Thesis deadline minus 16 hours

"At some point in the next 16 hours I'll write my results chapter ... meaning I'll run my code, generate my results, and write about them."

Well, godspeed.

Lulz

All these e-mails---it feels like a denial-of-service attack against my brain.

Micah M. White 

Death has become him

Fun fact of the day: De'Ath is an actual surname.

Foundationlessness

Ne me demandez pas qui je suis et ne me dites pas de rester le même

(L'archéologie du savoir, Michel Foucault) 

This is not new

Not at all. At least you deal with it a little better now, I do think.

But the advice you gave yourself then holds every bit as true. And maybe I should add: be nimble. Learn to embrace your lightness. To count your blessings and treasure them, but also to let go. Because you will probably have to do a lot of that in the years to come ...

Protip #1566

While it is probably true that you should stop over-analysing the living daylight out of all your thoughts and impulses, those instincts in moderation also serve you pretty well in general. You should listen to them and stop freaking out.

Protip #5772

When in excessive doubt, you're probably just being a coward.

Meh

You aren't just free to dispose of your time as you want to.
Well, at the moment, I am. Maybe I won't be in the future. But that's simply not true now. Yes to some extent I'm being "childish" and "irresponsible". But really more than anything I'm hearing this. Have you never heard of the concept of a graduation trip? Jeez.
There is so little structure!
Yes, and I'm comfortable with that. You should be too. At the end of the day I have anchor points, and that's all that's needed.
You're wasting your time.
The time is mine to waste. Don't you worry about it. (Also I do actually plan to do stuff in between. I just haven't told you about it yet ... I guess I should.)
I guess at the end of the day it boils down to this: my life is not yours to direct. Don't try. I don't know how sharply I'll react if you push. 

Things I Realized Today

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a privately-held company. So is Koch Industries. So are many firearms manufacturers. Any number of the interesting firms lobbying Congress are privately-held and so don't (aren't oblige to) disclose very much information about themselves. At which point the study of money politics goes back squarely into the shadows of murk, estimation and guesswork. Or maybe there's a way to scrape all that information off the massive hairball of information that is the Internet. That would be one hell of a scrape though.

Yet Another Sign of Creeping Senioritis

Echo Chamber

Not in the sense of killing out competing views, but certainly in the sense of being potentially somewhat enclosed and amplifying anything that might come up into huge, unhealthy feedback loops. Probably something Not Terribly Good that you should try to change.  

Cryptic Reminder of the Day

The operative question at the moment is, how?

Beware.

Your degree is not a proxy for your ability to do any job. The world only cares about---and pays off on---what you can do with what you know (and it doesn't care how you learned it.) And in an age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it also cares about a lot of soft skills---leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work.

Paz, esperanza y alegria

Absolutely the same thing as peace, hope, and joy. Except not. Except yes. Except not. Except ...

The Merry Month of February

For the next two weeks you will not worry about the future. The future will be a distant mirage and you will engage fully with the present, front and center. Until such time as good news comes crashing to shore and makes the mirage real again. Or, if not, till March arrives. 

Almost two years now but no less true

When more and more people around you start learning your language---just out of interest, or because they feel "they'll need it" in the future---; when whole provinces of neighboring countries start making it compulsory in schools ... you know something is afoot.
About time, you could almost hear so many say.
But even as we bask in the newly-(re?)found glow of attention, we should take care not to become arrogant and short-sighted once again. We should be careful not to repeat the mistakes of times past, and shrink back into a conceited cocoon. 

The Manchineel tree

Sounds like something in the Hunger Games arena.

 ... if you stay under its foliage while it's raining, the water will cause instant blistering wherever it touches you. ... You can't burn the Manchineel's wood because the smoke will cause temporary and even permanent blindness ... Ingestion [of the fruit] may produce severe gastroenteritis with bleeding, shock, bacterial superinfection, and the potential for airway compromise due to edema.

时势造英雄

Aitzaz Hasan is a brave man. I have nothing but respect for him.
More than once I've wished I could be like him ... but then I'm ashamed I could make such a perverse wish. For it would imply putting everyone else around in grave danger, and creating much disruption and grief ...

Probably the best riposte to L'Académie française

'English may be a shifty whore, but she's our shifty whore.' 

--Kory Stamper

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

A second chance! That’s the delusion.

“There never was to be but one. We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

ja aamun kiuru kirkkaudessa soittaa

So in the meantime, don’t just seek a life of happiness but keep yourself busy with your purpose and your neighbor’s purpose. Wake up every day like you mean it, sacrifice inconvenience for kindness; surround yourself with good people. Cry when you must, look for inspiration where you must. Never fall into any extreme; be truthful, be loyal, be a person of class no matter your status. Love more than you think is possible; forgive always. Be willing to sacrifice for what is good. And when you are tired, rest.

How Much a Truth, and How Much a Thin Fantasy

If human beings were angels, we would cheerfully focus on long-term goods. We would invest enthusiastically in schools and colleges for our own children and for everybody else’s children, so that they could become productive, engaged citizens in the future. We would happily support speculative research projects so that we could reap the benefits of discovery and innovation. We would gladly nurture humanistic inquiry because it provides an essential foundation for understanding what makes life meaningful and sustains the wellsprings of civil society. 

Indeed, we need not be angels to do these things. We would do them if we were perfectly rational investors, because economists like Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have shown convincingly that education and research are powerful drivers of economic prosperity. 

But we are not perfectly rational any more than we are angels. We live embodied in the present, sensitive to short-term pleasures and pains. Notions of the common good and promises about future returns feel abstract and feeble by comparison to the intensity of immediate experience.       

This bias seems especially fierce in America today. Our world features a non-stop news cycle, continuous political campaigns and an obsession with quarterly earnings statements. We demand that messaging be instant, and we talk in tweets. 

... 

In so doing, we risk squandering a national treasure. America’s colleges and universities are a beacon to the world. Parents around the globe dream of sending their children here, scholars dream of landing a place here, and nations dream of creating universities like America’s. Yet, here at home, we see a parade of reporters, politicians and pundits asking whether a college education is worth it — even though the economic evidence for the value of a college education is utterly overwhelming.

-- from Eisgruber's installation speech 

Meh

You know what? Being an adult is completely overrated. Conventionality can go stuff itself. And as long as you uphold your responsibilities, growing up can go stuff itself too. 

哭笑不得

PSI 300+ in Retrospect

It was so exciting when the PSI shot past 200, people demanded more PSI readings more often. And when the NEA didn't oblige there were promptly noises about how the government was dumbing down information for the people and treating them with kid gloves. Well that sounds plausible---the PAP's reputation on this front certainly doesn't help--- but then again maybe the government is honestly giving as much information as would be helpful to the average person. (Also: wait, what?)

It was also fairly entertaining to read an Indonesian minister complaining that Singapore was "behaving like a small child." Well, Mr. Laksono, you did sound very mature yourself. But then again you weren't alone, so oh well. At least there were some more rational voices out there (kind of.) Though now that the haze is over, how much of those voices and the very cogent and salient arguments that they made about longer-term underlying forces go heeded? 

It was also heartening to see people (my classmates, on Facebook oO ... probably also more people out there that I didn't hear about) organize things and try to come up solutions that didn't involve just complaining to the government and demanding action on their part. All in all it was a bit of a tempest in a teacup ... but baby steps are still important steps, in the context of this time and place. 

Less nostalgia more giant shopping malls

That seems to be the way things are going anyway. Is this kind of homogenisation inevitable? (Certainly it's not just happening where you are.) Is it really undesirable, and if so how? Discuss.

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

o·ti·ose

/ˈōSHēˌōs/ adjective

1. Serving no practical purpose or result. 
2. Indolent; idle.

All beauty and truth

You propose to surrender on everyone else's terms.
I propose to surrender on my own terms.
Maybe what I should really be thinking about is not surrendering.

Idiomatic Slippage

Now I wish I had been there.
Şimdi burada olduğumu istiyorum. "Now I want to have been there"

现在想想，真遗憾当时不在场。
Burada olmadığıma biraz üzülüyorum şimdi. "Now my not having been there saddens me a little."

It's funny how the most natural way of translating counterfactual wishes from English into Chinese seems to be to turn them into regrets. Or maybe that tinge of regret was always lying just beneath the surface of "I wish I had"? 

And then of course I have no idea about the idiomatic way of saying such things in Turkish. Both of those sentences might just sound downright strange to a native speaker ... 

Go, little book, and wish to all

Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, 

A bin of wine, a spice of wit, 

A house with lawns enclosing it, 

A living river by the door, 

A nightingale in the sycamore!

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Wichtige Begebenheit

Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est

It was a restful summer

I took a course---a "fun" one---went home and didn't have any deadlines for five weeks. I met people, read books, revised stuff I'd forgotten, bumped my head against the wall of connectivity once.
That might be the longest genuine break you'll have in a long, long looong while ... so much for remaining In Praise of Idleness.

Эй, ухнем!

"And I wish I could make you understand that there is no happiness for us, that there should not and cannot be. … We must only work and work, and happiness is only for our distant posterity. If not for me, then for the descendants of my descendants."

Vershinin, from Chekhov's Three Sisters (trans. Julius West)

Then again it's not all doom and gloom.

Che bella cosa è na jurnata ’e sole

n’aria serena doppo na tempesta! Pe’ ll’aria fresca para già na festa... Che bella cosa na jurnata ’e sole.

I hoard all these letters like treasure

One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship.
It will keep the vultures at bay

When in doubt ...

Deal with concrete specifics. Not categorical absolutes. Very useful thing to remember next time you have an existential crisis. 

47 Years on a Knife's Edge

Happy birthday. It's been a good while now.
Some say you're an anomaly, a freak and accident of history, an artificial and unnatural country. Well, yes, but only, above all, because countries are artificial things by nature, imagined creations of the human mind. It's easier to see that reflected in the case of a tiny, young city-state---but at heart you're not any fundamentally stranger than even the so-called great powers and ancient nations of this world.
That tiny size does unfortunately make you somewhat more vulnerable---though at least insofar as it also makes you acutely aware of the same, it is not, unmitigatedly, a bad thing. We all live on a knife's edge and but by the grace of circumstance---and the more aware of that we are the less complacent and better prepared we'll be. There is no room for complacency. There never will be.

Something you just avoid for the rest of your life

No. Those shouldn't exist. They only persist because you let them. Because you lack the courage and conviction to look things in the eye and resolve them. Of course it takes two to tango ... doesn't change what was said, only means the pronouns should be read as second plurals.
Besides, someone always needs to take the initiative; and in this particular case, considering how things started, it would be rather fitting if you did ...
Eventually. One day. No rush. But no, you don't "just avoid it for the rest of your life".  

The goddess of victory says, just do it.

So you're all at sea. The winds are fickle, the waves are rising, and there's not a bit of land in sight. Once in a while there seems to be another ship in the distance, but then on further inspection it usually appears to be a mirage of some sort.
What are you going to do now? Sulk? Whine? Scrunch into a ball and cry?
Well you're captain of this ship. Take command and steer.

Every other afternoon

Greetings from Bucharest

In summary, life is somewhat random. Always has been. Always will be. Şerefe.

They said, we said

This afternoon Mom related an incident that happened in Hotan, Xinjiang (新疆和田) a few days ago. The way she described it, a few Uyghurs, claiming disability, had boarded a commercial flight carrying heavy metal implements—purportedly crutches. Right after take-off, they disassembled these into metal sticks and start making their way to the cockpit, apparently making threatening voices in Uyghur along the way to the effect that they intended to hijack the flight, and, allegedly, that they had a bomb. As they made their way through business class, however, they were held up by the business class passengers (“一些干部和大学教授”) and then by a number of police travelling on a training tour. After a serious, extended brawl (“二十多分钟”) the hijackers were restrained, and the plane landed safely. The fighting must have been quite heavy, because two of the hijackers later died.
The Western press had a slightly different version of it. Or, they had the abbreviated official version, followed by the "German-based World Uyghur Congress" version, which states that "the plane turned back after Uyghurs and Hans began fighting after a disagreement over seat assignments", and an account of Han-Uyghur tensions in the region. The way it was put certainly seemed to give more credence to the second version of events. It didn't help that "the phone listed for Hotan police rang unanswered Friday."
Then again, you may say that the way I put it seems to be giving, or at least trying to give, more credence to the first version. That's really the whole point, isn't it: how do you know who's telling the truth? I don't really trust Chinese officialdom to tell the whole truth, especially in such a sensitive region, but I wouldn't trust a Uyghur exile group based in Europe to tell the whole truth either. Both sides would probably try to portray events in the light most favorable to them or supportive of their cause, ignoring or retouching any inconvenient details along the way. Everyone does this to some extent, maybe. But clearly, when the two accounts differ so radically, someone is just plain wrong here. 
Maybe the official version is right and the World Uyghur Congress is simply parroting their stage line, which they can plausibly claim not to have any firm evidence against yet. Or maybe it was just an extraordinarily bad linguistic misunderstanding and the "hijackers" were really just shouting things to the effect that they wanted their actual seats back.
But maybe it doesn't matter, because the [masses of] people whose opinions do matter will decide based on their prejudices, on which of the two sides they distrust or mistrust more, rather than on anything remotely resembling a cool, objective assessment. (Or in Staff Sergeant Dignam's words, "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself.")
Which is very unfortunate, especially when things end up the way they did. There was probably police mistreatment involved. But I do think it was indeed a hijack attempt, and that injuries sustained during the brawl on the plane contributed substantially to the subsequent deaths. But then again, could be completely wrong. And I concede that. I don't claim to actually know what happened, before seeing more convincing evidence either way.
Sometimes I really wish I could look every one of those people in the eye, and confront them with both versions of the story, and of how they could come about. And remind them that words can tell such lies, that only those who were on the plane could have known what actually happened, that nobody should take drastic action based on hearsay alone, that the truth is usually somewhere in between ...

Nets

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce has Stephen Dedalus famously say, about growing up in Ireland in the late 19th century, "When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets."
...
And most of all, don't play it safe. Resist the seductions of the cowardly values our society has come to prize so highly: comfort, convenience, security, predictability, control. These, too, are nets. Above all, resist the fear of failure. Yes, you will make mistakes. But they will be your mistakes, not someone else's. And you will survive them, and you will know yourself better for having made them, and you will be a fuller and a stronger person.

A Murder of Crows

Just in case "a group of crows" didn't sound ominous enough. Crows are probably just really maligned though. Such a bad rap just for being black and cawing ...

w00t?

Wandern

Okay I think I'm done wandering.

 

Maybe.

And unseen things that do not die

Kan ma kan / fi qadeem azzaman

We are creatures of air,
Our roots in dreams
And clouds, reborn
In flight.

After Democritus

By convention there is sweetness, by convention bitterness, by convention color, in reality only atoms and the void.
Foolish intellect! Do you seek to overthrow us, while it is from us that you take your evidence? Your victory is your defeat.

Kelle fiyatına hürriyet

Eserlik bedava / Bedava yaşıyoruz, bedava

Listen, Listen, Listen

If you have the patience, anyway.

豁然开朗

Most days, most of the time, you're going to be annoyed, frustrated, lost, lonely, and stressed half out of your mind. But then once in a while, when you least expect it, when you've just about hit bottom and then some, the skies will clear and you'll feel light. Happy. Possibly even experience the thrill of soaring in free but secure flight. And believe me, it's worth living for those moments alone. 

So Shiddy

At least, as it turns out, I guessed right. Okay back to work now.

Some Things that Make Me Unhappy.

Not giving enough time to the things that interest me, or the people whom I care about.
Brushing things or people off (but do I have to do this in order not to be forced into the first?)
Living life blind and unreflected.
Hypocrisy and hubris.

Some Things that Make Me Happy.

Food,

Friends,

Friends and food;

Visiting,

Travel,

The Sun. 

Serenity and laughter.

Music!

Being silly;

That cosy corner of the room; 

Being appreciated.

Puffins and complex analysis ...

Important Lessons in Life

The mean-value theorem doesn't apply to complex-valued functions.
You can't just discard summation signs, even when doing asymptotics.
If your blunt estimate didn't work, use more information!
You really didn't need to re-write that solution 8 times.
People take breaks for a reason, damnit.
Also, you should figure out what you're doing about Monday. Probably.

Wake up

Go to class
Take midterm
Go to class
Eat
Struggle with pset
Go to sleep
Repeat cycle
Pffft. Did someone say the words, "empty shell"?

You're special ... so what?

Somehow 特殊 or 特别 just doesn't carry the same set of positive connotations that "special" can in English. (Particularly American English and its descendants, I suppose.) The Chinese doesn't carry any particularly negative connotations, it's just ... not so special. Something is an exceptional case. Okay. No big deal.

Considering how all of those are [seem to be] born from similar etymologies, I guess it's probably a product of cultural and social attitudes more than a linguistic thing.

Listen.

What's really bugging you.

[in particular, at this point in time.]

1. Failure of Proposition K and wider ramifications.
2. Diversion of Senate resources during crunch period.
3. Morphine withdrawal.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow.

Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see; and to see, we have only to look. Contessina, I beseech you to look 

.... 

Life is so full of meaning and of purpose, so full of beauty--beneath its covering--that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage, then, to claim it: that is all! But courage you have; and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending, through unknown country, home.

Boston

The Athens of America was unhospitably cold when we visited: so cold the local weather forecasts passed on "clear" in favour of "frigid". It didn't help that we picked the coldest day of all to walk the Freedom Trail--the whole length of it starting from the Boston Commons, winding through Downtown and up the North Bay, and finally across the Charles River, ending at the Bunker Hill Monument.

History is often wrong,

but in our cowardliness we mortals give learned explanations of why its decrees were just, why what happened was inevitable, and why our noble dreams deserved to die.

(Amin Maalouf, Origins, 108)

A Sense of Space

New Jersey seemed so empty the first time round, especially coming from Singapore. Sure it might have the highest population density in the States, but it simply can't compare with East Asia.
Campus felt empty and spacious---as though there were room plenty enough for at least half as many again people---even when the semester is in full swing. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but it did feel strange.
Now it feels normal, and Singapore feels crowded. How are there always so many people, everywhere, all the time? It's not an unpleasant or uncomfortable feeling though; it just feels odd.
Of course nothing compares to the vast emptiness (empty vastness?) of that volcanic smouldering surrounded by the North Atlantic, where you can look out and see nothing but the mountains and the sky and the one road you're travelling on for dozens of miles at a stretch. Perfect for claustrophobics and introverts ... (maybe there is a link between the two after all.)

The Post-Apocalypse

The hills around Reykjavik were apparently once full of birch woods. But the woods disappeared less than a century after the Settlement began, having been turned into wood and charcoal for the growing number of Icelanders. Now the area, as is much of coastal Iceland, is largely a denuded, barren wasteland.
The southwest apparently used to be a centre of intensive agriculture--intensive by the standards of then anyway, before motorised farm vehicles and chemical fertilisers and all that jazz. Then Katla and Hekla covered the plains in lava and ash, and now there's only the odd farm here and there.
Is this what the world would look like after an environmental apocalypse [of the sort alarmists like to trumpet about]? A world of ice and of vast emptiness and of harsh, unpredictable weather. At least it's not without its beauty, and by no means unsurvivable. So, y'know, maybe everything will be alright after all, in the end. In its own way.

Completely. Unmotivated.

Moral of the story: listen to yourself and commit yourself to doing the one or two things that you really do want to do. Also there's probably a "crash after the sugar rush" element involved here. Go take a break and start afresh.

Think of a noun. Any noun.

Sen: Kedi
Nur: Köpek
Ani: Köpek
Huh. Well.

Before the dive

and rimmed with runes of running laughter

Faith ever will I hold
firm, unyielding,
though strife and storm
stand about me.

Wait, what?

I wonder if you aren't the first person to knowingly, deliberately will yourself into a stuporous haze. Whatever on this earth ... 

I should be doing this.

Learn to banish the word "should" from your vocabulary.
One the one hand, do you really have so many "responsibilities"? Where did they come from, anyway? And if you start dropping them because there're too many of them to handle, how is that better than just cleaning disclaiming some of them in the first place?
On the other, there are many, many things that can be great learning experiences. Until you try to do too many of them at once, and then you'll be too busy to learn anything from any of them.
Bottom line: do less. Live more.  

But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought

Well put, sir. Very. 

... and there goes the semester!

Come to think of it this kind of knocks George's "shortest lines in PCT history" right out the window.

You should keep up this streak of randomness. I want to see where you end up.

不知量力

Maybe I'm just really greedy.
Don't be. You aren't going to able to do everything, and you're only going to mess up everything you're trying to do by trying too hard.
Or maybe I just don't deal with uncertainty well and try too hard to hedge.
But then of course such half-hearted hedging is doomed to fail. Just set your sights clearly, keep your wits about you, take a breath and GO. And never look back once in a while you can look back, but you really shouldn't be trying to move forward with your gaze on the road behind you, the other roads by the side, anything but the road in front of you. 

Swans on Water

The very picture of effortless grace on the surface, but underneath they're paddling furiously just to stay afloat, let alone move forward. 

Taking any route, starting from anywhere, / At any time or at any season

It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are hear to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

En Saga

Or not really, but now I'm really curious about the Eddas. But anyway, to business.
Proposition A would endorse the Ankara plan over Warsaw, Krakow, or Copenhagen.
Proposition K would instate Kazan as the new Ottoman capital.
Debate.
Update. The answers were no and yes. Consider it made.