Sometime this afternoon, the conversation turned to kids. Not just kids kids, mind you, but real live in-the-flesh kind of children, the ones who constantly bump into your knees and marvel at how much taller you are than them.
I don't have such a good record with kids. Personally, I do like them (particularly with a little barbecue sauce and some grated cheese), but they don't seem to like me for some reason. It might be because the voice scares them, or it could be because my eyebrows give them nightmares. Whatever the case, I'm okay with kids, and the real question is whether or not they're okay with me.
For these occasions, I carry around a nice "children" anecdote. I won't tell it now because it loses something in the writing, but suffice to say that it involved a one-year-old child and a Snoopy doll. Said incident, by the way, ended with the head of said Snoopy doll being thrown in my general direction... and that confession alone should give you an idea of how I am with kids.
Despite the anecdote, however, someone dared to throw the question over to my side of the table: "So what about you, Sean? How many kids would you want to have?"
I figured that the "barbecue-sauce-and-grated-cheese" comment would have gotten me run out of town at that point, so I threw back the only response I could think of:
"What?"
"That is," my friend said, "if you want to have kids. Do you want to have kids?"
I thought for a moment. This was an interesting question, if only because I hadn't quite thought about it yet. I'm still a young man, after all. I'm not exactly about to shackle mysel... er, settle down to family life just yet.
"Well... yeah," I said. "I'd like to have kids someday. I mean, it'll probably be a while by the time I have them, but I wouldn't mind the wait.
"Thinking about it a little further, I'd say that two or three of them would be nice. The issue when you have only one child is that he or she usually has nobody to play with, which puts some undue pressure on either the parents or any outside friends. Having two kids would probably resolve this, but then you get the question of an elder/younger relationship, and I'm not sure how healthy that would be.
"So if it's possible, I'd rather have three kids. That would raise the possible conflict of an elder-middle-younger relationship, but I figure that the internal dynamics would balance it out — you can have a majority clique at any point, I imagine. That, and the middle child would inevitably be a bridge or a mediator between the other two.
"The only question that remains, I think, is the matter of age. I'd prefer the kids to be spaced about two or three years apart, so that they can share knowledge and contacts within similar generations. It takes quite a bit of pressure off the other factors, I think, when their constant contact with each other helps ensure that the older ones can literally help train and educate the younger ones. I find that siblings usually tend to take different paths in life, so three children would probably imply different interests and specializations of some sort.
"I'll throw the question back, by the way," I said. "What do you think?"
This brought some silence over the table for a few minutes.
"I think," my friend finally said, "I'd like three kids."
"Any reason why?"
"Uh... no. I'd just like three kids."
And somewhere in the world, a mother is asking her child about a decapitated Snoopy doll.
Monday, August 31, 2009
If Titles Could Talk
After thirty years' worth of reading, I've come to a fateful conclusion: It's possible to determine the base contents of a literary or artistic work merely by reading its title.
I imagine that this discovery will change our way of life as we know it: Soon enough, we'll be able flip through literary collections in a heartbeat, finish poetry readings in a fraction of a second, and sleep through movie screenings that would otherwise steal a good two hours of our lives. From there, it shouldn't be a great leap towards coming up with a mutual cure for AIDS, SARS, H1N1 and all forms of cancer; generating renewable fuel resources; solving world hunger; and determining the true meaning of life as we know it.
That, or it was those baked mushrooms I had for dinner. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter, because you're getting the list whether you like it or not:
IF...
...the title of the work has a colon in it, or a number at the end — "I am part of a series that everybody has since stopped reading."
...the title is a common phrase — "My title was the first thing that came to mind after the last chapter was finished."
...the title has only one word — "My writer couldn't think of an interesting title."
...the title has five words or more — "My writer couldn't think of an interesting article."
...the title mentions a specific historical or contemporary figure — "I have absolutely nothing to do with said historical or contemporary figure."
...the title summarizes the story in its entirety — "My writer just wasted two thousand words and three hours of effort."
...the title has a typographical error — "My proofreader is checking the want ads right now."
...the title is a word that doesn't exist — "Your only motivation for reading this article is to find out what the heck the word means."
...the title has a subtitle that involves the word "God" and multiple exclamation points — "I was created by the Philippines' newest National Artist!"
...the title is "Untitled" — "Please kill me."
I imagine that this discovery will change our way of life as we know it: Soon enough, we'll be able flip through literary collections in a heartbeat, finish poetry readings in a fraction of a second, and sleep through movie screenings that would otherwise steal a good two hours of our lives. From there, it shouldn't be a great leap towards coming up with a mutual cure for AIDS, SARS, H1N1 and all forms of cancer; generating renewable fuel resources; solving world hunger; and determining the true meaning of life as we know it.
That, or it was those baked mushrooms I had for dinner. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter, because you're getting the list whether you like it or not:
IF...
...the title of the work has a colon in it, or a number at the end — "I am part of a series that everybody has since stopped reading."
...the title is a common phrase — "My title was the first thing that came to mind after the last chapter was finished."
...the title has only one word — "My writer couldn't think of an interesting title."
...the title has five words or more — "My writer couldn't think of an interesting article."
...the title mentions a specific historical or contemporary figure — "I have absolutely nothing to do with said historical or contemporary figure."
...the title summarizes the story in its entirety — "My writer just wasted two thousand words and three hours of effort."
...the title has a typographical error — "My proofreader is checking the want ads right now."
...the title is a word that doesn't exist — "Your only motivation for reading this article is to find out what the heck the word means."
...the title has a subtitle that involves the word "God" and multiple exclamation points — "I was created by the Philippines' newest National Artist!"
...the title is "Untitled" — "Please kill me."
Fire for Fighting
Something's been wrong with my desktop computer over the past couple of days, and all of the symptoms were there. For one, the system wouldn't shut down properly — something would always interrupt the shutdown and ask me to terminate a running process. On top of that, anything that I downloaded — however small it was — would inevitably run into connection issues. But when I realized that my Google searches were being redirected to completely different (and ad-laden) sites, I realized that I had a problem.
My ability to make completely useless distinctions automatically told me that I was dealing with some malware here. There was something in the system, all right, but it wasn't necessarily a virus — a virus, after all, implies a payload of some sort; it's supposed to do something bad to your computer. Plain old adware normally puts a lot of pop-up ads on your computer, which wasn't the case, so I figured that whatever was in my system had been created for far more insidious purposes. Like, say, password thievery or backdoor hacking.
The first thing I did, then, was to enter my symptoms into a search engine (watching out for the redirection, of course) and figure out what I was dealing with. Yes, it was malware. Yes, it was a password stealer, with security compromisation on the side. Yes, it was a strain that was difficult to remove, which I was to find out later.
Most of the sites I visited recommended a single piece of free software which I could download, install, and run... and that's what I did. So I just sat back, waited patiently for the slower-than-usual download to finish, then double-clicked the handy little Windows icon and watched it do its stuff.
Except that it didn't. The silly thing wouldn't install.
I hit the internet forums again and noted that some of the more recent strains of malware were advanced enough to prevent corrective software from functioning... which was just great, really. I've run into enough malicious code in my life to know that this thing wouldn't be deleted easily; I just had to find the right combination of moves that would defeat it.
After a few attempts at booting and rebooting, I found out that I could run the antivirus installation as long as 1) I changed the name of the installation file, and 2) I performed the installation shortly after I booted up the computer. (I can only assume that it took the malware a while to figure out what I was doing.) The installation turned out successful, although it ran into a problem near the end... which I took as a sign that my digital interloper was trying to fight back.
Chortling to myself, I got the software to scan my computer, and after an hour's work, it easily identified the source of all my woes. Gotcha, sucker.
Cleaning it took all of ten minutes, after which I did what I normally do after a good cleaning session — I restarted the computer and ran the scan again. At this point, however, I ran into the bad news: The second scan indicated that the files were still there... which meant that the bad code was either resisting removal, or reconstituting itself in some way.
I cleared the harmful files again and ran the scan without rebooting. This one told me that the threat had been removed. After a skeptical restart-and-rescan, however, I was told that the malware was still present in my system. I guess there was some sort of method by which it was rebuilding itself, then.
Fortunately, by this time, I was able to put a name to my imaginary little opponent. I could identify a couple of primary component files, as well as three or four supplementary files that were written in random ten-character filename strings, presumably to evade detection. In short, I had a fair idea of where the problem was coming from, and the only question involved killing the stupid thing.
At that point, I fell back on my recovery console — this little backup tool that allows me to get into the operating system without running any of the files there. A few nerve-wracking minutes later, I was looking at the obnoxious little buggers from the safety of my digital crawlspace, and manually zapping them one by one.
From there, I restarted the computer and ran one final scan. This one gave me no issues whatsoever.
I don't remember when I started fighting these sorts of things, but I feel as though I've done a whole lot for someone who doesn't even have in-depth experience in this sort of firefighting. I figure that it's because of the wide range of tools that we have available for our convenience nowadays — any person with at least half a brain for technical analysis would probably be able to combat these things in their spare time.
In that sense, it brings to mind a question that someone asked me once... something about why I never seemed to write about things like computer viruses in my few sci-fi stories. If only that person knew about what strange, real-world experiences I've had in that regard...
My ability to make completely useless distinctions automatically told me that I was dealing with some malware here. There was something in the system, all right, but it wasn't necessarily a virus — a virus, after all, implies a payload of some sort; it's supposed to do something bad to your computer. Plain old adware normally puts a lot of pop-up ads on your computer, which wasn't the case, so I figured that whatever was in my system had been created for far more insidious purposes. Like, say, password thievery or backdoor hacking.
The first thing I did, then, was to enter my symptoms into a search engine (watching out for the redirection, of course) and figure out what I was dealing with. Yes, it was malware. Yes, it was a password stealer, with security compromisation on the side. Yes, it was a strain that was difficult to remove, which I was to find out later.
Most of the sites I visited recommended a single piece of free software which I could download, install, and run... and that's what I did. So I just sat back, waited patiently for the slower-than-usual download to finish, then double-clicked the handy little Windows icon and watched it do its stuff.
Except that it didn't. The silly thing wouldn't install.
I hit the internet forums again and noted that some of the more recent strains of malware were advanced enough to prevent corrective software from functioning... which was just great, really. I've run into enough malicious code in my life to know that this thing wouldn't be deleted easily; I just had to find the right combination of moves that would defeat it.
After a few attempts at booting and rebooting, I found out that I could run the antivirus installation as long as 1) I changed the name of the installation file, and 2) I performed the installation shortly after I booted up the computer. (I can only assume that it took the malware a while to figure out what I was doing.) The installation turned out successful, although it ran into a problem near the end... which I took as a sign that my digital interloper was trying to fight back.
Chortling to myself, I got the software to scan my computer, and after an hour's work, it easily identified the source of all my woes. Gotcha, sucker.
Cleaning it took all of ten minutes, after which I did what I normally do after a good cleaning session — I restarted the computer and ran the scan again. At this point, however, I ran into the bad news: The second scan indicated that the files were still there... which meant that the bad code was either resisting removal, or reconstituting itself in some way.
I cleared the harmful files again and ran the scan without rebooting. This one told me that the threat had been removed. After a skeptical restart-and-rescan, however, I was told that the malware was still present in my system. I guess there was some sort of method by which it was rebuilding itself, then.
Fortunately, by this time, I was able to put a name to my imaginary little opponent. I could identify a couple of primary component files, as well as three or four supplementary files that were written in random ten-character filename strings, presumably to evade detection. In short, I had a fair idea of where the problem was coming from, and the only question involved killing the stupid thing.
At that point, I fell back on my recovery console — this little backup tool that allows me to get into the operating system without running any of the files there. A few nerve-wracking minutes later, I was looking at the obnoxious little buggers from the safety of my digital crawlspace, and manually zapping them one by one.
From there, I restarted the computer and ran one final scan. This one gave me no issues whatsoever.
I don't remember when I started fighting these sorts of things, but I feel as though I've done a whole lot for someone who doesn't even have in-depth experience in this sort of firefighting. I figure that it's because of the wide range of tools that we have available for our convenience nowadays — any person with at least half a brain for technical analysis would probably be able to combat these things in their spare time.
In that sense, it brings to mind a question that someone asked me once... something about why I never seemed to write about things like computer viruses in my few sci-fi stories. If only that person knew about what strange, real-world experiences I've had in that regard...
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Gridlock
If you're wondering exactly what I do in order to cool off after a day's work, I can give you the regular suite of answers: I read books. I walk around malls. I sleep till noon. And I play games.
It's probably the latter item that distracts me on the Internet nowadays. While I do spend a bit of time in the evenings chasing my email and doing one bit of writing or another, I'm usually too tired to conceptualize and execute entire blog posts in one sitting. Thus, I play games.
And lately, the most prominent of those games has been Grid.
Grid is a remarkable Flash game of the puzzle persuasion, something that immediately caught my mind from the clean execution to the strange gameplay. What the game does is that it gives you a layout of various glyphs, each one contained within a given cell. One of the glyphs is a power source, which means that any other glyph connected to it can therefore supply that power to other glyphs that are similarly connected. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to rotate each of the glyphs such that power is supplied to the entire grid.
There are, of course, some hitches: You can't change or swap any of the glyphs, which means that you can only rotate each of them in their current positions and figure out how each one of them fits in the final configuration. You can only rotate a glyph is power is being supplied to it, which makes for quite a bit of frustration and fine-tuning. And you can't have any "loose" connections in the final grid, which means that every glyph must be clearly connected in all available connections.
Take the configuration below, for example.
Rotating each of the glyphs correctly gives us the following correct solution:
On each level, you're given a limited number of moves (rotations); it's often plenty for you to finish the level, but completing a grid within a smaller number of rotations gives you a higher score.
The games gives you 35 such grids to solve, and they gradually escalate in difficulty. The previous grid, for example, is one of the earlier ones — the first grid that you get to do for yourself after the tutorial's completed. Further grids tend to be head-scratchers...
And after a while, of course, the grids get more and more confusing. Whoever put this thing together tested the level design quite well.
And if you get far enough (the game saves your progress via unique ID), you can graduate up to the malevolent, labyrinthine jigsaw-like conundrums. You run into stuff that requires you to plan your moves well in advance, stuff that forces you to double back and redo old configurations, and stuff that just plain takes up the whole screen. In the later levels, you might even run into all of them at once.
That grid above is level 31 out of the 35, which is the most recent one that I've managed to solve. It's the first one that's taken me more than one session to finish, which means that yes, I was working on it for a week.
I imagine that my time on this game will end fairly soon, seeing that I'm only three or four grids away from completing everything. I'm going to miss it when I finally finish; it's one of the better games that I've come across, and I've recommended it to a few people so far so that they can suffer as I do.
Sure, it has some significant mental requirements to begin with... but I do look for those games. Otherwise, well, I'd have to fall back on my other online diversion, which involves untangling a bit of string...
I'll probably leave that for another time and another discussion, though. I just need to get to that 32nd grid right now...
* Grid, of course, is the property of Candystand.com, which offers "the sweetest games online". Seriously, they have some pretty good stuff on their site. Don't sue me over the free publicity, guys, or at least not until I manage to complete all 35 grids first.
* Planarity is the work of John Tantalo, and is an insidious time-waster if I ever saw one. Who would ever think that untangling string would be so addictive? Don't sue me either; I'm all tied up at the moment.
It's probably the latter item that distracts me on the Internet nowadays. While I do spend a bit of time in the evenings chasing my email and doing one bit of writing or another, I'm usually too tired to conceptualize and execute entire blog posts in one sitting. Thus, I play games.
And lately, the most prominent of those games has been Grid.
Grid is a remarkable Flash game of the puzzle persuasion, something that immediately caught my mind from the clean execution to the strange gameplay. What the game does is that it gives you a layout of various glyphs, each one contained within a given cell. One of the glyphs is a power source, which means that any other glyph connected to it can therefore supply that power to other glyphs that are similarly connected. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to rotate each of the glyphs such that power is supplied to the entire grid.
There are, of course, some hitches: You can't change or swap any of the glyphs, which means that you can only rotate each of them in their current positions and figure out how each one of them fits in the final configuration. You can only rotate a glyph is power is being supplied to it, which makes for quite a bit of frustration and fine-tuning. And you can't have any "loose" connections in the final grid, which means that every glyph must be clearly connected in all available connections.
Take the configuration below, for example.
Rotating each of the glyphs correctly gives us the following correct solution:
On each level, you're given a limited number of moves (rotations); it's often plenty for you to finish the level, but completing a grid within a smaller number of rotations gives you a higher score.
The games gives you 35 such grids to solve, and they gradually escalate in difficulty. The previous grid, for example, is one of the earlier ones — the first grid that you get to do for yourself after the tutorial's completed. Further grids tend to be head-scratchers...
And after a while, of course, the grids get more and more confusing. Whoever put this thing together tested the level design quite well.
And if you get far enough (the game saves your progress via unique ID), you can graduate up to the malevolent, labyrinthine jigsaw-like conundrums. You run into stuff that requires you to plan your moves well in advance, stuff that forces you to double back and redo old configurations, and stuff that just plain takes up the whole screen. In the later levels, you might even run into all of them at once.
That grid above is level 31 out of the 35, which is the most recent one that I've managed to solve. It's the first one that's taken me more than one session to finish, which means that yes, I was working on it for a week.
I imagine that my time on this game will end fairly soon, seeing that I'm only three or four grids away from completing everything. I'm going to miss it when I finally finish; it's one of the better games that I've come across, and I've recommended it to a few people so far so that they can suffer as I do.
Sure, it has some significant mental requirements to begin with... but I do look for those games. Otherwise, well, I'd have to fall back on my other online diversion, which involves untangling a bit of string...
I'll probably leave that for another time and another discussion, though. I just need to get to that 32nd grid right now...
* Grid, of course, is the property of Candystand.com, which offers "the sweetest games online". Seriously, they have some pretty good stuff on their site. Don't sue me over the free publicity, guys, or at least not until I manage to complete all 35 grids first.
* Planarity is the work of John Tantalo, and is an insidious time-waster if I ever saw one. Who would ever think that untangling string would be so addictive? Don't sue me either; I'm all tied up at the moment.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Lowest Output Yet
No, I'm not dead yet. Just busy... I've got a slew of marketing promotions to prepare for the next couple of months, and on top of that, I've got a few device tests to run through. The new manager also reported for her first day of work last week, so I'm allocating a small portion of my time towards making sure that picks up on her tasks and duties.
To make a long story short, I've been getting home by about nine or ten every evening, sitting down to a late dinner, then taking a quick bath and dozing off with a shock of wet hair. My barber's probably going to have a field day next month, but that's not the point here. The point is that I'm usually rather drained by the time I sit down in front of the computer.
I find it a little strange, really, that I'm unable to come up with much in the way of good ideas whenever I'm dog tired. Hypothetically, I don't think that it's really possible for my mind to "tire out" (although it does get migraines from time to time), so psychological fatigue is the only reason I have left: In a sense, between paper and bedsheets, I invariably choose the bedsheets.
The irony is that I don't even sleep early most of the time; I spend a couple of hours reading in bed. In the last month, I've gone through four Lillian Jackson Braun novels, Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a six-hundred-page book of ghost stories, and a little more than half of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana. If anything, I've at least caught up on some of my reading.
Of course, I still want to catch up with this month's output, which will certainly mean trying to write at least six blog posts by the time Monday comes around. We have a long weekend going on at the moment, so that should make things a little easier. It'll still be about two posts per day, however, when my expected rate goes at about one-thirds of a post per day. (Sometimes I wonder if I should just go and complain about the government; I'd probably have a lot of writing fodder in that case.)
That'll be a good resolution, I think: "Write more." I should take a more proactive stance on this, perhaps, and expend more willpower to write as opposed to flopping onto the mattress whenever I get home from work. It's not mental block after all... it's just psychological fatigue.
That said... I'll start tomorrow. The bed feels too good to leave right now.
To make a long story short, I've been getting home by about nine or ten every evening, sitting down to a late dinner, then taking a quick bath and dozing off with a shock of wet hair. My barber's probably going to have a field day next month, but that's not the point here. The point is that I'm usually rather drained by the time I sit down in front of the computer.
I find it a little strange, really, that I'm unable to come up with much in the way of good ideas whenever I'm dog tired. Hypothetically, I don't think that it's really possible for my mind to "tire out" (although it does get migraines from time to time), so psychological fatigue is the only reason I have left: In a sense, between paper and bedsheets, I invariably choose the bedsheets.
The irony is that I don't even sleep early most of the time; I spend a couple of hours reading in bed. In the last month, I've gone through four Lillian Jackson Braun novels, Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a six-hundred-page book of ghost stories, and a little more than half of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana. If anything, I've at least caught up on some of my reading.
Of course, I still want to catch up with this month's output, which will certainly mean trying to write at least six blog posts by the time Monday comes around. We have a long weekend going on at the moment, so that should make things a little easier. It'll still be about two posts per day, however, when my expected rate goes at about one-thirds of a post per day. (Sometimes I wonder if I should just go and complain about the government; I'd probably have a lot of writing fodder in that case.)
That'll be a good resolution, I think: "Write more." I should take a more proactive stance on this, perhaps, and expend more willpower to write as opposed to flopping onto the mattress whenever I get home from work. It's not mental block after all... it's just psychological fatigue.
That said... I'll start tomorrow. The bed feels too good to leave right now.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Ask a Silly Question...
For the record, I work for a marketing agency right now. I'm a Digital Producer, which means that I do the following things:
1) I manage any changes that need to be made to clients' web sites, and
2) I set up any online or email-based requirements that my clients need.
In short, if my clients need anything that has to do with the local Internet technologies, I'm the person responsible for planning them out and making sure that they work. It's harder than it sounds, particularly when you take into account the fact that most people don't have much Net savvy to begin with. I often have to advise clients as to what's possible (e.g. tracking peoples' browsing history on a single click), and what's not (e.g. setting up a Google search for colored text).
That said, it's a little complicated to explain, particularly to the previous generation of adults. Most of them have heard of the Internet well enough, but their eyes tend to glaze over the moment I go into specifics. On top of that, there's the occasional acquaintance, store proprietor or barista who asks me what I do for a living — and if anything, I usually don't have enough time to discuss the whole thing.
Nowadays, whenever somebody asks me about my job, I usually make up something on the spot. Sometimes it's reasonably accurate and sometimes it's not, but it's usually satisfactory enough for people to smile, nod, and let me get on with my day. The strange thing is that I'm not even sure if they're even listening.
I have to admit, however, that it was fun to come up with some of these, which were all mentioned at one time or another:
— "I'm the office slavedriver. I have my own official bullwhip and everything!"
— "You know how they need somebody to do the voice samples for commercials? That's me."
— "I'm the babysitter for my boss's dog."
— "Oh... something that involves squids, diamonds, and asphalt."
— "I have a job? I guess that would explain the building I enter each morning."
— "I'm in charge of training the office slackers. They just finished my introduction to Bejeweled last week; I've got plans to start them on Zuma next, but not before they pass that exam on Tetris that I prepared yesterday."
— "I'm the James Earl Jones impersonator."
— "I park peoples' cars, shine their shoes, and put vinegar into the coffee cup when no one's looking."
— "Let me put it this way: Bubu, the god of vacation leave forms and missed deadlines, needs an unfortunate patsy to do his divine bidding."
— "I'm the guy who writes all those neat little taglines on those movie posters."
— "Yes, I work in radio. I'm the guy who screams into the mike whenever they have a caller who they want to go away."
— "I'm the guy they call in whenever the underwear models don't show up."
Oddly enough, most of the people I know still don't know what I do for a living. You'd think that they'd know by now.
1) I manage any changes that need to be made to clients' web sites, and
2) I set up any online or email-based requirements that my clients need.
In short, if my clients need anything that has to do with the local Internet technologies, I'm the person responsible for planning them out and making sure that they work. It's harder than it sounds, particularly when you take into account the fact that most people don't have much Net savvy to begin with. I often have to advise clients as to what's possible (e.g. tracking peoples' browsing history on a single click), and what's not (e.g. setting up a Google search for colored text).
That said, it's a little complicated to explain, particularly to the previous generation of adults. Most of them have heard of the Internet well enough, but their eyes tend to glaze over the moment I go into specifics. On top of that, there's the occasional acquaintance, store proprietor or barista who asks me what I do for a living — and if anything, I usually don't have enough time to discuss the whole thing.
Nowadays, whenever somebody asks me about my job, I usually make up something on the spot. Sometimes it's reasonably accurate and sometimes it's not, but it's usually satisfactory enough for people to smile, nod, and let me get on with my day. The strange thing is that I'm not even sure if they're even listening.
I have to admit, however, that it was fun to come up with some of these, which were all mentioned at one time or another:
— "I'm the office slavedriver. I have my own official bullwhip and everything!"
— "You know how they need somebody to do the voice samples for commercials? That's me."
— "I'm the babysitter for my boss's dog."
— "Oh... something that involves squids, diamonds, and asphalt."
— "I have a job? I guess that would explain the building I enter each morning."
— "I'm in charge of training the office slackers. They just finished my introduction to Bejeweled last week; I've got plans to start them on Zuma next, but not before they pass that exam on Tetris that I prepared yesterday."
— "I'm the James Earl Jones impersonator."
— "I park peoples' cars, shine their shoes, and put vinegar into the coffee cup when no one's looking."
— "Let me put it this way: Bubu, the god of vacation leave forms and missed deadlines, needs an unfortunate patsy to do his divine bidding."
— "I'm the guy who writes all those neat little taglines on those movie posters."
— "Yes, I work in radio. I'm the guy who screams into the mike whenever they have a caller who they want to go away."
— "I'm the guy they call in whenever the underwear models don't show up."
Oddly enough, most of the people I know still don't know what I do for a living. You'd think that they'd know by now.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Hard Blink
I don't remember what triggered the topic of conversation, but somehow my brother and I ended up discussing a bit of Sci-Fi on the way home. At the top of the list, I think, was the matter of what literary elements made Science Fiction, Science Fiction... and the question of why some people would argue that some of these elements were preferable over others.
There are plenty of Sci-Fi subgenres, I would imagine. On the one hand, you have your space-opera clones involving bald starship captains and lightsaber-wielding farmboys. On another hand, you have your post-apocalyptic scenarios, usually involving ratty postal workers and people who bear an uncanny resemblance to Mel Gibson. On yet another hand, you have your slick martial-arts-and-slow-motion affairs, often involving machine code and bullet time. There's no shortage of literary elements out there, much less for Science Fiction in general.
We started out with the concept of "traditional" Science Fiction and the recent Hugo Awards argument that it caused, but we didn't get into too much discussion there. After five minutes, I think, we just agreed that we didn't have a clue as to any real distinction between "traditional" and "modern" Sci-Fi — if only because any contemporary take on the genre was likely to become dated after a few decades. "The writers can reinvent the genre all they want," I remember saying, "but that sort of creativity does little against the possibility that someone might grant the 'old-fashioned' label to their work in the future."
Fortunately, we pushed forward into more interesting territory: What would it take, for example, for a contemporary Science Fiction story to be considered "cutting-edge"? I mean, over the last thirty years, we've covered such things as (*deep breath*) aliens, robots, space exploration, extra-terrestrial locations, weapons, war, love, transportation, games, cyberspace, virtual reality, cybernetics, apocalypsis, morals, genetics, humanity, cloning, replication, temporal manipulation, religion, the human psyche, divination, oppression, guardianship, life and death... to say little of any other theme or scrap of a technological future that was written down by some fevered mind somewhere.
The best we could offer was that "cutting-edge" Science Fiction involved using a new element in there somewhere, perhaps something that hasn't seen much of the light of readership yet. In a sense, the genre has to resemble a lot of other genres in their race to constantly reinvent themselves. At the very least, it's certainly hard to define — if I knew what it was that gave the "newness" to any short story, then I'd have the Hugo Awards committee licking my boots right now.
I did point out, however, that for a genre that offers tangible benefits to technological progress, the Science Fiction genre doesn't seem to be concentrating on this aspect. Sci-Fi, after all, was a contributing factor towards such fields as Internet Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Cybernetics... but the modern efforts seem to be lighter on 'practical use' and heavier on 'cool concept'. After all, what did the concept of bullet time ever do for the real world?
I remember holding onto one concept that I've never been able to work into a successful story, and that's the idea of the neural implant. In case you don't grasp its implications just yet, that's the idea of having a computer grafted onto your living brain; maybe it's a chip that's attached to the front of your temporal lobe, and maybe it's a mechanism hooked up to the base of your skull. It's made the rounds before — most notably in Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell writings — but I can't seem to let go of it as a strangely practical idea, one that we might see within our lifetimes.
My brother was surprised at how far I had considered the idea. For starters, I felt that a convenient interface was possible. Imagine seeing your normal field of vision as a 'screen' of sorts, possibly through some transparent film implanted on the insides of your corneas. From there, you would be able to view information, communicate to people, and possibly issue commands to external implements. You could get a nice weather report the moment you woke up each morning... or perhaps turn on the coffeemaker from across the room.
"The problem with that," my sibling pointed out, "is that you'd get information overload."
"Not when you have a way to turn the interface on and off as needed," I countered. The best I came up with was the concept of a 'hard blink' — a very fast double-blink not unlike double-clicking a computer mouse; it was a little awkward but certainly possible.
It's a strange dream, of course, but I'm aware of at least a couple of developments in that direction. There are some research laboratories, for example, that will implant little identification chips under the skin of your arm so that the security facilities at your building can automatically identify you as you walk in. It's not too far a cry from those security cards and fingerprint scanners that seem to close off a lot of our offices nowadays.
And then there's the macabre practice of implanting similar identification chips into our pets (as well as inanimate personal belongings), so that they we can hypothetically find them if they ever get lost. Those are stories, I think, that people really can't make up... but in hindsight, perhaps we should have.
I have to admit that I'm not too well-versed in the debate between "traditional" Science Fiction and "contemporary" Science Fiction, but as opposed to searching for the concepts that would satisfy one or the other, there's also the possibility of looking for "practical" Science Fiction. It would be like having the same interesting concepts, I imagine, only with the implication that we might actually be wearing them one day.
But then again, I'm obviously not the best authority on this subject — I have yet to write something practical when it comes to Sci-Fi, for instance.
I would be interested to see if anyone somehow takes the idea and runs with it, though. That, and I'd probably buy the book, too.
There are plenty of Sci-Fi subgenres, I would imagine. On the one hand, you have your space-opera clones involving bald starship captains and lightsaber-wielding farmboys. On another hand, you have your post-apocalyptic scenarios, usually involving ratty postal workers and people who bear an uncanny resemblance to Mel Gibson. On yet another hand, you have your slick martial-arts-and-slow-motion affairs, often involving machine code and bullet time. There's no shortage of literary elements out there, much less for Science Fiction in general.
We started out with the concept of "traditional" Science Fiction and the recent Hugo Awards argument that it caused, but we didn't get into too much discussion there. After five minutes, I think, we just agreed that we didn't have a clue as to any real distinction between "traditional" and "modern" Sci-Fi — if only because any contemporary take on the genre was likely to become dated after a few decades. "The writers can reinvent the genre all they want," I remember saying, "but that sort of creativity does little against the possibility that someone might grant the 'old-fashioned' label to their work in the future."
Fortunately, we pushed forward into more interesting territory: What would it take, for example, for a contemporary Science Fiction story to be considered "cutting-edge"? I mean, over the last thirty years, we've covered such things as (*deep breath*) aliens, robots, space exploration, extra-terrestrial locations, weapons, war, love, transportation, games, cyberspace, virtual reality, cybernetics, apocalypsis, morals, genetics, humanity, cloning, replication, temporal manipulation, religion, the human psyche, divination, oppression, guardianship, life and death... to say little of any other theme or scrap of a technological future that was written down by some fevered mind somewhere.
The best we could offer was that "cutting-edge" Science Fiction involved using a new element in there somewhere, perhaps something that hasn't seen much of the light of readership yet. In a sense, the genre has to resemble a lot of other genres in their race to constantly reinvent themselves. At the very least, it's certainly hard to define — if I knew what it was that gave the "newness" to any short story, then I'd have the Hugo Awards committee licking my boots right now.
I did point out, however, that for a genre that offers tangible benefits to technological progress, the Science Fiction genre doesn't seem to be concentrating on this aspect. Sci-Fi, after all, was a contributing factor towards such fields as Internet Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Cybernetics... but the modern efforts seem to be lighter on 'practical use' and heavier on 'cool concept'. After all, what did the concept of bullet time ever do for the real world?
I remember holding onto one concept that I've never been able to work into a successful story, and that's the idea of the neural implant. In case you don't grasp its implications just yet, that's the idea of having a computer grafted onto your living brain; maybe it's a chip that's attached to the front of your temporal lobe, and maybe it's a mechanism hooked up to the base of your skull. It's made the rounds before — most notably in Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell writings — but I can't seem to let go of it as a strangely practical idea, one that we might see within our lifetimes.
My brother was surprised at how far I had considered the idea. For starters, I felt that a convenient interface was possible. Imagine seeing your normal field of vision as a 'screen' of sorts, possibly through some transparent film implanted on the insides of your corneas. From there, you would be able to view information, communicate to people, and possibly issue commands to external implements. You could get a nice weather report the moment you woke up each morning... or perhaps turn on the coffeemaker from across the room.
"The problem with that," my sibling pointed out, "is that you'd get information overload."
"Not when you have a way to turn the interface on and off as needed," I countered. The best I came up with was the concept of a 'hard blink' — a very fast double-blink not unlike double-clicking a computer mouse; it was a little awkward but certainly possible.
It's a strange dream, of course, but I'm aware of at least a couple of developments in that direction. There are some research laboratories, for example, that will implant little identification chips under the skin of your arm so that the security facilities at your building can automatically identify you as you walk in. It's not too far a cry from those security cards and fingerprint scanners that seem to close off a lot of our offices nowadays.
And then there's the macabre practice of implanting similar identification chips into our pets (as well as inanimate personal belongings), so that they we can hypothetically find them if they ever get lost. Those are stories, I think, that people really can't make up... but in hindsight, perhaps we should have.
I have to admit that I'm not too well-versed in the debate between "traditional" Science Fiction and "contemporary" Science Fiction, but as opposed to searching for the concepts that would satisfy one or the other, there's also the possibility of looking for "practical" Science Fiction. It would be like having the same interesting concepts, I imagine, only with the implication that we might actually be wearing them one day.
But then again, I'm obviously not the best authority on this subject — I have yet to write something practical when it comes to Sci-Fi, for instance.
I would be interested to see if anyone somehow takes the idea and runs with it, though. That, and I'd probably buy the book, too.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
Anarchomancy
I find it difficult to put a coherent thought together at the moment, so I just have to hope that this message comes through.
My writing world has seen two straight issues come about lately. First, there's the Hugo Awards issue: A writer named Adam Roberts has seen fit to express his dissatisfaction with the nominees in a very well-publicized blog post. That his creative tendencies have seen fit to express this displeasure in a letter addressed to the Science Fiction reading audience can be seen as either interesting or arrogant (depending on which side of the fence you occur) is just an aside; the main point to take into account is the fact that Adam Roberts is displeased.
On the heels of this international issue comes the list of those individuals named to the list of Philippine National Artists this year. One of the aforementioned individuals, a man named Magno Jose Carlo Caparas, is now a National Artist in the area of visual arts and film. The local artistic community seems to have taken offense to this, and suddenly the web sites I frequent are suddenly filled with catcalls and hate mail.
Both of these issues revolve around a similar premise: Worthiness. A first group of people have seen fit to grant certain awards to a second group of people, and a third group of people suddenly decides to challenge the merit of such nominations. There is one issue at the core of these two events, and that is the simple fact that different people have different opinions about other peoples' work.
Muddying up these waters, of course, are our own elegant methods of expressing our feelings. Some of us attempt to dissect the situation, wondering how circumstances converged unto this final decision. Some of us feign indifference, nursing the conflict within their own minds. And some of us attack the controversial winners, asking how it is that something they despise can gain so distinguished a recognition.
I feel that the third aspect of our expression has been outnumbering the first two so far. And I refuse to join this growing mob.
Kvetching is not a new concept. We can't expect all opinions on a single work to agree with each other, after all, and we're bound to run into situations where that movie or song or novel or painting or comic that we despise suddenly turns up on the winner's pedestal with a nice blue ribbon affixed to the frame. We can probably fill entire shelves with works that we dislike, yet which have likely won countless awards, or sold innumerable copies.
It's not inconceivable that a selection committee somewhere will come up with a winner — or even a list of nominees, mind you — that we think deserves to be buried somewhere and forgotten for centuries. We can't agree on these things all the time.
What I'm saying, however, is that this sort of thing happens. It's been around since the first time one man decided to compete against another in the opinion of their own peers.
Adam Roberts most likely has his own opinion of what should go on the Hugo shortlist this year... but frankly speaking, that's his opinion. It's for him to decide. If he's not on the Hugo selection committee, then it's entirely his problem if none of his choices are recognized. I'm not going to pander to his complaints if he's the one who has issues with the Awards organization, lament or no lament. Roberts can complain about how Science Fiction concentrates on old-fashioned concepts, but again, that's his opinion. I don't see why I should be drawn into his argument.
For the purposes of this writing, I assume that the people running the Philippine National Artist nominations have followed their established procedures to the letter, and this is why I don't necessarily question Caparas's ascendance. I neither like nor dislike his work, to be honest, but it's not my place to figure out who should be National Artist and who shouldn't. I leave that to what I presume to be an honest and open-minded selection committee. If people question his title just because they don't like his works... then, well, that's not something that I feel is worth arguing about.
If these assumptions are wrong, of course, and if there was something wrong with either of the two distinguished panel selections this year, than that's worth arguing about. You can question greed. You can question selfishness. You can question whim or indifference or domination or unmitigated power-mongering, especially when it comes on the heels of a competition that you once assumed to be fair. I feel that action is justified in these cases, if only because integrity and impartiality is obviously at stake.
But questioning a writer's accomplishment just because you yourself don't like his work? That's a really low blow.
So watch what you say. Watch what you do, and ask yourself where your motivation lies. You may choose to investigate the situation further, perhaps to see what redeeming value lies in these winners and find out how their judges were able to notice this when others did not. You may choose to throw in the towel and work on that potential award-winning work of yours for next year.
You may also choose to take up the poison pen and spread your vituperations across the World Wide Web. That's your choice, really. Just bear my words in mind: Look at yourself first, and ask why you wish to piece such an argument together in the first place. Check your awareness. Open yourself up. And most importantly, figure out why you're willing to throw yourself into the fray in the first place.
Otherwise you're just going to be part of the mob. And the mob eats its own young.
My writing world has seen two straight issues come about lately. First, there's the Hugo Awards issue: A writer named Adam Roberts has seen fit to express his dissatisfaction with the nominees in a very well-publicized blog post. That his creative tendencies have seen fit to express this displeasure in a letter addressed to the Science Fiction reading audience can be seen as either interesting or arrogant (depending on which side of the fence you occur) is just an aside; the main point to take into account is the fact that Adam Roberts is displeased.
On the heels of this international issue comes the list of those individuals named to the list of Philippine National Artists this year. One of the aforementioned individuals, a man named Magno Jose Carlo Caparas, is now a National Artist in the area of visual arts and film. The local artistic community seems to have taken offense to this, and suddenly the web sites I frequent are suddenly filled with catcalls and hate mail.
Both of these issues revolve around a similar premise: Worthiness. A first group of people have seen fit to grant certain awards to a second group of people, and a third group of people suddenly decides to challenge the merit of such nominations. There is one issue at the core of these two events, and that is the simple fact that different people have different opinions about other peoples' work.
Muddying up these waters, of course, are our own elegant methods of expressing our feelings. Some of us attempt to dissect the situation, wondering how circumstances converged unto this final decision. Some of us feign indifference, nursing the conflict within their own minds. And some of us attack the controversial winners, asking how it is that something they despise can gain so distinguished a recognition.
I feel that the third aspect of our expression has been outnumbering the first two so far. And I refuse to join this growing mob.
Kvetching is not a new concept. We can't expect all opinions on a single work to agree with each other, after all, and we're bound to run into situations where that movie or song or novel or painting or comic that we despise suddenly turns up on the winner's pedestal with a nice blue ribbon affixed to the frame. We can probably fill entire shelves with works that we dislike, yet which have likely won countless awards, or sold innumerable copies.
It's not inconceivable that a selection committee somewhere will come up with a winner — or even a list of nominees, mind you — that we think deserves to be buried somewhere and forgotten for centuries. We can't agree on these things all the time.
What I'm saying, however, is that this sort of thing happens. It's been around since the first time one man decided to compete against another in the opinion of their own peers.
Adam Roberts most likely has his own opinion of what should go on the Hugo shortlist this year... but frankly speaking, that's his opinion. It's for him to decide. If he's not on the Hugo selection committee, then it's entirely his problem if none of his choices are recognized. I'm not going to pander to his complaints if he's the one who has issues with the Awards organization, lament or no lament. Roberts can complain about how Science Fiction concentrates on old-fashioned concepts, but again, that's his opinion. I don't see why I should be drawn into his argument.
For the purposes of this writing, I assume that the people running the Philippine National Artist nominations have followed their established procedures to the letter, and this is why I don't necessarily question Caparas's ascendance. I neither like nor dislike his work, to be honest, but it's not my place to figure out who should be National Artist and who shouldn't. I leave that to what I presume to be an honest and open-minded selection committee. If people question his title just because they don't like his works... then, well, that's not something that I feel is worth arguing about.
If these assumptions are wrong, of course, and if there was something wrong with either of the two distinguished panel selections this year, than that's worth arguing about. You can question greed. You can question selfishness. You can question whim or indifference or domination or unmitigated power-mongering, especially when it comes on the heels of a competition that you once assumed to be fair. I feel that action is justified in these cases, if only because integrity and impartiality is obviously at stake.
But questioning a writer's accomplishment just because you yourself don't like his work? That's a really low blow.
So watch what you say. Watch what you do, and ask yourself where your motivation lies. You may choose to investigate the situation further, perhaps to see what redeeming value lies in these winners and find out how their judges were able to notice this when others did not. You may choose to throw in the towel and work on that potential award-winning work of yours for next year.
You may also choose to take up the poison pen and spread your vituperations across the World Wide Web. That's your choice, really. Just bear my words in mind: Look at yourself first, and ask why you wish to piece such an argument together in the first place. Check your awareness. Open yourself up. And most importantly, figure out why you're willing to throw yourself into the fray in the first place.
Otherwise you're just going to be part of the mob. And the mob eats its own young.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
The Bibliophile Hunters
I was in the back of the bookstore, browsing something on one of the lower shelves. It was cold in that lonely corner where the sunlight didn't quite reach, and when the hairs on the back of my neck started picking up, that was when I knew that I was being watched.
I turned slowly. Two people now stood at the end of the aisle, glancing in my direction. The man was tall and bespectacled, and he wore a loose green shirt against crisp blue jeans. The woman wore a dominating black blouse on top of formal black slacks. They both looked young, lean and hungry, and I instinctively clutched at the book I was holding with greedy fingers.
"We know who you are, Sean Uy," the man said.
I only clutched harder at the book, in case I needed to use it as a weapon. "How do you know my name?" I asked.
"We've been watching you for some time," the man said.
"Do tell," I answered, cautiously standing up. "What business do you have with me?"
"We have a proposition for you."
It had come to this, I realized. I had spent too much time in the bargain bookstores, too many moments perusing dusty shelves and ancient stock, all for the want of new reading material. It was only a matter of time before my presence would have been observed and recorded. It was only a matter of time before they came for me.
I tucked the book under my arm. "There are thirteen more shelves in this establishment that I haven't yet visited," I said. "If you have a proposition for me, you'd better name it right now, or else stop wasting my time."
"We represent a consortium, Mr. Uy," the man said, removing his glasses. "A small consortium with powerful members."
"And what would this consortium want with me?"
"You are a man of developing skills, Mr. Uy. You know the correct price for a rare back issue, the scarcity of a long-forgotten series, and the volatility of the collectibles market. You can spot a single relevant title from a stack of three thousand covers about five meters away."
"What does that have to do with you?"
"We are hunters," the man said. "Simple lovers of good books, and ruthless hunters of the same. Each of us has a different set of interests, Mr. Uy, and we employ a great deal of talent with skills similar to yours."
"And you want me to be part of your talent pool?" I asked. "Is this the meaning of the entire black charade?"
The woman started forward. "Why, you insolent little ass," she said. "Do you know just who you're talking to?"
The man laughed at this, and I wasn't sure if he was amused by my response or her reaction. He drew a soft white cloth from his pocket, and began wiping his glasses in the silence of the aisle.
"Our operation is quite simple, Mr. Uy. Each of us is a bibliophile, much like you are turning out to be. Each of us scours the magazine racks, the bargain outlets, and the garage sales for many an elusive volume to read. But we're only human, and we can't be in more than one place at a time. We're each mostly confined to our own little areas."
I smiled. "I know this," I told him. "You can't get rid of that nagging feeling, can't you? That crawling sensation that you have when you imagine that there's a valuable book sometime, somewhere far away you can't find or reach. Maybe you're at work when the store gets its new shipment. Maybe you're three hundred miles to the north, wondering about that convention in the south. Maybe you lie awake at night, concerned about how many books out there you've missed, all of them sitting somewhere beyond your long, dark reach."
The man stopped cold. The woman snarled silently at me, and I knew I had them all figured out.
"What we ask is simplicity itself, Mr. Uy. Each of us has a list of wants and needs. All that we require each of our members to do is to keep such a list in mind whenever they browse the shelves in their own spare time."
"What, then," I growled, "if it means that I'm doing your shopping for you?"
"Oh, you won't be doing our shopping for us, Mr. Uy. You'll just be... canvassing for us, in a way. If one of us seeks a Diana Wynne Jones novel that you should find, then you drop us a line. Should one of us demand a second-edition Crichton manuscript, then you shall reserve a copy if you ever manage to locate one."
"And what do I get out of it?"
"The same, Mr. Uy. That lost Steve Jackson volume that you're been looking for? Should one of our contacts finds it, then you can be notified within minutes. That rare interactive Escape series that you've been seeking for the past ten years? We can have you on the site within an hour, if one of our operatives sees fit to make a call."
My mouth felt dry and heavy. I raised an eyebrow in swift anticipation, but lowered it a second later when I realized the consequences.
"No deal," I said.
"No deal?" the woman answered.
"No deal."
A smile played at the corner of the man's mouth. "Fascinating," he said. "I suppose you would care to enlighten us as to your reasoning?"
"You've got a good idea there," I said. "It looks good on the paper you've scribbled on. But reality has a way of tilting things out of whack, and it's reality — and more than a bit of human behavior, mind you — that will cause it to collapse like a house of cards."
The woman glared at me as though I was throwing away a golden opportunity. The smile never left her companion's lips, and I wondered if he somehow knew something that I didn't.
"People don't always visit the bookstores just to look for books," I said. "That's an unrealistic way of looking at things. Since when was the last time you passed by a place to buy that one exact volume that happens to be on your mind? People browse — and it's only when their sense of curiosity is sated do they actually bring their choices to the cashier's post."
"You say that as though you truly believe in it," the man said. "But we know better. Each of us has a list in our own minds, a true idea of wants that we constantly seek in the literary receptacles. And we're always looking for those."
"Take a close look at those 'lists' sometime," I said. "It's easy to say that you want a first-edition copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, for example. But how specific are your requests? How sure can you get when there are tons of variants and endless minutiae out there?"
"Perhaps the tables have turned, Mr. Uy. One of us now seems to be wasting the other's time."
"Stephen King is on my list, you imbecile. But I neither look for just any Stephen King work, nor do I search for select volumes. I look for Stephen King works that I find interesting, something that I believe will be worth the time they take to read.
"I can entrust the responsibility of specific titles to another person, but I can't entrust the impression that comes from my heart and mind. I want to leaf through my books, find something good enough to read, and then take it home. And I am the sole arbitrator of such personal standards.
"I don't want thirty people telling me that they've found a Stephen King novel in such-and-such a store, because Stephen King is in practically every sale. I want to find him myself, and I don't want to be beholden to you all just because you're looking for something that I may or may not be able to find."
The man drew himself up, his glasses reflecting the cold glint of silicon and wire across the sparse light. He seemed to grow across the shadows of the empty aisle, and his companion shrunk against the chill of his long gaze.
"You are a fool, Mr. Uy. We seek to do a service across those... collectors... who only wish to fulfill their literary desires."
"Then you're talking to the wrong person," I said. "I'm not one of your so-called 'collectors'. I'm just a plain old reader, looking for new books."
For a moment, I thought that the man was going to do something rash and regrettable. For a moment I imagined thunder and lightning to emerge from his form. But the shadows held back at that point, and the light resumed its march, enough for him to lean back against the shelves and fix me with nothing more than his companion's cold glare.
"You will understand in time, Mr. Uy," he said. "I hope that, by the time you realize just what you have denied this day, then you shall still be able to find all of what you seek."
And in an instant, both the man and the woman were gone.
I turned back to the shelf, feeling the brittle pages of the paperback book under my arm and wondering if, perhaps, the wisdom was there. We all had certain items on our watch list, after all, certain items to look for in the darkest recesses of the bargain bins and the rotten corners of forgotten warehouses. To the collectors, ignorance may have been bliss, and knowledge divine.
Then I found another title that looked as though it might have provided some interesting midnight reading, and I settled down to browse.
I turned slowly. Two people now stood at the end of the aisle, glancing in my direction. The man was tall and bespectacled, and he wore a loose green shirt against crisp blue jeans. The woman wore a dominating black blouse on top of formal black slacks. They both looked young, lean and hungry, and I instinctively clutched at the book I was holding with greedy fingers.
"We know who you are, Sean Uy," the man said.
I only clutched harder at the book, in case I needed to use it as a weapon. "How do you know my name?" I asked.
"We've been watching you for some time," the man said.
"Do tell," I answered, cautiously standing up. "What business do you have with me?"
"We have a proposition for you."
It had come to this, I realized. I had spent too much time in the bargain bookstores, too many moments perusing dusty shelves and ancient stock, all for the want of new reading material. It was only a matter of time before my presence would have been observed and recorded. It was only a matter of time before they came for me.
I tucked the book under my arm. "There are thirteen more shelves in this establishment that I haven't yet visited," I said. "If you have a proposition for me, you'd better name it right now, or else stop wasting my time."
"We represent a consortium, Mr. Uy," the man said, removing his glasses. "A small consortium with powerful members."
"And what would this consortium want with me?"
"You are a man of developing skills, Mr. Uy. You know the correct price for a rare back issue, the scarcity of a long-forgotten series, and the volatility of the collectibles market. You can spot a single relevant title from a stack of three thousand covers about five meters away."
"What does that have to do with you?"
"We are hunters," the man said. "Simple lovers of good books, and ruthless hunters of the same. Each of us has a different set of interests, Mr. Uy, and we employ a great deal of talent with skills similar to yours."
"And you want me to be part of your talent pool?" I asked. "Is this the meaning of the entire black charade?"
The woman started forward. "Why, you insolent little ass," she said. "Do you know just who you're talking to?"
The man laughed at this, and I wasn't sure if he was amused by my response or her reaction. He drew a soft white cloth from his pocket, and began wiping his glasses in the silence of the aisle.
"Our operation is quite simple, Mr. Uy. Each of us is a bibliophile, much like you are turning out to be. Each of us scours the magazine racks, the bargain outlets, and the garage sales for many an elusive volume to read. But we're only human, and we can't be in more than one place at a time. We're each mostly confined to our own little areas."
I smiled. "I know this," I told him. "You can't get rid of that nagging feeling, can't you? That crawling sensation that you have when you imagine that there's a valuable book sometime, somewhere far away you can't find or reach. Maybe you're at work when the store gets its new shipment. Maybe you're three hundred miles to the north, wondering about that convention in the south. Maybe you lie awake at night, concerned about how many books out there you've missed, all of them sitting somewhere beyond your long, dark reach."
The man stopped cold. The woman snarled silently at me, and I knew I had them all figured out.
"What we ask is simplicity itself, Mr. Uy. Each of us has a list of wants and needs. All that we require each of our members to do is to keep such a list in mind whenever they browse the shelves in their own spare time."
"What, then," I growled, "if it means that I'm doing your shopping for you?"
"Oh, you won't be doing our shopping for us, Mr. Uy. You'll just be... canvassing for us, in a way. If one of us seeks a Diana Wynne Jones novel that you should find, then you drop us a line. Should one of us demand a second-edition Crichton manuscript, then you shall reserve a copy if you ever manage to locate one."
"And what do I get out of it?"
"The same, Mr. Uy. That lost Steve Jackson volume that you're been looking for? Should one of our contacts finds it, then you can be notified within minutes. That rare interactive Escape series that you've been seeking for the past ten years? We can have you on the site within an hour, if one of our operatives sees fit to make a call."
My mouth felt dry and heavy. I raised an eyebrow in swift anticipation, but lowered it a second later when I realized the consequences.
"No deal," I said.
"No deal?" the woman answered.
"No deal."
A smile played at the corner of the man's mouth. "Fascinating," he said. "I suppose you would care to enlighten us as to your reasoning?"
"You've got a good idea there," I said. "It looks good on the paper you've scribbled on. But reality has a way of tilting things out of whack, and it's reality — and more than a bit of human behavior, mind you — that will cause it to collapse like a house of cards."
The woman glared at me as though I was throwing away a golden opportunity. The smile never left her companion's lips, and I wondered if he somehow knew something that I didn't.
"People don't always visit the bookstores just to look for books," I said. "That's an unrealistic way of looking at things. Since when was the last time you passed by a place to buy that one exact volume that happens to be on your mind? People browse — and it's only when their sense of curiosity is sated do they actually bring their choices to the cashier's post."
"You say that as though you truly believe in it," the man said. "But we know better. Each of us has a list in our own minds, a true idea of wants that we constantly seek in the literary receptacles. And we're always looking for those."
"Take a close look at those 'lists' sometime," I said. "It's easy to say that you want a first-edition copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, for example. But how specific are your requests? How sure can you get when there are tons of variants and endless minutiae out there?"
"Perhaps the tables have turned, Mr. Uy. One of us now seems to be wasting the other's time."
"Stephen King is on my list, you imbecile. But I neither look for just any Stephen King work, nor do I search for select volumes. I look for Stephen King works that I find interesting, something that I believe will be worth the time they take to read.
"I can entrust the responsibility of specific titles to another person, but I can't entrust the impression that comes from my heart and mind. I want to leaf through my books, find something good enough to read, and then take it home. And I am the sole arbitrator of such personal standards.
"I don't want thirty people telling me that they've found a Stephen King novel in such-and-such a store, because Stephen King is in practically every sale. I want to find him myself, and I don't want to be beholden to you all just because you're looking for something that I may or may not be able to find."
The man drew himself up, his glasses reflecting the cold glint of silicon and wire across the sparse light. He seemed to grow across the shadows of the empty aisle, and his companion shrunk against the chill of his long gaze.
"You are a fool, Mr. Uy. We seek to do a service across those... collectors... who only wish to fulfill their literary desires."
"Then you're talking to the wrong person," I said. "I'm not one of your so-called 'collectors'. I'm just a plain old reader, looking for new books."
For a moment, I thought that the man was going to do something rash and regrettable. For a moment I imagined thunder and lightning to emerge from his form. But the shadows held back at that point, and the light resumed its march, enough for him to lean back against the shelves and fix me with nothing more than his companion's cold glare.
"You will understand in time, Mr. Uy," he said. "I hope that, by the time you realize just what you have denied this day, then you shall still be able to find all of what you seek."
And in an instant, both the man and the woman were gone.
I turned back to the shelf, feeling the brittle pages of the paperback book under my arm and wondering if, perhaps, the wisdom was there. We all had certain items on our watch list, after all, certain items to look for in the darkest recesses of the bargain bins and the rotten corners of forgotten warehouses. To the collectors, ignorance may have been bliss, and knowledge divine.
Then I found another title that looked as though it might have provided some interesting midnight reading, and I settled down to browse.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The Spoils
I've been hitting the bookstores pretty hard lately.
I'm not sure why, really. I imagine that I've suddenly developed a burning need to read stuff; my office laptop is littered with free e-book samples and gazeteers, I troll the international RPG forums looking for campaign journals to pore through, and of course, there's the aforementioned bookstore visits to consider.
My work is an easy culprit to identify — it's both challenging and exhausting at the same time. When you have to think on your feet and dream up ways to meet a flood of deadlines, you tend to use up a significant portion of your resourcefulness each day.
That said, my circumstances still don't give me a good reason behind my sudden bookstore visits. When the urge first came along, I started hitting the high-class places with discount card in tow. Only recently have I come to my senses and focused these attentions on the cheaper book sales; if I'm going to have to feed a temporary addiction, I hope that I don't break my bank accounts in the process.
I actually put together a short, personal guide to bargain bookstores a few months ago, and I still follow these same expectations. Bargain bookstores (or book sales, or whatever you want to call them) really haven't changed much over the years. I imagine that there are now more than a few bibliophiles who know exactly how to scour a new branch each month, and promptly pick it clean of those volumes that they find interesting.
The last few weeks have made me realize that I approach each book sale with a certain set of goals in mind. My first priority, of course, is to seek out and hoard any particular books that I'm looking for. From there, my second priority involves looking through any titles that seem interesting enough to take home and read. My third priority then involves checking out specific authors or series for collection filler or familiar ground. Finally, if all else fails and I can't find a single thing that I would want to pick up, I just grab the strangest item in the bunch (as long as it's cheap, of course) and bring it to the cash register.
I find that this is not a very organized system, but it does ensure that I leave every book sale with at least one paperback package tucked under my arm. This inevitably gets added to the clutter of a room that has bookpiles in some of the strangest places.
This doesn't even begin to cover the habits I've developed in the bargain bookstore aisles. For starters, I've developed the "bibliophile squat", a maneuver that allows me to inspect the lowest shelves on the pads of my feet for minutes at a time. In cramped spaces or narrow passages where people will inevitably want to walk by, I employ the "crustacean shimmy", so as to let them pass without interrupting my otherwise oblivious stupor.
There are a couple of bookstores that most likely have developed stories about me. In one of them, I spent a solid two hours scouring the bookshelves once it became obvious that at least fifteen volumes of a hard-to-find series were scattered among the collection there. In another, I became so disgusted at the way the books were organized that I started stacking and collating them myself. In the former case, I found myself spending almost a thousand pesos in front of a very surprised cashier; in the latter, I ended up getting some dirty looks from someone who I took to be the branch manager.
The most irritating habit that I've developed so far, however, involves the impromptu "dusting" some of the grimier volumes. I'm allergic to dust, so I can't just start wiping books or melodramatically blowing the tiny particles away... so I end up whacking them once or twice against a convenient surface. Like, say, the seat of my pants.
This has yet to give me any strange looks. I imagine that the people who frequent bargain bookstores themselves have habits that are strange enough to warrant ignorance of mine.
I act a lot more "civilized" when it comes to the more expensive bookstores, of course — these are the places where the titles come shrink-wrapped, and where you can mill around doing absolutely nothing each day until the time comes to grab a Mocha Frappe at the nearest Starbucks. I tend to score a lot more impulsive buys in these areas — if only because I find it difficult to judge books that I can't conveniently open for all of the plastic that covers them. (Yes, it would be easy for me to simply remove the silly wrappers under the watch of a bookstore employee... but why bother?)
That said, even these places aren't safe from my strange habits. I tend to ask the employees about the quality of certain titles, for example. Every now and then I get into a self-propelled debate on the merits of one writer over another, which usually gets me a nod and a smile from people who probably couldn't care less about what I'm talking about. They probably get the same drill from other customers, I think.
I suspect that I've picked up at least thirty different titles in this way over the last few months, with ten of them from the previous two weeks alone. At my current rate of reading, that means that I've got enough to last me about two to three months or so; nevertheless, I still continue to pick up books.
Perhaps it's an obsession. Perhaps it's a compulsion. Perhaps it's merely an outlet for my own curious brand of deviant behavior. Whatever the case, I'm now a hoarder of volumes for my own reading pleasure, which would be nice if it weren't for the fact that I'm rapidly running out of shelf (and room) space.
The other day I inquired about the sale price of a massive plastic container, big enough to fit a small TV with matching DVD player and game system. The saleslady at that time made the unfortunate decision of asking me what I wanted it for, and when I told her that it was for my books, she clearly didn't believe me.
It's just as well, I suppose. Maybe I should start saving for the dump truck...
I'm not sure why, really. I imagine that I've suddenly developed a burning need to read stuff; my office laptop is littered with free e-book samples and gazeteers, I troll the international RPG forums looking for campaign journals to pore through, and of course, there's the aforementioned bookstore visits to consider.
My work is an easy culprit to identify — it's both challenging and exhausting at the same time. When you have to think on your feet and dream up ways to meet a flood of deadlines, you tend to use up a significant portion of your resourcefulness each day.
That said, my circumstances still don't give me a good reason behind my sudden bookstore visits. When the urge first came along, I started hitting the high-class places with discount card in tow. Only recently have I come to my senses and focused these attentions on the cheaper book sales; if I'm going to have to feed a temporary addiction, I hope that I don't break my bank accounts in the process.
I actually put together a short, personal guide to bargain bookstores a few months ago, and I still follow these same expectations. Bargain bookstores (or book sales, or whatever you want to call them) really haven't changed much over the years. I imagine that there are now more than a few bibliophiles who know exactly how to scour a new branch each month, and promptly pick it clean of those volumes that they find interesting.
The last few weeks have made me realize that I approach each book sale with a certain set of goals in mind. My first priority, of course, is to seek out and hoard any particular books that I'm looking for. From there, my second priority involves looking through any titles that seem interesting enough to take home and read. My third priority then involves checking out specific authors or series for collection filler or familiar ground. Finally, if all else fails and I can't find a single thing that I would want to pick up, I just grab the strangest item in the bunch (as long as it's cheap, of course) and bring it to the cash register.
I find that this is not a very organized system, but it does ensure that I leave every book sale with at least one paperback package tucked under my arm. This inevitably gets added to the clutter of a room that has bookpiles in some of the strangest places.
This doesn't even begin to cover the habits I've developed in the bargain bookstore aisles. For starters, I've developed the "bibliophile squat", a maneuver that allows me to inspect the lowest shelves on the pads of my feet for minutes at a time. In cramped spaces or narrow passages where people will inevitably want to walk by, I employ the "crustacean shimmy", so as to let them pass without interrupting my otherwise oblivious stupor.
There are a couple of bookstores that most likely have developed stories about me. In one of them, I spent a solid two hours scouring the bookshelves once it became obvious that at least fifteen volumes of a hard-to-find series were scattered among the collection there. In another, I became so disgusted at the way the books were organized that I started stacking and collating them myself. In the former case, I found myself spending almost a thousand pesos in front of a very surprised cashier; in the latter, I ended up getting some dirty looks from someone who I took to be the branch manager.
The most irritating habit that I've developed so far, however, involves the impromptu "dusting" some of the grimier volumes. I'm allergic to dust, so I can't just start wiping books or melodramatically blowing the tiny particles away... so I end up whacking them once or twice against a convenient surface. Like, say, the seat of my pants.
This has yet to give me any strange looks. I imagine that the people who frequent bargain bookstores themselves have habits that are strange enough to warrant ignorance of mine.
I act a lot more "civilized" when it comes to the more expensive bookstores, of course — these are the places where the titles come shrink-wrapped, and where you can mill around doing absolutely nothing each day until the time comes to grab a Mocha Frappe at the nearest Starbucks. I tend to score a lot more impulsive buys in these areas — if only because I find it difficult to judge books that I can't conveniently open for all of the plastic that covers them. (Yes, it would be easy for me to simply remove the silly wrappers under the watch of a bookstore employee... but why bother?)
That said, even these places aren't safe from my strange habits. I tend to ask the employees about the quality of certain titles, for example. Every now and then I get into a self-propelled debate on the merits of one writer over another, which usually gets me a nod and a smile from people who probably couldn't care less about what I'm talking about. They probably get the same drill from other customers, I think.
I suspect that I've picked up at least thirty different titles in this way over the last few months, with ten of them from the previous two weeks alone. At my current rate of reading, that means that I've got enough to last me about two to three months or so; nevertheless, I still continue to pick up books.
Perhaps it's an obsession. Perhaps it's a compulsion. Perhaps it's merely an outlet for my own curious brand of deviant behavior. Whatever the case, I'm now a hoarder of volumes for my own reading pleasure, which would be nice if it weren't for the fact that I'm rapidly running out of shelf (and room) space.
The other day I inquired about the sale price of a massive plastic container, big enough to fit a small TV with matching DVD player and game system. The saleslady at that time made the unfortunate decision of asking me what I wanted it for, and when I told her that it was for my books, she clearly didn't believe me.
It's just as well, I suppose. Maybe I should start saving for the dump truck...
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
I Know Where This is Leading...
Recent exercises in internet surfing have led me to rediscover the Strange Horizons web site. Strange Horizons, you see, is an online publication that's been running for almost ten years now; it focuses on speculative fiction that is made far more interesting by its access to an international stable of writers.
More importantly for this post, however, Strange Horizons is also the home of one of the more fascinating lists on the Net. Ten years of running a regular publication schedule means that the magazine's editors have come across their share of common, clichéd, and castrated stories, and at some point they decided to make an interesting response: They gathered some of the most irritating and overused plot ideas they'd seen, and put up the resulting list in their submissions area like some great warning in big red letters.
Naturally, this list makes for some very fun reading. Got a story idea that you tend to use over and over again? It's here somewhere. Noticed a common theme among the current crop of bestsellers? It's probably about halfway down the page. The list isn't exhaustive and may be somewhat opinionated (because it's only based on Strange Horizon's personal standards, after all), but it's great for a few minutes of derisive laughter.
Let's take one of my favorites as an example. Item 4 in their list of overused plots and themes notes the following:
This never fails to get a chuckle out of me, because it's true. Somehow, sometime, somewhere, there's always an aspiring writer who makes the fateful decision to end their masterpiece with "...and it was all a dream," completely unaware of just how insulting it is to readers and editors alike. (That said, I like to think that we all grow out of this phase, eventually.)
And lest you think that I only laugh at this because I'm almost completely immune from their identified stereotypes, I must point out Item 9 on their list:
That, ladies and gentlemen, is my writing to a T, and I was still greatly amused.
That said, I didn't necessarily bring up this article to praise Caesar, and the reason can be found early in the list, in the lower reaches of Item 2:
To be honest, I have seen a few of these floating around, and I have yet to read one that's good.
Except perhaps for Neil Gaiman's Calliope.
Calliope, mind you, isn't technically a short story. It's a comic that was featured in The Sandman series, published by DC Comics's Vertigo line, written by Neil Gaiman, pencilled by Kelley Jones and inked by Malcolm Jones III. It's about a struggling author who acquires one of the nine Muses of Greek Mythology and keeps her captive in order to establish a constant stream of ideas. In short, it's a plot that falls squarely on Strange Horizon's list.
Except that Calliope predates Strange Horizon's list. Come to think of it, Calliope seems to predate every single story concerning lost creators and captive muses. Neil Gaiman, in fact, pointed this out about five years ago, and I assume that he's being perfectly straight with us on this matter.
I can only assume that Calliope was an innovative story for its time, and that it probably ended up spawning an entire host of imitators (perhaps due to the hive-minded subconscious that all writers seem to share). Fast-forward a few years and you have a group of editors at an online magazine who have seen more "captive muse" stories than they can take. Ergo, the "captive muse" plotline is suddenly an overused one, fit only for a bit of laughter at how unoriginal people can be.
So what happens when an editor who has read one too many "captive muse" stories finally gets his or her hands on Calliope? Such a hypothetical scenario boggles the mind.
I wonder if this is more a matter of "shelf life" than anything else. Certain plotlines do run their course, after all, and it's entirely possible that something of great relevance and distinction in the past may no longer have the same impact in the present (which is why James Bond eventually moved away from the Cold War scenarios of his youth).
On the other hand, it could also be an issue where repetition diminishes creative impact. JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, for example, spawned an entire host of imitations, most or all of which concerned pre-teens with magical powers, or fantastic worlds that exist alongside our own. But what would happen if, in the middle of this scenario, some excellent story of similar subject matter but better quality than Rowling's writings, came out? Would a significant audience turn their interest towards that work as well?
I suspect that the answer is "no" here, and I suspect that public reaction would consider the second work to be another imitator that couldn't stand on its own. Timing can be such a jerk sometimes.
So it turns out that I do have a problem with the Strange Horizons list after all. The list does make me laugh, yes, because I know that both I and an entire host of writers out there have made the mistake of using those overused, overwrought, and overexposed plotlines. But the list also makes me think, because it now begs the question: Does this mean that I shouldn't use those ideas for stories at all?
And the answer is that I should still be able to write these things. I shouldn't care what Strange Horizons or anyone else says in this regard; if I feel that a story is best served with a captive muse, a subtle plot twist, or even — God forbid — a release from the fictive dream at the end, then I should use it. I mean, if I feel that it should work like that... then, well... it should work like that.
And if I write such a plotline, there's a good chance that some editor out there will gloss over my story, file it among the stereotypical "nonsense" themes that she has tucked away in her head somewhere, and start filling out the rejection slip. I like to think that there are good editors out there, of course, but let's face it — everyone does have their own prejudices, their own first impressions, their own pet peeves.
Innovation, I suppose, shouldn't automatically mean coming up with brand-new ideas. Innovation should also involve taking old ideas and pushing them forward in a new way. It's another lesson that we shouldn't immediately jump to conclusions about anything; sometimes it's better to see if that road actually takes you to where you expect it would.
We may have heard it all before, and perhaps we've already taken the words to heart. Perhaps we've even incorporated them as part of our belief system.
But I must conclude that lists like these are more curiosities in the long run. They're like the red octagonal STOP signs — there to provide a warning against a danger that may or may not exist. Eventually we have to hold the notion of stopping in our own minds, molding it to the point where we know why the rule exists and under what circumstances it can be bent or broken.
I feel that there are few certainties in the writing effort, and as interesting as this list can be, it shouldn't stop me from trying things out and seeing what I can do with them.
Neither, for that matter, should it stop anyone. Play with your ideas as you like.
More importantly for this post, however, Strange Horizons is also the home of one of the more fascinating lists on the Net. Ten years of running a regular publication schedule means that the magazine's editors have come across their share of common, clichéd, and castrated stories, and at some point they decided to make an interesting response: They gathered some of the most irritating and overused plot ideas they'd seen, and put up the resulting list in their submissions area like some great warning in big red letters.
Naturally, this list makes for some very fun reading. Got a story idea that you tend to use over and over again? It's here somewhere. Noticed a common theme among the current crop of bestsellers? It's probably about halfway down the page. The list isn't exhaustive and may be somewhat opinionated (because it's only based on Strange Horizon's personal standards, after all), but it's great for a few minutes of derisive laughter.
Let's take one of my favorites as an example. Item 4 in their list of overused plots and themes notes the following:
Weird things happen, but it turns out they're not real.In the end, it turns out it was all a dream. In the end, it turns out it was all in virtual reality. In the end, it turns out the protagonist is insane. In the end, it turns out the protagonist is writing a novel and the events we've seen are part of the novel.
This never fails to get a chuckle out of me, because it's true. Somehow, sometime, somewhere, there's always an aspiring writer who makes the fateful decision to end their masterpiece with "...and it was all a dream," completely unaware of just how insulting it is to readers and editors alike. (That said, I like to think that we all grow out of this phase, eventually.)
And lest you think that I only laugh at this because I'm almost completely immune from their identified stereotypes, I must point out Item 9 on their list:
A "surprise" twist ending occurs. (Note that we do like endings that we didn't expect, as long as they derive naturally from character action. But note, too, that we've seen a lot of twist endings, and we find most of them to be pretty predictable, even the ones not on this list.)
That, ladies and gentlemen, is my writing to a T, and I was still greatly amused.
That said, I didn't necessarily bring up this article to praise Caesar, and the reason can be found early in the list, in the lower reaches of Item 2:
Creative person is having trouble creating.Writer has writer's block. Painter can't seem to paint anything good. Sculptor can't seem to sculpt anything good. Creative person's work is reviled by critics who don't understand how brilliant it is. Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive.
To be honest, I have seen a few of these floating around, and I have yet to read one that's good.
Except perhaps for Neil Gaiman's Calliope.
Calliope, mind you, isn't technically a short story. It's a comic that was featured in The Sandman series, published by DC Comics's Vertigo line, written by Neil Gaiman, pencilled by Kelley Jones and inked by Malcolm Jones III. It's about a struggling author who acquires one of the nine Muses of Greek Mythology and keeps her captive in order to establish a constant stream of ideas. In short, it's a plot that falls squarely on Strange Horizon's list.
Except that Calliope predates Strange Horizon's list. Come to think of it, Calliope seems to predate every single story concerning lost creators and captive muses. Neil Gaiman, in fact, pointed this out about five years ago, and I assume that he's being perfectly straight with us on this matter.
I can only assume that Calliope was an innovative story for its time, and that it probably ended up spawning an entire host of imitators (perhaps due to the hive-minded subconscious that all writers seem to share). Fast-forward a few years and you have a group of editors at an online magazine who have seen more "captive muse" stories than they can take. Ergo, the "captive muse" plotline is suddenly an overused one, fit only for a bit of laughter at how unoriginal people can be.
So what happens when an editor who has read one too many "captive muse" stories finally gets his or her hands on Calliope? Such a hypothetical scenario boggles the mind.
I wonder if this is more a matter of "shelf life" than anything else. Certain plotlines do run their course, after all, and it's entirely possible that something of great relevance and distinction in the past may no longer have the same impact in the present (which is why James Bond eventually moved away from the Cold War scenarios of his youth).
On the other hand, it could also be an issue where repetition diminishes creative impact. JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, for example, spawned an entire host of imitations, most or all of which concerned pre-teens with magical powers, or fantastic worlds that exist alongside our own. But what would happen if, in the middle of this scenario, some excellent story of similar subject matter but better quality than Rowling's writings, came out? Would a significant audience turn their interest towards that work as well?
I suspect that the answer is "no" here, and I suspect that public reaction would consider the second work to be another imitator that couldn't stand on its own. Timing can be such a jerk sometimes.
So it turns out that I do have a problem with the Strange Horizons list after all. The list does make me laugh, yes, because I know that both I and an entire host of writers out there have made the mistake of using those overused, overwrought, and overexposed plotlines. But the list also makes me think, because it now begs the question: Does this mean that I shouldn't use those ideas for stories at all?
And the answer is that I should still be able to write these things. I shouldn't care what Strange Horizons or anyone else says in this regard; if I feel that a story is best served with a captive muse, a subtle plot twist, or even — God forbid — a release from the fictive dream at the end, then I should use it. I mean, if I feel that it should work like that... then, well... it should work like that.
And if I write such a plotline, there's a good chance that some editor out there will gloss over my story, file it among the stereotypical "nonsense" themes that she has tucked away in her head somewhere, and start filling out the rejection slip. I like to think that there are good editors out there, of course, but let's face it — everyone does have their own prejudices, their own first impressions, their own pet peeves.
Innovation, I suppose, shouldn't automatically mean coming up with brand-new ideas. Innovation should also involve taking old ideas and pushing them forward in a new way. It's another lesson that we shouldn't immediately jump to conclusions about anything; sometimes it's better to see if that road actually takes you to where you expect it would.
We may have heard it all before, and perhaps we've already taken the words to heart. Perhaps we've even incorporated them as part of our belief system.
But I must conclude that lists like these are more curiosities in the long run. They're like the red octagonal STOP signs — there to provide a warning against a danger that may or may not exist. Eventually we have to hold the notion of stopping in our own minds, molding it to the point where we know why the rule exists and under what circumstances it can be bent or broken.
I feel that there are few certainties in the writing effort, and as interesting as this list can be, it shouldn't stop me from trying things out and seeing what I can do with them.
Neither, for that matter, should it stop anyone. Play with your ideas as you like.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The Last Regulation
No processed meats.
No internal organs.
Limited amounts of duck, lamb and other uncommon meats.
Lower amounts of beef and pork.
No fats.
Nothing deep-fried.
No alcohol.
Singular carbohydrates per meal.
Reduced consumption of cheese and other dairy products.
Less salt.
Drastic reduction in sugars.
Reduced consumption of fruits.
...
If you're curious, last night's dinner involved a nice cottage cheese spread on a loaf of processed cardboard, with some fresh salad greens on the side. Delicious.
No internal organs.
Limited amounts of duck, lamb and other uncommon meats.
Lower amounts of beef and pork.
No fats.
Nothing deep-fried.
No alcohol.
Singular carbohydrates per meal.
Reduced consumption of cheese and other dairy products.
Less salt.
Drastic reduction in sugars.
Reduced consumption of fruits.
...
If you're curious, last night's dinner involved a nice cottage cheese spread on a loaf of processed cardboard, with some fresh salad greens on the side. Delicious.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Patience
Option number one: A eulogy for Michael Jackson.
Option number two: Another attempt at a short story.
Never let it be said that the prospect of writing a blog post was an easy one. I resolved to write something within the previous weekend, and these were the two things I was dithering about.
In the end, I decided to go for the short story. Michael Jackson has a ton of online memorials about his untimely passing already, and while I do want to leave some words on the death of a musical icon, I find it harder and harder nowadays to say something that the rest of the crowd hasn't already mentioned.
So I'm writing a short story. It's reached about 1,700 words so far, which indicates something with enough pace and flow to keep my interest. The only issue is that I don't have that much time to write nowadays, and even at my current rate of eight hundred to nine hundred words per session, it might take me a while to finish this. Michael Jackson will definitely have to wait a little longer.
What's funny is that I don't even intend for this work to be published anywhere apart from this blog. I'm just getting my groove on, that's all — it's been a while since I hit the publishing venues, and it's about time that I called back the muse from her cigarette break. I think of this as a bit of practice.
Stay tuned, then, and be patient. This stuff will come around.
Option number two: Another attempt at a short story.
Never let it be said that the prospect of writing a blog post was an easy one. I resolved to write something within the previous weekend, and these were the two things I was dithering about.
In the end, I decided to go for the short story. Michael Jackson has a ton of online memorials about his untimely passing already, and while I do want to leave some words on the death of a musical icon, I find it harder and harder nowadays to say something that the rest of the crowd hasn't already mentioned.
So I'm writing a short story. It's reached about 1,700 words so far, which indicates something with enough pace and flow to keep my interest. The only issue is that I don't have that much time to write nowadays, and even at my current rate of eight hundred to nine hundred words per session, it might take me a while to finish this. Michael Jackson will definitely have to wait a little longer.
What's funny is that I don't even intend for this work to be published anywhere apart from this blog. I'm just getting my groove on, that's all — it's been a while since I hit the publishing venues, and it's about time that I called back the muse from her cigarette break. I think of this as a bit of practice.
Stay tuned, then, and be patient. This stuff will come around.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Disclaimer: July 2009
I was conducting a short crash course on forum moderation the other day. It was right in the middle of a short discussion on plagiarism in forum posts, however, when somebody raised their hand in my face.
"I'm not taking questions yet," I said.
"Yeah, but how can you tell if a guy is infringing copyright or not?"
That opened up a whole can of worms, I have to admit. Discussion forums aren't the most common place to find copyright violations, seeing that most forum posts are short and reactive by nature. However, I recalled an old case where the Sassy Lawyer found one of her articles copied and pasted in its entirety on a local board, which indicated that there was the possibility that such a thing could happen.
The first thing that I pointed out was the lack of "voice". A plagiarized post is usually presented in a tone and style that is different from the poster's usual approach, obviously because the work didn't come from the same source. In short, you could put the suspicious piece alongside the poster's previous works and identify marked differences between the two.
"Every writer has a distinct style," I said. "Taking my blog as an example, you'll notice that its works tend to go in certain directions. The words are chosen well enough that the posts make sense, but not so well that the writer doesn't come off as long-winded. There's also a noticeable trend towards strange humor, and the works of fiction make heavy use of dialogue and plot twists.
"That said, it's sometimes difficult to read tone and style, so another good move would involve Googling an excerpt of the suspicious work. Most Internet plagiarists will take stuff from whatever sites are handy, so if a work was stolen, you're likely to find an online source."
Someone raised their hand. "What if somebody copied it from a web site, but changed some words so that no one could tell that it was plagiarized? Or what if they retyped it from a non-online source?"
"If anyone would be willing to put that much work into the piece," I said, "then they probably would not have taken the work in the first place. They would normally just write something on their own. But even if you make some small adjustments, there's a good chance that the rest of the work would come out on an online search."
"So what should we do if this happens?"
"Easy," I said. "You just have to remove the offending content, then place a moderator's warning at the bottom of the post. Tell them the right thing to do."
"Which is...?"
"That if they use any information from any outside source, they should include an acknowledgment of that source. Usually a link to the original web site is preferred. This is the approach that I use on my own blog — everything I write there is completely original, except for those areas that I borrow, reference or quote... and it's those items where I place my links."
"Okay."
"Sometimes you might run into the reverse situation — someone from outside the web site contacts you and tells you that one of their works was unlawfully taken and posted in the forums. In that case, you should remove the content and put up a notice in its place. Normally the authors would be willing to negotiate over the use of the work, but as a blanket policy, you should remove these at the first sign of any issues.
"I've never had such a dispute with any external source, but on my end, I would try to talk it over with them and smooth out any differences. If I would prefer to keep using the reference (which is unlikely for most forums), I'd negotiate.
"That goes for any work originating on the forum that gets used on the outside, too. For me, I want to get asked for permission before anyone uses my work. That's usually all that there is to it, and you'd be surprised at how many people don't even bother to do that. I don't want to find that me work got credited to someone else who had absolutely nothing to do with its creation. Neither do I want to find my work used to slander and ruin people, much less get interpreted outside its original context."
Another hand went up. "So what do we do if somebody's work on the forums gets stolen?"
"There's not much you can do, because that's technically out of your scope," I said. "But you should at least inform the owner if he or she doesn't know yet. From there, it'll be up to them on what action they want to take. Be prepared to provide information to the authorities if the issue gets investigated. I would suggest that you lock the post or thread immediately to preserve the evidence; that's what the timestamps are for.
"If you're wondering, the usual penalty for copyright infringement usually involves monetary compensation. Bigger cases may see a betrayal of trust of some sort, and may have stiffer penalties. That's not discounting whatever the owner of the work can think of. Online, there are things worse than what the authorities can dream up."
I looked over my tiny audience. "Any other questions before we move on?" I asked.
When there were no responses, I turned back to the whiteboard. "Okay," I said, "the next thing that we need to discuss is the prevalence of the 'Me Too' response in discussion forums..."
"I'm not taking questions yet," I said.
"Yeah, but how can you tell if a guy is infringing copyright or not?"
That opened up a whole can of worms, I have to admit. Discussion forums aren't the most common place to find copyright violations, seeing that most forum posts are short and reactive by nature. However, I recalled an old case where the Sassy Lawyer found one of her articles copied and pasted in its entirety on a local board, which indicated that there was the possibility that such a thing could happen.
The first thing that I pointed out was the lack of "voice". A plagiarized post is usually presented in a tone and style that is different from the poster's usual approach, obviously because the work didn't come from the same source. In short, you could put the suspicious piece alongside the poster's previous works and identify marked differences between the two.
"Every writer has a distinct style," I said. "Taking my blog as an example, you'll notice that its works tend to go in certain directions. The words are chosen well enough that the posts make sense, but not so well that the writer doesn't come off as long-winded. There's also a noticeable trend towards strange humor, and the works of fiction make heavy use of dialogue and plot twists.
"That said, it's sometimes difficult to read tone and style, so another good move would involve Googling an excerpt of the suspicious work. Most Internet plagiarists will take stuff from whatever sites are handy, so if a work was stolen, you're likely to find an online source."
Someone raised their hand. "What if somebody copied it from a web site, but changed some words so that no one could tell that it was plagiarized? Or what if they retyped it from a non-online source?"
"If anyone would be willing to put that much work into the piece," I said, "then they probably would not have taken the work in the first place. They would normally just write something on their own. But even if you make some small adjustments, there's a good chance that the rest of the work would come out on an online search."
"So what should we do if this happens?"
"Easy," I said. "You just have to remove the offending content, then place a moderator's warning at the bottom of the post. Tell them the right thing to do."
"Which is...?"
"That if they use any information from any outside source, they should include an acknowledgment of that source. Usually a link to the original web site is preferred. This is the approach that I use on my own blog — everything I write there is completely original, except for those areas that I borrow, reference or quote... and it's those items where I place my links."
"Okay."
"Sometimes you might run into the reverse situation — someone from outside the web site contacts you and tells you that one of their works was unlawfully taken and posted in the forums. In that case, you should remove the content and put up a notice in its place. Normally the authors would be willing to negotiate over the use of the work, but as a blanket policy, you should remove these at the first sign of any issues.
"I've never had such a dispute with any external source, but on my end, I would try to talk it over with them and smooth out any differences. If I would prefer to keep using the reference (which is unlikely for most forums), I'd negotiate.
"That goes for any work originating on the forum that gets used on the outside, too. For me, I want to get asked for permission before anyone uses my work. That's usually all that there is to it, and you'd be surprised at how many people don't even bother to do that. I don't want to find that me work got credited to someone else who had absolutely nothing to do with its creation. Neither do I want to find my work used to slander and ruin people, much less get interpreted outside its original context."
Another hand went up. "So what do we do if somebody's work on the forums gets stolen?"
"There's not much you can do, because that's technically out of your scope," I said. "But you should at least inform the owner if he or she doesn't know yet. From there, it'll be up to them on what action they want to take. Be prepared to provide information to the authorities if the issue gets investigated. I would suggest that you lock the post or thread immediately to preserve the evidence; that's what the timestamps are for.
"If you're wondering, the usual penalty for copyright infringement usually involves monetary compensation. Bigger cases may see a betrayal of trust of some sort, and may have stiffer penalties. That's not discounting whatever the owner of the work can think of. Online, there are things worse than what the authorities can dream up."
I looked over my tiny audience. "Any other questions before we move on?" I asked.
When there were no responses, I turned back to the whiteboard. "Okay," I said, "the next thing that we need to discuss is the prevalence of the 'Me Too' response in discussion forums..."
Friday, June 26, 2009
Math for an MBA, Part 2
The first part of the story is here, along with the questions that took about an hour to consider and another hour to conceptualize. After some deliberation, I settled on four areas that seemed to fit into the "MBA Entrance Exam" mold: Percentages, Averages, Multiple-Variable problems, and Logical Reasoning.
Percentages are simple problems involving percentage calculations: "What is 75% of 40?" belongs in this mold. They have a very practical real-life application in bank lending and interest rates, occasionally make guest appearances in Accounting problems, and tend to show up on project status reports. As a result, I felt that a refresher on these would not be amiss.
Averages are similarly easy, although I wanted to approach them from a roundabout direction. Most problems in this area involve calculating the average of a set of values; I wanted to turn this on its head and ask a question where you needed to get a specific value in a series, given the average as one of your clues.
Multiple-variable problems, on the other hand, were certainties. I had given a friend some help on one of these for her MBA class before, so if there were any problems that were likely to show up, it would be these. You've probably seen them before; these are the tedious word problems where you have to figure out the values of more than one item.
Logical reasoning is harder to describe. This is not a subset of problems, mind you, as much as it is the ability to organize given information, identify an unknown value, and then use one to work towards the other. It's obviously used extensively in business, although in a less mathematical sense. But I'm convinced that it's the mathematical training that helps us apply it to non-math outlets.
Given this outline, all that I had left to do was to write the questions:
1. Three chickens can lay three eggs in three days. In how many days can you expect 18 chickens to lay 18 eggs?
This was a question of logical reasoning, plain and simple. I see it appear in a lot of IQ tests and other cognitive exams, and I've seen some very smart people give some very wrong answers as well. Most people, in fact, will trust in their faulty pattern-recognition senses and say "18 days!" right off the bat.
The answer is a lot more mundane. If three chickens lay three eggs, with all other factors being equal, then it stands to reason that each chicken laid one egg. If these three chickens laid those three eggs in a matter of three days, then it follows that each chicken needs three days to lay one egg. Therefore eighteen chickens would come up with eighteen eggs in those same three days.
2. You have exactly Php 35,000.00 in a bank account that gains 2% compound interest per annum. Assuming that you neither deposit nor withdraw any money from that account, how much will the account contain after two years?
I wanted to throw in at least question that implied a real-world application of a mathematical principle, and this was that question. The easy way to solve this is to just get ((35,000 x 102%) x 102%) for a total of Php 36,414.00. That said, I only realized afterwards that banks hardly use the term "compound interest" anymore, which puts up the wall between theory and practice again.
3. I need an average score of 93 among my exams in order to pass one of my courses. So far, the grades that I got in five earlier exams were 90, 97, 87, 100, and 86. What is the minimum grade that I should get on the sixth (and final) exam in order to pass?
This is a reverse-average problem that is commonly known as "the Student's Dillemma", and I'm sure that a lot of people out there learned to put these calculations together at some point in their academic lives. I won't cover the answer here, as it's really just a throwback to what we were all probably doing around our final exam weeks.
4. A bicyclist travels at a steady rate of 8 kilometers per hour. She leaves her house at 2:00pm and rides her bike to the supermarket. Halfway there, she realizes that she's forgotten her shopping list and returns home to get it, then sets out for the supermarket again. She arrives there at 4:30pm. What is the distance from her house to the supermarket?
I put this problem here for one basic purpose: It encourages the solver to draw a chart. I feel that visualization is an important part of logical reasoning — if you can envision the cyclist's journey in your mind, then so much the better, but if not, you can just doodle something that lets you conclude that she travelled a total of twice her original intended distance from 2:00 to 4:30. That means that she normally travels the path to the supermarket in 75 minutes at 8 km/h... which makes the distance 10 kilometers.
5. A 200-liter mixture is comprised of 20% water, 30% salt, 10% sugar, 15% sand, and 25% gold. This mixture is left out in the sun for a few hours, after which all the water is found to have evaporated. What percentage of the resulting mixture is made up of gold?
And now the problems get a whole lot harder. I set up this percentage problem to illustrate the fact that percentages are non-constant values, and that they change with the introduction or removal of new factors. The easiest way to get the answer here is to realize that you're just looking for an equivalent of 25 parts out of the remaining 80 units, which makes 31.25%.
One interesting quirk about this problem was the fact that you technically don't need the volume of the original mixture to solve it. In fact, you can give the original mixture and quantity you want and the answer will still be the same... but I wasn't about to introduce that to people who had spent years away from their high school math classes.
6. A motorboat needs three hours to travel upstream, but it only needs one hour to travel downstream. When there is no current, the motorboat moves at a constant four kilometers per hour. What is the rate at which the river's current flows?
This took things a little further; It's actually rather difficult to solve if you slept through most of your math classes. In fact, it's another problem that encourages you to draw... although a chart instead of a diagram is needed in this case.
Rate-Time-Distance problems like these usually need a bit of background. You need to know that Rate x Time = Distance, of course, but you also need to know that an opposing force will lower an object's effective rate of travel (and vice-versa). Ergo, the river will slow you down by its own rate when you go upstream, but it'll make you go faster by the same rate when you go downstream.
Assuming that the river's rate is R, we get:
(4 + R) x 1 = distance travelled downstream = distance travelled upstream = (4 - R) x 3
From there, it just boils down to:
(4 + R) = (4 - R) x 3
4 + R = 12 - 3R
4R = 8
R = 2 km/h
7. Three bowling balls and four frying pans weigh 54 pounds in total. Four bowling balls and one telephone weigh 54 pounds in total. Three telephones and eight frying pans also weigh 54 pounds in total. What is the total weight of one bowling ball, one frying pan, and one telephone?
This is the classic three-variable problem: Three unknown quantities, and three equations. I chose the objects completely at random only because I like choosing objects completely at random.
The interesting part is that I deliberately screwed around with the numbers here — while a bowling ball weighs 12 pounds and a telephone weighs 6 pounds, a frying pan weighs 4.5 pounds. I find that some solvers normally get thrown off by the decimal value for some reason, perhaps because it makes them think that they're on the wrong track.
8. Anthony, Beatrice and Charles win the lottery on a single ticket. They decide that they will each take 30% of the total, and then set aside the remaining 10% for future needs. After the money is deposited in their bank, however, each of the three friends arrives separately to claim their share. Anthony arrives first and withdraws 30% of the money. Beatrice arrives a few hours later, and withdraws 30% of what's left. Finally, Charles arrives some time later and withdraws 30% of what's left. At this point, only Php 205,800.00 is left in the account. How much did the three friends originally win in the lottery?
This is actually a problem that gets featured in a lot of puzzle books. While it's possible to solve this by means of basic algebra, the circumstances of the problem tend to leave people confused on where to start. Yes, this actually centers more on logical reasoning than percentages. Yes, I threw the two of them together to try and confuse my solvers further.
Problems like these encourage logical thinking — they force the solver to stop, think, and determine their battle plan before trying to tackle the problem. In this case, the way the logic should go is that that 205,800 represents 70% of the money that Charles saw (before he took his 30%). This amount represents 70% of the money that Beatrice originally found in the account, which is 70% of the money that Anthony found in the unblemished account. Therefore:
205,800 is 70% of the money that Charles saw...
— Charles originally saw 294,000 in the account.
294,400 is 70% of the money that Beatrice saw...
— Beatrice originally saw 420,000 in the account.
420,000 is 70% of the money that Anthony saw...
— Anthony originally saw 600,000 in the account.
And now I must admit that it all turned out to be for nothing, because we both ended up so busy the night before the exam that we never got around to the problems. I managed to fire off a quick question about chickens and eggs (which my friend got wrong), but we otherwise weren't able to go through the eight items above.
The next morning, my friend called to tell me that the exam was much easier than he expected, and that math only played a very small role in this regard. There were plenty of real-world logical scenarios and a few questions of general knowledge, but nothing beyond the simplified "What is 75% of 40?" percentage problems that I mentioned at the start of this article.
I suppose it's too much to ask. Math is more a tool for mental stimulation in schools, something that acts as a precursor to the logical thought that we use when we're older. You can't expect business professionals to maintain passion (much less practical use) for these theoretical concepts... especially when it comes to a post-graduate program that concentrates on cooperation and networking.
The test still sits on my desk, however, waiting for the next time that another MBA applicant asks for my assistance. On top of that, I have more word problems where that came from. It's only a matter of time before somebody asks me for another favor...
Percentages are simple problems involving percentage calculations: "What is 75% of 40?" belongs in this mold. They have a very practical real-life application in bank lending and interest rates, occasionally make guest appearances in Accounting problems, and tend to show up on project status reports. As a result, I felt that a refresher on these would not be amiss.
Averages are similarly easy, although I wanted to approach them from a roundabout direction. Most problems in this area involve calculating the average of a set of values; I wanted to turn this on its head and ask a question where you needed to get a specific value in a series, given the average as one of your clues.
Multiple-variable problems, on the other hand, were certainties. I had given a friend some help on one of these for her MBA class before, so if there were any problems that were likely to show up, it would be these. You've probably seen them before; these are the tedious word problems where you have to figure out the values of more than one item.
Logical reasoning is harder to describe. This is not a subset of problems, mind you, as much as it is the ability to organize given information, identify an unknown value, and then use one to work towards the other. It's obviously used extensively in business, although in a less mathematical sense. But I'm convinced that it's the mathematical training that helps us apply it to non-math outlets.
Given this outline, all that I had left to do was to write the questions:
1. Three chickens can lay three eggs in three days. In how many days can you expect 18 chickens to lay 18 eggs?
This was a question of logical reasoning, plain and simple. I see it appear in a lot of IQ tests and other cognitive exams, and I've seen some very smart people give some very wrong answers as well. Most people, in fact, will trust in their faulty pattern-recognition senses and say "18 days!" right off the bat.
The answer is a lot more mundane. If three chickens lay three eggs, with all other factors being equal, then it stands to reason that each chicken laid one egg. If these three chickens laid those three eggs in a matter of three days, then it follows that each chicken needs three days to lay one egg. Therefore eighteen chickens would come up with eighteen eggs in those same three days.
2. You have exactly Php 35,000.00 in a bank account that gains 2% compound interest per annum. Assuming that you neither deposit nor withdraw any money from that account, how much will the account contain after two years?
I wanted to throw in at least question that implied a real-world application of a mathematical principle, and this was that question. The easy way to solve this is to just get ((35,000 x 102%) x 102%) for a total of Php 36,414.00. That said, I only realized afterwards that banks hardly use the term "compound interest" anymore, which puts up the wall between theory and practice again.
3. I need an average score of 93 among my exams in order to pass one of my courses. So far, the grades that I got in five earlier exams were 90, 97, 87, 100, and 86. What is the minimum grade that I should get on the sixth (and final) exam in order to pass?
This is a reverse-average problem that is commonly known as "the Student's Dillemma", and I'm sure that a lot of people out there learned to put these calculations together at some point in their academic lives. I won't cover the answer here, as it's really just a throwback to what we were all probably doing around our final exam weeks.
4. A bicyclist travels at a steady rate of 8 kilometers per hour. She leaves her house at 2:00pm and rides her bike to the supermarket. Halfway there, she realizes that she's forgotten her shopping list and returns home to get it, then sets out for the supermarket again. She arrives there at 4:30pm. What is the distance from her house to the supermarket?
I put this problem here for one basic purpose: It encourages the solver to draw a chart. I feel that visualization is an important part of logical reasoning — if you can envision the cyclist's journey in your mind, then so much the better, but if not, you can just doodle something that lets you conclude that she travelled a total of twice her original intended distance from 2:00 to 4:30. That means that she normally travels the path to the supermarket in 75 minutes at 8 km/h... which makes the distance 10 kilometers.
5. A 200-liter mixture is comprised of 20% water, 30% salt, 10% sugar, 15% sand, and 25% gold. This mixture is left out in the sun for a few hours, after which all the water is found to have evaporated. What percentage of the resulting mixture is made up of gold?
And now the problems get a whole lot harder. I set up this percentage problem to illustrate the fact that percentages are non-constant values, and that they change with the introduction or removal of new factors. The easiest way to get the answer here is to realize that you're just looking for an equivalent of 25 parts out of the remaining 80 units, which makes 31.25%.
One interesting quirk about this problem was the fact that you technically don't need the volume of the original mixture to solve it. In fact, you can give the original mixture and quantity you want and the answer will still be the same... but I wasn't about to introduce that to people who had spent years away from their high school math classes.
6. A motorboat needs three hours to travel upstream, but it only needs one hour to travel downstream. When there is no current, the motorboat moves at a constant four kilometers per hour. What is the rate at which the river's current flows?
This took things a little further; It's actually rather difficult to solve if you slept through most of your math classes. In fact, it's another problem that encourages you to draw... although a chart instead of a diagram is needed in this case.
Rate-Time-Distance problems like these usually need a bit of background. You need to know that Rate x Time = Distance, of course, but you also need to know that an opposing force will lower an object's effective rate of travel (and vice-versa). Ergo, the river will slow you down by its own rate when you go upstream, but it'll make you go faster by the same rate when you go downstream.
Assuming that the river's rate is R, we get:
(4 + R) x 1 = distance travelled downstream = distance travelled upstream = (4 - R) x 3
From there, it just boils down to:
(4 + R) = (4 - R) x 3
4 + R = 12 - 3R
4R = 8
R = 2 km/h
7. Three bowling balls and four frying pans weigh 54 pounds in total. Four bowling balls and one telephone weigh 54 pounds in total. Three telephones and eight frying pans also weigh 54 pounds in total. What is the total weight of one bowling ball, one frying pan, and one telephone?
This is the classic three-variable problem: Three unknown quantities, and three equations. I chose the objects completely at random only because I like choosing objects completely at random.
The interesting part is that I deliberately screwed around with the numbers here — while a bowling ball weighs 12 pounds and a telephone weighs 6 pounds, a frying pan weighs 4.5 pounds. I find that some solvers normally get thrown off by the decimal value for some reason, perhaps because it makes them think that they're on the wrong track.
8. Anthony, Beatrice and Charles win the lottery on a single ticket. They decide that they will each take 30% of the total, and then set aside the remaining 10% for future needs. After the money is deposited in their bank, however, each of the three friends arrives separately to claim their share. Anthony arrives first and withdraws 30% of the money. Beatrice arrives a few hours later, and withdraws 30% of what's left. Finally, Charles arrives some time later and withdraws 30% of what's left. At this point, only Php 205,800.00 is left in the account. How much did the three friends originally win in the lottery?
This is actually a problem that gets featured in a lot of puzzle books. While it's possible to solve this by means of basic algebra, the circumstances of the problem tend to leave people confused on where to start. Yes, this actually centers more on logical reasoning than percentages. Yes, I threw the two of them together to try and confuse my solvers further.
Problems like these encourage logical thinking — they force the solver to stop, think, and determine their battle plan before trying to tackle the problem. In this case, the way the logic should go is that that 205,800 represents 70% of the money that Charles saw (before he took his 30%). This amount represents 70% of the money that Beatrice originally found in the account, which is 70% of the money that Anthony found in the unblemished account. Therefore:
205,800 is 70% of the money that Charles saw...
— Charles originally saw 294,000 in the account.
294,400 is 70% of the money that Beatrice saw...
— Beatrice originally saw 420,000 in the account.
420,000 is 70% of the money that Anthony saw...
— Anthony originally saw 600,000 in the account.
*
And now I must admit that it all turned out to be for nothing, because we both ended up so busy the night before the exam that we never got around to the problems. I managed to fire off a quick question about chickens and eggs (which my friend got wrong), but we otherwise weren't able to go through the eight items above.
The next morning, my friend called to tell me that the exam was much easier than he expected, and that math only played a very small role in this regard. There were plenty of real-world logical scenarios and a few questions of general knowledge, but nothing beyond the simplified "What is 75% of 40?" percentage problems that I mentioned at the start of this article.
I suppose it's too much to ask. Math is more a tool for mental stimulation in schools, something that acts as a precursor to the logical thought that we use when we're older. You can't expect business professionals to maintain passion (much less practical use) for these theoretical concepts... especially when it comes to a post-graduate program that concentrates on cooperation and networking.
The test still sits on my desk, however, waiting for the next time that another MBA applicant asks for my assistance. On top of that, I have more word problems where that came from. It's only a matter of time before somebody asks me for another favor...
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Math for an MBA, Part 1
A few days ago, someone asked me to give him a hand with the MBA entrance exam he was taking on Saturday morning. "You still remember what we learned in Math class," he told me, "and you obviously practice it a lot."
"Yeah, well... the math in an MBA course isn't that tough. I've helped out at least one other person with his MBA homework, and it didn't go any farther than algebra and number theory. It's high school stuff."
"I don't remember most of what we studied in high school. And it's the entrance exam... who knows what questions will come out? You know this better than I do, so give me a hand here."
I admit that I couldn't deny him the favor, and I suppose that part of me was itching to do some heavy-duty tutoring, so I said yes. Since we only had about one night's worth of time to go through the basics (us being working stiffs and all), I needed to gather my thoughts and imagine what kind of math was likely to come out in a bunch of MBA classes.
Eventually I came up with a list of eight questions for discussion, which I'll post here. I've come up with Math tests before (mostly for my siblings when they were in school), but this is the first time I've come up with a series of questions for an MBA applicant. If there was any point to this entire exercise, it lay in the matter of what was likely to come out, and what was not.
I eliminated such irritants as Calculus and Trigonometry right off the bat, for example. I felt that these were highly unlikely to come up in a Business Administration course, because they obviously require a lot of theoretical background and advanced thinking. Geometry was the next to go, because as basic as the math is, the concepts didn't apply to management principles. Probability and Combinatorics remained by the wayside as well, although those were among my favorites to explore.
After an hour's worth of thought, I had pared down my ideas into a limited set of concepts that felt as though they belonged in an MBA environment, and were fundamental enough to appear in an entrance exam. From these, I pulled together eight questions that my friend and I could discuss, and I now post them below for your viewing pleasure:
1. Three chickens can lay three eggs in three days. In how many days can you expect 18 chickens to lay 18 eggs?
2. You have exactly Php 35,000.00 in a bank account that gains 2% compound interest per annum. Assuming that you neither deposit nor withdraw any money from that account, how much will the account contain after two years?
3. I need an average score of 93 among my exams in order to pass one of my courses. So far, the grades that I got in five earlier exams were 90, 97, 87, 100, and 86. What is the minimum grade that I should get on the sixth (and final) exam in order to pass?
4. A bicyclist travels at a steady rate of 8 kilometers per hour. She leaves her house at 2:00pm and rides her bike to the supermarket. Halfway there, she realizes that she's forgotten her shopping list and returns home to get it, then sets out for the supermarket again. She arrives there at 4:30pm. What is the distance from her house to the supermarket?
5. A 200-liter mixture is comprised of 20% water, 30% salt, 10% sugar, 15% sand, and 25% gold. This mixture is left out in the sun for a few hours, after which all the water is found to have evaporated. What percentage of the resulting mixture is made up of gold?
6. A motorboat needs three hours to travel upstream, but it only needs one hour to travel downstream. When there is no current, the motorboat moves at a constant four kilometers per hour. What is the rate at which the river's current flows?
7. Three bowling balls and four frying pans weigh 54 pounds in total. Four bowling balls and one telephone weigh 54 pounds in total. Three telephones and eight frying pans also weigh 54 pounds in total. What is the total weight of one bowling ball, one frying pan, and one telephone?
8. Anthony, Beatrice and Charles win the lottery on a single ticket. They decide that they will each take 30% of the total, and then set aside the remaining 10% for future needs. After the money is deposited in their bank, however, each of the three friends arrives separately to claim their share. Anthony arrives first and withdraws 30% of the money. Beatrice arrives a few hours later, and withdraws 30% of what's left. Finally, Charles arrives some time later and withdraws 30% of what's left. At this point, only Php 205,800.00 is left in the account. How much did the three friends originally win in the lottery?
While it would be easy for me to just put up the answers to each of these and call it a day, that wouldn't be enough for a second article on this subject. I feel that there's a specific reason why I prepared each one of these questions... and that these reasons are worthwhile to discuss.
That said, those words will have to wait till tomorrow, I think. It's almost two in the morning at this time, and in the intervening hours, you're welcome to have a crack at these. I know that it's no Sudoku, but wouldn't you be interested to see how much you remember from your high school math?
"Yeah, well... the math in an MBA course isn't that tough. I've helped out at least one other person with his MBA homework, and it didn't go any farther than algebra and number theory. It's high school stuff."
"I don't remember most of what we studied in high school. And it's the entrance exam... who knows what questions will come out? You know this better than I do, so give me a hand here."
I admit that I couldn't deny him the favor, and I suppose that part of me was itching to do some heavy-duty tutoring, so I said yes. Since we only had about one night's worth of time to go through the basics (us being working stiffs and all), I needed to gather my thoughts and imagine what kind of math was likely to come out in a bunch of MBA classes.
Eventually I came up with a list of eight questions for discussion, which I'll post here. I've come up with Math tests before (mostly for my siblings when they were in school), but this is the first time I've come up with a series of questions for an MBA applicant. If there was any point to this entire exercise, it lay in the matter of what was likely to come out, and what was not.
I eliminated such irritants as Calculus and Trigonometry right off the bat, for example. I felt that these were highly unlikely to come up in a Business Administration course, because they obviously require a lot of theoretical background and advanced thinking. Geometry was the next to go, because as basic as the math is, the concepts didn't apply to management principles. Probability and Combinatorics remained by the wayside as well, although those were among my favorites to explore.
After an hour's worth of thought, I had pared down my ideas into a limited set of concepts that felt as though they belonged in an MBA environment, and were fundamental enough to appear in an entrance exam. From these, I pulled together eight questions that my friend and I could discuss, and I now post them below for your viewing pleasure:
1. Three chickens can lay three eggs in three days. In how many days can you expect 18 chickens to lay 18 eggs?
2. You have exactly Php 35,000.00 in a bank account that gains 2% compound interest per annum. Assuming that you neither deposit nor withdraw any money from that account, how much will the account contain after two years?
3. I need an average score of 93 among my exams in order to pass one of my courses. So far, the grades that I got in five earlier exams were 90, 97, 87, 100, and 86. What is the minimum grade that I should get on the sixth (and final) exam in order to pass?
4. A bicyclist travels at a steady rate of 8 kilometers per hour. She leaves her house at 2:00pm and rides her bike to the supermarket. Halfway there, she realizes that she's forgotten her shopping list and returns home to get it, then sets out for the supermarket again. She arrives there at 4:30pm. What is the distance from her house to the supermarket?
5. A 200-liter mixture is comprised of 20% water, 30% salt, 10% sugar, 15% sand, and 25% gold. This mixture is left out in the sun for a few hours, after which all the water is found to have evaporated. What percentage of the resulting mixture is made up of gold?
6. A motorboat needs three hours to travel upstream, but it only needs one hour to travel downstream. When there is no current, the motorboat moves at a constant four kilometers per hour. What is the rate at which the river's current flows?
7. Three bowling balls and four frying pans weigh 54 pounds in total. Four bowling balls and one telephone weigh 54 pounds in total. Three telephones and eight frying pans also weigh 54 pounds in total. What is the total weight of one bowling ball, one frying pan, and one telephone?
8. Anthony, Beatrice and Charles win the lottery on a single ticket. They decide that they will each take 30% of the total, and then set aside the remaining 10% for future needs. After the money is deposited in their bank, however, each of the three friends arrives separately to claim their share. Anthony arrives first and withdraws 30% of the money. Beatrice arrives a few hours later, and withdraws 30% of what's left. Finally, Charles arrives some time later and withdraws 30% of what's left. At this point, only Php 205,800.00 is left in the account. How much did the three friends originally win in the lottery?
While it would be easy for me to just put up the answers to each of these and call it a day, that wouldn't be enough for a second article on this subject. I feel that there's a specific reason why I prepared each one of these questions... and that these reasons are worthwhile to discuss.
That said, those words will have to wait till tomorrow, I think. It's almost two in the morning at this time, and in the intervening hours, you're welcome to have a crack at these. I know that it's no Sudoku, but wouldn't you be interested to see how much you remember from your high school math?
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Export to Hard Drive
I spent a few minutes doing a backup of this blog a little while ago, based on Dominique's revelation that Blogger now has an Export feature. That's not to say that I'm paranoid and constantly afraid that Big Brother is going to delete all my records one day, but I have had a lot of words posted here for the past four or five years.
To be honest, the Multiply site that I set up some months ago already acts as a backup — that is, whenever it's picking up my posts properly. However, I feel more comfortable knowing that there's a method that allows me to be responsible for making my own archives, as opposed to worrying about a point in time when I might lose everything.
That, and I've just realized that all of my posts since 2004, all of the code and comments and image links, comes to a mere 7.1mb on my hard drive. I feel so inadequate.
Then I mused on the fact that I have a lot of words posted here, so I opened up the XML file in a browser window, then took advantage of the clipboard in order to copy and paste the resulting mishmash into a Word document. The whole operation took me ten whole minutes at my current level of memory (and thirty more minutes because MS Word insists on annotating every single spelling and grammatical error in its documents), but I eventually got the numbers: The backup file contained about 3.6 million characters in 640,000 words. Given a conservative estimate that I wrote about 70% of those words, that puts my total so far at about 450,000 words scattered throughout this blog. I'm no slouch there, at least.
That also implies that I write an average of five or six letters per word. This is a surprise, considering my habit at wordiness.
I'm now working on exactly what kind of backup schedule and procedure I should use. I mean, I'm not sure if it's a smart move to produce archives only when I feel like doing so, not in an age where our government is debating legal standards for open reporting. Pushing a seven-megabyte file each time I post something new, however, will just eat my time in front of the modern boob tube.
Or I could just forget about my budding paranoia and just post more often. But then that would discourage me from playing with all the lovely numbers.
Ah well.
To be honest, the Multiply site that I set up some months ago already acts as a backup — that is, whenever it's picking up my posts properly. However, I feel more comfortable knowing that there's a method that allows me to be responsible for making my own archives, as opposed to worrying about a point in time when I might lose everything.
That, and I've just realized that all of my posts since 2004, all of the code and comments and image links, comes to a mere 7.1mb on my hard drive. I feel so inadequate.
Then I mused on the fact that I have a lot of words posted here, so I opened up the XML file in a browser window, then took advantage of the clipboard in order to copy and paste the resulting mishmash into a Word document. The whole operation took me ten whole minutes at my current level of memory (and thirty more minutes because MS Word insists on annotating every single spelling and grammatical error in its documents), but I eventually got the numbers: The backup file contained about 3.6 million characters in 640,000 words. Given a conservative estimate that I wrote about 70% of those words, that puts my total so far at about 450,000 words scattered throughout this blog. I'm no slouch there, at least.
That also implies that I write an average of five or six letters per word. This is a surprise, considering my habit at wordiness.
I'm now working on exactly what kind of backup schedule and procedure I should use. I mean, I'm not sure if it's a smart move to produce archives only when I feel like doing so, not in an age where our government is debating legal standards for open reporting. Pushing a seven-megabyte file each time I post something new, however, will just eat my time in front of the modern boob tube.
Or I could just forget about my budding paranoia and just post more often. But then that would discourage me from playing with all the lovely numbers.
Ah well.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
A Man's Psychology Can Be Inferred by His Choice of Street Fighter
Ryu. You are an intensely competitive person. You exercise yourself both mentally and physically before an endeavor; you don't like walking into situations unprepared. You are incapable of thinking outside of the box, and instead resort to tried-and-tested methods in order to achieve your goals. You use these methods for a reason, mainly the fact that they work... and on top of that, you know exactly how to implement them to the best of your advantage.
Ken. As above, except that you're far more flashy and charismatic. You've got the mad skills — but some time ago, you realized that Number One happens to be a lonely place. You've played the field and are comfortable in the knowledge that you know how to deal with things... enough to go about them with a casual attitude and a sardonic smile on your face. You're really not as good as you think you are, but you're not going to lose as long as people think otherwise.
Chun-Li. You think on your feet. You're a guarded, cautious person who prepares a strategy beforehand and fully expects it to fall apart... which means that you have plenty of practice making last-minute changes. Reaction is almost instinctual in you, and life for you can be reduced to a series of moves and countermoves against the people you play with. You know when to push and you know when to wait; it's all part of the same game.
Guile. It's not about how well you do in the world, really. Instead, you feel that it's all about how you can take advantage of the opportunities that you observe. You are constantly on the lookout for openings — weak spots where you can drive your point home, or at least areas where you can push your own agenda. You're not into self-improvement as much as you are into using your strengths: If someone breaks one of your arms in a fight, you're just going to hit them with the other one. The only way people can get past you is if you let them through.
Blanka. You like to get up close and personal; the best way to solve a problem is to throw yourself into the solution. You have a lot of scars from experiences gone wrong, and often your misadventures outnumber your achievements... but your successes are held in high enough esteem that people don't consider you a slouch. You may not be strong or smart enough to hang with the best of them the first time, but eventually you'll get there. Just expect to get a lot of pain for all your trouble.
E. Honda. People don't expect much from you, and that's where the secret lies. You like being the underdog, the person who doesn't seem to hold much promise until you snatch success out from under everybody's nose. You're not as fast as them — but you're fast enough. You're not as skilled as them — but you're skilled enough. Your plan is to let them settle into their preconceived notions for as long as possible... then pull the gloves off and show them how you really roll.
Zangief. You hit things to make them work. You don't pretend to have an understanding of the basic nature of things like all the others claim to have, and that's because you don't. Why bother gathering every bit of information you can, when you just have to know what to do? That's the way the world works: You just need to point yourself in the right direction and pull the trigger. Everything else is just an irritating buzzing noise in your ears.
Dhalsim. You like surprising people, especially when you can defy their expectations so completely. If they expect you to go left, then you go right. People are at their worst when they're extremely predictable, and that's how you discovered the wonder of creativity and random choice. No one can ever figure out exactly what you're doing until the last moment, and that's when they find out that your eye has been on the prize for a long time. They may be ready, but they certainly won't be ready for you.
* No, this is not a serious psychological study or profile. This is a completely random article with no academic basis whatsoever, so lay off any accusations that I've favored one character over another. Street Fighter™ is the property of Capcom Co. Ltd., and I assure them that this post was written for parodical purposes (more as a curiosity than anything else). Don't sue me, or else I'll go all M. Bison on you. Psycho Crusher!
Ken. As above, except that you're far more flashy and charismatic. You've got the mad skills — but some time ago, you realized that Number One happens to be a lonely place. You've played the field and are comfortable in the knowledge that you know how to deal with things... enough to go about them with a casual attitude and a sardonic smile on your face. You're really not as good as you think you are, but you're not going to lose as long as people think otherwise.
Chun-Li. You think on your feet. You're a guarded, cautious person who prepares a strategy beforehand and fully expects it to fall apart... which means that you have plenty of practice making last-minute changes. Reaction is almost instinctual in you, and life for you can be reduced to a series of moves and countermoves against the people you play with. You know when to push and you know when to wait; it's all part of the same game.
Guile. It's not about how well you do in the world, really. Instead, you feel that it's all about how you can take advantage of the opportunities that you observe. You are constantly on the lookout for openings — weak spots where you can drive your point home, or at least areas where you can push your own agenda. You're not into self-improvement as much as you are into using your strengths: If someone breaks one of your arms in a fight, you're just going to hit them with the other one. The only way people can get past you is if you let them through.
Blanka. You like to get up close and personal; the best way to solve a problem is to throw yourself into the solution. You have a lot of scars from experiences gone wrong, and often your misadventures outnumber your achievements... but your successes are held in high enough esteem that people don't consider you a slouch. You may not be strong or smart enough to hang with the best of them the first time, but eventually you'll get there. Just expect to get a lot of pain for all your trouble.
E. Honda. People don't expect much from you, and that's where the secret lies. You like being the underdog, the person who doesn't seem to hold much promise until you snatch success out from under everybody's nose. You're not as fast as them — but you're fast enough. You're not as skilled as them — but you're skilled enough. Your plan is to let them settle into their preconceived notions for as long as possible... then pull the gloves off and show them how you really roll.
Zangief. You hit things to make them work. You don't pretend to have an understanding of the basic nature of things like all the others claim to have, and that's because you don't. Why bother gathering every bit of information you can, when you just have to know what to do? That's the way the world works: You just need to point yourself in the right direction and pull the trigger. Everything else is just an irritating buzzing noise in your ears.
Dhalsim. You like surprising people, especially when you can defy their expectations so completely. If they expect you to go left, then you go right. People are at their worst when they're extremely predictable, and that's how you discovered the wonder of creativity and random choice. No one can ever figure out exactly what you're doing until the last moment, and that's when they find out that your eye has been on the prize for a long time. They may be ready, but they certainly won't be ready for you.
* No, this is not a serious psychological study or profile. This is a completely random article with no academic basis whatsoever, so lay off any accusations that I've favored one character over another. Street Fighter™ is the property of Capcom Co. Ltd., and I assure them that this post was written for parodical purposes (more as a curiosity than anything else). Don't sue me, or else I'll go all M. Bison on you. Psycho Crusher!
Friday, June 12, 2009
Six-Word Stories
Here's a few six-word stories for Bahay Talinhaga's Independence Day effort. Because I like challenges, I've tried to do one for each of various genres. Because I have masochistic tendencies, I based these off of the ones available in the Talecraft storytelling game. And because I'm borderline suicidal, I've tried to place all of these in a contemporary Philippine context, something that I usually don't do in the course of my regular writing.
One conclusion I've developed, mind you, is that I'm too wordy to squeeze all of my ideas into a mere six words. That said, that probably just means that the items below are just the tip of the iceberg that happens to be my warped little mind.
Here you go, Mr. Chikiamco. Hopefully these are of good enough quality for you.
Adventure: Intrepid archeologist seeks lost Kho videos.
Fantasy (Bangsian Fantasy): Demon runs day spa for celestials.
Fantasy (Contemporary Fantasy): Secret squatter society battles subdivision monsters.
Fantasy (Fairytale Fantasy): Princesses. Paedophilia. Politicians. Put something together.
Fantasy (High Fantasy): Spellcasting cop shakes down otherworldly citizens.
Gothic: Strange giggling noises in Manila Cathedral.
Historical: Ferdinand Magellan's last words: "Nice... sword..."
Horror: Balut vendors terrorized by giant duck.
Mystery: Imelda's three thousand shoes are missing!
Romance: Is that MMORPG girl really female?
Science Fiction: Solution to Abu Sayyaf: Giant Robots.
Thriller: Must... stop... president... from... running... again!
One conclusion I've developed, mind you, is that I'm too wordy to squeeze all of my ideas into a mere six words. That said, that probably just means that the items below are just the tip of the iceberg that happens to be my warped little mind.
Here you go, Mr. Chikiamco. Hopefully these are of good enough quality for you.
Adventure: Intrepid archeologist seeks lost Kho videos.
Fantasy (Bangsian Fantasy): Demon runs day spa for celestials.
Fantasy (Contemporary Fantasy): Secret squatter society battles subdivision monsters.
Fantasy (Fairytale Fantasy): Princesses. Paedophilia. Politicians. Put something together.
Fantasy (High Fantasy): Spellcasting cop shakes down otherworldly citizens.
Gothic: Strange giggling noises in Manila Cathedral.
Historical: Ferdinand Magellan's last words: "Nice... sword..."
Horror: Balut vendors terrorized by giant duck.
Mystery: Imelda's three thousand shoes are missing!
Romance: Is that MMORPG girl really female?
Science Fiction: Solution to Abu Sayyaf: Giant Robots.
Thriller: Must... stop... president... from... running... again!
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