La la la

Okay. So I am fairly certain that whatever I put my mind to I can accomplish.
Now I should worry about whether I can actually put my mind to anything in the first place. 

Why do you travel?

To see how wide and wondrous the world is, but also how familiar it can be and how humanity has so much in common.
To experience the new and unfamiliar, to challenge my own comfortable assumptions, to make myself uncomfortable.
To learn the meaning of hospitality and friendship, to learn from and about those around me, in a deep, significant, and meaningful way.

Inchoate Thoughts

Let me speak frankly and bluntly. There are some things that have been bugging me every so often, and maybe if I put them out here in the open---so to speak---I will have a better grip on them and eventually figure out how to deal with them more productively.  Most of this is going to be not very coherent, possibly, and disjointed, and involves a probably inane amount of navel-gazing---so in case I have actually decided to hit "Publish" on this one and you are reading this, be warned that it may not be all that exciting a read. But anyway:
First, possibly foremost: I am terrified of the future. I have no idea what will happen after I graduate. It feels like jumping off a cliff with no inkling of what is ahead or below me, with no parachute, jet-pack, trampoline, or safety net of any kind to catch me. Sometimes I think I'll be fine as long as I keep working and look to see where I'm going. Other times (usually after I talk to the parents) it seems like the path I choose is going to be terribly difficult and that there is every chance that I will fail no matter how hard I try. I don't think that's true; or at least, I hope that's not true. Rationally I figure that it's probably not true, but there's always a nagging shadow of doubt somewhere in the corner of your mind that says, not quite "the naysayers are right", but "what if they're right? What will you do then? I think there's a small but significant chance that they are. Shouldn't you be doing something about this?" Does that sound like someone in denial? Maybe. Maybe it's really saying "the naysayers are right" but the rest of your mind is fighting that notion as hard as it can.
Which brings me to number two: I am perpetually haunted by a mix of extreme nihilism and existentialism, something which is tremendously liberating but also terribly draining. What is the meaning of life? There is none, is my usual answer. You can choose either to be a pawn of your evolutionary instincts, an instrument of biology; or you can define yourself by what you do. But---then it's probably a natural question to ask---what is the point of defining your own purpose in life when nobody else will share in it or affirm it. And thus "defining your own purpose", usually, devolves into defining yourself by your work, by what others think of it, and/or even by what others think of you. At which point you open yourself up to all kinds of stresses and upsetting things that should not disturb you so unduly. But then again maybe that's not all a bad thing. Or maybe you should just learn to be more at peace with these things which you now think of as stressors pure and simple. Maybe you just need to broaden your sense of purpose in life, but also to become more comfortable with failure, or perceived failure.
One reason why you're not is the persistent and recurring perception that you "cannot afford to fail" any more. Maybe that's true. More often it's not, and in these circumstances it does not help you at all to think that way (it's probably not very helpful even when it is true ... ) Sometimes you need to do some worrying, but afterwards you should throw the worrying out the window, set your mind at peace, and just go. If you fail---when you fail---then you'll have time to figure things out and try and solve the problem. In the meantime that worrying is preventing you from doing as much as you could, and causing you unnecessary stress.
These thoughts usually intensify---and present themselves in the form of mild panic attacks---around the bits of free time during summer, and/or after long calls with your parents. They usually go away during the semester, more than anything because they get buried by immense amounts of work and busyness. That is unpleasant in its own sort of way, but also nice, in a way. But it also means that you aren't actually addressing these questions and concerns, but only deferring them to a later time, when they will present themselves even more urgently.
I know my parents raise these issues out of genuine concern. Sometimes I question whether that concern is as much for their own future financial health as for me, but perhaps these questions are best left unasked and unaddressed. In any case never have I doubted that they do care for me, and they have really been very supportive if you think about it. Still ... zaten ... however reasonable I find their proposals, some part of me just categorically refuses to adopt them. Yes, they have more experience; but not all of that experience necessarily applies to your world today. Maybe ... maybe you just need to accept that, and its consequences, whole-heartedly, and work on that basis. At the moment it's more like you are in two minds: on the one hand you disagree with what your parents say and consequently part of your mind refuses to hear anything of it; on the other hand you fundamentally respect what your parents have to say and that feeds the voice in your mind that continually questions your own decisions and plans. Maybe what you should do is to take what you hear from your parents as good but not infallible advice, and weigh it objectively with and against everything else you see and hear from everyone else. Stop taking it as dogma that you must accept or fight, and start thinking of it as advice that you receive and weigh.
Talking to the parents also feels draining because they never quite talk to me as an adult. With Mom the nagging never stops; with Dad it takes the form of never quite agreeing with my opinions or even agreeing to disagree. It's annoying, frankly. But more and more I think of these things as just things I have to work around. It's not that they have malicious intentions or anything ... just that parents will always be parents ... 

Exactly what you said about eating tacos

One day I will make my compromises with reality.

Serinkanlı

"But to remain indifferent is unjustifiable"
"甚至有些时候，沉默成了对悲剧事件最好的回应。"
Interesting contrast.

Boom

Is it bad that my first thought upon reading the details of the Boston explosions was "it doesn't look that bad"? But in any case. To those who lost life or limb, or loved ones, my thoughts are with you. 

Translation Exercise #FFFFE7

Google Translate takes "hayirli" to "somebody help please".
(It translates hayırlı with the dotless ı's correctly though.)

Translation Exercise #43

Karpuz yiyesim geldi.
我～要～吃～西～瓜～！

So many questions to which there is no answer (Response to Tufte)

But yet we must answer them, no? Maybe not conclusively or definitely, but we must have some sort of answer so that we don't stand still or grope around blind.
Surely you know this, because you have been a social scientist before, because you are clearly more than just an armchair academic.
Or maybe you were just trying to say that this sort of ineffability, so to speak, will always be present, all the more acutely so in the social sciences; that we should always be aware of this and that this should be spur us on to be more rigorous, more exacting, and more creative in our methods and thinking ...

[Not enough Chinese to translate :/]

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West"

Φιλαδέλφεια

Remember how utterly dead Trenton, or at least the neighborhood where the Social Security office, was? Boarded up houses, no commerce except for discount corner shops and liquor stores, and hardly anyone on the streets; it seemed like the buildings were there not to be lived in and inhabited, but just to provide a picturesque background for all the cars zooming past on their way to other, more interesting places.

A lot of Philadelphia felt the same, somehow. Maybe not so much University City, which was well and alive alright. But so much of Center City even, the blocks near Front Street and Penn's Landing, felt devoid of life.  Even around City Hall, where there were crowds milling around, it felt like the people were only passing through, that there was nothing in this most central part of the city to hold their attention. There is a huge transit concourse running down part of the length of Market Street, I gather; but it doesn't have nearly as many shops or restaurants or buskers or activity as it could have: most of it seemed to be just huge, hulking empty walkways. The roaring of cars was a much more evident sign of human activity than anything human: there were major interstates placed prominently by the rivers.

The whole city gave off this air of neglect and decay. Sure the bits around Independence Hall were nice and 30th Street Station was very stately indeed, but beyond that it didn't feel like very much of a city at all.

Can a city like this, one which doesn't quite bring together people and ideas and communities through interaction and discourse and common experience, even claim to be a city? Surely a city is more than just two million people clumped into a relatively tight space but not really living together in any meaningful sense.

Then again really some of that interaction and discourse does happen, even if it's not as common or fluent as one might wish it to be. And there're also other aspects to it as well I guess. Stadtluft macht frei. Even if a city isn't quite serving some of the functions one might ideally want it to, maybe it can still achieve other things.

I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool urban resident, but now after two-and-a-half years in Princeton I've become rather more indifferent it seems. Then again university towns like this one share some significant similarities with large cities: there's always something going on, especially if you're a student there, and the large numbers of diverse and transient denizens (i.e. students) re-create to some extent the open, dynamic social environment of large metropolitan cities. So maybe I am still an incurable city-lubber, just that I've managed to find the city in Princeton ...

The Hospital, ca. 1750

Seriously ill poor people went to the hospital to die. The beds were arranged so that patients could see the altar and join in the celebration of daily mass.
The nuns administered medicines made from herbs gathered in the wild or cultivated in the convent gardens to treat patients or relieve their suffering in their last days.

from the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa

Call it Douglas Adamism

"Life is meaningless. Let's go for lunch." Or, the guy with the beret.

Probably the most accurate description of my life philosophy. 

Short answer: No

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:46 PM, Jason Steinberg <jssix@princeton.edu> wrote:

Combine Matt and Jane's responses and you get me!

On 1/9/13 2:37 PM, Jane Wang wrote:

I'm not on campus, but hope you guys have fun studying and good luck on the take-home! 

- Jane

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 7:50 PM, Matt Superdock <msuperdo@princeton.edu> wrote:

I already took it, but I would have loved to study with you guys!

Matt

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:08 PM, Alan Chang <acsix@princeton.edu> wrote:

Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a nice break!

Are any of you back? If so, do you want to study together for the combinatorics final? (Assuming that you haven't done it already!)

It is what it is

Es ist Unsinn
sagt die Vernunft
Es ist was es ist
sagt die Liebe 

Es ist Unglück
sagt die Berechnung
Es ist nichts als Schmerz
sagt die Angst
Es ist aussichtslos
sagt die Einsicht
Es ist was es ist
sagt die Liebe 

Es ist lächerlich
sagt der Stolz
Es ist leichtsinnig
sagt die Vorsicht
Es ist unmöglich
sagt die Erfahrung
Es ist was es ist
sagt die Liebe

---Erich Fried 

AWW YEAH

hows dat JP going
haha


its 23 pages


HOLY SHIT

The Overtakelessness of those

Who have accomplished Death,
Majestic to me beyond
The majesties of Earth.
The soul her “not at Home”
Inscribes upon the flesh,
And takes her fair aerial gait
Beyond the hope of touch.

--Emily Dickinson 

From Bonfire and Housewarming

Why all that cheering over a destructive act? Anlamıyorum. And I wonder what those firemen think ... or the town thinks. That bonfire on New Year's Eve in Reykjavik I understood. This one ... well I guess I understand, just slightly less so. Shrug. Maybe it does matter to some (not insignificant number of) people. Maybe that's all that matters.

Another thought ... no-one ever teaches children (or you) about these things called cultural references or frames of reference, things that people take for granted and base their interactions off of ... but what if your upbringing gave you a framework and a set of norms which were both here and there, and hence neither here nor there? Then what?

Then you become a perpetual outsider, embraced neither hither nor yon. There is nothing to be done---you can abandoned your identity to conform to something more familiar (to others); or you can learn to become comfortable with being an outsider. Most people aren't hostile (though some are); they're just not as warm or accepting. But with enough time and effort, you'll find enough warmth to survive on. And then stoic resignation will see you through the rest.

With severe audience

Mencken was brave enough ... to embrace a view of public affairs without uplift, without virtue, without purpose. He knew all efforts at betterment are ultimately shabby, inane, narcissistic, or brutal ...

Grader's Cakewalk