Post XXI: A Mirror Lightly

It's been a few months, that much is true, and I felt a blog post was much overdue. I maintain the importance of writing down thoughts, even if anyone reads them or not. I've been trying not to procrastinate, on research as of late, but sometimes it can be quite useful, to use procrastination as a tool. I'm tired of trying to rhyme, so let's just do this.

Song of the Post: Holidays, by Miami Horror

Introspection can be quite important. I've been thinking about myself a lot lately; not in any particularly more conceited way than usual, but in a more practical sense of self. Namely, the disconnect between how I perceive myself and how others perceive me. I remember something from an article I once read, about how frightening the thought of ones "self" is. It is a common refrain to say that someone "doesn't know the real you", which implies that there is somehow another person inside you that you only reveal in bits and pieces, over time. The article in question, if I recall, argued that this was ridiculous. That every interaction you have with others is, in fact, the real you. That not opening up at first is an aspect of your personality which does allow the person you are interacting with to know you.

This is not a totally unreasonable argument, but it does, I think, approach the true meaning of self in a slightly obtuse way. We have, sometimes, an unfortunate habit of making decisions and taking actions in a somewhat chaotic, or counterproductive way. Our thoughts do not always match our words or our actions, which natively creates a bias between what we think of ourselves and how others perceive us. We do, in fact, have another person inside us from the one we display. It is as ridiculous and frightening as it sounds, but it is the truth.

Last week, one of my good friends was kind enough to let me read over his shoulder during seminar, and I spotted a line that I very much like. In Walter Isaacson's biography of Da Vinci, he says, "Vision without execution is hallucination." This on the surface might seem to support the argument that we are only what others perceive us to be, but I would not be so quick to discount hallucinations. Hallucinations have form in their own right, and can be quite powerful. How you perceive yourself can absolutely dominate your understanding of how others perceive you, and in turn create a reality for yourself to inhabit. I would argue that this might be true for most people, most of the time, myself included, so that a large part of our lives is spent interacting with a world we consider to be different from what others consider it to be.

Consider two personal anecdotes. I will provide my interpretation with the understanding that my perception may be completely detached from reality.

First, I have loved Star Wars for many years. Star Wars, especially the Expanded Universe of Star Wars, has been a significant factor in both my personal and public perception. Most, if not all, of my friends have some understanding that I am a fan of Star Wars. However, I would say, was a fan of Star Wars. Star Wars as most everyone else interacts with it is about as far from how I interact with it. I have been unable to overcome my feelings of betrayal when it comes to the new canon and its abandonment of the EU. I have no interest in seeing or reading any of the material realeased or published post Disney. Not because I am concerned with quality, it's possible they are all very well executed movies and novels, but because it is not the Star Wars I care about. My ambivalence is... difficult for some of my friends. While I perceive I have been nothing but consistent, it seems that some of them simply cannot truly comprehend that I have no desire to engage with anything new that is Star Wars related.  In this case, it is my interpretation that other's perceptions of me are incorrect; that they are living in a world that is separate from reality.

There are certainly no shortage of situations of the converse; where I have a warped perception of reality and the people around me know me better than I know myself. It is certainly difficult to admit to specific situations, since they shed light on aspects of our personality we'd like to keep hidden. The one that springs most readily to mind might seem simple, but had a profound effect on me. I don't remember the exact context, but in class one day about four years ago I said something along the lines of "I don't think anyone works quite as hard as I do."

I swear, in my mind, it didn't sound that bad. I could swear, my intention, was to illustrate how dumb I was; that I had to work so hard because nothing came as easily to me as it did everyone else. And already, I'm embarassed for myself because both of those justifications are bullshit. It's all a self aggrandizing of my plight; poor, poor me. One of my friends immediately said, in what was probably a half-joking way, "Well, that's a pretty arrogant thing to say." I opened my mouth to explain my reasoning, how it wasn't, but he was absolutely right. It was arrogant, and I was arrogant for saying it. Of course my perception of how hard I work was inflated, because I have to spend the most time with me, and I had perceived that I was working an unreasonable amount. But by discounting the reality that others were working just as hard, some certainly harder, I showed a lack of empathy and an arrogance that I was rightly called out for. I still do this, from time to time. I have, however, been actively working to improve this aspect of my personality, and my perception is that I have been making some gains.

Maybe my friends can correct me if I'm wrong.

What this all comes to, I'm afraid, is that there can be no way to truly know our selves. We only have two sometimes quite unreliable sources; our own perception and our understanding of other's perception. We look in the mirror and see a different person than everyone else sees, we hear ourselves speak and hear a different voice. There is a person inside of us, hiding from the light, who we alternatively guard and coaxe out. There is the person everyone sees, that everyone knows likes Star Wars and is a little full of themselves, and there is the person who doesn't like Star Wars and is being modest, but only lives inside their own perception. Can they both be real? When I look in the mirror what do I see? Vision without execution is, after all, only hallucination.

Song hint: You can rely on the old man's money.

Post XX: Ten More 'til Porn

What I'm doing writing a blog post when I have any number of other things to do is beyond me, but the fact of the matter is I'm here, and it's happening. Should I be writing exam questions for the class I teach? Yes. Should I be running checks on my Gibbs sampler algorithm? Yes. Should I be sending emails to professors I promised to send emails to? Yes. But sometimes you get something into your head to write about, and if you don't write about it now, you might never write about it, and the loss of something like that, from any person, should be avoided. I believe it is important to believe that all persons have something to contribute to the dialogue surrounding a given topic; whether that contribution is poignant or not, having an opinion on things and letting that opinion be heard is valuable. The human conversation should not prevent those who may not be experts in a field from commenting on that field; it should encourage it. There are those who may speak unintelligibly about a topic, but through a dialogue, those misconceptions could be corrected. My thoughts, today, veered away from what might be considered my forte, Baseball Statistics, to what might be considered my favorite hobby, writing. What follows is likely largely unintelligible, but at least contributes to the human conversation.

Song of the Week: Party Hard, by Andrew W.K.

Two posts ago, last summer, I wrote about what a particular multimedia franchise, Harry Potter, meant to me. While some of what I write about today might cover similar ground, I'm focusing more on writing in general. Though I have been focused on a different set of priorities these last few years, I still enjoy writing when I can. I flatter myself, probably, to think I can spin something others find interesting and well written. I think it's probably true that any writer faces fears that what they're writing is either too similar to previous work, or too cliché, or too abstract, or too childish, or whatever. I think all these fears also prevent people who would otherwise like to write from writing; they think things like "It's so hard to come up with an idea to even write about."

Fan fiction gets a bad wrap from many (including myself on occasion), but honestly, all fiction is fan fiction. Revisionist literature is something that I have often railed against; when authors take events or characters from another authors work and either re-tell the same story or tell some continuation, or go back and make some prequel. But in this, I am a hypocrite, since I quite enjoy some revisionist media, and perhaps my favorite quote comes from Grendel, a re-telling of Beowulf from the monster's perspective by John Gardner, where the dragon tells him, "My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it." (A quote to dissect and appreciate another time).

My point is, there seems to be three types of people; those who have no trouble jumping into writing down their ideas, those who are overwhelmed with the task and never do, and those who write fan fiction. But it is not difficult to be all three types of those people in a short period of time. One might argue that the easiest way to go from someone who is overwhelmed with the task of writing, to someone who can write at the drop of a hat, is to start off with writing fan fiction. Take any sort of media you have enjoyed consuming, any setting that has already been created, any set of characters (fictional or real) and simply introduce some new variable. A couple summers ago, several of my friends got very into going to trivia regularly, and even made it to the State Trivia Tournament. One of them made the comment, after the fact, that it was something like an episode out of It's Always Sunny, where the title would be "The Gang Does Trivia". A subtle shift in the status quo for a single episode. And so, why couldn't someone write a short story, where the group of characters from It's Always Sunny spend a summer somehow doing very well at trivia, getting really into it, almost getting to Nationals and then burning out in some spectacularly stupid fashion at the State Tournament? Hell, why not just write that story, with some exaggeration and embellishment, about my group of friends?

Inspiration for writing is all around us; in our personal experiences, and in our media consumption. It is here where I go back to where I said all fiction is fan fiction. There is nothing new under the sun. That statement is very important. How can one write something completely original? All ideas must come from somewhere; what words can you write that haven't been written before? Well, how about this: Ioqqq, diesdf aqee mao iekdi! What does that mean? It means nothing. How can you present something with meaning that has never been thought of before? Was gunpowder an original idea of the Chinese? Sure, according to Wikipedia, they invented it in the 9th century, but how? They supposedly were looking for the elixir of life, and stumbled upon it. Most novel things were stumbled upon accidentally, by throwing together known quantities that somehow combined into a previously unknown quantity. Hey we have sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate; what happens if we mix them? But then, where did the sulfur come from? It's an element, we didn't create it, we just found it in rocks. But then, where did those rocks come from? Quickly this devolves into a higher order philosophical problem, but I don't think we need to go further to illustrate my point: everything comes from something.

Think about Star Wars (I do quite often), and try to see the similarities with gunpowder. Like gunpowder was created by mixing together already known quantities, so too was Star Wars. George Lucas didn't invent the idea of farmboys, or princesses. He didn't invent the concept of Good versus Evil. He didn't invent Space Operas, or the concept of space itself. What was the Death Star but a siege engine? Like gunpowder was sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate, Star Wars was a samurai film, Flash Gordon, and World War II dog-fighting. Indeed gunpowder was a novel invention, and Star Wars something that had never been seen before; but the ingredients for each existed long before they came about. All it took was someone to try putting other things together and see if they formed something new.

And so I wonder, how can people say "It's so hard to come up with an idea to even write about."? I honestly think there might not be an easier thing in the world. Just begin by telling someone about your day: I was walking across the quad, and it was windy, I looked up and saw the flag flapping furiously. I wondered for a second if the wind would be strong enough to rip the flag off its pole, and what it would feel like if it came down and enveloped me. Would it pick me up and throw me across campus, leaving me with broken limbs and a hospital visit? That would be kind of a depressing story, how about what if the flag was in fact a magic portal? What if, when torn from it's moorings, and flung down by the wind towards me, with smack of fabric to skin it teleported me through time, a thousand years ago? What was life like in what I know as Indiana in 1018? How could I survive, or how would the people of the time react to my arrival in theirs, wearing glasses and odd clothing? Should I research that to make it as realistic as possible, or should I not care, since a flag just transported me back in time and I've abandoned reality already?

I don't know if what I just wrote is really all that creative. Maybe someone might think so, but where did my ideas come from? I started in reality, me walking across campus. Wind is not a new idea, and it could certainly be strong enough to rip a flag from it's pole. Though it didn't happen, I could imagine it. Magical objects are not new, perhaps not even magical flags specifically. Has anyone ever wrote a story about a magical flag that sends you back in time, though? Maybe, maybe not. But I've certainly read time travel stories, or stories where magical objects are capable of transporting people through time. I didn't come up with that on my own.

Thus I think the problem isn't the ability to come up with ideas, but that people must fear the "quality" of their ideas. Maybe a time travel story instigated by a rogue magical flag is a stupid idea, but there's no reason, as far as I can tell, why it couldn't make a good story. Or why it couldn't lead to something a little more nuanced, or spur some idea that turns into something interesting. Why not write it down, and see what happens? It can only contribute to the human conversation.

So, I ask you, please write down your ideas. Maybe they're rambling, with no coherent structure or just all over the place. Maybe you use improper grammar, or have run-on sentences, or sentences that don't make sense. Maybe you say the same thing, three different times, in three different ways, treading water in your argument as you try to figure out where your brain is taking you next. Maybe you make confusing statements. Maybe you make incorrect statements. Write about things you hold dear, and write about things you don't care about.

And then, as you perhaps get angry at the second paragraph I've started with "and", go read other people's ideas. Talk to them about them, as hopefully they will talk to you about yours. Suggest alterations, or critique their work, and then listen to their suggestions and critiques of yours. Agree, or don't, but keep your mind open and try to appreciate what they are contributing to the conversation. In this way, we can learn something about each other, and maybe learn something about ourselves, that allows us to grow and continue to build something that approximates a human society. Because, and this is not an original idea, man is by nature a social animal.

Song hint: But just consider what we could do, you'd be surprised at what you'll find.

Post XIX: Hope for More

Last night was the MLB All-Star game, which means traditionally today is seen as the most depressing day in American sports. It is the offseason for NBA, NFL, and NHL, and the only day during the MLB season when there isn't some sort of game or exhibition going on. Obviously there are some other sports going on, since entertainment never sleeps. The USA soccer team even plays tonight in the CONCACAF Gold Cup. American Sam Querrey upset world number 1 Andy Murray today at Wimbledon, so American tennis is having a good day. There are WNBA games going on right now! Anyway, my point is that just because the traditional four major sports don't have anything going on, doesn't mean us sports fanatics can't enjoy something else for a 24 hour period. I guess normies who want a sports fix might watch the ESPYs tonight, but those are stupid. I honestly hadn't planned to write about sports today, but last night I had a brief (but thought-provoking!) conversation with my brother towards the end of the all-star game and decided to put some thoughts down. I've long enjoyed comparing the relative/perceived strengths of the different sports. Specifically, I enjoy arguing that baseball is the best one. That's what this post is about, how baseball is better. Than anything. This should be fun! For me.

Song of the Week: Me and Mrs. Jones, by Billy Paul.

I honestly like and enjoy all sports, so I would also like it if fans of the sports I'm about to insult realize that I'm doing it mainly for effect. Basically, in a non-crazy way to say it, baseball has many properties that I find more interesting and entertaining than the other sports, hence it is my favorite. In the way I prefer to put it, baseball is better than any other dumb sport that dumb people like.

The Goals and Strategy
 
Let's start simple, with the basic premise of many team sports. For the most part, I believe they fall into two categories: traditional bunker warfare, and modern guerilla warfare. What I mean is this: in most sports, the object of the game is very linear. Team A begins the offensive possession with the focal object (the McGuffin, as I will refer to it henceforth), takes the McGuffin from their end of the playing surface to their opponent's end, then attempts to do something with the McGuffin. Team B's goal, on defense, is to prevent Team A's offense from accomplishing what it wants to do with the McGuffin, take the McGuffin, and begin their offensive assault. These teams go back and forth, either for an arbitrary amount of time, or until one team does enough of the thing they want to do with the McGuffin to win. While there is some depth to the strategy, the essential premise is that there are two sides trying to put something in something else. Soccer, basketball, hockey, American football, rugby, ultimate Frisbee, water polo, even the fake sport of quidditch, all follow this basic set up. Don't get me wrong, this set up makes for some exciting moments! In each of these games, the defense's mad rush to prevent the offense from invading their net/basket/goal/end zone is as enticing as the offense's strategic maneuvering to put the ball/puck/disk/quaffle in their respective hole. Furthermore, it takes quite a bit of physical, and in some cases technical, ability to put the balls in the hole. I love putting balls in holes as much as the next guy but, I think, this linear premise holds back other sports. Each side has their bunker they're trying to protect, and that's it.

Bat and ball games like baseball and cricket, begin from a simple premise as well, at least insofar as the tasks required of the teams on offense and defense are relatively easy to understand. Team A sends one player out on offense, their goal to hit the ball with the bat in a way that allows them to advance as many stations as possible. Team B's goal on defense is to prevent Team A from hitting the ball or, barring success in that, prevent them from advancing any stations or, barring success in that, keep them to advancing only one, or a couple stations or, barring success in that, limit the number of stations Team A is able to advance so that when they get their turn on offense they have a better chance of catching up in number of stations advanced. Maybe it's not quite as simple a premise. This is one of the greatest things about baseball; how complex and intricate it is! One of the biggest complaints about baseball I hear from people who don't know it is that it is complicated, but understanding the intricacies of that complexity makes it much more fulfilling than the simpler, linear games. The structure of the offensive game involves moving station to station, where you are safe, to prevent getting got by the defense, who attempts to strike at you when you are outside of the stations. Running from first base to second base while the defense attempts to throw the ball and tag you is like having to go from one base to another in a jungle filled with enemies actively hunting you. This is, while usually not involving as much physical contact as the other sports, at least as tense as the moments the other sports offer. Furthermore, the goal of the defensive team is constantly evolving! In basketball, there are basically three types of defense: man-to-man, zone, or some combination. This is because the defense's goal is simple. Stop the offense from putting the ball in the hole. I don't want to diminish the strategy too much, but baseball offers a much more complex defensive tapestry. Yes, the main point of a defensive "possession" in baseball is to keep the other team from scoring, same as basketball. But if over the course of the inning you end up with the bases loaded and no outs, the goal has now become keep them from scoring too many runs. And this distinction is vitally important, as it foreshadows the most important difference between baseball and the rest.

The Optimism

I want to link to a certain philosopher's take on the difference between the two most popular American sports. I don't take this little allegory of baseball vs. football by Mr. Carlin terribly seriously, since it is part of his standup routine and meant mostly to be funny. However, in addition to outlining some key strategic differences that reflect some of what I spoke about in the previous section he also, in his humorous way, helps illustrate part of the main reason why baseball is so much better.

Baseball is hopeful.

In the Platonic version of baseball, there are no ties; one of the teams will always win the game. You can arrange this in the other sports; sudden death in football, overtime in basketball or hockey, extra time or shootouts in soccer, but that's not really the point. The point is that not only will one of the teams always win, but each team, until the final out, always has a chance of winning.

This is mainly due to there not being any clock in baseball, a point mentioned by good ol' George up there. No matter how bleak it looks for a team they know that, while perhaps unlikely, they always have a chance to win until they run out of outs. The offensive game is made up of discrete opportunities, which means that during each opportunity there is the probability of some success and some failure. If we assume, as is right, that each opportunity the offensive team has a non-zero probability of success, then no matter how otherwise small the probability, no matter how many successes are needed, the probability of stringing together enough successes is going to be non-zero. This means, in an extremely non-trivial, literal sense, that a baseball game is not over until it's over.

This is in direct contrast to all those timed sports mentioned before. Whenever there is a clock, there is the potential for a game to be over and out of reach of one team before the game is officially over. If LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers are up 114-71 with 3 minutes left in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Toronto Raptors, that means that just to tie, the Raptors will have to score .7167 points a second, when up to that point they had been putting up .0263 points a second. In order to gain that lead, the Cavs had put up .0422 points a second. That means the Raptors would have to play approximately 17 times better than the team they were facing had been to that point, and 27 times better than they had been, in order to tie. This even assumes, incorrectly, that the Raptors players are capable of scoring, stealing, and scoring again instantaneously. With 3 minutes still remaining, the game was actually over. It was in fact over, in a real actual sense, before that. Baseball has no such occurrence, in any game. Even if the score is 8-2 in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and and your 7th place hitter whose average is barely over .200 is up, there is a chance you can come back and win the game. There is always hope.

Sports that throw away time, and play to some set number, accomplish this as well. I think it makes a sport better. Tennis is one of my favorite sports to watch and play (poorly) because until the last game is won, you can always come back. Baseball has that, plus enough moving pieces and shifting strategies to keep your mind sharp, and enough action to keep your heart fulfilled. There has been a lot of talk in baseball circles recently about how to make it more appealing, and I think some of that talk has been constructive. I think the games are too long from a combination of commercial breaks, pitchers taking too long to throw, and defensive shifts; the first two of those things are things we can address without sacrificing the integrity of the game. I think baseball suffers from a lack of diversity and star power, with the best players like Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw being milky white doldrums without any personality. Some of that is changing. The pitch clock should be implemented soon, and some of baseball's young stars are showing more emotion and passion, especially the Dominican, Venezuelan and Puerto Rican players, but also Americans such as Adam Jones and Bryce Harper. Baseball challenges the viewer mentally in ways other sports can't, but mostly it is one of the few things we enjoy that can truly keep us invested until the last moment. Unless you're the Dodgers fans you can see slamming on their brakes as they listen to the radio call of the game they just left, thinking their team had lost.

I realize this made for a rather long post, but when my brother suggested there should be ties in baseball, like there are in Japanese baseball, I decided to think more carefully about why that idea bothered me so much. I think for exhibition games, like spring training or the all-star game, that this would be fine. But actual games of baseball are for the optimist in us. Saying all games end in ties after 12 innings turns the bottom of the twelfth, for the team that didn't score in the top half, into a very negative experience. Just don't lose. The goal of the game is not to not lose, it's to win, and baseball is one of the few major sports that makes that goal possible until the very end. Anyway, that's it. I'm not putting nearly as much thought into these song hints as I did four years ago when I started this thing, but c'est la vie: You, you worked all night, and when you work you don't feel alright.

Post XVIII: Conditionally Human

The last week has been busy, although that is somewhat of a trivial statement whilst in graduate school. I suppose last week's business is notable mainly because of how not related to graduate school it was. It was a long weekend, since I gave my students Monday off (with the 4th of July on Tuesday, they weren't going to show up anyway). I took the opportunity to go down to the Swiss Consulate in Atlanta and renew my passport. I haven't had a valid Swiss passport for about 20 years, but earlier this year my brother talked about renewing his, and I figured now was as good a time as any. While it was a good experience, I also fell behind a bit on my research. Research is generally one step forward, two steps back, so not taking any steps forward over the weekend has made me feel a little guilty. Although I'm not sure why; the only person I'm inconveniencing really is myself. My advisor, who is wonderful, is not my boss. He is a resource to help and push me in the right direction as I work towards the PhD. Anything I don't accomplish, or am slow in accomplishing, only hurts me. This line of thinking is perhaps not entirely true, and more than a little selfish, but I believe it is necessary to try to think this way. I can't really afford to spend time worrying about inconveniencing others, because that just takes time away from me making progress. Especially when I intend to take time away from making progress to write a blog post about Harry Potter.

Song of the Week: Pinball Wizard, by The Who.

Media consumption has always been an important part of the human condition. Since the dawn of humanity, we have been telling stories with goals of entertainment, or education, or both. Tales of great trials overcome by heroes, humorous anecdotes intended to disarm and delight our companions. It is very natural for all of us to have our favorite media, our favorite stories. Ones that speak to us on some level, either superficially or profoundly, allow us freedom to imagine our own and provide a framework for understanding others.

I've made no secret of my love for some tales, even in this very blog. Star Wars and Star Trek both have a special place in my mind. Star Wars gave me an appreciation for the epic, the larger than life narrative that deals with trials on a galactic scale. Through the books and expanded universe, it also allowed me to explore a myriad of connections between characters big and small, an interwoven yarn spanning hundreds of years where there is something larger at work; the Force, Destiny, whatever you want to call it. Star Trek was arguably more important an influence, providing the wonder of exploration and of learning new things and experiencing other cultures. The optimism of a future where humans, and aliens, live mostly in harmony, working together to solve the problems encountered. An appreciation for the unknown. Star Trek too, through excellent storytelling, provided depth of character that encouraged empathy; forced you to care and identify with the characters.

There are other stories that have had enormous impact on me, not just as a writer, but as a person. M*A*S*H, Shakespeare, HG Wells are just a few I could write a lot about. The point of all this is to reinforce my statement that Harry Potter has had as much, if not more of, an impact on my life as the rest.

What is important for me to establish is that statement has less to do with the content of the Harry Potter books (although I don't want to trivialize their contribution) and more to do with how I have interacted with them. When the first Harry Potter book came out, just over 20 years ago now, my mother believed my brother and I were too young to read it by ourselves. Even now I'd probably disagree with her, since I have a very high opinion of myself as a 6 year old, but that was the way it was. My sister, however, felt it very important that we learn about this Harry Potter thing as soon as possible, and so she undertook to read it to us. What this started was a tradition that led to my nearly 30 year old sister reading a children's book to her two college aged brothers as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

For each of the 7 books (and now again for the play they made of Harry's kid [spoilers? maybe?]) my sister shaped my introduction to the characters. When I re-read the books for myself, I did not hear my own voice as Harry, Ron and Hermione's, but my sister's voice. This, somehow, made the books all the more real to me. My sister's obvious love and obsession with the Marauder's Map and the idea of Padfoot, Moony, Wormtail and Prongs, her inability to hold the tears in while reading Beyond the Veil, her disdain for Harry (and the occasional, "Why is Harry so dumb?") all set up my own experience. Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite book, I don't know if I've read Order of the Phoenix all the way through more than twice, and I cannot stand the main character. What my sister recognized, and which I in turn consumed, was that the world JK Rowling built was so fleshed out, so magical yet so grounded in reality. I'm not going to make any classifying statements about the plot progression and some of the story decisions that were made towards the end of the series, but I will say that the world building of Harry Potter was masterful. It imbued ordinary objects and animals all around you with magic. Owls were now potential mail carriers, a moldy boot could whisk you away, running as fast as you could at a wall might not hurt you, if you believed.

I kept lists; oh, good lord, did I keep lists. I wrote down every spell uttered, what it did and, if possible, the wand movements to cast it. I wrote down every textbook mentioned, every food and every drink. I wrote down rosters for every house in every book. When I wanted to figure out who RAB could be, I went through every book and wrote down every single character; even the unnamed trolley driver at the beginning of Azkaban (my sister, by the way, figured out who RAB was, I want to say, almost immediately). I wrote down every description of Hogwarts from every book and then used reams of graph paper to sketch out building plans. I have a notebook somewhere with sketches of Quidditch robes for every single country on Earth, and files on my computer somewhere where I constructed imagined Quidditch club leagues for all those countries. I did all these things without the internet, either due to lack of access or lack of understanding that probably there were already people who did these things and did them better than me. Even if I had known there were huge nerds like me doing the work for me, I still probably would have done it. The thought of getting a letter from Hogwarts kept me up at night before my eleventh birthday, as I'm sure it has done to many and will do to many more.

I guess my way of connecting this back to my discussion of what media has meant to me, is to point out that I did all this despite actively loathing the main character. Harry was just the worst. Even the main supporting characters, Ron and Hermione, made me angry all the time. With perhaps the exception of Fred and George, or Lupin, I was never really attached to any of the characters. Not like I am with Geordi and Data, or with Han, Luke and Leia. I don't think this is because the characters in Harry Potter were written poorly; I think it was probably because they were written extremely well, and teenagers are just the worst. They honestly scare the living shit out of me. Anyway, my point is that Harry Potter showed me the way to make a world real. The whole point of Star Wars is that it's in a galaxy far, far away, that it should be alien. The whole point of Star Trek is to show us a world that could be, if we believe in humanity. Harry Potter is like, I don't know, PG-Game of Thrones. It gives us magic, and impossible things, while fleshing out all the little details that make us believe a place like this does exist, or has truly existed. I'm sure there are other takeaways from the series, other lessons to be learned, but Harry Potter fills this niche in my mind.

I have to admit that in recent years, my consumption of Harry Potter media has curtailed quite a bit. I have a Pottermore account, and I went to go see Fantastic Beasts, and my sister is still in the process of reading The Cursed Child to my brother and I. But that's about it. Fifteen years ago, if I had had access to Pottermore, I might have never spent time doing anything else. I don't think I remember my Pottermore password currently. I don't think it's a question of growing out of it, since I refuse to believe I've grown out of anything, but my interests have certainly shifted somewhat. I watch a lot more TV and sports, play a lot more video games, and perhaps most importantly I read for pleasure much less often. My sister texted me this just a few days ago: "The single worst part of being in graduate school is feeling guilty every time you read for pleasure. I KNOW you feel me on that." And she's right, I do feel her on that. I feel guilty even writing for pleasure, or doing anything pleasurable at that. But I don't think I should. I think we live a limited number of years on this planet and, while it is important to try to keep some perspective and organize priorities, we should also try to make sure our quest for knowledge, and specifically for expansion of our understanding of the human condition through storytelling, is not neglected. I think, the next time I am home, I'll grab Philosopher's Stone off my bookshelf and read through it again. After all, I think I might have lost my list of spells.

Next week's song hint: We meet every day, at the same cafe. 6:30, and no one knows she'll be there.

Post XVIIb: Fear

This might be a little weird, two blog posts in the same day, but I'm going for it. There are a lot of things I could write about, a lot has happened in four years. There are some things on the personal side I'm either not ready or not willing to talk about, but on the... professional side (I guess) I've just been toiling away at grad school. I got my Master's degree, and am continuing for the PhD. Things are, for the most part, on track for the life path thing. The world has not gotten particularly brighter, in my eyes, however. The following post has something to do with the somewhat contentious atmosphere surrounding the election season last year. It mostly has to do with my rambling philosophical thoughts concerning why some of the problems that seem to plague us as humans persist. Fun.

Relevant Song of the Post: The Fear, by Lily Allen

(July 8, 2016) It shouldn’t come as a surprise that positions of power attract the power hungry; those who are more interested in exerting control over others than in actually helping them. It has been a fact throughout history, and it still is today, that the same people who find themselves in authoritative positions are most often those least suited to them. Some of those who we allow to walk around with our lives in their hands have a fundamental misunderstanding of what respect for life means. I don’t think it is an indictment of human nature, but rather a sad truth that authority has a negative connotation. The authorities should be those we trust, those that root out the malicious and help prevent harm. Instead authority has, more often than not in human history, been the cause of harm, exacerbating hatred and fear. This is what it all boils down to, really. Fear.

Humans have proven time and again that we are no different than any other animal on this earth, ruled by instinct and fear. We simply have developed tools to help amplify our reactions to fear. Politics exacerbates fear; fear of our “enemies”, fear of the opposition, fear of the future. Racism, sexism, bigotry in general, are all simply subsets of fear, fear of the other, of what is not us. Religion preys on fear of death, and relies on fear of supernatural forces. A society lives only because of fear; fear of being alone, of non-conforming.

Some fear is good. Humans do not develop if we’re not afraid of lions, or fire. Too much fear, however, debases us. It makes us cling to weapons that can save us from something or someone unknown, the future, premature death. Things we can’t control, especially other people. They’re out there, walking around with free will. They could be thinking anything, planning anything, and so we yearn for the power to stop them, to regulate, to control them. The indictment of human nature is that any of us might think we can or should do those things. You’re afraid of foreigners coming into your land, a land that your ancestors came to as foreigners? Build a wall, or don’t let them on planes, or only let the “good” ones in. You’re afraid that you won’t be able to convince someone to sleep with you? Drug them, exert control. You’re afraid of someone else because they don’t look like you? Shoot them.

We encourage fear. This year, millions of Americans will choose a President, regardless of which one, based on fear. They will vote for their candidate not only because they are afraid of the other candidate, but because they share the same fears as their own. People of all stripes commit sexual assault because of fear of their own limitations, and most of them get away with it because their victims are afraid. Athletes do it and we’re “disappointed”, maybe they get suspended for a few games, because we’re afraid of thinking that someone with such influence could really be so terrible. Police officers kill innocent civilians because they work in a job where danger is constant, and are afraid, and fear keeps you from thinking rationally. We let them get away with it, because we are afraid of admitting that this might be a world where the people we entrust with authority are ruled by the same fears we are.

Childhood is often romanticized; the carefree days, when things were simpler. But if you’re not too far removed, try to think back to how much fear there was. Fear of the dark, of strangers, of disappointing your parents, of not having friends. A part of maturing is being able to have the same fun you had as a child, while mastering the fear. None of us completely mature, in fact most of us become more and more fearful. We magnify our attempts to protect ourselves from our fears; from the dark, from strangers, from loneliness.

This was long, but I wanted to get my thoughts down; I’ve been too afraid in the past of letting my thoughts known, mostly out of fear that people I respect would disagree with me, and I would either somehow lose respect for them, or them me. Being afraid is natural, and we shouldn’t endeavor to get rid of it, but I’d like to start being a little less… afraid. If you think you need a gun because “you never know…”, or you think whoever gets elected is going to ruin the country, or if you think no one will take you seriously when you speak your mind, my recommendation is this: just don’t be such a scaredy-cat

Today: I'd like to say I've done a good job of controlling my fear over the last year, but that probably isn't true. Maybe in small increments, I have been able to question my own visceral reactions to things and keep myself from becoming too embroiled in the seizure of reason in favor of fear. I think probably that's the least any of us can hope for. I just finished talking with my sister, who mentioned she had also recently had the urge to write a blog post, about Harry Potter (since yesterday was the 20th anniversary). I might do the same, but will be careful not to steal her main idea; there are plenty of things I can write about Harry Potter. While I figure that out, here's the song hint for New Blog number 1: He ain't got no distractions, Can't hear those buzzers and bells.

Post XVIIa: Spring Training

Four years may seem like a long time, but in reality, it is only 5% of the average male lifespan, and that percentage is only getting smaller. It has been 4 years since my last blog post, but yesterday my good friend and office-mate here in graduate school, minimax, started a blog with some encouragement from me, and then in turn encouraged me to start up mine again. While I might end up transferring this to Medium, or whatever he's using, I like the idea of continuing here, after 4 years. My plan is to keep the format, with an intro paragraph, a song of the week, and then the meat. Things don't always go according to plan. I also want to add to the blog ledger, if you will, a couple posts/notes that I made on Facebook. This gives me the chance to post a couple things now (that I've decided to re-start the blog) and gives me some time to think about what the first true new blog post will be (New Blog, like New Coke but good). The first Facebook post has to do with baseball Spring Training, which is months past now but I think still has enough emotion to carry itself here. Finally, even though it has been four years, I would be derelict in my duty if I didn't keep my promise from the song hint from "last week".

Ancient Song of the Week: Come On Eileen, by Dexys Midnight Runners

(March 3, 2016) Today is the first day of spring training for the White Sox. While that may seem trivial, I want to describe how important it is to me. There was a time when I didn't care about baseball, but I honestly can't remember it. I can't pinpoint the moment I started loving it; I imagine there was none. What I remember is going to softball tournaments my father would play in while we lived in Benin. I remember calling home runs "hole in ones". I remember returning to the US in 1997 and being able to watch White Sox games live on WGN, instead of on VHS tapes.

What I remember most, right now, is trying to figure out how I could play baseball. Moving back and forth from the US to Africa, and being generally shy, I was never really great at making friends. But I had a best friend. I remember one day, sitting in the living room, and creating a baseball league with my brother. The memory isn't super detailed, and it could be we'd had the idea earlier, but I distinctly remember coming up with the name "Toronto Arks" because I was looking at an African painting of Noah's Ark. My brother and I created more than a dozen teams each, and players to populate the league, and then we'd play outside. I'd pitch to him as Jason Millaxo, and he'd hit home runs off me as Cal Saco. We were all nine players on defense, though at some point we started allowing balls that hit trees to count as outs. Sometimes Dad would join us, pitching for either team. For a Kindergarten or 1st grade project, my brother and Dad made a plywood umpire to help call balls and strikes. We used Chump the Ump until his rotten plywood head fell off, then we had Dad drill another one on him.

I remember when we were discussing moving to Zambia, and I remember the reason, the only reason, I didn't want to go. They didn't have baseball in Zambia. We got to Lusaka before the end of the 2000 season. I don't recall exactly how; either we had DStv or someone had brought us a VHS, but I remember sitting in the TV room in our house on Mutende road watching the end of the ALDS. Someone bunted towards Frank Thomas, who for some reason was playing first base, and the White Sox lost. That's my first White Sox playoff memory, watching from Zambia.

We lived in three houses in Lusaka, and my brother and I continued playing our league at all of them. On the paved driveway of Mutende road, I dove once and scraped my knee worse than I ever had or ever have since. Our yard when we lived on Ngwerere rd. was so large, we tried playing in three different places. The place we settled on had the outfield fence the fence around the pool, so we could have splash shots. We also routinely lost balls over the neighbors fence, and the bushes in the front yard ate more tennis balls than was possible. The yard at Ibex Hill was small, but there was at least a gazebo where we could store the stat sheets we filled out during each game.

Baseball has been, except for my family, the one constant I've carried with me my entire life. It is the entire reason I majored in Statistics in undergrad, the reason I'm here in graduate school. It has given me some of my best memories; games with my family, the look on my father's face after the 2005 World Series, playing in the backyard with my brother.

I know a lot of people don't care for the game, and that's fine. Most of my friends don't, though some do, and a surprising number of those are Cubs fans. The Cubs are the trendy pick to win it all this year. And you know what? If they make it to the series, I'll be rooting for you.

As long as you're not playing us. Go Sox.

Today: As it turns out, the Cubs did win the World Series, but I must admit to having lied. I did not root for them, and since they have now won, I will never root for them. 2016 was a rough year for me, in terms of sports, culture and politics. The next post deals with part of my reaction to the latter. It seems a little contrived to have a song hint for a post I'm going to make in the next 30 minutes, but I do so enjoy consistency. Here's the hint: I want loads of clothes and fuckloads of diamonds, I heard people die while they are trying to find them.

Post XVI: Let's Get Funny

I'm pretty tired.  Teaching middle school is taxing.  I'm heading out of the country in about a week and have a lot to do, but every time I get home from work, I just want to pass out on the couch.  Feels like I don't have a lot in the tank, if you know what I mean.  It's mostly mental exhaustion, from trying to reason with 7th graders who know they only have 3 days of school left, and that all their work is done, and who think they can get away with anything.  The thing about these students is that they're hilarious.  It's nigh impossible for me to keep a straight face and discipline them because I'm close to breaking out laughing.  They've got that brand of humor that involves testing the boundaries to see just how outrageous they can make a statement until it's inappropriate.  They haven't reached the point where they realize reaching the boundary isn't going to do anything to stop them saying it.  I have.  That's kind of what I'm going to talk about.  Humor!  Even if the beginning of this introduction wasn't very humorous.

Relevant Song of the Week: Running on Empty, by Jackson Browne

I assume most people would like to think they have some kind of sense of humor.  People don't generally take it as a compliment when you tell them they don't have one, they get offended and say something like, "Sure I do!  I can be funny!"  Being funny and humor, though, are two very variable things.  Different people find different things funny, and making the wrong joke at the wrong time can sometimes be pretty devastating for the people involved!  Well, at least if one of the people involved takes things too seriously.

As most people, I like to think I have a good sense of humor.  I would go so far as to call myself funny.  My sense of humor comes from two places (everyone is a product of their environment, so it should be fairly easy to identify where someone's views come from, especially for that person) my father and my peers.  My mother, who can be very funny when she wants to, doesn't make a lot of jokes, but basically my entire childhood was full of Dad Jokes.  Really awful Dad Jokes which often involved puns.  Meanwhile, starting with my high school class, I developed an appreciation for the afore mentioned "boundary" humor.  Saying ridiculous things in a serious manner to highlight their inherent ridiculousness.

The latter often comes in forms that will offend the higher strung, more "politically correct" people.  A good example from when I was in high school, during small group work in English class, I believe, a friend and I were making fun of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supposedly having said the holocaust never happened by saying, well, that the holocaust never happened.  We were highlighting the utter foolishness of the people who might say that, but what we got from a couple other members of the group were too serious reactions "That's not funny" or "You can't say things like that".  The thing is, it's so absurd that someone might think that, that it seems pretty funny to me that we might attribute full human status to them.  I sometimes make similarly distasteful jokes about women and homosexuals.  I have certainly used the phrase "Make me a sandwich" and have expressed shock that a female might be somewhere that wasn't a kitchen.  I have also said on occasion that I'm a fan of gay men, because they're leaving more women for me, but that I do not approve of lesbians because they're taking them away.  I do not actually believe those things, though I have said them.  It's like lying, except to be funny.

There are only two reasons anyone would say those things.  Either they are not being serious (in which case it is a joke), or they are being serious (in which case they are clearly uneducated or mentally handicapped).  Saying those things and not believing them (and I should point out, making it obvious through facial movement and tone of voice that you do not believe them) is funny twofold.  It is a joke on it's own, and it is a mockery of the idiots who actually believe it.  I'm not a big fan of universal truth, but every now and then I identify a few that I think are probably true, like that predetermined gender roles are stupid, men should make their own sandwiches, and that everyone should be able to love whoever they want.  Except genetically inferior people, we should keep them out of the gene pool.

The second type of humor is the kind that no one finds offensive, but few find legitimately funny.  When my dad is watching baseball, or any TV really, if he sees a... let's say unique, name, he is unable to stop himself.  Each time Mike Trout would get a base hit, he'll say "That swing looked fishy."  One of his favorite jokes when my siblings and I were little involved "healing" us.  If we'd start crying or complaining about a little scratch or scrape, he'd come up and place a hand on the injured area and start shouting, really loud, "I HAVE THE POWER TO HEAL YOU! ALL THE PAIN THAT IS IN YOUR ARM WILL, ON THE COUNT OF THREE, BE TRANSFERRED INTO MINE!"  Then he'd count to three and start screaming in pain.  He'd do this in public places.  At some point we stopped laughing at it and just immediately pulled our arm away whenever he started with "I HAVE THE POWER..."

Another one of dad's favorite jokes, which he used to say all the time, would be to ask us if we heard about the fire in the circus.  There was a fire at the circus?  "Yeah, it was intense."  If you've never heard it, do you get it?  "Intense/In Tents"?  He used to say it ALL. THE. TIME.  But it's probably my favorite thing ever, truthfully.  In fact, I have a new plan for meeting the future Mrs. Prophet.  I'll go to those speed dating things, and each time I meet a woman I'll ask, "Did you hear about the fire in the circus?"  The first one who answers correctly, I will propose on the spot.

That gives me something of an idea to write about next week... hmm... We'll see.  Anyway, that's all for this week.  I didn't really wrap up the post and bring it to a conclusion or anything, but whatever.  I'm not Shakespeare, Dammit!  Now the internet knows what I think is funny, and that's good enough. Song Hint for Next Time: These people round here wear beaten down eyes, sunk-in, smoke dried faces, they're so resigned to what their fate is, but not us, not not us, we are far too young and clever.