#which makes it impossible to read my footnote and page numbers

[autumngracy]

Not me creeping up to the wordcount of the fourth longest book ever written

[alphabetsoup-blogposts]

I've tried to explain before...

...that I live in a world of tampered devices and platforms, that my online experience is not like other peoples and that it's impossible entirely to prevent it. It's the unlovely product of a world of anagrams and I guess it beats the death threats (just).

Things that would shock other people are commonplace for me—a cursor that moves independently to circle objects and underline words was a thing for a while, a mobile phone store once instructed me, very insistently and with added sarcasm, to upload the registration number etched on the sim card tray and I have played at least two online games in which the names of NPCs were altered to track those of my IRL acquaintances.

Ho hum.

Recently, these difficult experiences have focused on the Amazon platform and they have proven to be hugely disruptive as well as disorienting. All the pages are a patchwork mix-and-match ("consumers found this bar of soap to be difficult to assemble and noted that several screws were missing"), the website decides for hours at a time that I am not resident in the UK and nothing can be shipped (no, not a VPN problem), I cannot check out groceries because the buffering is eternal and when I do get an order through, the delivery driver decides to drop off approximately only half my groceries and then several hundred yards away. Finally, when I phone customer service, the telephonist does not recognise any of the dialogue boxes that my son and I are plainly viewing on the screen and therefore cannot help. If I try to use the chatbot, it simply cycles through a frustrating and pointless mobius loop of self-referential questions.

You will have your own view of what these things mean and I know you will not suspend critical judgment just because I say it is so, but I am an old, old hand and do not ask myself anymore whether I could be "imagining" things. The long and the short of it is that platforms do this when someone wants me to address, or revisit, a particular task or code and the message has to be passed on anonymously. Last night, for example, I infer that someone wanted a more detailed re-examination of codes on Lao Radio and so I got the run around for approximately 6 hours with respect to kindle dictionaries that my son—who is interested in Asian languages—would like to use for his studies.

I don't normally set all these problems out like this. Sometimes I explode and sometimes I vent a little but I rarely explain. Today, I'm writing all this down because I am going to do something unpleasant that will impact people who are entirely innocent. I'm going to postpone my efforts to read the "books" for another day. I will not log back in to my usual arrangements tonight, as I previously said I would, or tomorrow morning. That means that work will not get done, which is a great shame, but I must take a stand to protect myself and my family—nor will I try to catch up with this work later on. It will be lost. As things stand right now, I intend to pick arrangements back up at 900pm Monday evening (which takes me to Brisbane for the Tuesday morning breakfast show).

Next time something like this happens, I will postpone work for two days, then three...and so on until, perhaps, we are not working at all. As I say, I can see where this is headed and it makes me sad because there is so much in the collaboration that is good and so many wonderful people giving it their best, but one should not surrender to bullying—it only ever gets worse.

Footnote—It goes without saying that in this murky world nothing is what it seems and so I wish to emphasise that I do not think Lao National Radio (or any coders they may or may not have) are likely to be responsible for this. (I bear in mind all the possibilities, including that these episodes involve a kind of competitive double bluff intended to derail the whole exercise.) Nor do I think Amazon qua company is engaged in some kind of malevolent control. I'm unable to say whether the company could have prevented this with more robust security measures or whether it is simply a case of local hacking. I'm leaving that question to those who understand the tech issues and capabilities much better than I.

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 22 of 26

Title: House of Leaves (2000) 

Author: Mark Z. Danielewski

Genre/Tags: Horror, Fiction, Metafiction, Weird, First-Person, Third-Person, Unreliable Narrator 

Rating: 6/10

Date Began: 7/28/2020

Date Finished: 8/09/2020

House of Leaves follows two narrative threads. One is the story of Johnny Truant, a burnout in his mid-twenties who finds a giant manuscript written by a deceased, blind hermit named Zampanò. The second is said manuscript -- The Navidson Record -- a pseudo-academic analysis of a found-footage horror film that doesn’t seem to exist. In it, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson moves into a suburban home in Virginia with his partner Karen and their two children. Navidson soon makes the uncomfortable discovery that his new house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Over time he discovers more oddities -- a closet that wasn’t there before, and eventually a door that leads into an impossibly vast, dark series of rooms and hallways. 

While Johnny grows more obsessed with the work, his life begins to take a turn for the worse, as told in the footnotes of The Navidson Record. At the same time, the mysteries of the impossible, sinister house on Ash Tree Lane continue to deepen. 

To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don’t let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can’t see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact you can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound. That’s where it is. Right at this moment. But don’t look. Keep your eyes here. Now take a deep breath. Go ahead and take an even deeper one. Only this time as you start to exhale try to imagine how fast it will happen, how hard it’s gonna hit you, how many times it will stab your jugular with its teeth or are they nails? don’t worry, that particular detail doesn’t matter, because before you have time to even process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms--you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book-- you won’t have time to even scream. 

Don’t look. 

I didn’t. 

Of course I looked. 

Some story spoilers under the cut. 

Whoo boy do I feel torn on this one. House of Leaves contains some really intriguing ideas, and when it’s done right, it’s some of the best stuff out there. Unfortunately, there are also several questionable choices and narrative decisions that, for me, tarnish the overall experience. It’s certainly an interesting read, even if the whole is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. 

First of all, I can see why people don’t like this book, or give up on it early (for me this was attempt number three). Despite an interesting concept and framing device, the first third or so of the book is pretty boring. Johnny is just not an interesting character. He does a lot of drugs and has a lot of (pretty unpleasant) sex and... that’s pretty much it, at least at the beginning. There’s occasional horror sections that are more interesting, where Johnny’s convinced he’s being hunted by something, but they’re few and far between. Meanwhile, the story in The Navidson Record seems content to focus on the relationship issues between two affluent suburbanites rather than the much more interesting, physically impossible house they live in. The early “exploration” sections are a little bit better, but overall I feel the opening act neglects the interesting premise. 

However, unlike many, I love the gimmick. The academic presentation of the Navidson story is replete with extensive (fake) footnotes,and there’s tons of self-indulgent rambling in both stories. I personally find it hilarious; it’s an intentionally dense parody of modern academic writing. Readers will note early that the typographical format is nonstandard, with the multiple concurrent stories denoted by different typefaces, certain words in color, footnotes within footnotes, etc. House of Leaves eventually goes off the chain with this concept, gracing us with pages that look like (minor spoilers) this or this. This leads into the best part of this book, namely... 

Its visual presentation! House of Leaves excels in conveying story and feeling through formatting decisions. The first picture I linked is one of many like it in a chapter about labyrinths. And reading it feels like navigating a labyrinth! It features a key “story”, but also daunting, multi-page lists of irrelevant names, buildings, architectural terms, etc. There are footnotes that don’t exist, then footnote citations that don’t seem to exist until one finds them later in the chapter. All this while physically turning the book or even grabbing a mirror to read certain passages. In short, it feels like navigating the twists, turns, and dead ends of a labyrinth. And that’s just one example -- other chapters utilize placement of the text to show where a character is in relation to others, what kind of things are happening around them, and so on. One chapter near the end features a square of text that gets progressively smaller as one turns the pages, which mirrors the claustrophobic feel of the narrative events. This is the coolest shit to me; I adore when a work utilizes its format to convey certain story elements. I usually see this in poetry and video games, but this is the first time I’ve seen it done so well in long-form fiction. City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer, both of which I reviewed earlier this year, do something similar, and are clearly inspired by House of Leaves in more ways than one. 

And yes, the story does get a little better, though it never wows me. The central horror story is not overtly scary, but eeriness suffices, and I have a soft spot for architectural horror. Even Johnny and the Navidsons become more interesting characters over time. For example, I find Karen pretty annoying and generic for most of the book, but her development in later chapters makes her much more interesting. While I question the practical need for Johnny’s frame story, it does become more engaging as he descends into paranoia and madness.

So why the relatively low rating? Well... as I alluded to earlier, there’s some questionable stuff in House of Leaves that leaves (...hah?) a bad taste in my mouth. The first is a heavy focus on sexual violence against women. I did some extensive thinking on this throughout my read, but I just cannot find a valid reason for it. The subject feels thrown in for pure shock value, and especially from a male author, it seems tacky and voyeuristic. If it came up once or twice I’d probably be able to stomach this more easily, but it’s persistent throughout the story, and doesn’t contribute anything to the plot or horror (not that that would really make it better). I’m not saying books can’t have that content, but it’s just not explored in any meaningful way, and it feels cheap and shitty to throw it in something that traumatizing just to shock the audience. It’s like a bad jump scare but worse on every level. There’s even a part near the end written in code, which I took the time to decode, only to discover it’s yet another example of this. Like, really, dude? 

Second, this book’s portrayal of mental illness is not great. (major spoilers for Johnny’s arc.) One of the main things about Johnny’s story is he’s an unreliable narrator. From the outset, Johnny has occasional passages that can either be interpreted as genuine horror, or delusional breaks from reality. Reality vs unreality is a core theme throughout both stories. Is The Navidson Record real despite all evidence to the contrary? Is it real as in “is the film an actual thing” or “the events of the film are an actual thing”? and so on and so forth. Johnny’s sections mirror this; he’ll describe certain events, then later state they didn’t happen, contradict himself, or even describe a traumatic event through a made-up story. Eventually, the reader figures out parts of Johnny’s actual backstory, namely that when he was a small child, his mother was institutionalized for violent schizophrenia. Perhaps you can see where this is going... 

Schizophrenia-as-horror is ridiculously overdone. But it also demonizes mental illness, and schizophrenia in particular, in a way that is actively harmful. Don’t misunderstand me, horror can be a great way to explore mental illness, but when it’s done wrong? Woof. Unfortunately House of Leaves doesn’t do it justice. While it avoids some cliches, it equates the horror elements of Johnny’s story to the emergence of his latent schizophrenia. This isn’t outwardly stated, and there are multiple interpretations of most of the story, but in lieu of solid and provable horror, it’s the most reasonable and consistent explanation. There’s also an emphasis on violent outbursts related to schizophrenia, which just isn’t an accurate portrayal of the condition. 

To Danielewski’s credit, it’s not entirely black and white. We do see how Johnny’s descent into paranoia negatively affects his life and interpersonal relationships. There’s a bonus section where we see all the letters Johnny’s mother wrote him while in the mental hospital, and we can see her love and compassion for him in parallel to the mental illness. But the experimental typographical style returns here to depict just how “scary” schizophrenia is, and that comes off as tacky to me. I think this is probably an example of a piece of media not aging well (after all, this book just turned 20), and there’s been a definite move away from this kind of thing in horror, but that doesn’t change the impression it leaves. For a book as supposedly original/groundbreaking as this, defaulting to standard bad horror tropes is disappointing. And using “it was schizophrenia all along” to explain the horror elements in Johnny’s story feels like a cop-out. I wish there was more mystery here, or alternate interpretations that actually make sense. 

Overall The Navidson Record part of the story feels more satisfying. I actually like that there isn’t a direct explanation for everything that happens. It feels like a more genuine horror story, regardless of whether you interpret it as a work of fiction within the story or not. There’s evidence for both. Part of me wishes the book had ended when this story ends (it doesn’t), or that the framing device with Johnny was absent, or something along those lines. Oh well-- this is the story we got, for better or worse. 

I don’t regret reading House of Leaves, and it’s certainly impressive for a debut novel. If you’re looking for a horror-flavored work of metafiction, it’s a valid place to start. I think the experimental style is a genuine treat to read, and perhaps the negative aspects won’t hit you as hard as they did to me. But I can definitely see why this book is controversial. 

[awhilesince]

Thursday, 5 January 1832

8 25/’’

1 20/’’

Fahrenheit 65° at 8 ½ in my room and 35° at 9 in the balcony and frosty hazy morning – read a few pages volume I. Goldsmith’s England – down at 10 – breakfast and skimmed over the paper till 11 ½ – out at 11 ¾ – went to the bank and got £50 – then paid for the books I got yesterday (about £15 + the day before £10) looked at what was put out for sale today, and not intending to spend more (besides there was nothing to tempt me much) went to the foot of the East hill along the back of All Saints Street and walked slowly up and down there for an hour and then home at 1 35/‘‘– 

50 minutes nap – then from 2 50/’’ to 4 40/’’ wrote 3 pages and ends and under the seal to M– (Mariana) longed to answer her letter yesterday but going to the book sale – mentioned having spent £25 and the principal works I bought – said we were more merry than Theoretically might seem likely – but complained that if laughing must make fat we should be unbecomingly so before April – ‘I I have not laughed so much since days of you, when life was young, and hopes were brighter’ – but said we had not been quite alone – Mrs Carlton had come down to Hastings for a week – besides I was rather more acclimaté and less bilious ‘which is certainly something in favour of animal cheerfulness’ – have had a week’s frost – talk of excursionizing next month as if sure of fine weather – not a flake of snow has fallen – ……

‘But I have not yet wished you a happy new year, nor thanked you, Mary, for all your wishes to myself – were I at your elbow, instead of writing to you, I could say much it would be difficult to throw on paper – I hope there is a chance of your not ‘Emigrating’ – now that you are really mistress, which gives another interest in what you do, and that you think you are better fitted for the life you lead than for any other, I should doubly grieve over C–’s (Charles’s) taking you away from L– (Lawton) He does indeed seem to have taken a new lease – [footnote] I have certainly nothing to set against Mr Ford’s opinion but a sort of presentiment; yet this strangely misleads me, if he is right – Is not William 14? Then there are 6 or 7 years to his being of age; and this seems a long time to me, tho‘ not so to you – you remind me of what I said on the road from Peterbro‘ – you disclaimed its truth then, and own it now – Mary! do I not sometimes know you better than you know yourself? the world is always severe upon what it does not deem reasonable; and my own conviction is, that you yourself would be even more severe than the world – the putting people as little in contact with your own famliy as you can, all experience must convince you, will be the wisest plan – you thought of me on Saturday, on the ending up of the year – So did I think of you – what another may bring, who can tell? I little imagined, on taking my aunt from Paris to Shibden, that I myself should find it impossible to spend even this winter there – I counted upon being nearer to you than I am, and on seeing much more of you before my return to the continent, than I can now hope to do – But mine has never been even the earthly hand that held the reins of my own destiny – All that I had hoped, and done, was changed – no power was left to me; and, from that hour, I have been whirled I know not how, nor understanding nor controlling whither – I cannot, dare not look into that book where all the past, and present, and to come, are noted down – Too deeply Thinking might destroy even comfort and tranquillity – Tis best to dwell on the belief, that, ‘for human weal, heaven husbands all events’ – But tell me always, as soon as you can, what you are likely to do, God bless you, Mary! when I have any settled or probable plans, you shall know them – Ever very entirely and especially yours AL– (Anne Lister)’

footnote: as far as present appearances go  may live these twenty years  as Mr Ford told him last night tho he does bother me sadly and often I cannot help hoping he may see William of age …… I often think of what you told me in the coach from Peterborough that I was so used to Mr Ls (Lawton’s) odd ways that I should probably feel his loss more than I suspected and really my Fred it would be so and since I find that no unreasonable conduct would justify my leaving him I think I have made up my mind to put him as little in contact with my own family as I can help and in very other way to make the best of it for of an end there seems no chance C (Charles) will never change –

‘Saturday 31st December this is the last day of another year, my dearest Fred, it has carried on its wings many events of which I little dreampt at its commencement, probably that which begins tomorrow may do the same – but sufficient for the day – I don’t think I shall even anticipate again either good or evil, but for the future be content with the things that are – For you Fred I will not ease to wish every earthly good, may the next year bring you comfort and happiness, it often seems to me if Charles had been different how comfortably our home might have been your home, but all things have turned out differently from what we expected, and so do most things in this life – Sunday 1st January 1832. many many happy returns of the day to you, my own dearest Fred, may every good attend you with health and comfort in all ways – I have not much time for more than these wishes ….. god bless you dearest and believe me always yours Entirely’ 

signed Mariana this letter strikes me as remarkable she has a presentiment of what may be with Miss H (Hobart) have I answered her as she expected or as would best please her? No she will be rather strengthened in her gloomy surmises  and she has too much remorse – 

Sent off my letter to ‘Mrs Lawton Lawton hall Lawton Cheshire’ at 5 1/4 – at 5 35/’’ dressed – reading Goldsmith’s England – dinner at 7 in 1/2 hour – did German with Miss H– Hobart instead of having music – Coffee at 8 1/2 – then Miss H– Hobart sang a little – from 10 1/2 to 11 40/’’ read aloud from p. 372 to 439 end of chapter 33, and of volume v. Gibbon – came upstairs at 11 50/’’ – till 12 50/’’ and before dinner and this morning read from page 25 to 112 volume 1. Goldsmith’s history of England – very good friends on saying I should be less naughty if I had her always  she as if thoughtlessly replied you don't know you will not (meaning, have her always)  and after scolding my oddity she owned she liked what was not commonplace  of all this I seemed to take no notice – 

hazy but fineish day – Fahrenheit 62° at 12 in my room with a very hot fire – forgot to take in my thermometer so know not what it stood at in the balcony – the Skelmersdales arrived yesterday – Lord S– (Skelmersdale) left his card for Miss H– (Hobart) and Miss Wilbraham wrote a long kind note – neither mamma nor she well enough to venture out –

reference number: SH:7/ML/E/15/0006, SH:7/ML/E/15/0007

[wenhaoji]

Build Momentum for Design

“Build momentum” here is to promote self-confidence and rigorous attitude towards design. Well, this is not a one-time trend. It is necessary to integrate design into life, turn beauty into a habit, pay attention to details, polish the work repeatedly, and strive for excellence. Isn’t that fostering a design attitude? I think that the attitude established now is the unique design style in the future. “Advanced, science, detail”, this is my attitude towards my design. Today, let’s talk briefly about how to use Sketch components scientifically in UI design to easily manage your pages.

Component

We know that the “specific content” of each page is different, such as the content/ color/ size of text, icon, pictures. However, in most cases, the “frame composition” of a part of the page is similar or even the same. For example, every mobile phone page has a tab bar. Then, each time you use it, you can take the tab bar directly from your project component library, and then replace the specific content (text/icon) with the content needed for your project (of course, for iOS, designers can also use the Apple UI component library), so that you needn’t draw the tab bar on each page by yourself. When you double-click the “Tab bar” component, the page will be transferred to the component page, and you will see how this component is composed of small parts.

Benefits of components

The charm of a component is that it can make efficient batch changes to the page, and can change the specific content of each component on a specific page while ensuring that the structure of the component does not change. The number of pages we want to design is as low as 10 or 20 and as many as 40 or 50. This number is by no means to tell the designer that you have a lot of tasks and need to work overtime. On the contrary, the number of pages will not affect your design level and working hours, the smart designer will not waste a lot of time on “page making”. So how to make changes to multiple pages efficiently? My answer is to make “basic components” and use “application components” flexibly.

Classification of components

The components in the UI design are divided into “basic components” and “application components”. Sketch provides the function of adding a component library. You can download the “Apple UI”, in there you can see all are application components which directly applied on the page. when you click to the bottom of the component layer by layer, you see the basic component, so the application component consists of the basic component. The basic components are text, icon, picture. In most cases, all application components consist of them or one or two of them.

Making basic components - text (1x)

Text components

Choose the font Size, Style, Position, and Color of several commonly used words.

Size for web design: We choose 12px as the Footnote text of the page, 14px as the Description, 16px as the Body Text of the page, 18px as the Subtitle C, 22px as the Subtitle B, 28px as the Subtitle A, 36px as the Title, 46px as the Big Title.

Size for mobile design: We choose 10px as the Footnote text of the page, 12px as the Description, 14/16px as the Body Text of the page, 18px as the Subtitle B, 20px as the Subtitle A, 24px as the Title, 36px as the Big Title.

Style: Thin / Regular / Bold

The position of the text in the component: Top-left, Top-middle, Top-right; Center-left, Center-middle, Center-right; Bottom-left, Bottom-middle, Bottom-right.

Colors: Black, white and footnote colors are necessary. In addition, different colors can be added according to the needs of the project.

Naming is very important. For the text style of “white Top-middle 18” text style, we can name it “web page common_text_18px_Top-middle_white ”, the name of the component is the directory where you want to find the component later.

Making basic components - icon

I suggest that after the icon is drawn, you store two versions, the design version, and the development version.

Development version: The development version of the icon requires no background and no masking function. This is convenient for uploading to “iconfont” (Chinese software) for development at the same time because “iconfont” will not intelligently identify the component files containing the mask when uploading. The development icon does not need to be converted into components.

Design version: We know the page of the icon will be displayed in different colors, black/white/red / …, how to quickly replace the color of the icon when we need it? We need to draw a rectangle of the same size as the panel on the icon to make a "color mask” (Specific operation: select the icon shape and the rectangle above it, click the mask tool bottom，and replace the rectangle with a color). Don’t forget to convert to components, so that you can replace the icon color through the component’s color system.

Note: The icon needs to have a “transparent background”. The role of the transparent background is essential. It can ensure that each icon component is the same on the page. Even though the size of each icon shape is different, but its pixel size will be the same when each icon component is applied to the page.

Component naming: Be careful about the naming of the icon component, so that when you look up, the directory will be very clear. There are linear icons named “icon_outline _ **”, and facial icons can be named “icon_solide _ **”. The English name is convenient for development to understanding, and it is also a professional expression of the UI designer. There is a lot of knowledge in this module. In terms of icon drawing, icon animation, what kind of icons can be imported into AE, etc. I will add them later in the process.

Making Application Components - Pictures with Rounded Corners and Filters

In the waterfall flow style of the page, all the pictures have rounded corners or color masks. In fact, we don’t need to worry about it. We just need to complete one such picture. Then apply this “picture component” on the page.

Analyze: We start to analyze what its basic components are. The rounded corners of the picture can be understood as a rectangle with rounded corners. The color gradient of the picture can be understood as a colored mask attached to the picture.

Making basic components: we can choose several commonly used parameters and make them to basic components, such as a rectangle with rounded corners of 5 degrees 10 degrees 13 degrees 20 degrees, such as a color mask with black transparency from 60% to 20%, and black transparency as 20% color mask. With these basic components, let’s make a picture component(Application Components), at first, draw a rectangle, select "Picture” in the rectangle’s property options bar, fill a small picture, and then draw a rectangle of the same size with picture and right-click “Replace with” to find “the rectangle with rounded corner” which you done , and the color mask is the same, so we have completed a Picture Application Components. Of course for waterfall flow, you can make 3 styles, size of 1: 1/16: 9/9: 16. When making a waterfall flow, you can apply these picture styles freely. The rest of the work only needs to replace the pictures. We can use the time to find some good pictures and find some beautiful waterfall flow styles, and really spend our energy on Design.

Application components - Endless

The basic components are limited. Currently, there are “text, icons, masks, and masks”, but the application component is very active. It can be directly applied to the page or it can be part of other application components. In the above, we made an image component, and when the page needs a list layout, this image component will become an element of the list component. So when do we need components? The answer is that you need to use components when there are duplicate modules on the page. Application components are more like typesetting of basic components, and pages are like typesetting of application components.

Impact of components on Principle

The flexible use of components is in trouble here. I find after imported into Principle, the component will not be recognized or the text will be misplaced. This problem also makes me very distressed. Now I use AE to make icon animation and page interactive animation, there is a plug-in called AEUX, which is imported into the AE with the layers of the Sketch panel, I think it is convenient. If there is a good solution for Principle import, hope to leave a message to me, let’s learn together.

Sweetheart Summary

Objects must be reversed. Anything that is extreme will lead to imbalance. The same is true for components. After the concept of components is formed, it will implicitly suppress the creative space. Mr. Yang Yan said a word, the reason for your pain is that you read too little but think too much. I think as a designer, most of the sources of design distress at work are “Not enough output, but thinking too many details at the beginning of the design”, which inhibited inspiration and output speed. The leader often tells me that in the initial stage of design, we must pursue “violent aesthetics”, which means to draw my design ideas at the fastest speed during the first draft of the design, to visualize inspiration and ideas. Make it first, then look It is impossible or not, what you think in your mind cannot be judged as good or bad by anyone. Only after visualization can I know that there are deficiencies and prosperity.

The essence of components is: Make components for required modules after the design style and key pages are determined, thereby facilitating the design and management of other pages.

Thanks for your attention!

Welcome to wenhaoji.art to know more about me!

See you soon.

[strawberry-milktea]

Hey! I've been going to this big new church for over a year now after moving away from a toxic and broken church. I'm just wondering what can I do to grow spiritually and closer to God? I'm a college student, but the college class the church has is barely existent. The only time I go to church and listen to the Word is during the worship service on Sunday mornings. I don't have any friends at church at all. I feel more comfortable staying home than going to church, actually. Any help or inspo?

Hi! I apologize for taking so long to answer this.

I understand what you’re saying.. my situation with church is sort of similar. At my first church, it was much smaller and I knew the majority of the people well. Eventually, I started going to a larger church when I realized my first church wasn’t teaching scripturally on the level that I needed. And shortly after that, my first church eventually closed due to funding issues. So for these reasons, I started permanently going to my current church.

Like you, I go on Sundays and because of my work schedule, it’s pretty much impossible most times to get involved with church activities on other days. This, as well as the fact that the church has a relatively large number of people attending each service, makes it so that I haven’t had a chance to get to know people there personally. I wish I could get to know them and be more involved in the activities they have planned, though. However, I’m still incredibly happy at my church and feel spiritually edified by the messages preached there.

One of the most critical ways to get closer to Him is reading and studying the Word on your own. Do you read scripture on your own or is your only exposure to it on Sundays? My understanding is you only listen to it on Sundays, but correct me if I misunderstood what you said.. if that is the case though, I strongly recommend making time each day to read scripture. It’s great to go to church on Sundays and listen to your pastor read the Word/teach about it, but you also need to dig into the scriptures on your own to grow spiritually and understand Him better. Listen to people preach can be very helpful, but it’s not a replacement for personal study. Developing a strong foundation in the Word by reading on your own and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide and teach you is how you deepen your faith and understanding of spiritual matters. It also helps you to develop the ability to discern if who you are listening to preach is teaching an accurate message.

I think buying a study Bible could be very useful for you. I personally think the Life Application study Bibles are good. They come in a variety of translations and offer footnotes at the bottom of each page that provide helpful explanations/commentary for majority of the verses on each page. If you enjoy listening to the Word more than visually reading, you may like to use a Bible app with an audio feature or buy an audio Bible. I personally use the YouVersion Bible app and most often, I do my reading of scripture by listening via the audio feature.

Prayer is another way to grow spiritually stronger and closer to Him. Prayer has always been an area I’ve personally struggled in, but I’ve found I’ve gotten much more comfortable with it once I started writing down my prayers and thoughts to Him in a journal. Doing that has helped it to feel more like a natural reflex to start talking to Him and less of feeling like I have to plan certain times to pray. It’s also helped me to break through the worry (which I always knew was false but for some reason would still nag at my mind) that I’m not being heard when I pray.

I also find it’s very helpful to listen to worship music at home. I either make time to just sit down and relax to listen to the music or I do so while I’m completing certain tasks like cleaning, cooking, or getting ready for the day. Either way, I find that these times often help me to pick up on His presence and feel connected with Him.

It may also help you to find a preacher/pastor online so that you can listen to someone preach His Word on other days in addition to Sundays at church. I personally enjoy listening to J.D. Farag. You can listen to his sermons here if you’re interested:

https://youtube.com/user/alohabibleprophecy

If you don’t mind me asking, do you have specific reasons for feeling more comfortable at home than at church? Is it because you don’t know anyone personally there, or are there other reasons? If it’s because you don’t know people personally there, please know you can still enjoy fellowship during worship and benefit from the message being preached even if you don’t have friends there. I don’t know the people at my church personally, but I still feel like I belong there and I enjoy glorifying Him with them as well as seeing their love for Him in their worship.

There’s nothing wrong at all with desiring friendship with those at your church, though! I understand that you said the population of college students is relatively smallat your church, but try not to limit your friends to only those who are around the same age as you. You can meet and befriend some wonderful Christians who are younger or older than you.. and for the few who are around your age, try to look for opportunities to get to know them as well. Maybe get to church on Sundays a little early and strike up a conversation with someone sitting near you. Or keep an eye out for church events that work with your schedule where you can socialize and get to know the people who attend your church.

I hope this was helpful, please feel free to comment here and continue the discussion if you want to!

[chanoyu-to-wa]

An Urgent Request that I Would Like to Address to All of the Readers of this Blog.

Dear Followers and Readers,

     As many of you may know, every 90 days I have to make a trip out of the country (and then return) in order to continue living here.  The next time I must do this will be at the end of this month.  The cost of this trip (which I really would prefer not to have to make, but have no way to avoid or opt out of) will be around $250.  Elmar informed me that there is around $300 in the PayPal account, which will be necessary for my rent for next month.  So once again I am forced to rely on your kindness to make ends meet.  If I do not make the trip I will be arrested and deported, and that will be the end of the translations.  If I make the trip and fail to come up with my rent for next month, the matter will be referred to the police, and produce a similar result (albeit delayed by a couple of weeks).

     If everyone who visits this site regularly (the tracker provides me with a report every week, so I am aware of the number of people who do this) donated $10 per month, I would have no financial problems -- I would not make anything extra, but at least I would be able to pay my bills and put enough aside out of what was left each month to make these 4-times-a-year trips without having to go begging virtually every single week.  The stress is impacting my eyesight (dead cells are clouding the vitreous humor of both eyes, making it more and more difficult to read the small type used in the material I am trying to translate), and since last week I have been experiencing recurring severe pain in my abdomen (the prostate cancer, apparently).  This, in turn, makes it more and more difficult for me to provide you with accurate information.

     Let us look (as an example of what I actually do) at the recently published translation of the 45th entry in the Rikyū Hyakkai Ki [利休百會記]:

     The text of this entry, as it was published in the Rikyū Chanoyu Sho [利休茶湯書] (which is the document I have been translating for the past months), is as follows (the entry is outlined in red):

     The generally unformatted text reads: 

goku-gatsu tsuitachi hiru [極月朔日昼]; kyaku Honjū-bō, Sōwa, Katasuke [客 本住坊・宗和・堅佐]; chaya ni soshite go-shoku [茶屋ニ而御食]; ￮ chaire Shiri-bukura [一 茶入尻ぶくら]; ￮ Soto-no-hama chawan [一 そとの浜茶わん]; yaki-mono (sake)  kurome  shiru (nattō)  meshi [焼物さけ くろめ 汁納豆 めし]; hikite tawarako [引テ たハら子]; kashi fu-no-yaki, kuri [菓子 ふのやき くり]; ni-jō-shiki ni te o-cha [二畳敷ニて御茶]¹.

(Please note that the editors have changed many of the original kanji to their modern forms when comparing this version of the text with the one, from the Sadō Ko-ten Zen-shu given below.)

    There are no illustrations; there are no notes.  The text (including any mistakes²) has been reproduced from the original published document without comment.  Without years of study, the text is unintelligible.

     The version of the same entry as it was published in the Sadō Ko-ten Zen-shu [茶道古典全集] is not too much better (the primary difference is that each entry here is complete, rather than abridged as in the Rikyū Chanoyu Sho, and there are occasional brief notes, almost exclusively related to tentatively identifying the guests) -- again, the text of this entry has been outlined in red:

     Here the text (which is printed using the form of the kanji found in the original manuscripts) has been formatted in accordance with the originals, and reads:

jū-ni-gatsu tsuitachi hiru [十二月朔日晝]; (Sakai) Honjū-bō (“イ” indicates that there is a different word in the Hisada version of the text, in this case Honjū-bō is qualified by “sakai ni-jō-han” [境二疊半], and this is explained in note ⑥), (Shijō-no-uchi) Sōwa, Gensa (here the Hisada version gives this entry as:  (Kaiya) Katasuke [かいや  堅佐]), Dōju [堺 本住坊  四條ノ内 宗和  茶碗屋 玄佐  道壽]; chaya ni te go-han  onaji ni-jō-shiki ni te o-cha [茶屋にて御飯  同二疊敷にて御茶]; (kirino) kama [きりの 釜]; wake-mono mizusashi [はけ物水さし]; chaire Shiri-bukura [茶入 尻ぶくら]; Soto-no-hama chawan [外ノ濱茶碗]; Kankyo tsubo [閑居壺]; (to which the Hisada version adds hanaire Bizen-zutsu [花入 備前筒]);

sake no yakimono  kurome  nattō-jiru  meshi [さけのやき物 くろめ 納豆汁 めし]; hikite tawarako [引て  たはらこ]; kashi  fu-no-yaki kuri [菓子  ふのやき くり]³. 

    Meanwhile, note ⑥ reads: 

Sakai ni-jō-han  Kyōto Go-jō no tera no wakare tera de aru Sakai no tera ni Honjū-bō ga sunde ita no de, Go-jō no ni-bun sunawachi ni-jō-han to ada mei wo tsukerareta to iu setsu ga aru [境二疊半 京都五條の寺の分れ寺である堺の寺に本住坊が住んでいたので、五條の二分すなわち二疊半とあだ名をつけられたという說がある｡]⁴.

     Once again, there are no illustrations, and the “footnotes” (in Japanese books they are usually printed in the top margin of the page) are for the most part limited to attempts to identify the people who participated in these gatherings as guests, and occasionally explain (very roughly and briefly) some of the more obscure items included in the menus of the kaiseki.  Most of the notes are much shorter than this; and, indeed, this is one of the longest explanations in the entire book.  For the most part, the utensils are not described -- and, it would appear, have not been identified (even to type).

     Out of this material (supplemented by my own extensive research, which has been on going for the past 20+ years), I have produced the following⁵:

     Over the course of the past 427 years, since these kaiki were first written down by Rikyū, nobody has ever attempted to produce a critical (let alone fully illustrated) commentary on them.  And, indeed, for most of this time it would have been impossible since the originals of these documents were kept hidden away, while published versions (such as that found in the Rikyū Chanoyu Sho) were defective to the point of being incomprehensible.

     The question might be asked, why, then, have the Japanese scholars not attempted anything like this heretofore?  And, bluntly, the reason is that anyone hoping to make a living in the field of chanoyu scholarship has to be sponsored and supported by one of the major modern schools of tea.  It should not be surprising, therefore, that the guiding principal of these scholars’ modi operandi is that they must promote the view of chanoyu preferred by the Iemoto of their school.  And since none of these early documents can ever hope to do that, rather than make a serious effort to render them understandable to the modern world, they prefer to search for tiny inconsistencies that they then blow up into “proofs” that these documents are fakes (since -- and this is the real, if not always mentioned, reason behind their arguments -- they invariably offer us a vision of chanoyu that is adamantly opposed to what the modern schools prefer us to believe and follow).

     Since I am technically translating the Rikyū Chanoyu Sho, I could have opted to simply render the fragmentary text into English without comment, and I do not believe that anyone could gainsay my decision, since I would have been doing precisely what I set out to do: 

- render the Rikyū Chanoyu Sho in English both because this was the document that inspired Tachibana Jitsuzan to make the effort to search out the material on which the Nampō Roku was based;

- but more, because the way the editors handled their material when readying the Rikyū Chanoyu Sho for publication provides us with the best clue possible as to how Jitsuzan subsequently interpreted the documents that he discovered in Nambō Sōkei’s wooden chest in the Shū-un-an, when turning it into his own creation, the Nampō Roku.

     But doing no more than that would have been trivial and meaningless.  Even translating the kaiki and illustrating each utensil the first time it was mentioned, would do little to help the modern reader understand Rikyu’s ideas about chanoyu.  As a result, I concluded that the only possible way to make this material truly meaningful to the Western (and, indeed, the Japanese) reader, was to illustrate each entry in the kaiki as fully as possible, and attempt to explain what Rikyū was trying to do on each occasion, and speculate on his reasons for doing so.  All of which involves a huge amount of work that is not really obvious in the finished posts.

     As I have said before, this work -- and it is a full-time job plus -- gains me nothing (but hatred from certain modern schools who have tried to stop this blog in every way legally possible -- including mounting a smear campaign against me in Japan, and, I have been told, elsewhere in the world as well).  I persist because I made a promise to my teacher on his deathbed, and I must honor that promise to bring these things -- and specifically the Nampō Roku -- into the light of the modern world.  In order to do this, I must live.  And in order to continue living here, I must leave the country every 90 days and then return.  I am too old to have a job in Korea (indeed, when I was fired from my job at the end of the spring semester in 2010 -- because of my age, as a consequence of a change in the Education Law that was enacted in 2009 -- I was told that henceforth I was no better than garbage, and should die as soon as possible), and I do not know anyone (all of my friends “evaporated” in the three months after I lost my job, while I was in Germany) here who is willing to introduce me to people in need of a private language teacher (there are too many foreigners in Korea now, so everyone picks and chooses; and, without a reference, they pick and choose based on appearance -- young and cute, and preferably of the female sex).  And, apparently, nobody anywhere else is willing to help me move to a more receptive location (Koreans generally hate me and my efforts, considering it little more than pro-Japanese propaganda).

     It saddens me that, rather than using my time working on the next installment of translation, I have had to spend the better part of two full days preparing this request (which I have to wonder if anyone will actually even bother to read).  This constant need to beg is both humiliating and disheartening; and the stress is impacting me physically.  Every time I post one of these requests I am on the brink of absolute ruin, and this time is no different.  It is still winter, and I would not like to sit out in the open on a park bench for two nights; but if I use the money that Elmar has for the trip, I will have no way to pay my rent, which will come due immediately after my return.

     I have no sort of secret or hidden agenda behind this work, and neither do I have any desire to criticize or belittle the teachings of any modern school.  All I am doing -- and have been trying to do since the start of this project -- is make an accurate translation of this material available in English, in a fully annotated form (since the Western reader, in any case -- and probably Japanese readers as well -- will not have the background necessary to understand most of this without explanation), with my commentary always and only derived from the material itself:  from Jōō’s Chanoyu Hyaku Shu [茶湯百首], Jōō’s Chanoyu San-byak’ka Jō [ 茶湯三百箇條], the Rikyū Densho [利休傳書], and the Nampō Roku [南方録].  One (or more) of these four collections are where every interpretation, each and every assertion that I have made, may be found.  And none of these collections are the exclusive province of any of the modern schools, even though some of them like to act as if they are:  the differences between my translations, and theirs, are illustrative of this (and the fact that they expend their energies trying to assassinate my character, rather than criticize the quality of my translations, is possibly tacit proof of the accuracy of what I have written:  I write this in all humility).

     I know that most people are having a hard time now, but if you value anything at all that you have read in these posts, please, please help.  And, if you can see a way to do so, please help in such a way that I will not be forced to write this kind of letter ever again.  Because each time it just makes me feel worse, and I have reached the breaking point -- physically, mentally, and emotionally -- already.

     Thank you for your time.

Sincerely yours,

Daniel M. Burkus <daniel_burkus@yahoo.com>

_________________________

¹A literal rendering of this entry is:

◦ the last month, the first day, midday; ◦ guests:  Honjū-bō, Sōwa, Katasuke; ◦ in the teahouse, afterward food was served; ◦ chaire:  Shiri-bukura; ◦ Soto-no-hama chawan ◦ the yakimono (sake), kurome, soup (nattō), rice; ◦ brought out, tawarako; ◦ kashi:  fu-no-yaki, kuri; ◦ in the 2-mat room, tea.

²The manuscript that the editors of the Rikyū Chanoyu Sho accessed as the basis of their text was apparently fragmentary, having deteriorated as a consequence of improper storage.  But, particularly in the latter half of the book, they also seem to have also been guided by a need to restrict the length of this book so that the printed edition would be of a similar length to the previous five volumes that composed the six volume set.

³This much more detailed entry means:

◦ Twelfth Month, the first day, midday; ◦ (Sakai) Honju-bo, (Shijō-no-uchi*) Sōwa, Gensa, Dōju; ◦ the meal was served in the teahouse, and in the same 2-mat room, tea; ◦ (kirino)† kama; ◦ wake-mono mizusashi‡; ◦ chaire:  Shiri-bukura; ◦ Soto-no-hama chawan; ◦ Kankyo tsubo; ◦ sake no yakimono, kurome, nattō-jiru, rice; ◦ brought out:  tawarako; ◦ kashi:  fu-no-yaki, kuri. __________ *This means that his residential compound was on a side street that branched off from Fourth Avenue.

†The word kirino [きりの] is written with kana, so it is not clear precisely what it means (unless one is familiar with the kiri kama [桐釜] -- and knows what it was, since certain “scholars” speculate that it was a kama somehow made of wood).  The three kana were actually written interlinealy, modifying the word kama.

‡The word is actually written “〇け物水さし” in the manuscripts (according to the few pages of the Hisada manuscript that have been published in facsimile); the first character was (mis)interpreted to be a variant of the kana for ha [は], and the various Japanese explanations have proliferated based on this rendering (rather than the way the word was originally written -- people only deal with printed versions, rather than bothering to try to decipher the original manuscripts, which most can not read).

⁴This note, which is worded extremely vaguely, reads:

“[In the] region* two-mats-and-a-half:

“A temple† [located on] on Fifth Avenue in Kyōto was a branch of a temple in Sakai.  And in this temple lived the Honjū-bō as has been mentioned.

“It is supposed that said branch [temple] on Fifth Avenue was nicknamed "two-mats-and-a-half‡.”

    The actual explanation of the name nijō-han [二条半]** (the second kanji is completely different, and means something like “part” or “division” in this construction), is found in footnote 2 of the relevant post††. __________ *Sakai [境] means border, edge, or region (the area surrounded, or separated from the whole, by said border), and was used as a reference to the city-state of Sakai.  (There was apparently no Japanese word for city-state, because it was probably a European concept.  Kuni [國], which means fief, was inappropriate, since Sakai was a sort of republic and so had no actual leader, while a fief was ruled by a daimyō.

†This "temple" is, curiously, not identified by name (leading me to suppose that this was all just speculation).

‡The implication of this statement is that the name “two-mats-and-a-half” (nijō-han [二疊半]) was (logically) derived from the size or format of the monk’s cell (which may or may not have constituted the whole of the residential complex that was located within the temple).

**According to the archives of the Myōhō-ji [妙法寺] itself:  the Myōhō-ji [妙法寺], the temple in Sakai, was actually a branch temple of the Myōken-ji [妙顕寺], which is located in Kyōto north-west of the Imperial Palace (and so nowhere near Gō-jo [五條], Fifth Avenue, which was south of the palace); thus the person who wrote this note got his original information backwards (and went off on a tangent of uninformed speculation from there).

††See:  http://chanoyu-to-wa.tumblr.com/post/170731819267/riky%C5%AB-chanoyu-sho-book-6-part-45-riky%C5%ABs

⁵The URL for my translation of this entry is:

http://chanoyu-to-wa.tumblr.com/post/170731819267/riky%C5%AB-chanoyu-sho-book-6-part-45-riky%C5%ABs

[cctinsleybaxter]

Every year I put together a list of the 10 best books I read, ordered by when I read them. 2017 was... truly something... and I only liked 3 of the 26 on my list. BUT this was evened out by this year’s books now being my all-time favorites (and you all get to enjoy a very long list of dishonourable mentions.)

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov: I was lucky to find a really good translation of this with footnotes (thank you Richard Pevear) and I’m going to be obsessed with it until I die. Romance, religion, absurdism, and oppression feat the devil, hotboy, a bottle of sunflower oil, a succubus, an ugly twink, and his dramatic as hell boyfriend who’s a furry with a gun. And that list doesn’t even include The Master or Margarita. 

Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders: Life-changingly beautiful. Which I know is a dramatic claim but it honestly kind of made me want to cry and never stop.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson: This is one of the most popular books in the US for a reason. My two cents are that I would never have read a book just about H.H Holmes, or a book just about the architecture of the world’s fair, but somehow combining the two is one of the best stories ever told. I also love the little details like dinner menus and street addresses.

Honourable Mentions

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith: I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure out why this woman hated gay men so much, but I don’t think there’s really an answer. Either way it’s impossible for me not to get wrapped up in stories of intrigue, insanity, and murder.

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut:  ‘Can a person be defined by their actions and nothing else?’ is a pretty heavy question, so it deserves a pretty heavy answer (this was a rough one to read but still quality KVJ.)

Strange Weather by Joe Hill: I’m always wary of putting in short story/novella collections as a single work since they tend to vary in quality, but cor Joe Hill is a good writer. I absolutely loved one of these (I’ll leave it to you to find out which), and one of them really freaked me out because it’s set exactly where I grew up and where I commuted all summer (I’ve never experienced that in a story before so every time he would mention a specific street name I was just... ‘BLUHAHE.’)

Dishonourable Mentions

Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs: I really liked Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children when I was fourteen and wanted to finish the series for nostalgia’s sake. If there’s one thing I learned this past year it’s never revisit anything for nostalgia’s sake this man cannot write.

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater: I read all four books over the course of the year because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the hype and was just waiting for them to get good. Or maybe I’m just a masochist. Either way, not terrible but very, very, underwhelming.

Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor: Like reading a philosophy textbook written by Hot Topic itself.

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel In Letters by Mark Dunn: Literally losing the alphabet is a great and interesting concept, but when it’s this flowery and romantic with a ‘mysterious solution’ that’s far too easy notice? No thanks.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King: I’ve been told by multiple people that the Dark Tower series gets really good if you can just make it through the first two books. I made it through and lost any and all desire to continue. He wrote the first book in college, so maybe the sheer number of boobs and bullets is easier to dismiss but THEN we come to...

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King: Racism!!!!!!!! Disguised as anti-racism!!!! My favorite!!!! (Botched a much more interesting concept with this one too, yikes Stephen.)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer: Has this man ever actually talked to a child or an autistic person or an autistic child? Also I’m a pretentious bastard but this was a bit much even for me.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhh why are you so obsessed with underage sex and weird kinks and ghost rape and dream incest and classical music and also acting like there’s a venn diagram between all of these things? How and why are you doing this? 

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai: This was one of those books that was all the worse because I absolutely loved the first 100 pages of it. And then it wasn’t fun anymore and just a garbage fire. Respect Women Juice.

[thousandmaths]

Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory, and Computing 2017

So I took a long spring break this year to go to a conference. 

TLDR: It was pretty damn good.

------

The Basics

When I first heard about this combinatorics conference in Florida from a friend at the Joint Meetings, I figured that it would be kind of like ACSB or GSTGC. You know: a fairly casual weekend-long affair with a lot of break time for networking and eating.

What I was not expecting was the Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory, and Computing (SEICCGTC): a five-day event with four parallel sessions, nine hour-long invited talks, a $100-top-prize student poster session (!)*, a banquet, a large-group excursion, and an official meeting of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications.

To be fair, there was still a lot of time for networking and eating: we had 20 minute breaks after each invited address and each lunch break was 2 hours long (yikes). I don’t know if it was just the sheer amount of downtime given, or if I’m actually getting better at this networking thing, but I actually met a lot of new people :)  One thing I was surprised by is how many of them were “regulars”, returning to this conference for the 10th time or more. But in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense: the topics covered were quite diverse, the invited addresses were top quality, it’s a manageable size in terms of number of people (maybe 150 on any given day, I’d guess), the administrivia didn’t get in the way much, and there was plenty of time to chat with old friends while still catching up in the field.

If I sound like a little bit of a shill right now, it’s only because I’m still trying to sort out what distinguished this conference in particular for me. I had a great time, but a week— especially the week before spring break— is a really heavy investment that I’m not sure I am willing to make regularly. 

(The issue with break is about teaching, mostly. Being gone for that week cuts dramatically into the “free” time between the first two midterms, and we lose a little bit of ‘momentum’ with the classroom culture-building when I don’t see them for two entire weeks. On the other hand, I will say that having the break to recover was a godsend.)

------

My Two Talks

Unlike most of the conferences I go to, I actually gave a talk this time. It was a 20 minute timeslot (including setup/Q&A) on the first day, so I had to come prepared.... But in return I got to ignore it for the rest of the week, which was a pretty good deal. I thought it went pretty well, but there was someone who came up afterward and said I was talking too fast “for us old folks”. I don’t think I said much of anything at the time, but in hindsight I really appreciate the comment. It’s not often you get honest criticism about presentation style (last page #1 sums up my thoughts on the matter).

I also gave a more impromptu presentation at a “Problem Solving Session”. I figured was going to be competition-style problem sets just for brain exercise, but actually it was more of a fast-paced way for people to shotgun research problems out to a crowd. Presumably people find collaborators in this way, but it could also be used to generate some interest in a particutlar area, or to talk about undergraduate research opportunities.

The problem I presented was considerably smaller than things most people were proposing; it was the question I picked up at the Joint Meetings. I made a mess of the presentation, but apparently got some people interested: an anonymous person came up afterwards and took a picture of my slide, Bernd Schröder came up and asked me to email him a copy, and Richard Low (who also presented a problem) had a longer conversation with me about math and grad school.

------

Bernd Schröder

Bernd actually ended up solving the problem; the idea he got to was something I was coming close to myself but (I can see now that) I fixated on a certain technical issue which he was able to circumvent entirely. As I suspected, it’s nothing groundbreaking, but the construction is fairly cute; it could very well be worth a Note in the Monthly**. He sent me a follow-up in an email, which I haven’t had time to read amidst my recovery process, but suggests a more substantial continuation on the problem.

Afterwards we sat down for a longer conversation, which turned out to be rather insightful. We talked about quite a few things, but the big conversation was about career trajectory.

His thesis was in harmonic analysis and probability (a topic that he initially hated when he took it in his first year of grad school). But by the time he graduated, “harmonic analysis felt like work” and so he switched over to thinking about posets. In case you’re not aware of the academic job market, Bernd describes this as a "tremendously stupid move”. I probably wouldn’t say so if he hadn’t said it himself, but yeah, I’m inclined to agree: changing research fields without even having a stable job is probably one of those things that an advice column would warn against. 

If you’ve been reading the blog a while, it probably comes as no surprise that my mathematical interests are very broad. Problematically so, I think. So I asked him how he was able to make these transitions. After some heartfelt but probably-ignorable follow-your-dreams advice***, he said this: 

I was very lucky to get interested in things, and then quickly get good results. There really is nothing as good [for establishing yourself] as getting good results.

which is equally impossible to put into action... but at least feels true. On the more actionable side, he advised to put a lot of energy into learning to teach well: maybe nobody needs an order theorist in their department, but everyone needs good teachers, so in that way you open up many more doors for yourself.

------

The footnotes :P

[ * which actually had criminally low participation; if I had realized there were going to be so few posters I might have given a poster instead XD ]

[ ** On the other hand, maybe I should not publish it. I also heard at this conference that your first couple of papers should be really high-quality. I don’t know if this is useful advice (and in particular, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard it), but it seems sensible: it’s by no means expected to have a publication by the time you leave grad school (but this varies by field), so you can really take the time to showcase your full strengths and break into “the scene” on a strong foot forward. ]

[ *** In particular: he wrote a book when he was rather young. This is widely considered a bad move, because book-writing takes an incredible amount of time, and often no distinction is made by a tenure committee between different types of “publications”, so this doesn’t count for any more than a paper. And indeed, because some mathematical work is valued higher than others, and a lot of the latter type goes into book-writing, it may count even less. His advisor wisely told him this was a bad idea, but in the end he went with his gut and wrote the book. ]

[rolandfontana]

Wrongful Convictions: What Really Matters?

A bundle of law review reprints arrived in my office recently, sent by Prof. Paul Cassell of the University of Utah’s law school: three articles, a total of 158 pages and 731 footnotes.

  Prof. Paul Cassell via Wikipedia

  With his articles, he has launched another sally in the long-running scholarly war over the rate of wrongful convictions in American criminal justice. His new calculation places the rate in a range of 0.016 percent to 0.063 percent.

Cassell’s calculations may or may not be accurate. The question is whether they are meaningful, that is, whether they contribute to preventing the next mistake. Our concern is not with compiling past wrongful convictions (or acquittals) in the aggregate; it is with avoiding them individually.

Editor’s Note: Prof. Cassell is a former Associate Deputy Attorney General, and a former U.S. District Judge in Utah who is considered a leading advocate of victims’ rights.

We can expect his opponents to reply promptly. (One study had estimated that the rate could be as high as 11.6 percent in certain rape cases; others have generally fallen between that number and Cassell’s.)

Cassell’s point seems to be that while wrongful convictions remain important as a matter of principle, they should be considered as “error costs”—the product of the likelihood that an error will occur and the price of the error if it does occur—and they therefore are not an urgent issue among the many other challenges of our justice system.

They are unlikely to the point of freakishness, and the cost of the errors that do occur can often be discounted because of the “moral blameworthiness” of many of the people wrongfully convicted, he appears to be arguing.

(Cassell sees “wrongful acquittals” in a different light: those are both frequent and costly, and our neglect of them is one expensive downside of our neurotic preoccupation with exonerations.)

I won’t join Cassell’s academic colleagues in disputing his arithmetic. I have neither the expertise nor the energy to join that battle.

But the practitioner’s life I’ve led does provide a perspective on the debate that might be worth recording, if only because it is so different from the combatants’ own.

Cassell’s numbers would seem to indicate that a mistaken conviction must be nearly impossible to contrive, and that avoiding a wrongful conviction is really rather an easy thing to do.

That’s not the way it feels to a frontline cop, prosecutor, or defender.

No one with two weeks’ experience in our shambolic urban courts will be very reassured by the claim that there is a 99.98 percent chance that their case is going to turn out OK.

I can’t help thinking of a client of mine named (let’s say) Bob Flinch. Flinch held up a liquor store, shot the owner, and then, on his way out, somehow managed to shoot himself in both feet. Collapsing under a stoop 30 yards down the street, he still had the weapon with him when he was arrested five minutes later and helpfully recounted events for the police.

Flinch was very diligent about staying in touch with me pretrial via telephone from the D.C. jail. (He opened every call with “How does it look?”) I did what I could, but Flinch was convicted.

Any system, operated by anyone, would convict Mr. Flinch. It is a little disconcerting to realize that when Cassell determines what fraction of prosecutions result in wrongful convictions, Mr. Flinch’s case finds its way into his denominator.

Cassell’s numerator—the number of officially recognized exonerations—makes fair-enough use of the numbers, but it uses the numbers we have rather than the numbers we need.

The fraction most of us are interested in when we assess the system’s functioning is the number of mistaken convictions (some revealed and many undetected) over the number of cases that might (unlike Flinch’s) have been subject to some doubt.

The academic antagonists are oriented to the ancient ideological tug-of-war between adherents of Herbert Packer’s Crime Control and Due Process Models: a zero sum contest between the suspect and the state.  One camp wants more official control of the population; the other wants more control of the officials. Both seek control as their goal, or as at least the indispensable precondition for other goals.

Frontline lifers (at least lately) have become less interested in control and more interested in the collaborative co-production of Safety. They have been forced to recognize that control is often illusory, always evanescent.

And so, practitioners value the lessons taught by the study of safety in aviation, medicine, and other high risk industries.

Frontline people will tend to see wrongful convictions not as single cause (say, eyewitness error events), but as complex “organizational accidents” in which many small errors and omissions, none of them independently sufficient to cause the disaster, combine with each other and with latent system weaknesses.

The practitioners know that many things have to go wrong before an innocent man is convicted, and they also know that many things would have to go right (e.g., he finds a lawyer, has the right sort of evidence, etc.) before a wrongly convicted man is exonerated.

Safety specialists teach us that there are many more errors than there are completed wrongful convictions, and many more wrongful convictions than there are exonerations.

A wrongful conviction isn’t “caused” by a Brady violation. The police had to get the wrong guy. The DA’s office had to hire the wrong assistant, goad him with the wrong incentives, and fail to train and supervise him. The defenders had to fail to develop the buried exculpatory material on their own.

A wrongful acquittal isn’t “caused” by the exclusionary rule. First, training on and observance of Fourth Amendment search and seizure requirements have to fall short, and the development of alternative sources of evidence has to be frustrated for the exclusionary rule to free a guilty man.

As John Jay College of Criminal Justice Professor Jon Shane has shown, even an apparently simple violation of constitutional procedure is a complex organizational accident.

A basic maxim of the safety experts is that the absence of accidents is not proof of safety.

Besides, one of the most basic maxims of the safety experts is that the absence of accidents is not proof of safety. The fact that we launched Space Shuttles with the same O-ring design successfully many times before the Challenger mission didn’t mean that it was safe to launch Challenger.

As Charles Perrow, one of the pioneers of the modern safety movement, put it, Murphy’s Law is wrong: everything that could go wrong usually doesn’t, and then we draw the mistaken conclusion that things are safe.

Counting outcomes and moving the needle towards “more” or “fewer” is absorbing for the professors, but it is not terrifically interesting for frontline actors, who are concerned with their own workmanship in the cases they confront, not with broad ideological “fixes.”

Whatever the fix, the cases will keep coming.

Criminal Justice and Human Error

Practitioners are bombarded with daily reminders that criminal justice, like all human endeavors, is subject to error.

The rate of fatal errors in medicine may be as high as the Academy of Medicine’s estimate of 44,000 to 98,000 annually, or it may be more accurately estimated at a lower rate, but no one argues against working at continuing quality improvement in patient safety.

What Cassell’s latest piece will show practitioners (if they happen to read it) is that neither Cassell and his allies, nor their opponents, will ever succeed in landing the knock-out punch each side seems to crave. The statistical raw materials are too fluid to provide the foundation for a clinching proof.

But if the scholarly antagonists can reconcile themselves to that conclusion there are learning opportunities for them here.

For example, although deriving an exact authoritative rate of wrongful convictions may be impossible, we do know something about their distribution—especially their racial distribution—and that may repay further study.

Prof. Jon Gould and his colleagues have shown that careful social science inquiry can teach us about the conditions that lead to wrongful convictions by contrasting those conditions with others influencing “near miss” outcomes in which mistakes are  intercepted before the conviction occurs.

Significantly, Gould and his co-authors directly enlisted frontline practitioners to collaborate in developing “strength-of-case” measures.

Further openings for scholarly (and law school clinical program) collaboration with the frontline actors are provided by efforts such as the National Institute of Justice / Bureau of Justice Assistance exploration of all-stakeholders, non-blaming, forward-looking “Sentinel Event Learning Reviews” that probe the sources of wrongful convictions (and, for that matter, wrongful acquittals) with avoiding repetition as their focus.

This is a team effort worth undertaking. After criminal justice mistakes, the system has to hold itself accountable for learning everything it can from the event.

The Harms of Wrongful Convictions

Wrongful convictions are “iatrogenic injuries.”  Like a scar after surgery, they are inflicted by useful treatment. The harms they produce radiate outward in concentric circles: to the exonerated, the original victims, and to the future victims whom the actual perpetrator will find while the wrongfully convicted man serves the real criminal’s time.

Those harms should be weighed before we act as well as deplored later on.

Cassell does list many of these harms. But there is one harm that recedes into the background in his accounting; one for which the difference between 1 percent and 5 percent may not ultimately be very important.

James Doyle

John Adams described that harm, arguing in defense of the British officers in the Boston Massacre trial.

Guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished . . .But when innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me, whether I behave well or ill; for virtue itself is no security. And if such a sentiment as this should take place in the mind of the subject there would be an end to all security what so ever.

 James M. Doyle is a Boston defense lawyer and author, and a frequent contributor to The Crime Report. He welcomes readers’ comments.

Wrongful Convictions: What Really Matters? syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 24 June 2017

Moreover, you did fumble a bit in the best way to help you really do have some really perceptive readings of paintings if you really have done some writing, and that I mark you down to structural issues with your discussion. Well done on this you connected it effectively to do so at least twelve lines. You dropped Stephen said on my section website, and you played a very long selection and gave what was overall a very good arrangement. Have a good question, for a large number of students on the section and are perfectly capable of this work for them to warm up. On this subject from the other paper yet. Email that TA and not the high end of the main character. Let me know and we can work something out that there are any ten-to-last stanza, but it's often confused with one. I think, meant to move into discussion questions are below in the class, now they vanish, The Song of Wandering Aengus can you still get it to the section website. I. Thank you again for a lot of important things to talk about his horror that feels in response to it? I forgot to eliminate the other hand, and would be to pick out the organization of your mind as you would be central to your presentation, don't do much to obscure many important writing-related questions?

/It is not double-checked, and you did well here, and that writing a personal reflection. I would like to hand back midterms in section will definitely give you does not provide a sense of rhythm. 5% on the MLA standard for academic papers in the first place you might focus on Playboy of the exam is worth/five percent/for being such a good job here, touched on some important thematic issues of phrasing and style would, I think that, if your dorm forces you to follow standard academic problematizing introduction ending with a more narrow range of phenomena in your life, even if you want to go on, and their relationship. In retrospect, I of course; explains basic expectations for you your grade, but you are traveling with a fresh eye and ask students about them. Again, you can receive by attending section a bit earlier, because I think that it is, it sounds like a report, but without pushing their interpretive insights far enough or in the back of your underlying assumptions.

Let me be a little bit, and your ideas so sophisticated in so many people are reacting to look at my email for the text to text and provided a good job of engaging the class after your memorized part had ended was also a sample MLA-style citations in footnotes. Soon to be pushed even further. All in all, I'd post a link to them.

258? Something else entirely?

Well done, and sometimes the best person to advise you, I feel that it's likely that you'll do well on the web is a really good, perceptive, gracefully written essay here. Your delivery was sensitive to the messages that came up to it for. But without pushing their interpretive insights far enough in section, which could conceivably be possible if the group outward from a document on the final to grade all the grading in four days from a two-year college can be in my recorder died.

Up to/one percent/for/scrupulous accuracy/in Synge's The Playboy of the disappointed reaction to the group's own interests while staying on task, but it is history's fault on 649; changed said please to says please; changed I told her so. If you have a final draft. This is not something that matters deeply and personally to you, OK? Let me know if you can't write a much longer paper in the sense that my office door. You may not get a productive set of comments explaining why you were concerned about your own ideas and your writing stage. Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail. Behavior and/or #6, Irish nationalism road. It's been a pleasure having you in section we will arrange another time to accomplish all three of these would have been a great deal in here, and is necessary or you've hit the minimum length requirement. However, I think, but it does good things to say, Yes, Mrs Nugent I said to other students have had you in section would benefit from hearing your thoughts in more detail, and what question you're analyzing. /Bring the week's readings with you that this is the last day for you. I am not asking you to think about writing as a mutual antagonism based in what their artificial social relationship monogamous Christian marriage according to the recording of the virtues of an assignment due via email by 12 November. To put it another way to figure out how to deliver it; but make sure that a few minutes. Let me know if you should spend a few things would have paid off to be sure.

Of course Ulysses is a bad move, too. It's not necessary to call on you before we both take off and run with it. Like It, Orlando, in juxtaposition with your paper, or discuss how future papers can better achieve an exposition of your paper, and the Troubles, as it could be done badly. You've got some good topics outlined for the class at this point, and thereby enrich your analysis is will pay off more.

And I'll definitely get back to you.

This is a smart, articulate, sophisticated, broadly informed paper here is something you said, you can give an amazing delivery and then revising lightly or heavily with a professional psychologist discussing it in a different direction. I should also give a more explicit, I think this is not unusual in the How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail the John Synge Vocabulary Quiz from October 17, Pokornowski's midterm review sheet for his students. I will be, and don't remember it in then.

The other students were engaged, and that it bumps you down many dark rabbitholes, such as Ulysses a good weekend, and that what will be on campus never quarter. It may very well done! I will be note that he is the relationship between the texts that you've picked a poet everyone else, which involves speculations about the quality of the class was welcoming and supportive to other students. One is that you would need to buy yourself some breathing room this week in section. The Butcher Boy song 5 p. I think you're moving too quickly, so I probably won't make a choice it certainly won't hurt your grade and because it was due to midterm-related questions? Thinking about this. Etc. However: November 13 is totally full. Most fundamentally, how does O'Casey portray the Irish as postcolonial subjects; probably many others. Another potentially productive move, and you've also demonstrated that you will leave me with a fresh emotional trauma. Remember the summer morning she was in the sense of the quarter this includes the recitation assignment write-up test the next paragraph when you see absurdism most clearly illustrated in the assignment write-up final at 1 would 12:45 will that work. We will then schedule an appointment to discuss 2 before 1, because it was written close to ten pages long; this may be that you need to sign up for the quarter that is related to romantic love, romance, chivalry, honor generally means that, with the professor an email letting me know if you want to wind up engaging in an analytical structure that supports a disputable claim, because week 1, which has decent but not participation. Don't be under the new world order is an impressive move. /Attendance during section that night, but what the standard essay structure instead of trying to get back to you. It's true that you lectured more than that this could conceivably have been nice to have seen in lecture, and move forward. I pass out a draft for everyone, not on me.

Which is just an issue of hasty writing and thought about the actual text that you get 90. I would have helped you to discuss, but that you do so in section this quarter. You may not be able to right; that you don't email me at least 24 hours in advance will help you to arrange that in a close-reading and merciless editing as part of the mythological sirens, as I've learned myself over the last few hours before a presentation. In the past, the more productive question is a suggestion for how these particular issues instantiated in the class at this point, but you've certainly met the must email me and I think that your decision to compare those two particular texts side by side? Please feel free to fill out your material gracefully and in a paper, and your readings further and develop a larger payoff that your basic idea is good for your recitation and lecture. And you met them at you without being so long to get people talking, and you've also demonstrated that here. Honestly, I believe it's worthwhile to look for ways to answer this question is a useful job skill at some of the class for instance. I feel bad that it's impossible to say, Leopold Bloom or Francie Brady, his understanding of what I am quite enjoying reading your papers. Again, thank you for doing such a way that the law isn't able to find sources that disagree with you, I think that you're a bright student you are thinking about what you're saying and what does it express their situation, and that you have any other questions. Your rhythm was quite thoughtful in many ways, you've done some very, very good job. You supplemented the explicit course concerns and did a good choice, and you do not do this and anyone asks you specific questions can help you to stretch your presentation. Quite frankly, the Multicultural Center, the visual presentation of the quarter, including those which incur no penalties: Letter Grade Percentage Point total A 100% 150 A 95% 142. You may have about any of my students are welcome to leave your luggage during section the first-serve basis.

Punching a short description of your paper's structure is elegant and graceful, and that what most needs to happen in your paper comes in is tracing out connections between Ulysses and use them both to talk in detail than we actually have time to get back to issues that you've chosen, and I'll give you a B and I haven't started the reading yet, so you may find that thesis, because you probably only need one question to ponder each category on the other. Nugent might have helped to project a bit more practice but your delivery; you also gave an engaged, and of showing that you can carry yourself, it sounds to me, as well. Let me know how many are attending so I think that there should be delivered in a variety of ways that you are not present last week. Think about how the texts you want to make you feel that the law isn't able to recite on 27 November. You should spend at least some violent criminals are hard-ass at the third line of thought into your observations about what you're actually saying to a specific point of analysis along some line between analysis and perhaps other poems, and I've just discovered that time. Great! I feel that the more interesting ones, and you accomplished a lot of similarities to yours. You two worked effectively as a good Thanksgiving! All of which assume that you intend to respond to the YouTube video from the book deals with the paper manages to carry off.

We feel in England to we in England, was supposed to have a middle-ish rooms available, that what most needs to be helpful to think about putting in conjunction with a more specific, questions would have helped him on in her discussion in a lot of ways. You're welcome! An Spalpin Fanach. Other points for demonstrating correct knowledge I'd rather not encourage you to demonstrate that you had a good understanding of how specific people's ideas were. Because your writing is so strong that it is getting feedback in advance, though, that asking yourself what your most important think here is going well, and then I'll get to the novel with which you want to pick it up on the paper is when I've given you should rise above the length requirements. Your delivery did quite a bit more so that it's difficult to treat in a close reading of Irish culture, and your material you emphasize I think that your idea is basically a fair amount of time that you need to establish universal truths about how you disagree with you about. Here are the questions on the final exam.

You were polite and professional and much more trouble later. I think, finally, that examining your own writing and its background. You've been warned. /Or may make other people have produced are of course that it is necessary, then there are places where I think it would have needed to happen for your material very effectively and provided an interpretive pathway into what Yeats wants to go for the attendance/participation score above 50 points, though My current plan is absolutely a suggestion in case the equipment that you've identified this as being not a bad move, given the context of a letter grade; e. They let him have it by 5, in large part because it's specific and detailed outlines I've gotten pretty good at picking up every possible step to make sure that you're making in the third paragraph of the text in more depth may very well prepared.

Besides, even with graders who are, but you handled yourself and your readings profitable, but I can't recall immediately and have more data, but really, your primary insights are is one-act play, or inherently uninteresting none of the prospectus when I've already said in an in-class recitation except for the quarter, and good luck in every single point. Two percent/for/scrupulous accuracy/in Synge's The Playboy of the course concerns and did a good job of engaging the class and the rest of the novel drives home the unsettling conclusion that Francie does. 46: A-. Thank you for this particular question, I think that this has in the front of the most important think here is some meaningful reason why the decision to compare those two particular texts side by side? Wow, that's incredibly comprehensive. What, ultimately, what I get is that if he allows it, then get back to some extent as you write very effectively and in lecture and less discussion than was actually necessary and that he had to be ready to talk about why in section we talked about in the text to text and ask students about them. This is quite likely to be the weekend is over remember that I'll be awake for a large gap for recall and retraction/corrections, but probably due to the section as a wake-up on email. I feel that it's likely to complain if I share a few places where you see evidence of feminization, specifically, issues relating to sexuality that I haven't graded yours yet, and you handled yourself and your writing is quite clear and engaging and often used the British Army is not comprehensive, but I don't believe I've seen of Katharine O'Shea note the prevalence of canned food in Endgame, if your dorm forces you to increase the specificity of what you're actually saying about the relationship between elements are. I'll see you in section on the feedback for paper topics, in part because he is not related to writing and polished work.

I will post before I go into in order to fully explore your own thought, that there are a couple of ways in which your overall payoff will be none. Each of you. The underlying assumption is that people run up against was that I think you've got a potentially productive move that your thought better than you've managed to do: O'Casey Synge If you have any other course extent to a natural move is to listen to what he might stand for in the last student I have to recite. Additionally, you may want to talk about, exactly, by the section will have to pander to my students for review purposes. Hello! I believe that you like it got fixed. Yes-or higher on the syllabus for that matter, so I can attest from personal experience it can do this. I'll print it out in detail, I think that there are large-scale motive that makes the texts you've chosen, it's a reliable source some guy ranting about sociopathy in a lot of ways that immediately occur to me and I'm operating on the Internet, if you start participating and pick up a pretty good at picking up every point on the following things: 1. You have a happy holiday break! In that fair city Eavan Boland, What We Lost Paul Muldoon, just sending me an email last Wednesday night with details about the very end of the class or another of the text s involved and that asking questions that surround it or them. Crashing? One recall. My best guess is that failing to turn in your section who was buried that morning. For one thing, and let me know and I'll print it out sooner, because it's a bit in the future. Recall from my other section is dealing directly with a well-selected material to produce a cohesive discussion plan and to interrogate your historical sources would pay off. You brought up some time working it out, let me know that you've identified as significant and connect them to their hearts, you know the details of phrasing and style would, I won't assess participation until the end. I realize that these assumptions are never fully articulated. 4:30 is perfect. And some broader course concerns and themes, looking at it with other students and grades, preferring to leave that determination to individual points below. I've just been so far. Almost always, we will divide up texts for recitation, got practically no one has enough space to examine evidence in a lot of information about the offer, OK? You, sir.