The Death of the Snipe

Among the general readership and the very authors of this blog, the concensus seems to be that--well, the posts have regrettably grown too deep and profound, to a point where it just fails to have any superficial meaning. And we apologize for that. To compensate for the madness that is the other posts before this, we dedicate the following to just pure, superficial meaning and making sense. In fact, never has so much sense and lack of deep cognitive requirements been packed into a single piece of writing. So take a break! It's been the end of a long 365 days.

The blog is the logbook of the internet. It has colonized the web, and at the same time the web has colonized it. Unlike the natural log, the blog was the faultless second child, the projection of perfection onto the real line. The natural log had its humble beginning as a tree and its humble end as a log cabin, from whence stemmed forth a nation mighty. The blog was born. While the root of the natural log was its base, the blog escaped the dreadful litmus of the conservatives. It conquered and was conquered; it tried to transcend but was transcended. Its' inherent logness could not be changed, and the blog fell to the curse of the metalogs.

But herein lies the paradox. It is understood that the existence of complex life on earth is vastly dependent on oxygen. For example, the final electron receiver in the electron transport chain in cellular respiration is the lowly, diatomic oxygen molecule. However, oxygen is a highly reactive molecule, very capable of damaging living organisms through uncontrolled oxidation. And this is indeed an unresolvable paradox, the untangling of which is akin to wrestling a cuttlefish. And this is in itself a paradox. The paradox of paradoxes is that while the vast majority of paradoxes requires the use of nonsense, nonsense is a highly confusing concept that would bewilder scholars by leading them to believe that what they are reading is nonsense rather than a paradox.

And so to this extent, the experts have proposed an ingenious solution: text boxes. That piece of modern art not cooperating in your text document? Simple. Slap it into a text box. From extensive testing in our laboratories, even the most existential of images will be reduced to an unmoving piece of ether with respect to an external text box. Unfortunately, we have yet to develop a method of capturing such images; at the same time, images have yet to develop a method of escaping from text files. So hunt them down vigilantly. They can run, but they can't hide, and their ability to run is limited. A win-draw situation.

The second theorem guarantees the existence of fireworks, the awesomeness of which is defined in the axiom of explosion. The propagation of awesomeness, then, is governed by a divergent generating function. As a corollary of this, there must exist the elementary particle awesomine, with spin +3. While such particles have not been detected in ordinary fusion, they are conjectured to be produced in massive quantities when the proportionality symbol is transferred via a flash drive. This idea has excited the scientific community, as if the conjecture is true, a perpetual motion machine of the second kind can be constructed by attaching fireworks to flash drives containing nothing but the proportionality symbol.

Henceforth, we must be thankful of the art of proof. It is a testament to the crumbling of society today that the developed nations are continually dissatisfied with what they have, and in dissatisfaction lead the expansion, crushing the weak and defenceless. General Hilbert's plans to invade physics may have been forestalled, but for only a finite time. In the time of great mourning, we must stand firm and remember who our true enemy is. It is not triviality. It is the radian, the steradian, the percent, all the imposters among the group of units. It is not the evil quadratic residues that we should fear, but the fools pretending to be sums of squares. As Fernando Westrick said, "Ask no questions--but partake of the proof".

Happy New Year!

Degrees: The Menace of Mathematics

The method of measuring a rotation around a circle has vexed many a high-school student. For the general public, and in the education system before trigonometry is introduced, the unit of measure is known as the degree. The degree certainly has its historical roots; it is believed that the degree originated from the Babylonians and their base-60 number system (Bringhurst 2002), and first appeared written in English in medieval times (Miller et al. 2009; Chaucer 1386, quoted in Miller et al. 2009). Yet for the trigonometry student, and for one in calculus, another unit of measure is introduced: the radian. It has appeared in more recent times (Cajori 1919, quoted in Miller et al. 2009; Thomson 1873, quoted in Miller et al. 2009; Muir 1874, quoted in Miller et al. 2009), but is clearly more suited for measuring angles.

However, none of these authors actually deal with the importance of the degree measure. This brings to mind the question: is degree measure really necessary at all, and if not, can it be removed from the academic curriculum and from general society? I will analyze the extent of the usage of the degree and radian measures to discuss whether it is feasible to replace all occurrences of the degree with the radian. In this essay, I will argue that due to the extensive usage of the radian measure in mathematics and physics, and the inherent confusion from learning radians after many years of learning degrees, it is more convenient for students to do away with the degree measure entirely. To conclude, I will determine whether it is plausible to do away with the degree measure entirely.

The typical North American young student would encounter the subject of "geometry", as a sort of extension to math. The types of angles, in degrees, are taught: less than 90° is an acute angle, 90° is a right angle, 90° to 180° is an obtuse angle, 180° is a straight angle, and between 180° and 360° is a reflex angle. Transversals: these are vertical angles, these are corresponding angles, these are alternate interior angle, these are alternate exterior angles, these are consecutive interior angles, and these are consecutive exterior angles. There is the fact that a university student is highly likely to have forgotten these angle names, and thus the issue of whether transversals even need to be taught arises, but this essay does not deal with this, and further research is required to deal with this issue. Nevertheless, all these angles are expressed in degrees, and the concept of pi is left to being a irrational (weird) number that has something to do with the radius and circumference of a circle. If a student were to read, perhaps, a high-school or university textbook of an older sibling and ask the teacher what a radian was, the teacher would almost certainly reply that the radian was something else further away down the road of education, in high school.

Thus, it is in high school where the radian is introduced. It is not to say, however, that the moment high school starts, the students are immediately told that 2π radians constitute a circumference of a circle; far from it, it is only taught at the grade 11 and 12 level. However, the degree is not completely left behind; in fact, trigonometry and calculus may deal with radians, but physics continues to use degrees unabated. The dual usage of degrees and radians continues to the end of high school, where the physics final exam uses degrees, and the math exam uses radians in addition to degrees (and may even include a question requesting a conversion between the two) (BC Ministry of Education, 2007). The taboo surrounding trigonometry and calculus as "hard" can thus be explained: since students have thought of a circle as 360 degrees, and a right angle as 90 degrees, it is a sort of shock for them to suddenly switch to thinking a circle has 2π radians and a right angle has π/2 radians.

However, in university the dual teachings of the degree and radian end. In both mathematics and physics, the degree measure is abandoned for the radian measure.

Except not. Diffraction gratings? No one can understand that confusing stuff in radians. See that little line there? The point of maximum constructive interference? That's at 45 degrees. Not π/4 radians. No, you're mistaken. Yeah, that's right. I took that calculator. AND I THREW IT TO THE GROUUUUUUUNNNNDDDDD

WHAT YOU THINK I'M STUPID
I'M NOT A PART OF YOUR SYSTEM
REAL PHYSICISTS USE GRADIENTS
DUHHHHH


One may argue that the degree/radian case is similar to the case of conventional current, where Franklin's arbitrary definition of positive and negative charge resulted in electricity, so to speak, "going the wrong way". It is common practice in high school and university to teach circuits with a charge coming from the positive terminal of a battery, rather than the negative terminal. Obviously, it would be optimal to rectify this, yet time has secured this way of thought, ergo the term "conventional current". However, the argument that this may also apply to degrees and radians is invalid. While degrees is the common unit of angle measure, the radian is also used frequently as argued above. This contrasts the "actual" current of electricity, which is rarely discussed in high school or university.


-prolly mention "Anderson Cooper 2π" for lulz

A small sacrifice for a switch to a much more logical and natural system.



Works Cited:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Degree.html accessed November 12, 2009
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Radian.html accessed November 12, 2009
http://jeff560.tripod.com/d.html accessed November 12, 2009
http://jeff560.tripod.com/r.html accessed November 12, 2009
http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/exams/search/grade12/english/release/exam/0711ph_p.pdf accessed November 12, 2009
http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/exams/search/grade12/english/release/exam/0711ma_p.pdf accessed November 12, 2009
Bringhurst, R. The Elements of Typographic Style, 2nd ed. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley and Marks, p. 276, 1997.

1. e4

A quick note on chess notation. It is fairly intuitive, however some of the additional notation will be explained here.

An exclamation mark after a move indicates that, well, it is a surprisingly good move and that had you been present to watch the chess game the player who made the move probably would have done so rather violently and followed it up with several fist pumps. Like, we're not talking "best move in the situation" good here – we mean more like "woah holy shit can he DO that?" good. Two exclamation marks indicate that it was such an insanely and incomprehensibly amazing and wholly remarkable move that a mere single exclamation mark did not do it justice, and that the player making it may have caused significant collateral damage. Further exclamation marks (after !!!, it is simply notated n! partially for convenience but probably more to irritate those who spend a lot of time with combinatorics) are in fact calculated based on the Richter scale.

A question mark after a move indicates that the move was surprisingly weak. Essentially, it shows a betrayal of trust. If one is annotating a game at a chess tournament between two amateurs, they will not add in question marks after each and every blunder they make, rather only if/when they manage to pull something so incredibly and mind-bewilderingly stupid that the annotator is genuinely surprised by their ineptitude. When a grandmaster moves in such a manner that he or she leaves a pawn in a slightly vulnerable and weakened position, this too is bewildering and can deserve a question mark. Now, the double question mark indicates not just a betrayal in the annotator's trust in the player, but rather its complete and utter destruction. An amateur could perhaps achieve this, but only by means of the most extraneously hindsighted moves such as losing in two turns as per 1. f4 e6 2. g4 Qh4#. A grandmaster can generally earn the same level of shame by losing a pawn.

Now, combinations of exclamation and question marks can get complex. The general forms of their usage are beyond the scope of this brief introduction, so only the two most basic forms will be discussed. An exclamation mark followed by a question mark indicates that the annotator is fairly confident in his or her intuition that it was a good move, even though a wide array of general guidelines indicate that it was in fact a blunder. While modest annotators will only go against the more flexible guidelines such as "avoiding doubled pawns" and "controlling open aisles," when the exclamation mark-question mark is used by more arrogant annotators, the counter-intuitive guidelines being ignored often include things such as "not sacrificing one's bishop" and "avoiding checkmate." A question mark followed by an exclamation mark indicates that the move was clearly a blunder. However, it does also indicate that the player who made the blunder could potentially perhaps just possible you know maybe kinda actually still win, but clearly if he does it would be due not to his making a brilliant move but rather to to the move winning an advantage by pure chance that he could not possible have thought of when he made the move. A better way of phrasing this would be to say that the question mark-exclamation mark is to be used when you are annotating Tal's games and you just know he is going to somehow squeeze a checkmate out of that bishop sacrifice but have no idea how.

So enough theory. Here's the annotation system. Put into use.

1. ... Nf6
2. Nc3 d5
3. e5 d4
4. exf6 dxc3

An unorthodox version of the Alekhine opening, where both knights are slaughtered on their natural squares.

5. fxe7 cxd2+?

Note that a + here stands for check, not plus. Chemists shouldn't be confused as the cxd2+ ion does not exist (as the only stable ion cxd can form is the 3+ cation; the other oxidation states do not exist not because they are structurally unstable, but simply because they are impossible). The question mark, if you have paid attention earlier, should denote that this move is considered unexpectedly bad by the annotator. It is not being added to cxd2, as if you have paid attention earlier, you'd know that the plus sign denotes a check. At this point, we don't really know why this move is unexpectedly bad, but it's a check, and a move that has a check in it has a higher chance of being bad. So now if black loses, we'll have a move to blame it on.

6. Bxd2 Bxe7
7. Nf3 0-0!

Here, 0-0 refers to kingside castling. It is not an emoticon, nor does it refer to zero minus zero factorial (the solution of which is -1). Castling is generally good, though typically not good enough to warrant an exclamation mark. However, his expectations having lowered due to black's terrible fifth move, the annotator is genuinely surprised at black's ability to respond with a half-decent move. Black also ruthlessly breaks the pseudo-symmetry.

8. Bc4 Bf6
9. c3 Bg4
10. 0-0 Bxf3
11. Qxf3 Qxd2
12. ½-½ (Mirage endgame)

Plato is a pretty smart fellow in fact I would go so far as to say that do what more want like if

Absolutely forefront from all other things I do (so forefront in fact that it's not even the first thing I do, but more like the zeroth or something like that), I will give some background information regarding background information. Background information is actually a misnomer as it is not information in the metaphorical background (not the focus) of a writing or topic, but rather is information relevant to understanding such things as literary or rhetorical allusions made in a writing piece, oration, or similar.

First, I will give some background information. Plato was an Athenian philosopher who is most well known today, along with Xenophon, for writing several fictional dialogues about a character named Socrates. Although often portrayed to be an underdog, the authentic Socrates as described by Plato's writings was in fact a seriously imposing figure in daily Athenian life. Some meta-backgroundinformation is necessary to understand this: while today we may think of bullies or gangs (the type stereotyped as being illiterate, buff, with tattoos, etc) when we think of confrontational rebels without causes, it was quite different in Athenian society. Socrates, not unlike the sophists, was known for strolling the streets and challenging people's views on matters such as justice and goodness. Those foolish enough to believe themselves his match in these confrontations, or those unlucky enough to be unable to escape, would receive what can only be described as a mental beat-down of epic proportions. Belief and bias alike fell before the mighty blows of his logic. None could escape its arrogance-purging embrace forever. What made him different from being essentially a really efficient sophist, however, was the fact that in his creation, Plato and Xenophon made his arguments and beliefs so powerful and interesting that they effectively trolled western culture for several millennia - up to and including the modern day.

So this post will detail one of Socrates's (through the writing of Plato, of course) arguments and its incredibly undeniable logic. So around 427d Plato has been discussing for the the past few chapters the absolute perfect state. Now, the feasibility of this may incite skepticism among some people, but that is beyond the scope of this post. He lays out a plan for finding out what justice is:
1. The city we are talking about here is perfect. (i)
2. The city we are talking about here must have the virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. (ii)
3. If we determine what characteristics of the city the virtues of wisdom, courage, and temperance are rooted in, whatever characteristics are left over must be the characteristics that justice is rooted in. (iii)

So thus we can find out what justice is. Now, one might argue that some assumptions are being made here that Plato does not state, such as perhaps: "perfect things are ONLY wise, courageous, temperate, and just." A hypothetical opponent to Plato here could hypothetically propose that it could be thought that perhaps it is problematic to Plato's argument that if there are traits in the city other than the four he happens to feel like considering, they would also have to be found and set aside before whatever is left over is justice. Now, bear in mind that this is purely hypothetical as no one in their actual right mind would so much as consider making such a silly objection. And as such, being small and insignificant, the objection was not even given a mention by Plato. So, moving on.

The next step to Plato's ingenious method of finding justice is to find wisdom, courage, and temperance. These arguments are fairly straightforward and are found at 428b-429a, 429b-430d, and 430e-432b respectively. So then we get to justice. Now that we have determined and set aside three virtues, justice has to be the remains. Now at this point I got pretty excited. This is a sign of good literature, that you are absorbed in the world of the characters and feel their excitement as your own. Oh man we're getting real close to this, let's make a metaphor about how we are like "huntsmen" approaching their game (iv) oh man oh man I'm really feeling this holy shit it has to be here I can feel it's presence OH THERE IT IS FUCK YEAH JUSTICE I FOUND JUSTICE EVERONE OH MY GOD GUIZE I FOND JUSTIC SRSLY HOLY SHIT YEAH UUNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE!!11oneeleventyoneetc
So about halfway between 432d and 432e, Plato realizes that justice has been staring him in the face all along (metaphorically). Essentially, he claims at this point that justice is in fact (433a-433b) "to do one's own business in a certain way," by which he means justice is achieved by all the individuals in the state performing the duties they are best suited to perform. And then, about halfway between 433b and 433c, when asked from whence he draws this inference, he says "well duh, because this is the only virtue which remains in the state when the other three have been removed. srsly holy shit, learn to philosophize noob." (v)

Once again, an uneducated bystander might find it odd that while the common meaning of justice is generally used to mean equality, Plato argues for justice as a form of inequality (each person in society doing only the duty they are best suited to do, not necessarily the one they want to do). But again such a bystander would just be revealing their own ignorance, and Plato does not bother commenting on this discrepancy as its justification is obvious: justice was clearly the one trait left over and thus our previous intuitions about it must have been wrong.


And here, although it somewhat detracts from the humor, are the references.
Yes. References.
I was not entirely joking.

i. About halfway between 427e and 428a. "I mean to begin with the assumption that our State,
if rightly ordered, is perfect."

ii. Same. "And being perfect, is therefore wise and valiant and temperate and just."

iii. 428a. "If there were four things, and we were searching for one of them… we might know the
other three first, and then the fourth would clearly be the one left."

iv. I might have exaggerated a tiny bit. 432c. "... like huntsmen, we should
surround the cover, and look sharp that justice does not steal away, and pass out of sight and
escape us; for beyond a doubt she is somewhere in this country: watch therefore and strive to
catch a sight of her, and if you see her first, let me know."

v. This one was 100% serious. Halfway between 433b and 433c. "Because I think that this is the
only virtue which remains in the State when the other virtues of temperance and courage and
wisdom are abstracted"

From Benjamin Jowett's translation of Plato's Republic.




Sorry.

fgarsou78325kjdsv

Yup.

Pet Peeve:

People who talk about their pet peeves. I mean, telling others what annoys you the most? That's just asking for it.

Genesis v2.0

Name42 says (10:28 PM):
LaTeX, man.

Name42 says (10:28 PM):
YOU DON'T MESS WITH LaTeX

Name34 says (10:28 PM):
Whaddabout WolframAlpha?

Name42 says (10:29 PM):
NO DUDE

Name42 says (10:29 PM):
LaTeX

Name42 says (10:29 PM):
DO YOU NOT COMPREHEND THE EPICNESS OF LaTeX

Name42 says (10:30 PM):
OKAY

Name42 says (10:30 PM):
SO ONE DAY GOD WAS CREATING THE EARTH FOR A FEW DAYS

Name42 says (10:30 PM):
THEN HE TOOK A BREAK

Name42 says (10:30 PM):
BECAUSE HE WAS BORED

Name42 says (10:30 PM):
THAT DAY HAPPENED TO BE A SUNDAY

Name42 says (10:30 PM):
AND DURING THAT DAY, HE DECIDED THE EARTH WASN'T EPIC ENOUGH

Name42 says (10:30 PM):
SO HE DECIDED TO STEP IT UP A BIT

Name42 says (10:30 PM):
AND HE MADE LaTeX

Name42 says (10:30 PM):
NOW YOU KNOW

Name34 says (10:30 PM):
...

The Wayfarer

The external thermometer was a most peculiar one. The logarithmic scale was unsettling in the most--nor was the lack of units very comforting. Johnny had done it deliberately, of course, the intent being to ruthlessly spite his obsessive-compulsive copilot. Though now the actual unit the thermometer measured in faded from their collective memory, that of Johnny and his engineers.

As the copilot sat in the cockpit, he would obsessively ask for--well, everything. Their altitude, bearings, air pressure, velocity, volume of fuel left, engines left, fuel burning rate, apparent time dilation, dimension, wormhole generation speed--and would always end the list with the external temperature. The crew would have to respond in the quickest; the slightest hesitation made the copilot break into a sweat, tremble, and erupt into an uproar of yelling at the crew and demanding the values. And the values were given to him just as candy is given to a baby. Johnny, unfazed by this act, would undoubtedly provide the last value--without the units. And to add a finishing touch, he would always turn, with a smile, to his copilot and mouth calmly, "That's right. An external temperature of 110. Surely you don't expect it to be measured in centigrade without the engines boiling over?"

And thus they tortured copilot so. Eventually it proved too much. The copilot developed a lethal fever; he sat there phasing in and out delirium, on the bounds of life and death. The craft lost a vital controller, and they wandered gravely off course. But the Johnny and the crew continued with the cruel torture, aggravating the copilot's condition. The copilot's life slowly slipped away from him, though Johnny did not care in the slightest. Such was his triumph over the conventional, bureaucratically dictatorial grip of tradition and convention.

Johnny remembered that day. That very afternoon. He stood there resolute, glaring at his superior towering before him with an even more resolute counter-glare. The credit was lost, and he was the commander of the forces in a lost battle. His superior shook his head--no units. For want of the unit, the mark was lost; for want of the mark, the paper was lost; for want of the paper, the course was lost; for want of the course, his career was lost. He remembered walking out of that room after the damning statment "Off with you! Go become a pilot or something." The hallway was lined with his colleagues, comrades, all pitilessly staring, jeering at him. Johnny didn't care. They were brainwashed, brainwahsed by the oppressive upper powers. He was a rebel. He didn't need their sympathy.

And now, they crowded above the copilot; a prisoner of war, an enemy that has fallen into their hands now. Johnny was the torture master, and now poised over him, ready to squeeze the last drop of blood from his captive foe. The air turned bone-chillingly cold, as if anticipating the pathetic fallacy it can draw in a narrative. With the last of his energy, the copilot forced his eyes open and croaked out. "The...t...t-t-t-temperature...?"

Johnny smiled. He grinned an evil grin, stretching devillishly from one ear to the other. "Negative fourty, my copilot. Negative fourty."

Almost like a zombie, the copilot suddenly sat up. His face turned white, his hands trembled; and with a piercing cry, uttered forth, "What are the damn UNITS?!"

There was no answer. Nor was there a need. The copilot fell down dead immediately. An eerie cold settled into the room. Johnny sat back. His expression was one of infinite satisfaction.

Like a wise king, Johnny opened the log, looked over his crewmates, and simply declared, "The fool. The fool he is. A damn fool. All ought to know that negative fourty farenheit is the same in centigrade. Away with the body."

As if mourning the death of the copilot, the ship let out a gutteral moan. Though no one noticed that the engines were no longer functioning. Nor did anyone notice that that the fuel burning rate became negative, number of engines irrational, altitude complex and dimension undefined.

Nor did anyone ever remember that the thermomter read in Kelvin.

Asia Major

I've recently returned from China (People's Republic of China for those of you advanced super- intelligent-absolutely-accurate intellectuals who refuse to understand what I'm talking about when I say "China"). Of course, that means I must have went there some time before I returned, so congrats if you figured that out. For a change, I think i'll use this blog for a more orthodox purpose in this post, namely that of describing my experience.

Firstly, it is not the People's Republic of China that's too hot, but rather Vancouver that is too cold. By Beijing standards, thirty degrees centigrade is fair weather, twenty-five is getting cold, and twenty is unbearably frigid, as one passenger made clear upon disembarking in Vancouver on the return trip.

I'm not a big expert in economics or politics, but I'll just give my observations:

The Communist party is sure serious business. So is swine H1N1 flu. [No man. You gotta respect the farmers.]

The Canadian dollar - RMB exchange rate is approximately 1:6, though everything is cheaper in Beijing so it still feels like everything is priced in Canadian currency.

Facebook, blogger, and youtube seem to be blocked. Some tough deductive reasoning would lead one to the conclusion that I did not publish this post in China.

China must be a very safe place, if safety in numbers is anything to go by.

The sixtieth anniversary of the forming of the People's Republic of China (right, you advanced super- intelligent-absolutely-accurate intellectuals?) is coming up, and it seems to be pretty serious. Though I really don't see why it should be more serious than the fifty-ninth of the fourty-second anniversaries, it doesn't really matter. Though something of this seriousness probably happens every year in China anyways. The number of movies made portraying the glorious days of the resistance, the revolution, and what not would almost make you think if China single-handedly defeated the Japanese.

Traffic Law Number 1: whoever gets there first has the right-of-way. This applies to pedestrians and cars alike. Of course, having the right-of-way doesn't really mean anything.

"AC" on an electrical applicance has a greater chance of meaning "air conditioning" than "alternating current".

English translations of signs range from the mistaken "No tourist admittance" when it's supposed to mean "Don't jump into the fountain" to the elaborate "Behold, such lush, fragrant grasses; how cruelly hardhearted it is to trample such!" instead of "Don't step on the grass".

I found Blogger, Facebook, and Youtube to be blocked in Chi- I mean, the People's Republic of China. Some tough deductive reasoning would lead one to the conclusion that this post was not published in the People's Republic of China.

Prokofiev, unfortunately, is not very popular in the People's Republic of China. Well at least it doesn't appear to be, seeing how his piano sonatas are no longer published (a fact that I discovered upon taking a one-hour walk to some major conservatory to demand some of the said sonatas), and the only Prokofiev score I found in the whole duration of my vacation was one of his four etudes; great etudes, I admit, but Prokofiev did write better things. Incidentally, there was a prepondernace of Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff in one of the stores, which was really quite interesting.

The Yellow River is a sight to behold: the torrents of muddy, yellow water stirring up massive amounts of silt, eroding the soil...it's beautiful. And if you think otherwise you're just a silly foreigner with no understanding of Chinese culture.

The top floor of a tewnty-story building doesn't offer much of a view in Beijing as it is obstructed by the tall buildings. Even less so in Shanghai. By the way, the river that flows through Shanghai is also beautiful. So are the construction cranes and half-completed buildings that obstruct the

view of twenty-story buildings.

All aspects of the People's Republicblargh can be described by either "good" or "developing".

China's a great place.

Brevity Win

The Shortest Post

A Shorter Post

Yup.

A Short Post

I'm not lying.

!

Contemplative Introspections on Introspective Contemplations

Take two ideal point charges of equal and opposite charge. The positive charge will be called q1, and the negative charge q2. Now separate them by a distance d. You now have yourself an electric dipole.

Now pick some point far away from the dipole. The distance from that point to charge q1 is r1, and the distance from that point to charge q2 is r2. The distance from that point to the midpoint of the two charges is r.

The potential at the point then is the combined potential produced by both charges:

kq(1/r1 - 1/r2) = kq((r2 - r1)/r2r1)

Now, as the distance r increases, d starts to become insignificant. And thus, let us assume r2 is approximately equal to r1. Thus, r2r1 can be approximated with r^2.

Well, wait. If we assume that, wouldn't r2 - r1 be equal to 0?

No, no. What nonsense. Everybody knows that r2 - r1 can be approximated with d cosθ.

θ, of course, is the angle between the line connecting the point to the midpoint of the dipole and the line connecting the two charges.

Wait what? How did you get that?

Go use the cosine law. Figure it out yourself. It's so obvious. But anyways, the potential would then be:

kqd cosθ/r^2

And just for the hell of it, let us let p be the "dipole movement". p = qd. The potential is now:

kp cosθ/r^2.

Thank you very much. And that's that. Any questions?

But wait how did you-

Nope? Okay. Moving on to capacitors...

I closed my physics textbook and put on some light-hearted Mozart. There must be easier ways of not doing my work in the yearbook.

secular-atheist-agnostic-pantheist-neouncertaintdeist-theologicalnoncognitivist-tuamaterist

Once upon a time Little Jack never woke up for school. However, a spontaneous spasm in his arm conveniently swung his knapsack over his shoulder and propelled him out the door. Luckily, that one swift motion provided Little Jack's sleeping body with enough momentum to send him staggering down the steep hill, hurl him onto the bus, and gently plant him in a seat at the back of the classroom just as the bell rang. This was lucky because he probably would not have been able to facilitate such a procedure, conscious or otherwise.

On that day, by freak coincidence, or sheer luck, all the forces of nature and the universe orchestrated themselves with complete and utter seamless perfection. They propelled Jack's body in and out of classrooms at all the necessary times. When his english teacher gave him the routine lecture about his steadily declining work ethic, the undetectable P-waves of an earthquake in Japan nudged Jack's chin at the precise angle to induce a pseudo-thoughtful nod. By the end of the day, Little Jack was still in a Stage N3 NREM slumber, rather content in his obliviousness to the outside world.

After school had finished, a gust of wind gently directed Little Jack's body over to a fig tree by a river and sat him down...

When Little Jack finally awoke, he was surprised to find a new exhilarating feeling pulsing through every sinew of his existence. He had discovered Nirvana! He had become enlightened! Everything made complete sense, as if every question and frustration he had every experienced suddenly became flawlessly aligned in a vast and intricate tapestry. On his trek back home he smiled at the bus driver, gave up his seat for the old lady and still had enough Nirvana-juice left in him to not think a single negative thought on the entirety of the godforsaken uphill hike from where the bus dropped him off to his home.

There was however one task which eclipsed all of these acts...
Many alchemists and scholars has postulated that it would be impossible to do what Little Jack had in mind... But he didn't care for them. For he had motivation beyond any human understanding. He had found Nirvana. He was enlightened.
... and Little Jack was going to do his homework.

Little Jack strode into his room, chest puffing with pride. He sat down at his desk, grabbed a pen, took a deep breath and prepared himself to do his homework. He kind of felt like savoring this glorious and epiphanic moment in his life, and so he spent a little longer preparing by taking deep breaths and whispering to himself the sort of motivational quotes one finds written on mugs.

It was then that, the stretch receptors in Little Jack's colon sent a cogent signal to his brain to defecate. And so he did. After he had finished he returned to his desk feeling...feeling.... feeling like he was going to do something...but he couldn't quite place his finger on what it was.

'Nevermind', he thought.

And so he began his daily after-school routine of drawing phalluses. Little Jack's homework slipped away into the darkest corner of his messy desk, and soon drowned to death beneath the flood of pornographic images.

Long after the sun had set, Little Jack dosed off, to find himself safely asleep where he belonged.

Admittance regulator

It must be noted that it is with utmost importance that we bring you this information:

Oran is an Algerian port.

The current Iranian currency is the Rial. Which, interestingly, is an anagram of lira. So, say, if you were doing a crossword and ran into "Iranian currency" and assumed it was the lira, as many Muslim nations have the lira as their currency, you would be pretty screwed. Unless of course there is a nine-letter word that intersects it that means "admittance regulator" (by the way, google is wrong) that intersects through the second letter, in which case it wouldn't matter since lira and rial both have the same second letter.

"Nah" is synonymous with "nope". If you are quotationizing something and it is not a complete sentence, by the way, the quotation mark goes before the period in the lineup to the local McDonalds.

Caruso is a human being. And a tenor, who probably sings arias, which are opera solos.

Ipso facto, ipso comes before facto.

I decapitated my timetable.

Pekin is a smooth fabric. Satin, which also happens to fin. in -in, incidentally happens to refer also to a smooth and lustrous fabric.

Trite means commonplace, despite being far from it.

Evidently, acknowledging is the same as avowing.

Maples and pines are types of trees.

Pears are not salad ingredients, although they probably are.

Amen.

Strength and Mortality Revisited

Name4 says:
What doesn't make you stronger will kill you.

Name3 says:
Yeah, although something could both kill you and make you stronger.

Name4 says:
Hmm that sucks. Now not only does everything that doesn't make you stronger kill you, some things that make you stronger can also kill you. 75% of all things can kill you now.

Name3 says:
And there is an 80% chance this statistic is wrong.

Name4 says:
Of course, if one in six objects is a scone…

Name3 says:
Well, scones make you stronger, but they may or may not kill you. Lug nuts probably won't though.

Name4 says:
Statistics can kill you, but they never made me stronger.

Name3 says:
Interesting.

Name4 says:
Interest makes you stronger though, without killing you.

Name3 says:
It'll take you longer to type if we keep going this way.

Name4 says:
Don't worry. I'll get stronger. If I don't die, of course.

Name3 says:
Wait, copypasta won't kill you. Damn…but okay. You're on. We'll see who gets killed/stronger more by tomorrow.

Name4 says:
Well, if we both show up tomorrow, we'll both be stronger, seeing how we have not died.

Name3 says:
Yes, but by what degree?

Name4 says:
is there some way to get weaker without getting killed?

Name3 says:
Yeah, my strength vs. time graph will be concave up; not only will I be getting stronger, the rate at which I get stronger will be increasing. But it does not stop there. What’s more, YOUR MOM WILL BE GETTING STRONGER. True, the saying doesn't say anything about getting weaker. We'll ignore that; that was a valid conclusion though, since it can be applied to everything.

Name4 says:
Well let’s look at it this way. The set of all things can be divided into the set of all things that make you stronger, and the set of all things that don't make you stronger, and the set of all things can also be divided into the set of all things that can kill you, and the set of all things that cannot kill you. Each of the pairs are mutually exclusive.

Name3 says:
We'll redefine it to avoid self-references later.

Name4 says:
Yes. In case Russell comes again.

Name3 says:
Actually, I'm going to go back to studying calculus now.

Name4 says:
Aww.

Siege of the Himatz

The following was supposed to be the foundation for a novel. You can be thankful that I gave up.

Story (alternates first person limited and third person omniscient, of knowledge degree four at infinite focus zoom sixth)

Characters:

Inventor - Archimedes
Narrator - me. (General Marl)
Others - Read the story.

Archimedes, a idiosyncratic genius, and really strange, military weapon specialist and inventor working for the nation of Latzov, was kidnapped by Casnian spies while drawing up blueprints for an unrevealed super-weapon. Taken to the capital Latzov, Archimedes voluntarily assists the Casnians, finishing up the super-weapon.

King of Latzov (come up with a good name that sounds Russian) learns of the kidnapping. He is informed by General Marl and his strategists that Archimedes's super-weapon would take a year to construct, and that they should quickly attack Casnia and take Archimedes back before the weapon is constructed. General Marl, commander of the third army, and some other random general and commander people were commanded to send an invasion force to Casnia.

Marl and the other generals discuss the invasion plan. (which is a good device for the author to reveal some random stuff about geography: Casnia is a large island nation (larger than Australia), with a smaller island due north (separated by the Sea of no name), a province of Casnia, Avovia, that is abundant in amusement parks and ice cream. Marl and the generals, distracted, draw up plans to attack Casnia to obtain large quantities of ice cream and to transport the amusement parks back to Latzov, enhancing their tourism industry.

The Siege of the small island Avovia began, but they met fierce resistance. The Avovians possessed strange weapons, and it was noticed that much of their machinery had rather useless orange rings painted on them and the letters LPX embossed on them. When Avovia was finally taken, the amusment parks, much to the disappointment of the Latzovians, were destroyed by the warfare, and the ice cream melted by firestorms. The seige took one year.

Archimedes falls in love with a Casnian spy, Cynthia (make up a more original name later). In their dialogue, it is revealed the Archimedes had a strange obsession of having orange rings painted over his inventions and embossing random letters onto them. Also, the super-weapon was ready. The Prime Minister of Casnia congratulates Archimedes, although he fails to understand why.

The Casnians struck back at Avovia with their full navy. One of the vessels was a super-carrier, a hundred times larger than a conventional carrier with a top area of near a square kilometre (a floating island, the Latzovians called it). An aerial view shows the orange ring painted on all the air strips and the letters LPX. A proud telegram came from the Casnians, telling the Latzovians to surrender to their "unsinkable Himatz", referring to the super-carrier.

The Latzovians launch a bomber fleet over the Himatz, but large parabolic mirrors were deployed against the fleet, blinding them and melting the wings of some of the bombers. The bombs that were dropped exploded in mid-air, hit by precisely aimed pressure waves from sound cannons on the Himatz. Meanwhile, the 42-inch guns of the Himatz wreaked havoc on the navy of the Latzovians.

A stealth submarine, piloted by a squadron of people, were sent on a mission to destroy the Himatz. The people on the submarine mission obviously did not take the mission seriously, playing chess on board. When they had assumed position underneath the Himatz, the group suddenly turned its attention to a nearby octopus, and started making sketches of it. The Himatz quickly picked up the submarine on sonar. Extending a claw into the ocean, it stirred up a vortex, drawing the submarine out from underneath the Himtaz before droping depth charges. Both ballast tanks were taken out and a leak was sprung, and the submarine began to sink. After a futile attempt to bail out (accompanied by an interesting discussion on bailouts in general), the group settle down into a last game of chess, the moves of which were radioed back to the panicking Latzovians.

Meanwhile, in Casnia, the Prime Minister tells Archimedes of the successes of his weapons. Archimedes was horrified, as he did not realize that his drawings would actually be built and put to use, as in his words "I'm an artist! Do you not appreciate my drawings?!" The Prime Minister, failing to understand him, compliments him on his good sense of humour and leaves. Archimedes was now terrified, that everything he was drawing was being used against his own nation, but if he was to suddenly refuse to design, he would likely be killed. Distraught, he walked around the halls of the parliament building and saw a vase of flowers; unimpressed, he begins drawing a super-vase, which he gives to Cynthia. Understanding his troubles, Cynthia agreed to help him deliver mesasges to the Latzovians, as she was a spy.

The Latzovians receives Archimedes message, pinpointing the weaknesses of the Himatz. However, General Marl claims that such a plan would be too boring, and decides on a parachute invasion of the Himatz, which was delayed a day due to clear weather. On the day of the invasion, a thick fog had set in, and smoke bombs were deployed over the Himatz. Troops then poured out of overhead planes and helicopters in a massive aerial invasion of a single ship. Archimedes, upon hearing this news, asked Cynthia to help him escape. Cynthia decided to go along with Archimedes, "leaving the wretched land of Casnia". Secretly sending a radio message to Latzovia, telling them of Archimedes' planned escape. An hour after they had left, the Casnians discovered Archimedes missing, and sent out a fleet of planes after them. Not far from mainland Casnia, this fleet met with a Latzovian fleet that was sent to receive and escort Archimedes, although neither fleet located Cynthia's plane. A brutal aerial fight not far from mainland Casnia ensued, both fleets forgetting their main purpose--Archimedes.

Aboard the Himatz, the fighting had descended to the first level below the deck, where the Casnian troops defended tenaciously, with pillboxes and heavy artillery scattered throughout. The Latzovians began to airlift tanks onto the Himatz, in an effort to storm the first level. Upon discovering a storage room of frozen food near the centre of the first level, General Marl directed all of his forces to seize the room, upon which the Casnians redeployed all their troops to the defence of the storage room.

Meanwhile, Cynthia and Archimedes landed in mainland Latzovia. The King of Latzovia and his strategists were overjoyed and in a panic, asked Archimedes to give advice on how to overrun the Himatz, as they were suffering heavy casualties. Archimedes, however, demanded that he have a full feast and ten hours of sleep before he reveal it since he was really hungry and tired. He then finally reveals that there was a hidden elevator to the control room on the first level, so well hidden that not even the Casnians knew about it. Taking out his blueprints, he spent a few hours studying it to find the elevator that he had drawn in. Upon finding it, the information was relayed to General Marl, who had already seized the storage rooms. A squadron of troops were sent to take control of the control room (under dire warnings not to play chess along the way), upon which they came to the control room and took the Casnian generals by surprise, who were ironically playing chess. The troops had fun messing around with the controls before finally activating the self-destruct function (a feature that Archimedes always includes on his large-scale projects).

Ending: Himatz sinks, the Latzovian troops leave and return to Latzov ("attack Casnia? why? we have Archimedes back now. Why do we want them to surrender?"). Everybody lives happily ever after. Amusement parks are re-installed on Avovia. The end.

No, I'm Sorry, It Most Definitely Is Not A Duck

I was walking...walking...walking where? 'Tis irrelevant. It better be irrelevant.

Somewhere, I saw a cat in a box...no wait, was it a box? Hmm, if it was in fact a box, I would've taken off the top, and taken a look inside...but no, it was a bag. And the cat crawled out of the bag, and...oh, I remember now, it went out of the bag into the box. That's where I got mixed up. Anyhoo, it went into the box, and there was some radioactive symbol thingy there, and some flask with some green, hissing liquid. The cat knocked over the flask, and it broke. A few seconds later, the cat collapsed, presumably poisoned by whatever that liquid thing was.

"Curious," I thought to myself. But I didn't dare examine the scene any further, lest I be killed along with the cat.


And then, and then what? Ah, yes, there was a tarpaulin somewhere...a tarpaulin...although there should've been a shorter version of that word, although it currently escapes my mind. Hmm, and there was a commander? Admiral? One of the two, mentioning something about said tarpaulins. It was quite intriguing, but I don't remember anything past this point.


Graph. Graf. Graph? Steffi Graf? Zeppelin!

Some rigid-body, oddly sorta not really pseudo-phallic aircraft...vaguely familiar, for some reason. And it's pretty heavy, cuz it's filled with...lead. Led? Leed? What what?

And some number...127. Two to the seventh minus one. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with that graph zed--zee--zeppelin.

OK, it's starting to come

back to me now. There was a penguin. Yes, a penguin, and it had a really big hammer and yellow and red clothing. Or it was a stereotypical penguin, black and white with orange beak and feet, sitting down. And it may or may not have been carrying a rawwwwket lawwwwnchair--lawwwwncher, for it slips my mind. It was on top of the zep-peh-lin, along with some random stick figure, with...with...something on his head. It might've been a top hat, it might've been a sombrero, it might've been neither or some combination of the two. But it was black, let me tell you that. No doubt it was black.

Great, that was the only thing which remains vividly in my mind. The rest might be a bit weird.

So then the hammer time, er, hammer guy, swings back his hammer, and there's something...a jet engine...I know it sounds absurd, yet there was a jet engine. I'm pretty sure about that. There was a jet engine--no wait, yes, there was a jet engine. And it somehow was in the back of the hammer, and the penguin charged his, his, engine thingy--no, it looked nothing like a lazor. No, it wasn't, and then. He evidently must have overcharged it, for it started steaming and the penguin guy turned red. But then he swung it at the stick figure guy, and he aimed it at his face...? Yeah, I guess so, because he was yelling something too. I couldn't quite make it out, but I did hear "what", "five fingers", and "fail" or "face"; I was too far away to hear the last word clearly. Thus, he hit the stick figure, and he went flying away.

There was something that struck me when I first laid eyes on the stick figure with the black headwear; somehow, incredibly, it gave me a strong feeling that soon, he would be back on that zap--zeppelin, and subsequently exacting his revenge on the penguin. But I had no interest in watching this scene continue after a few minutes of this penguin dancing around with his hammer; I continued to walk, with my shadow the only object by my side.



At this point, I recall quite a few numbers. I don't quite remember why they were there, but they were, floating around. One of the numbers hit me in the back of the head--I took it in my right hand (it was about zero point zero six metres wide), and my eyes recognized the number 42. Suddenly, a thought ran into my head. I have no idea where it came from, but it had something to do with the--the--I'm sorry, I can't pronounce it--me--meam ing--meam ing of life. Or something like that. I examined it for a little while, then grew bored of't and systematically threw it away. It spiralled through the air--I realize now that I should've made winglets, but 'tis too late now. And it had some sort of impact. I then heard someone say "Oh hush"--then I realized that I was not alone in this world; that there were quite a few other people, whom I recognized as friends. I walked up to one, to talk to him, but he suddenly made a mad dash for--for--hmm, yes, there was some sort of enclosure here. There was a sort of sphere surrounding us all, and he somehow got out of the sphere. He left behind a little piece of paper--I grabbed it as it fluttered to the ground and saw "brb".

Outside of this sphere shape thingamajig, I noticed what seemed to be the "real" world, or at least a world with objects characteristic of the real life, i.e. anything not in here. But that was not the focus of my attention--nay, it was the little objects floating around in the sphere.

I soon found out that "little" was a sort of misnomer. For I saw the zeppelin that I had talked about a few paragraphs earlier. Firstly, it appeared in the hand of one of my friends, and he threw it to another one of my friends. It was quite small--about the size of a baseball--but it soon grew. Eventually, one of those two friends threw it to me. I found I was quite adept at making multiple copies of this model zeppelin and throwing it across the sphere to other people, and soon they were affecting everyone, whether they were throwing one around or getting hit by one. I don't recall seeing the zeppelins visibly grow bigger, but suddenly there they were, almost as big as ourselves. There were evidently people who tried to destroy some of the zeppelins, but their attempts were futile--there were always more to hit them with. And then, I again don't remember exactly, but the zeppelins suddenly started deflating. They got smaller and smaller, and some disappeared altogether. The last time I recall, there were maybe two little zeppelins, about the size of a tennis ball, and they were rarely thrown around. I remember finding one in the corner--yes, that's right, a corner in a sphere--and throwing it at one of my friends; he did not react to it. So I gave up, although I still see a little zeppelin moving around once in a while.

But enough of the zeppelins; there were a plethora of other objects around. They seemed to be created from the outside world. One person would exit the sphere into the real world and come back with drops of Jupiter, and, ahem, a new object. They always started off quite small, then they grew bigger when they were thrown around. I distinctly recall one that consisted of a hand. When someone caught it, they experienced a sharp pain on their cheek--almost if they had been slapped there. There were some words associated with that object, too. I think it had something to do with what that penguin had said, as I had explained a while ago, although it might not.


And so I turn to a sort of chronicle of these little objects. I call them "little objects" because I cannot remember the proper name for it--I think we (my friends and I) had a name. But it does not matter now, for that is beside the point.

There was a sort of quiet period for the first few months or so after I met my friends--there were no little objects around at all. And I don't quite recall if there was any special event or anything that triggered it, but--suddenly, I saw my friends' mothers and my own, in our palms. There was quite a furious pace of throwing in the sphere (which was quite small in the beginning), but it must have subsided quickly, for I do not think it spread to everyone I knew in real life, although of course they might have started using it in their own small spheres.

Here, around this time, there was--I can't quite describe it--well, it was a sort of shapeless object. It must have looked like something--oh yes, it was kind of a link, as in a link in a chain. And--and--it obviously looked pretty harmless, although I noticed that when this was first thrown around, people reacted strongly against it. Or they started dancing--I had no idea what it was until I first got my hands on it. It immediately split into two and fit into my ears as earbuds would. Then I heard the beginning of a song I vaguely remember hearing on a radio station. It consisted of a drum intro, and some guy singing in a really deep voice (and he wasn't black). Apparently, the drum bit at the start was enough for most people to identify what the song was. There was some sort of name for it...some kind of roll...pastry roll? Hmm, I haven't eaten in a while...but that's not it, no, I don't think. Anyhoo, this is still thrown around occasionally, although most people have learned to be wary of it and avoid the link as much as they could.

The numbers--ah, the numbers. They were quite an interesting case. Because they were in fact numbers, and numbers show up quite frequently in real life, we saw quite a few cases of a few of those numbers appearing in real life. When that happened...it happened quite frequently...there was a sudden crackle of electricity between the number in the sphere and the number appearing in real life. Or at least, that's what happened when someone threw it. In any case, the receiver of the throw usually laughed, or punched the thrower in the face...there was an indication of a reaction though. I don't remember the numbers now, but there were quite a few, and because they had a connection to the area outside the sphere, they were always used, and never really disintegrated.

And there were quite a few others too, but I only remember glimpses of them. Something about some kind of tank, some laser, something to do with shaking heads back and forth rapidly, along with some music...there were a lot. And they came and went, after they had been thrown around enough. There was something interesting I noted, though; if an object was thrown around between a large group of people, it seemed to die out pretty quickly, such as with the ze--oh great, zeppu--zeppelin, yes, zeppelin. Such as the zeppelin, and others that were thrown around within a smaller group lasted longer, such as the numbers, which as I recall are still around today.


This went on for a while, then...

Then something most peculiar happened. The barrier between the sphere and real life suddenly disintegrated. They were now one and the same. And the little objects--they--they somehow escaped, and other people, people we didn't know, got their hands on them...

Everything here's a bit blurry, but I'll try my best to recall what exactly happened...

So the aforementioned blimps--did I call them blimps? No matter--began to grow rapidly again, as they were thrown between streetlight people--hmm, that sounds familiar, like some song...I digress. The blimps, or whatever they were called, grew to their full size, and slowly rose into the air...

And all the other little objects, they too rose onto the blimp.

Oh, yes, that was it. That scene before, all the way back in the first few paragraphs, with the penguin and the stick figure--that was in real life. And they became reality...

Then came the day that they struck back. Evidently they had been tired of being thrown around, and decided that once and for all they would take a stand, that they would not be forced, manipulated by higher-ranking objects, that they wanted their own success, and that being thrown around was nice and all, but it did zilch toward helping toward them toward their goals, and there was little time, and before provincial exams...

What?

Yeah.

Okay.

Watch out, watch out.



Sorry.

Anyhoo. They struck back, and the penguin. The penguin turned his hammer toward us. And the stick figure took off his hat, and suddenly I noticed that the brim of that hat was really quite sharp-looking, and perfectly capable of decapitating, say, a marble statue...hmm, that sounds familiar...some movie, maybe? Wow, I get off track a lot, don't I? Sorry about that. And thus, we were attacked by a laser, a slapping hand, by numbers hurtling towards us, some peregrine--bird, punching, kicking, diving...beds...living rooms...dining rooms...the list goes on, I presume.


And thus, they took over the world...we tried--we tried--to stop them, but they could never be killed off completely; they always came back, in one form or another...

I Don't Know Either

I suddenly found myself, groggy-eyed, in a factory. Either the building was infinite or mirrors have been placed on both ends, for I saw no end, looking either way.

Stumbling to my feet, I pulled myself up. Before me was a conveyor belt. I surveyed around me; workers were sparsely scattered throughout the factory. Perchance that it was an assembly line, but one in which each item travelled a few hundred metres to the next worker. Inefficient design with such limited workers, I mused to myself, although empirically my brain registered that there must be an infinite number of workers, if what I see is any good approximation of the number of workers per unit area.

Unless, of course, mirrors have been placed on both ends. But for some reason my senses and perceptive abilities lagged like that of a good aged computer associated with William Doors. Excuse me. Gates. Man what is wrong with me…

My legs temporarily weakened, and in a reflex arc my arm shot out for the nearest object to support my body, which happened to be the conveyor belt. Lucky for me that it was travelling at a surprisingly low velocity. Adds to the inefficient design, I guess. Inches from my hand was a book titled…Da…Das Kay-pi…Das Kapital. However you pronounce it. Sounded familiar…chess book? No… that was Mine System by Capablanca…wait that’s not right. Shaking my head, I threw the book back on the inefficient conveyor, watching it inch slowly towards infinity. Unless, of course, mirrors have been placed on both ends. Ow my brain hurts.

I awoke again. A group of workers surrounded me. Surprised, I stood up. I was still in the factory. One of the workers came up to me and explained in Russian that I was struck in the head by Michelangelo’s David statue. I nodded, although I stopped to think how I suddenly understood Russian. David Statue?! And I turned. Sure enough, it was there standing, life-sized, on the conveyor belt. But it doesn’t fit…the conveyor is too small. Ahh nothing makes sense. I knew what was going on. Aha! I am dreaming! But I just woke up. Unless mirrors have been placed on both ends. I got up and walked away, leaving the group of Dutch workmen behind in confusion.

I staggered down the corridor towards the mirror. Unless the factory was infinite. I caught up to the David statue, and then Das Kapital, unlike what Xeno told me. Suddenly a worker picked up Das Kapital and started ironing it. Don’t ask me…he just had a clothes iron in his hand and started applying to the cover. A shiver shot up my spine. I love chess books. Suddenly I found myself on top of the worker, furiously strangling him while trying to pry the book from his hands. He would likely have given me seven degree burns with the copper in his hands…I mean iron, had a man not gently nudged me off of the choking worker. The worker, unperturbed, returned to ironing the book. I turned to the man.

“Why hello. It’s nice to have visitors,” the man said. “My name is Charles A. Mosser. The manager Alex Quickling is not here today, so I am in charge. Touring the factory, I see. Do you have any questions?”

I stood up. “Sorry about…err, your worker. But why is he ironing the book?”

“Ahh,” Charles explained. “He’s an avativator.”

“Avati-what?” I questioned, quite confused. “And is this factory infinite?”

Charles shrugged. “I’m not sure. That you’ll have to consult with the creators in the theoretical physics department. A group of Dutch destroyers told me you were knocked out by David?”

What kind of a question was that? But I nodded. I asked Charles, “Why are you here?”

“Why, I’m an avativator. Undeniably the highest rank in this factory, for all the creators do is just stuff silly things onto the conveyor, and while the destroyers are pretty good at negating the creators, they have not yet learned the true art.” Charles declared in an air of pride. “Why don’t you observe them yourself? The rank of each worker is displayed on a badge. I must be off now,” and with that, he produced a clothes iron from his sleeve and walked away. I saw him pick up an idea (don’t ask me. He just saw an idea and picked it up from the conveyor) and iron it in the distance.

I turned back to the man ironing the chess book. Suddenly, it was just not one book he was ironing, but a whole stack. I walked up to inspect it. Titles such as The New Theory of Economics and The Communist Manifesto jumped out at me. The worker, sure enough, had a badge with a big A displayed on it. It appeared to have some sort of a red circle going around it, and the A, also in red, intersected it in several places. Or maybe I was imagining things, for the circle and red ink disappeared upon a second viewing. There was this sadistic flame in his eyes, as he hacked away at the stack in the iron. Then, with a triumphant flick of the wrist, the iron disappeared into his sleeve, and he walked away, leaving me with the stack of books, surprisingly undamaged. I flipped open Das Kapital. Suddenly, it was as if all the interesting economic theories in there were erased and replaced with rubbish. The book was hilarious—absolute nonsense.

I never knew how I realized Das Kapital was not a chess book, but don’t ask me. I continued my stroll. Beside me the group of Dutch destroyers I saw earlier were hacking at the David statue with axes and ice picks. I walked on. Novices, I thought, although it never occurred to me what they might be novices in.

Gradually, I realized that everything was on the conveyors. Uh that made no sense whatsoever. Never mind. But creators would walk by and place something on the conveyor, and then watch as avativators and destroyers came and reduced (and oxidized. Hah. Wait what does that mean again…never mind) whatever noun was placed on the belt. The creator would look at them forlornly with a sad look in his eyes, but do nothing. Other times a group of creators would stare at the avativators and destroyers, shake their heads, and walk away.

Further down the infinite corridor—need I say, give the possibility of feigned infinitude by means of double mirrors at the extremities of this factory—I saw myself. Wait. But I’m standing here…Maybe it was a mirror. I walked closer. But it was me. I ran up to him…or should I say me. But that would be grammatically incorrect (lest of course grammar accounts for such strange incidents). He was wearing the exact same clothes as I was, the same mole on the ear, and…well same everything, with the exception of that badge on his chest that read A. And then I realized that I was wearing the same badge. Strange. Thought I would have noticed that earlier.

I tried talking to me, but I ignored myself (haha see what I did there?). He (or I) walked up to a mirror. Before I can say anything, he produced a…well it wasn’t really an iron, more like a steamroller (don’t ask me. He just took out a steamroller from his sleeves), and rolled it up and down the mirror. Then suddenly he turned and charged at me with the steamroller. He was surprisingly stronger than I am, which is rather strange considering how we have the same genes. I fell over, but he was already running the other way, flaying the weapon around, attacking the very factory itself.

Then finally he stopped. He turned to me and smiled. I stood up angrily. “Are you insane? You have two essays to finish that are due on Monday! (of course I didn’t know that, but seeing how I had two essays to finish, it was a safe assumption) Why are you in this factory anyways?”

He didn’t say anything, but instead swept his hands in an expansive gesture. I turned and looked. The whole factory suddenly looked ridiculous. The destroyers, the creators…my what nonsense are they throwing onto the conveyor. It’s just not right. The avativators are the most awesome. I had to do something…and then I realized I was holding a steamroller (don’t ask me. It was just in my sleeve). I saw the thought of a history and literature essay coming down the conveyor, but a destroyer came and smashed it with a hammer with a banner attached. Haha hammer with a banner attached. They should call it a banhammer. And I realized my twin was gone, and I proceeded, steamrolling down the infinite corridor. There was no mirror on either side.

Logos

He peered over the control console, at the interplanetary equivalent of a radar set. The dots approached slowly. He gritted his teeth, pounding his fist against the screen. They had prepared for everything...except this. Such cowardly tactics he had not counted on. It was terrorism. And yet now they were caught completely by surprise.

"What is it, captain?" Garry asked.

Sergei ground his teeth. "The Americans," he mumbled underneath his breath, if he had actually breathed to say that.

America, that peaceful nation with all its grand talk of peace and liberty. What a joke. America's reign of terror began in 2010, when the president Obama and his whiteshirts completely eliminated the House through violent means. The Communist party of America became the ruling party, and all opposition paid in blood. Obama immediately withdrew America from every single international organization, a prelude to the forced annexation of Canada. With the motto "from pole to pole", he soon had all of North and South America united under the stars and stripes. Meanwhile, the rest of the world watched, terrified and helpless. Any nuclear engagement with America was bound to result in world destruction, and so both sides held back from nuclear warfare, although the stockpiles have long been cut down since the Reykjavik conference of 2009.

Alas, Russia was the only superpower that could withstand the power of the American army and its nuclear arsenal. Sergei smiled at the thought. The 2012 invasion of Britain, a massive amphibious invasion across the Atlantic with half the airforce, navy, just over thirteen hundred divisions of men and backed up by non-nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles made the Normandy invasion a mere pinprick. All of Europe was eliminated within forty-two weeks. But the Americans knew that the Russia, for the time being, was impenetrable. So they stopped. Where the iron curtain used to be now descended the titanium curtain, cutting the globe into half. America was halfway to world domination. And the great waiting game began.

It became apparent in 2015 that the resources of the Earth can no longer sustain the world. And both Russia and America turned to the same sole orbiting natural satellite of the Earth: the moon. The cold war now also took place on the moon, as the respective countries seized lands and set up defensive barriers guarding their own chunk of moon. If the moon was not instrumental in the trajectory of the Earth's orbit or did not have any important effect on the biological systems of the Earth, it would have likely been blown apart; but as it stands, it remains intact. Space travel to the moon was perfected; shuttles went in armed convoys, and the space equivalent of battleships, frigates, and carriers were created.

But as terrifying as the leadership was, America was divided internally. And in the summer of 2020, seven months ago, the second American Civil War broke out. But they were not going to invade America. Sergei knew that. His nation was a peace-loving one, quite unlike their barbaric adversary, and this civil war can only weaken the Americans, much to the benefit of the Russians. As the Prime Minister Mikhail Talivich said, an invasion while the enemy is sedated is a cowardly tactic. They would wait calmly, supplying the orangeshirts and supporting them in their attack against the tyrant Obama. And with the Americans struggling on Earth, the Russians had a free hand to conquer space. And here they were, inside the Z1 shuttle, bounded for Mars.

The Z1 was a marvel of engineering, but at the same time it was highly experimental. A large carrier-like shuttle, smaller ships and fighters could take off from the large shuttle. Utilizing a combination of nuclear and solar power, it overcame the restrictions of the smaller ships--a lack of fuel. The smaller ships exhaust their main supplies of fuel to leave Earth, rendering them rather unmanoeuvrable in space, travelling in unchangeable velocities until the need to land comes. Whereas the Z1 was free to accelerate and turn. However, no ship of such large proportions has ever been built, and the Z1 is mostly a research craft, armed with only four phasers that mostly function to blast apart obstacles such as asteroids.

For fear of American attacks on the Z1, the shuttle was escorted by a massive convoy in the beginning of its journey. They felt secure seeing the massive fleet around them, but at the same time thought it superfluous; after all, the Americans were way behind in space technology and were too wrapped up in their civil war to deal with Russian conquests. And a few million kilometres away from the moon, the fleet turned back as they had limited fuel. Z1 cruised on towards the boundaries of explored space, where no spacecraft had ever gone before. Sergei was filled with excitement. The Americans may be the first to land a man on the moon, but they will soon have a man on Mars.

Some worries arose a few days ago, when the intelligence reported that the Americans have launched a fleet of nearly a hundred small fighter spacecraft from the moon. But the Russians ignored it. The Americans couldn't possibly intercept Z1, they said. Such small spacecraft couldn't possibly carry enough fuel to do so. But slightly disturbed, Sergei received instructions from Earth to accelerate. They couldn't do it, Sergei thought. Flying to where they were now in tiny crafts was suicide. They would run out of fuel to turn around, and eventually they would run out of oxygen or freeze to death in the desolate vacuum of space.

But now they approach. Sergei watched the dots. They must be travelling at nearly a hundredth the speed of light. He knew what they were going to do. They had no plans of a round-trip flight back to Earth; they were simply going to try and hijack the Z1 and carry on to Mars. It was on the level of the former Japanese kamikaze pilots; they had simply carried as much fuel as they possibly could, and exhausted it completely upon leaving the Earth, travelling as fast as they possibly could, give or take a tiny bit of fuel to finally manoeuvre and land on the Z1.

The radio crackled. "Attention Z1. This is the American fighter space fleet division aleph-null. Open your landing docks, or we'll open fire on the ship." The voice faded out into static. Garry shifted in his chair, staring out into space.

Sergei angrily turned. "Quick. Call for reinforcements," he commanded. Garry nodded and turned to the radio. Two light-minutes they were from the Earth, meaning that every radio message they send, they will only receive a response four minutes later. And Garry spoke. "Help. The Americans are trailing us. We need reinforcements." And he stopped. What hope was there? Two light-minutes from the Earth, nothing could help them. They were essentially stranded on an island empty-handed with a bunch of thugs with assault rifles. They can only run, but they were slowly being caught up. The Z1, while capable of enormous speeds, accelerated with agonizing slowness.

The crew was in a panic. Sergei considered their options. They could comply and open up the docks, whereupon the Americans would board the Z1. Seeing the savages they were, they would have no hope of surviving and will likely be shot by the American phasers. Whereas if they refused, they would likely perish in the Z1, but it would not fall into the hands of the Americans, who would also die in their expired fighter crafts. The decision was not difficult.

"Nobody open the landing dock!" Sergei shouted to the crew. "The Americans will not set foot inside this shuttle!"

Garry bent over the radio. The message finally came. "Our ships will not make it in time. The only weapons we have now are our interplanetary ballistic missiles now. Can you not fend them off with your phasers? The Americans are not to take over the Z1 under any circumstances!"

Sergei and Garry looked at each other. They were vastly outnumbered; only one Russian ship was in the reserve landing dock, an unarmed exploration vessel capable of holding the entire crew. "What about the interplanetary ballistic missiles?" Garry asked.

Sergei shook his head. "Oh those will kill the Americans alright...and completely destroy the Z1."

"But we cannot save the Z1 anyhow," Garry said dejectedly. "Either it is destroyed or the Americans will take it. Unless we escape from the Z1 somehow and have it destroyed..."

Sergei crinkled his brow. That sounded like a good idea. "Yeah...and we can have it destroyed with the missiles." He rubbed his hands together. "Those damn Americans. They may destroy the Z1, but they will go down with it." He turned to the crew. "Everybody into the exploration craft in the reserve landing dock. We are escaping."

Some crewmembers protested, but Sergei stood firmly. "We have no other choice. Go!" This imperious command none of his subordinates dare defied, and everybody hurriedly left the control room.

Sergei glanced at the relativistically adjusted atomic clock aboard the Z1. An hour past midnight in the glorious city of Moscow right now, March 28, 2021. He shook his head. The Z1 will not be around in a few hours. He did some quick figuring. At their current velocities, the Americans will surely catch up in an hour and a half; they cannot escape too early as the aleph-null division will not yet have run out of fuel, and they will likely be shot by the fighters. The plan materialized quickly. They will lock every single door in the ship, and escape via the craft. This will give them enough time to escape as the Americans make their way through the Z1 (as it is more than 200m in length, not to mention all the locked doors impeding their progress). When they will finally make it to the control room, it will be too late. Yes. Sergei rubbed his hands together. The Z1 will not go down in vain. America's largest and most feared kamikaze space crew will be eliminated. And all this will take place in two hours.

He took the radio speaker and spoke the commands confidently. "This is the Z1 captain. In exactly two hours, 0300 time in the capital Moscow, send two missiles on a direct collision course with the Z1. But do not worry. The Z1 will not be filled with Russian lives in two hours."

The reply came in five minutes: "We have received your message. At 0300 time in Moscow, two missiles will be delivered."

Sergei nodded to Garry. Walking over to the control panel, he shut off all lights in the Z1 and deployed smoke bombs in every single corridor--anything to stall the Americans once they make it inside the Z1. He hovered his hand over the big orange button, hesitating, but finally pressed it. The main landing dock opened. Garry still did not believe it, that after all these years of hard work, the Z1 would be destroyed by their own missiles. They quickly made their way to the exploration craft in the reserve dock. There was not much they can do now, but wait.

At three o'clock ante meridiem, the commander-in-charge of the main control station in Moscow pressed the button. The button that will send a signal to the nearest Russian geosynchronous satellite, relaying it to the moon, where the two of the most fearful weapons ever known to man will be launched.

The time was two hours after midnight on the clocks of the Z1, synchronized to the glorious capital of Moscow. The crew all sat in the craft, waiting for Sergei to take off. The numbers on the clock increased, one by one. Sergei sat there, sweaty hands gripping the controls, an emotionless face staring into infinity; and yet inside he was filled with both ecstasy and anger. In an hour. An hour...sixty minutes. Thirty-six hundred seconds. That was how much time the Americans, and the Z1, had yet to exist. He shifted his hand over the engine starter, but then moved it away. It was not yet time. Five more minutes. Then they will take off.

They did not; the Z1 was gone after five minutes, the crew vaporizing with it...

*signal received-- from Z1 to earth--Z1 destroyed at 0305 time in the glorious capital of Moscow*

And nobody will ever know what trick Chronos has played on us this time.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

...and THIS is why daylight saving time sucks. Alas, we can only think what wonderous things Sergei and his crew would have accomplished, had the evil curse of the daylight saving time not come to fruition! Any sentient being with a blood-pumping organ sometimes associated with emotion would come to agree that daylight saving time, that wicked beast, is the very predecessor of every evil there is on this planet! Yet people support it; and this is only because they themselves are possessed by the flames of evil themselves! And so, I appeal to the rational ones among you, the ones with any feeling left in your souls...please! Dispel this pestilence of doom among us!

Pathos and Ethos

The tundra seemed infinite, and the visibility was impaired by a light, haze-like snowfall.

I saw troops and various machinations of war all about me. Climbing atop a small hill, I noticed that a considerable portion of the visible forces was united under a white banner. They paraded about, and, in this very act, they seemed to radiate a whitish light, as if they were attracting those other forces in the area. The other army, of similar vastness but differing in design, was considered to be its rival (although perhaps this conception only held true as a self-fulfilling prophecy), and was thus compelled to perform similar maneuvers at some distance under its red banner. I found the marching tune of the whites, whose camp I was more or less in the middle of, rather disturbing. It was not motivational or intimidating. It resembled something more like propaganda to be announced over loudspeaker. Phrases such as “a human life is a human life,” “murder is wrong,” and “714 weeks is life” were repeated in what was by any means an eerie voice. I asked a soldier nearby (one without a banner, all of the whites were busy parading), he simply looked at me strangely and then reverted his attention to watching the parade. I could not even find the source of the sound; there were no speakers of any sort. I left the whites and approached the reds. As the sound of the whites’ parade and the eerie voice gradually let out, I began to hear something similar from the reds. “We must respect individuals’ rights to their own bodies,” “it’s a mother’s choice,” “freeeedoooommmm.” Not that I had any means of quantifying them, but the eerie sounds of the whites and reds seemed to be centered at the heart of their parading, and seemed to decrease in volume as I moved away (or increase as I approached, in the case of the reds). In fact, it seemed that there was an entire aura to the affair, a combination of the voices, the radiant light, and what seemed to me more or less the effect of an intoxicating drug. To the soldiers, the showing of the red force had a similar effect as the whites’ did: the conglomerate of red forces seemed to draw some of the surrounding forces under its banner. Most of the groups not already red or white were resilient, however, either forming their own groups or refusing to be colored altogether. Interestingly, most of the alternate groups were merely shades of pink. It did not seem that they were partially convinced or partway between the two banners; the troops that had a hard time deciding, and there were plenty, often switched rapidly between banners before choosing one. No, the pinks, as was the case with the few other present colors (such as blue and green), had a different attitude altogether. They seemed to find that their ideal state was a combination of the reds’ and whites’ qualities. Their technique of battle was a combination of qualities from both. The blues, whom I only spared a glance (by now, I wasn’t particularly optimistic), had founded a completely different technique of combat. The armies seemed to gain in ranks from their showings of power through battle or parade, but such demonstrations were limited in their effect on troops who already loyally belonged to a faction (as they were firm in their belief in the red or white school of warfare).

However, gathering up the courage, I inspected closer. Upon this inspection, the differences between the reds and whites turned out to be much smaller in practice than they appeared to be, and in fact they only seemed to distinguish between the particular manners in which the army was ineffective. The white army's vehicles had wheels without any sort of tires (rather, they had metal ridges), while the red vehicles were large and operated on three mechanized legs. The reds considered their vehicles large and menacing and the whites' small and harmless, while the whites considered the reds' vehicles inefficient and easy targets while their own small and difficult to strike. The blues, similarly, could only be seen on unarmored horses.

At the break of battle, which was more of a continuous state of warfare than actual individual battles, it became apparent that the weapons of the troops were all identical in function, however different they may have appeared. While the vehicles and other machinations still managed to find distinct ways to fail spectacularly, the only differences between the weapons seemed to be their appearance. Merriam machine guns versed Harper machine guns and Webster howitzers versed Collins howitzers. Perhaps some were more effective; it was difficult to tell. I discovered adhominium powder, which powered almost all of the projectile weapons on all sides.

There was a special band of uncolored forces that did not fly any banner. They were not like the rest of the uncolored. They were not undecided, but rather decided in their abstention. There were no Webster howitzers or adhominium-powered guns to be seen amongst them. They did not have any means of war, in fact. Weapons had no effect on them, nor did they seem to particularly care about the potential of this seemingly amazing ability they had. They seemed almost detached and transcendental. They wandered about and often made strange noises at troops of various banners. But these noises were not battle cries or calls of orders to soldiers. These noises made didn’t seem to have any purpose in intimidation or military tactic. I slowly considered this in my mind; it seemed as if I was missing something. It was only at this point that I realized that I had forgotten language and communication altogether. It had been such an easy process, sliding into this world, that I had not even noticed. In a rush, I remembered everything. Language, logic, reason. I saw the bewildered troops around me, still in the state I had been seconds earlier. They stood bewildered at what these uncolored people could possibly be doing, making these noises with their mouths, and of course already in awe having learned, in practice, that their weapons have no effect on them.

And at this point, the true nature of this world became apparent to me. It was clear that the troops hadn’t the slightest common sense. They were caught up in their banners, armies, and those eerily voiced beliefs that they saw nothing else. The uncolored ones tried to communicate rationally, rather than fight, but it was a lost cause. And even within their intent, they were horrid at judging the best method of warfare. They saw no actual communication of reason; the only important thing was… Well, what was it? Did they value their military might more, or their banner more? Did the banner just symbolize the military might? What was with those eerie voices anyway; could the soldiers even understand them?


I awoke to the slam of a heavy textbook on my desk. I wearily looked around the classroom and gradually the sound of conversation (strangely loud) overcame my ears. I scowled at the student next to me who had felt the need to ensure that I remained attentive. The memories of my dream were gradually replaced by those of what I was doing prior to sleep. Everyone was adorned in either red, white, or pink t-shirts; it was one of those “breast cancer awareness day” things that schools do (of course, there were some students who had forgotten, and they had been forced to wear an embarrassing grey smock over their shirt in class). What were we discussing again? Ah, right, abortion. Well, I wasn’t the only one not participating. There were only a handful of debaters on both sides of the argument, together about half the class. As I listened to them argue, I noticed that they were really only repeating the same things over and over. I probably hadn’t missed much. The one side’s argument was that killing any human being was always wrong no matter what (amongst various other and less secular claims), while the other seemed to repeatedly make some variation of an appeal to individual liberty and rights to one’s body. Of course, now being awake, I was then a target of some members of both sides. Both attempted to turn me to their cause with talk of rights and freedoms or of moral righteousness. Although they were at first surprised that these appeals did not move me in the slightest, they eventually desisted and left me be. I asked one of the more vigilant debaters nearer to me a few questions. “What is so special about a human life?” Rather than try to introspect and actually determine what, intuitively, is to be valued in a human life (for, clearly, we value human lives very much, but we never stop to question whether it is purely because it is a human life or because of what a human life entails), he simply gave me a weird look, muttered something under his breath, and returned to his verbal foray with someone diagonally across the room. It did not seem that anyone was up for any real consideration of the question at hand, so I returned to my doze.


It seemed for a moment that the reds and whites were actually diminishing in strength due to their constant warfare. After quite a while, they weren’t much smaller (the forces seemed infinite, nor did any direction on the horizon reveal anything other than more distant combatants), but they were spent. During a lull in the combat, I paid more attention to the individual details. The troops did not seem to be any different in demeanor or stature, but the aftermaths of the combat was apparent in the holes in their uniforms and the damage to their equipment. Some of the banners were tainted slightly, too. However, despite this, and the battle had been raging for quite some time without much variance in tactics or intensity, the combatants paraded with the same amount of vigor, tattered uniforms and equipment or not. The radiating light was no less intense, but of a slightly darker shade. The continuous voice had not changed in the slightest. Suddenly, all movement ceased, all weapon fire and parading stopped. For a second, only the voice hung in the air, with no other movement or sound.


This time, the bell awoke me. The vigilant debaters ceased in their combat at the sound. With parting glares, they collected their materials and joined the other half or so of the class (who were already partway to the door) in leaving the room. For whatever reason, I seemed to look at them in a worse light than I had before. It did not seem that a single one of them had shifted so much as a concession on their beliefs. They still held their beliefs strong, but only departed with hatred and a pugnacious air about them.

The End of the Pax Februaria

The firestorm of chaos begins, and the first wave struck today. Sadly, this reflection was meant for brilliant things, but yet the thoughts themselves fled, terrified at the prospect of being caught and pinned to binary digits, forever wandering the infinity of the interwebs.

Alas. Terrible things come not in embers nor legions, but in firestorms of fluorine.

Lab. Ah, the sleepless, terrible... Lab. Surrender...I commandeer this computer is the name of... struggle. Struggle. STRUGGLE... ... Push! Shove! Cursed thumb drive--¶

Paragraph markers?! Son of a pilcrow...¶ Another one! The rush...cries of "Mayday!" Fumbling. The orphanage overflowing...The firmament overcasting.

Crazed. Deranged. Meta meta meta meta...sleep. Sleep. SLEEP. Murder, assassin...the cookies falling...Maelstrom! pull up...pull up.

Waterloo, Stalingrad... Kepler! Charge!! The ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk... synthesis failing. Kamikaze quad radicals, sparking radios. Struggle. Struggle¶ What's this?! Treason!

Lab. Lab. LAB! Blah. Ah, the sleepless, terrible... Lab. Surrender...I commandeer this computer is the name of...Wait I said this. Sorry. Comic relief. Comic relief. Relief. BE RELIEVED!

Irony, wit, humour...LAUGH. LAUGH, wretch! Oxalic molar rush split hack chiesel...Allemandes! Allemandes! Go on my comrade...charge with your double permium! Crack... Russian soldier charges for rifle... My buret...mine! Fall fail flail but no avail. Titrate or die! White. White. Pink. RED?! Onomatopoeia, onomatopoeia, cacophablargh!

Four or three? Drip! Drip! dripping, falling...incendiary flames of doom. Hyperbola! Tick. tick. dirty wares of glass...

Tears. Relief? Survival. Survival. I will survive! Humour. Reference. It's funny. LAUGH, wretch.
Wait I said this. Sorry. Wait I said this. Sorry. Wait I said this. Sorry. Meta meta meta meta meta...

*hugs*

Lab. Cruel...fateful words, sealed up in ink... Extension, but alas! Fools...buffoons. Rigoletto! Interruption in chronology. Resume. Music. Subsets. the decaying ions...leaving. leavening?! leaving. silence. silence.

¶¶¶¶¶

Firestorms of flourine.

Coming to Terms

Today, I came to terms with sunlight, lab reports, geometry sets, and electromagnetism.

I never really liked sunlight. In Florida, it was the general state of the weather, and things like overcast and rain were welcome rarities. Overcast meant that the sun wasn't in my eyes, and rain meant that I'd be able to cool off a little. Similarly, having been raised until seven in Chicago, gray and fog were more nostalgic and reminiscent than irritating. So although the sun was generally a welcome thing in Chicago, the sort of affinity that people have for the sun did not stick with me long after I left.
I never really liked the physics of electromagnetism. It was always some sort of weird force that couldn't be understood in the same, fundamental, way that kinematics could be understood. Things like equal opposite reactions, mass times gravity, friction, and whatnot make sense. Magnets and electricity do not. It's not that I didn't read those children's books and sit through science courses about it, it's just that those sorts of explanations and understandings never rang through for me in the way that solid, tangible things like kinematics do.
I probably don't have to say much about my history regarding lab reports.



First of all, part of my peace with lab reports comes from today being the first day I was completely finished with my report when I woke up in the morning. I felt insanely good about it, a sort of exuberant and radiating joy. Upon the ringing of my alarm, I bolted out of bed, ready to face the clichéd day. And that was quite a feat, given that I slept about four hours total the previous night and afternoon (power nap).
Secondly, my love of geometry sets today started with the Fermat test. They didn't give the diagram to scale, so I made my own.

However, the main period of time that is responsible for my accordance with the aforementioned lab reports, sunlight, geometry sets, and electromagnetism, was after school. The thought of the sun was forefront on my mind as I walked back with the damn thing in my eye. I had the drawings for a certain physics lab to finish. I probably would not have if Karlming had not been there, for I had little idea what the drawings were supposed to be anyway. He was nice enough to help me out by describing just what the drawings had to be of.
Now, these were perhaps the most fun lab drawings I have ever done. I had something beyond just a perfectionist attitude towards the drawings - it was something more like my process in making an n level. It wasn't perfectionist at all in that I allowed some errors to go without white out or erasing. It still had to be good, but I also obsessively followed any whim that came to mind for the sake of it. I drew a top down view of the CRT with the magnet near it, with much help from my geometry set. The idea was to make a single elaborate drawing so that I could afford to make the four drawings of the deflections with varying magnetic field strengths a bit more simplistic. I had spent enough time on it, especially the lines of the magnetic field (which had to be done by hand without aid of any tool), that I did not want to repeat it on the next page for the solenoid acting on the CRT. I especially cannot draw things twice. It is a curse placed upon me, that if I should draw something, the heavens inevitably feel that I never shall again. And, indeed, the solenoid drawing was in most any effect the same, with a coil instead of a bar magnet. The magnetic field lines would not differ. I wished that I had some way of tracing it, alike to those lighted surfaces that paper can be placed upon and permeated by light. Woe, even a makeshift solution to the problem was not supplied, though it would have taken but the smallest twist of fate to do so. Even 'twas denied me.

Then I remembered the sun, that old dog, and the glassed front door. In that instant of epiphany, it was the most perfect tracing pad conceivable. The sun had been my most despicable foe for the past years, and these minutes of tracing upon the door were a reacquaintance with the old friend behind the heartless, merciless waves of radiation. In meeting with that friend again, and seeing the good in such a despised enemy, I in a rush regretted all the time I had focused my hatred so. It had been my madness that led me to such a rash aversion, with little regard or consideration.

Enlightened in a sense, or at least in increased consciousness, I set about continuing my drawings. In this new world vision, I was considerate of the good in all things around me. I even saw application to my current task in them; a loonie and two varyingly sized cups proved excellent for drawing circles about the magnet field. Perhaps by a by-product of my then-current state, the natures of electric and magnetic forces seemed to make themselves clearer to me. In the least, it was a step towards the level of familiarity I hold regarding the more tangible kinematics.
Without further event, I completed the drawings. My geometry set, having consisted of the various gallant machinations necessary for the work, was crippled. Little remained of its former glory, and I mourned its loss, but I knew not to linger overly on such an inevitable passing. As surely as the seasons change, the noblest of souls in all planes of existence must do their duty and accept the possibility of an untimely demise as undeniable side effect of their heroism.

This was a lesson I should have actually learned from the last lab: that doing physics labs is actually quite fun and should not be hurried by tardiness. But while I blundered in a sense this time too, it did not end at all badly. In the end, it is clear that while I had once thought that the fates had conspired against me, they had rather brought several adverse circumstances together for a greater good.