun shining down on a Costa Rican coffee plantation, or the warm glow of the sunrise on new years morn; the grandeur and spectacular presence of an ancient Japanese castle, or the sense of peace that comes with being with the most amazing friends on earth; even describing something as simple as the art on a card, but that description will never exactly be able to capture the reality; reality resists the simplicity of language.
In the sciences, reality resists our ability to describe it with words, scientific definitions, theories, mathematics, or even something as plain as measurement.
And so it is with religion. I've described to you on many occasions about how I'm trying to define my religion with two simple truths, and deriving the morals and laws I support or reject based on these truths, but I've recently realized that all of these rules I've been evaluating should not be treated as black and white rules, but sort of as guidelines, because the reality of the world resists my attempt to simplify it into "agrees with my truths" and "disagrees with my truths." The reality of the world resists my attemps to categorize and separate into groups, and urges me to consider each situation fully and independantly.
For example, something seemingly as simple as "One must not murder" can turn out to be something more complex than at first glance. My initial reaction to the statement "one must not murder" is to agree with it: murder disrepects the lives of others and violates their right to live their own lives. But imagine someone alone in their home, and a burglar breaks in and attacks the homeowner, and in an attempt to protect themself from being stabbed to death, s/he its the burglar over the head with a large heavy object (lamp, frying pan, baseball bat, miniature house hippo, etc), and the burglar ends up dying because of the injuries sustained from the blow to the head. Technically, the homeowner has murdered the burglar, but it was completely non-intentional. If one is to stand by their rule that "one must not murder," then the homeowner would be considered a murder.
However, I don't think that it is fair to put the homeowner in the same category as a person who intentionally goes out into the world and murders people for his/her own twisted pleasure. There are big differences between the two situations, and although they both technically performed the same act (the taking of another person's life), I am inclined to believe that the two are by no means the same.
In this way, even the most simplest of religious rules can only be a guideline to help us dictate how we live our lives, and in truth, we must consider each and every situation independently; we should try to avoid making large, general statements and then cement those statements as binding, because in truth there is no "yes" and "no," but varying degrees of agreement and disagreement.
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LOL k Clay, TOTALLY had to read your post like 3 times in order to understand what you were trying to say XD Good looooooord there were so manyh syntax, usage, and grammar confusions. Like, I completely didn't get that you'd changed the subject to Twilight when I first read that part, and I was becoming increasingly frantic because I thought you were bashing Harry Potter (which I cannot stand for; I LOVE HP!) TEEHEE I totally agree with you on that series; it will not last. There are very, very big differences between the Twilight and HP phenomena.
For one thing, Twilight is/was only really popular with females. Second of all, it doesn't even come close to the influence that HP held over the world.
Harry Potter is much more than a book, or a movement. It has become a part of the lives that it has touched. I first read Harry Potter in grade 3/4; I still remember buying Goblet of Fire at the Scholastic Book Fair in grade 4, and then following the rest of the books through high school. I grew up alongside Harry and everyone at Hogwarts. It was also a series for all ages: young kids and old wrinkly people alike could read Harry Potter and still enjoy it. The series was action, mystery, fantasy, and children's literature all rolled into one. It entertained while provoking (at least in me) thought about many things (for example, social structures and social perception during adolescence). This is something that Stephanie Meyer could never hope to achieve: her books are way too empty, the style is way to deprived, and they were written/published way to fast.
I will admit to having read all four of the books, and while they were entertaining, I really don't feel the same emotional attachment to it than I do to Harry Potter. There's just no comparison.
SO YEA... the week i made my last post, I went to see Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows pt1 with Asia and Kelsey, and I've been re-obsessed with it ever since: seeing as I read the 7th book over the winter break, I started the 6th book and rented the 6th movie last weekend; I finished the 6th book on Wednesday night and I'm 1/5th the way through the 5th book. Going through the series in reverse order is interesting; I'm finding a lot more stuff because the details of what happen next are fresh in my mind.
My obsession with the Fire Emblem series has also been rekindled over the winter break, so I'm in the midst of purchasing a lot of the old GBA games I can find b/c I'd love to play them; the plot and character development in this series is phenomenal!
Also: HOW IS TERM GOING FOR YOU? School's been rather dull this term so far. I'm enjoying some of my classes, but others are just such a bore. Midterm season starts soon, and it couldn't have been timed worse: the weekend of Feb 4-6 is Chinese New Years, but I have four midterms during the week Feb 7-12, which has got me rather alarmed. Oh well, at least reading break is the week after! Is that the same week you have reading break too? I hope so. I remember you mentioned that TWU likes to try to make reading break line up with Easter, but this year Easter is very late in April, so... If our reading breaks coincide, I totally thing we should go for a road trip! It'd be so much fun!!!
Anyways, I hope classes are going well for you!
Chat soon,
~Tim~
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Autochthonous
au•toch•tho•nous (adjective)
(of an inhabitant of a place) indigenous rather than descended from migrants or colonists
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Well, well, well. The time has come. I've been postponing it for a long time until now, but here it is.
I'm finally going to talk about the show I've only alluded to to you before. It's time for:
BEARS
BEETS
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Oh yes, time to talk about one of favorite shows to ever grace the DVD shelf.
So here's what I have to say about it:
It's pretty awesome. You should watch it when you have the time.
OK, moving on.
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I have to say I really liked your post about Eukaryotic cells was really sweet and I really liked what you had to say about scientific definitions.
It got me to thinking about literature, as most things do, and I was thinking about what defines something as legit literature (legiterture?).
For example, BattleStar Galactica is actually really well written and (I like to think) has a lot of merit to it in terms of the real-life issues of slavery, abandonment, love, sex, betrayal, war, exodus, rebirth, and theological wrestling. However, does that make it worth studying? Is it something that can be directly descended from the inspirational lines of Western literary thought? Is it autochthonous and canon?
Or, here's a novel example: there's a class going on right now that studies Fantasy throughout the history of the western world, starting with Beowulf and ending with Wizards of Earthsea, which we've already talked about.
Anyway, seeing as they will be studying Harry Potter (Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Ooh!), which raises the question in my brain, "Does that Make Blast-Ended Skrewts part of the Literary canon?"
And I think the answer I have come to in that same confuséd brain of mine is that the literary merit of something is dependent upon many factors, one of them being the degree of impact the book has.
Obviously that impact is dependent upon how well the book is written, which determines how many people read it and most importantly, how long it will actually stay in circulation. Or to put it another way, how many more individuals will be impacted by this book in the generations that follow? Will my children read this book and still find it worth their while? Will their children's children read it and find that despite its archaic language it still has a lot to say on love, the force of good and evil, and the human condition?
Personally, I think that the impact of Harry Potter won't just fade away and kids in the next few decades will still read it, in the same way that we still read The Chronicles of Narnia and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But maybe that won't be the case. I can't truly know that, only God knows for certain.
However, I can tell you that I picked up a couple of books out of my cousin's house the other day that she said she had read and didn't want anymore. So I took them and me and my dorm mate read passages of these books to each other all last night.
And now I can legitimately say I know enough about this series to say that there is no monkey-fighting way these books are literature. They only even attain the status of "book" by the mere loophole of each separate volume possessing a spine (something the main character seems to lack on every page).
If I may quote a passage.
[From the beginning of Volume 4, Book 2, after quoting a line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream]
"Life sucks and then you die.
Yeah, I should be so lucky."
Good Lord, I just want to poke out my eyeballs with a sharpened metre stick and flambé them over a pyre of love letters written to Stephanie Meyer thanking her for blessing yet another self-deluding pubescent with the mindset of believing they will one day have the great fortune of being carried off by an aged somnipathic covered in glitter paint.
Oh yes, there book have had an impact, there's no doubt. But to say that that impact will not only carry through the lives of our generation and share its precious influence with our offspring is as much a ludicrous statement as saying "Hmm, maybe genocide isn't all that bad". The day that my children and all their friends are given a curriculum with these atrocities hastily inserted is the day I add broken glass into my daily diet.
That being said, I would just like to conclude that yes, I have just proven that Harry Potter is better than Twilight. QED.
On that note, I will talk to you soon, Tim.
-Clayton
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