Category — logos addict

I'm awesome at grammar, but it's a talent, not a skill:  I do it in my guts, and I have to go back and think it through in order to tell you why something is right or not.  

(I can usually do that, because I soaked up all the grammar I learned very easily, since it was just attaching rules to things I already knew — though my early education was pretty horrid, so I wasn't exposed to a lot that people who went to better schools were.  …And no, this doesn't mean that every bit of English I write has perfect grammar; sometimes I get "entitled" about knowing how it should be, and change things because I feel like it; plus I like to experiment — especially with punctuation and word-formation — and sometimes I just go fast (ahem, quickly) or am lazy, like most people.  That said, though, this post and my general disposition totally does give anybody the right to nitpick at me for any grammatical errors they may find in anything I've written, and yup, I'm okay with that.)

(Also, excessive parentheses are a stylistic mistake, not a grammatical one.  ::sticks out tongue::)

So here's my conundrum:

• the phrase "a day's worth of stuff" contains a possessive form of the singular noun "day", which therefore has an apostrophe.  The apostrophe goes in front of the "s" rather than behind it because "stuff" is a collective noun, I think, referring to the heap or chunk rather than the many items that compose it, and therefore gets treated as singular.
• the phrase "a day's worth of things" contains a possessive form of the singular noun "day", which has an apostrophe before the "s" even though the object-noun "things" is definitely plural — which is normal, so okay.  But this establishes that when "day" is plural in this phrase, there's an apostrophe-s regardless of whether the object-noun is singular or plural
• both the phrase "many days worth of stuff" and the phrase "many days worth of things" seem (intellectually) like they ought to have apostrophes following the "s" in "days"…but "many days' worth of things" just looks wrong to me (a good sign that it is wrong!).  Furthermore, Googling produces about a 80/20 preference for not using the apostrophe, including in well-respected publications!  SO WHAT IS THE DEAL?

Ah, life mysteries.  If only they were all so tiny as the waveform of an apostrophe….

"Well I guess there's a reason that truth-functional propositional logic is called zeroth-order logic, now, isn't there?"

[Not that complicated of a point, and barely even a pun...but a bit of a mouthful to keep your righteously-witty face on while telling at a subway stop.]

::adjusts collar nervously::

(By the way, on a similarly no-I-swear-I'm-just-a-nerd-not-an-alien note, the category on this site called "logos addict" refers to the Greek word logos, not to the plural of "logo".  And it did not occur to me that this could be interpreted as anything other than the Greek until someone brought it up to me in person, is the sick thing.  ::sigh::)

There are approximately ten thousand posts backed up in my brain right now, but I've no idea when I'll get a chance to write them, so instead you get one of the (many!) good bits from the Tao Te Ching:

In dwelling, be close to the land.

In meditation, go deep in the heart.

In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.

In speech, be true.

In ruling, be just.

In business, be competent.

In action, watch the timing.

No fight: No blame.

-Chapter Eight

"Love suffers long and is kind;
Love does not envy;
Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;
does not behave rudely,
does not seek its own,
is not provoked, thinks no evil…"

(I'll leave the attribution as an interesting exercise for the reader.)

SO yesterday was a lot of semi-sensible-sounding sleep-and-diet, writing-and-practice stuff…but don't let that fool you; I still highly value the *other* kind of planning too, the kind that just lets it all explode out and let's see what sticks.  Therefore, lest anyone think I’m not also doing good old-fashioned completely batshit planning in addition to the (for me) sane and well-considered planning of yesterday, I present…

JANUARY 2’s CONFESSIONS

The nice thing about a slow period — you've got to have them, and if I'm not careful I hate them, but — it IS nice that they give you lots of time to make crazy plans.  To make ALL the planz, and then gear yourself up to hit the tarmac at 200 knots and see what you can do.  When things are busy, you just grab the ropes as they swing by; it's when they're slow (like over a holiday) that you get to set things up and try to put some future ropes (mental or physical or financial) in the right places so you can make all those amazing leaps you're really hoping for.

Like… 

[Read more →]

New quote added to the Random Quotes scroller:

"Seven Deadly Sins:
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Science without humanity
Knowledge without character
Politics without principle
Commerce without morality
Worship without sacrifice."  – Mahatma Gandhi

I like this more complete formulation of a "sin"…as a Catholic child I was basically taught that single words ("wealth", "pleasure", etc.) were "bad", without any reference to why or how or what could bring them into balance so they could be good.

Gandhi makes the excellent point that a thing or condition like Wealth or Knowledge can be good or bad, depending on whether it's in balance.

I might even add some others:

Cursing without grammar
Gifts without gratitude
Work without goals
Help without sympathy

…Can you think of any?

OK, I've been using this giant analogy forever, because it just works so darn well.  Time to get it in writing … there's a lot more to it, but this is what I can pull out of RAM right now  ;) 

1. Hardware:  Body as a whole
2. Firmware:  Brain
3. Software:  The conscious and subconscious mind as well as the autonomous nervous system
4. OS (Operating System):  What I call the Psychology; the collection of constructs and "base software"
5. Processes:  Individual psychological constructs, issues, habits, reactions, etc.  Some are part of the OS and some are independent.  Can be installed by yourself, other people, or the system itself.  Some run on command or in reaction to another process; others run all the time or in the background; some are harder to shut off than others; some are necessary for you to function
6. Skins:  Mini-personalities you wear for other people; masks
7. Kills / Killalls:  Things you do to deliberately attempt to shut off a process (i.e. you light a cigarette to kill a stress-reaction; you race a car to kill intrusive memories; you open a window to kill claustrophobia)
8. Cron jobs:  Processes you run at a regular time.  Can be deliberately configured; many are not
9. Tuning, tweaks, optimizations, overclocking:  Different ways of attempting to make your system better (won't go into the differences here)
10. Clearing cache:  Meditating
11. Defragmenting:  Therapy
12. Race condition:  Anxiety attack
13. Packet loss:  A communication problem, either between yourself and another, or internally (i.e. a neurological problem)

Feel free to add any you know about that I've missed!  I'll probably update this in the future, just so I have something I can refer the Confused to.  ;)

Cool Tools: Writing Tools.

1. Cool Tools is an amazing blog and everybody should read it, even though it’s usually about tape and shovels and stuff* more so than writing; however

2. HOLY CRAP BETWEEN THREE BUTTERY CRACKERS, that’s a gobsmackingly useful PDF. I think I will print it on Tyvek and sew it into all my clothes.

*my house, and my Amazon wishlist, are FULL of their recommendations. I bought this tape because they said to and it is the OLYMPIAN TAPE OF THE MFING GODS. Listen to these people. About everything, apparently. :)

MMMWWWAAAHHHHRRRRGHHH…

[Zombie noises continue as dirt-covered fingers climb up over the edge of the keyboard.  In the ghastly glow of the monitor, the eyes that appear are ringed with deep black circles, and the mouth reeks of stale coffee and delivery food.]

Ugggh, coming back to the world of the living feels awful.  But I'm doing it!  My Insanely Massive Project at work is pretty much complete — everything goes live on Monday, so it's not to say there isn't still stress, but the brunt of the work-work is done with, and I even have this weekend mostly off!  (I haven't had a weekend, or even a weekend day, in pretty much a month.  But this weekend I just need to supervise some testing here and there, so woot!)

Needless to say, I'll have some massive work to do putting my schedule back together…I've just been plain exhausted, sleeping 4-6h most nights, getting naps when I can't stand up anymore (if at all) and crashing out for 7-9 hours once a week or so in order to jolt my brain into working again…it's ugly.  But Wednesday night I slept 8 hours (like a brick) and yesterday I made myself lay down for two naps (even if I was still too stressed-out to sleep for them); last night I got a solid 6h and today my aim is to lay down for ALL my naps.  If the usual re-adaptation rules hold, and my schedule actually does get less crazy (no promises; depending on how things go I might still have another week or so of craziness), then by mid-next-week I should be back on track, or getting close to it. 

Anyway, all the time I've spent online that wasn't working was writing, which is awesome; and I have a good-sized story I'm really proud of in the last stages of being readied for submission, so woot!  That makes me feel like work didn't completely eat my life, even if it came close.  But eh, I knew it would, and I wanted to do this project anyway and it was pretty fun, so aside from the occasional over-dramatic zombie reference I guess I can't complain.  ;)

More soon!  I have to catch this nap, then it's off to kungfu (which I've also been missing due to work, so woot!).  Hope you're all well!

PD

P.S.  I recently admitted to a non-family-member for the first time that I suffer from workaholism in the clinical sense.  For a response I got, "Well actually I think that's putting it a bit lightly, don't you?"  Sheesh!

…By Ralph Waldo Emerson.  I copied some of this for a friend the other day, a friend who isn't as happy with "thick" reading as I am, and he made me realize that if you sift through the rather dense weave of old language and dense arguments with your fingers, you can pull gems out of Emerson that will make anyone's day. 

This is a list of the best sentences, if you will, from this excellent essay, with my adjustments and occasional commentary in brackets and elipses.  It's less a collection of quotes, and more an outline of the piece.  If you like it, please understand that the whole tangly mess is brilliant and wonderfully worth it to read and you should do it no matter how long it takes you; but for some geniuses like Emerson, even skimming the bones of his thoughts are marvelously good for ours, so I offer these here for the time-stripped and classics-averse to enjoy too.

• Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost

• Great works of art…teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility…most…when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
  

• We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.  …but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.  [I want that on a T-shirt.  In Chinese.]

• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the [self-reliance] of every one of its members. … The virtue in most request is conformity.

• Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. 

  [There's a great part right after this where he describes a churchgoer asking him when he's young, essentially "how can you trust your impulses when they might come from the Devil?", and his answer is, "I don't think so, but (quote) If I'm the Devil's child, then I'll live from the Devil."  For Emerson, self-reliance meant having the guts to be what you were created to be, and having enough faith to not doubt the usefulness of your own creation.  <3!]

• Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none.

• I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

  [Italics mine.  An excellent example, perhaps one of the best, of a positive argument from existentialism!]

• It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

• The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.

• But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

• The sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows.

• [There are some bits that just can't be condensed...the "foolish consistency" argument is amazing, but it's all or nothing...]

• Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.

• Be it how it will, do right now.  [If that's not Zen, I don't know what is.]

• Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.

• That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.

  [Fascinating that we don't seem to have a story like that nowadays.]

• What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? 

  [This one I put in just for sheer gorgeousness, and to point out that science has informed beautiful literature for a long long time...this whole section is a great example.  And by the way, the "power" he's referring to here is Spontaneity or Intuition, if you were curious. ;)]

• The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.

• Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. 

  [This, and what follows it in the text, may be my favorite bit.]

• [Only Life] avails, not the having lived.

  [In the original it's "Life only avails", but that antiquated construction confuses the point for some people.  I love, love, love this one; I think it's the greatest wisdom one could possibly carry forward into growing old.  Only Life...not the "having lived".  It's sort of a restatement of my Higher Law #1:  Keep Trying.  Only said much, much better...but there's no shame at all in being jealous of Emerson I think.  (Well, he would think there was.  But he dead.  ;)]

• I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

• Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law.

• The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.

• Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious.  [AMEN!]

• Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

• Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.

• Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.   [Fascinating point, which he supports with arguments later on; for example, "The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. ... He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun."]

• Great men…leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, [a] founder.

• Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long…They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.  But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature.

• Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.  [These are the last two lines. ;)]

*One last comment — Emerson refers to "man" and "manhood" throughout this piece, and others.  I believe his sexism is ignorance, and further I firmly believe that if I had an hour with the man, I could talk him right out of it, because he was obviously a clear thinker and a believer in honesty and universalism of principle.  Hence, it doesn't upset me here like it does in some other writings…in the time he was writing, to say anything else (he/she?) would have been pretty literally unthinkable; it would have been such a huge point as to require a separate essay.  But it is worth meditating on how this wasn't that long ago, really, that freedom and education and uprightness and full life meant, literally, "manhood".  And that not only doesn't it mean that today, but I can openly write here about it, throw my education around and furthermore, openly threaten to kick anyone's ass (or perhaps flash my tits at them) who disagrees with me.  Viva las modernity.  ;)