NYTimes: (Middle) East Meets West

I recently saw the film "American Hustle" (quite good, I would recommend it), in which there's a con involving an Arab oil magnate in Atlantic City, and I thought of this New York Times article about Middle Eastern investors doing business in the West:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/25/islamic-banks-stuffed-with-cash-explore-partnerships-in-west/?hp

I find the crossroads of disparate cultures fascinating (possibly because I occupy one such intersection myself). There's always a certain contentious power dynamic, no matter how seamless each side wants their dance to be -- it's simply a matter of navigating cultural differences, and where there's difference, there's compromise to be reached.

In the cases mentioned in the above article, it's a matter of Islamic law, which to Westerners accustomed to separation of Church and state, seems antiquated and alien. Of course, considering that American bills still have "In God We Trust" printed on them, we're not 100% secular either. The United States is just a less homogenous society, which means that it's much harder to enshrine any particular religious practice as law without provoking backlash from other religions. In the Middle East, on the other hand, Islamic tenets -- such as the prohibition on interest payments, for example -- are so ingrained in the legal system, in everyone's day-to-day operations, that it would hardly seem out of the ordinary for Islamic companies to request certain religious accommodations as part and parcel of doing business.

Each side tends to think of itself as "normal" and everyone else as "other." That's just how we're wired--it was an evolutionary advantage, to be sure, and we've remained so long after our species abandoned the "small tribes roaming the Serengeti" lifestyle. It's a product of genes ensuring their own survival, methinks, and it has been the root cause of a lot of conflict through the centuries (and even today). But in a world where it is generally acknowledged that outright war between states is undesirable for all states in question (with certain notable exceptions, many of them precipitated by stateless organizations or religious factions), I suppose a lot of that cultural distance gets sublimated into power plays in negotiation (and similar, otherwise constructive enterprises).

I expect we'll see more and more of this in our increasingly globalized world. Today, it's not just governments that engage with each other -- it's entire populations that have to reconcile "us" and "them."

BuzzFeed: The Strand Proves That Bookstores Are Not Dead

The Strand is one of my favorite New York bookstores, so I was especially pleased to see it featured in this holiday piece:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/the-86-year-old-strand-bookstore-just-proved-that-bookstores

There's been so much media buzz about "the death of the bookstore" in the wake of e-commerce gaining marketshare, but I think there's something to be said for a well-stocked, well-curated neighborhood bookstore with a friendly and helpful staff. Also, their Twitter is fun and their rare books room is wonderful. (I'm guessing that the Christmas shoppers weren't there for the rare books room, but nonetheless...)

Just a bit of holiday cheer for bibliophiles. :-)

BBC: Royal Pardon for Alan Turing (Finally!)

Two days ago, fifty-nine years after he was driven to suicide by discrimination and the overwhelming solitude of misunderstanding, Alan Turing finally received a royal pardon for violating the so-called "gross indecency" laws of his time:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25495315

Though his downfall was perhaps not as well-publicized and posthumously noted as that of Oscar Wilde in the century before his, it was no less a travesty for humanity. (And to think that society had not budged an inch on homosexuality between 1900 and 1954!) Turing was one of the finest cryptanalysts in history, as well as one of the founding fathers of modern computer science, and he was just forty-one years old when he died. One can't help but wonder what great and wonderful things he might have accomplished in his later years had he lived.

I am reminded, somewhat, of the story of Johnny Gunther, immortalized in his father's memoir Death Be Not Proud. Gunther was another extremely promising young man who died even younger, as a teenager, after a valiant struggle with brain cancer. Untimely "early" deaths, like those of Turing, Wilde, and Gunther seem especially tragic because of the injustice of the situation (particularly with Turing and Wilde, whose deaths were entirely preventable) and the abruptly curtailed possibilities of their later lives. Entirely due to human stupidity and prejudice, Turing was never afforded the opportunity to reach his full potential. I can only imagine, for a person brimming with ideas, curiosity, and the drive to contribute meaningfully to the sum of human knowledge, to hold in his hand the poisoned apple and think that such an exit was preferable to the future that lay before him...

The royal pardon is too little, too late, but at least some six decades later, we recognize and regret the human cruelty that hounded Alan Turing to his death, and move forward as a society with an awareness that we did not have before.

Cover-a-Week #34: "The Engine Driver" by The Decemberists

It's been quite a long time since I last posted one of these -- I completely stopped making these videos during NaNoWriMo, and during the period of catching up with my life afterwards. But here's a new one!


http://youtu.be/svuvxbpSmR8

Also, just noticed that I now have two videos with over a thousand views; "Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)" just hit four digits. Yay!

Christmas Tree!

Today we decorated our Christmas tree! It looks like this:

And here it is in the dark, with all of its multicolored, flashing lights:

It never quite feels like the holidays are upon us until we've put up our tree. Every year, my sister and I petition for a larger one, and every year, my mother insists that we buy a smaller one. This year, we compromised at "just a little taller than my father."

Even though I'm a "real adult" now, having a Christmas tree with some presents underneath never fails to make me feel like a little kid again. It's good to be home for the holidays. 

io9: Clever Cosplayers Sued for Carpet Costumes

This seems like a hilarious take on camouflage/your usual Con cosplay:
http://io9.com/cosplayers-threatened-with-legal-action-for-hotel-carpe-1366152096

I can't say I'm terribly surprised that the cosplayers were hit with a cease-and-desist... I imagine that the hotel was, copyright infringement aside, probably afraid that the next DragonCon would see an entire regiment of cosplayers crawling about on the floor like that! (A shame it won't happen, though -- it would have been fun to see!)

Upgo.info, a Parody

Upgo is a project I did with some friends while in California last week. It was a Christmas present for a friend of ours who founded a startup, is an impressive Go player, and has an affinity for all things Japanese. The premise basically arose from someone's attempt to give me the quick-and-dirty description of this friend's startup -- I thought it sounded like The Hunger Games for software engineers. Ergo, we decided to film a parody startup video:


http://youtu.be/v_1Cj0jQ9IQ

We did it over the course of one night in Lucas's living room. The jokes are from all three of us, the video editing was Brett and Lucas, the bones of the script (and the Hunger Games references) was mostly me, the logo and font were Brett, and the website was Lucas.

We even made fake business cards as the physical souvenir (note: the friend for whom we were making the website/video is also named Lucas):

Definitely one of the most fun projects I've done in a while!

The Economist: The Dream of Interstellar Starships, or, the Hows and Whys of Technology

I'm in California, hanging out with a lot of techie folks whom I met at university. We've talked about things like Amazon drones and Elon Musk's proposed hyperloop... and naturally I was reminded of this article, which I saw in The Economist a month or two ago:

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21588349-if-starships-are-ever-built-it-will-be-far-future-does-not-deter

Scientists have been contemplating interstellar travel for as long as science fiction authors have been writing about it (indeed, these two groups have a significant overlap). The above article catalogues some of the problems facing any space-adventuring hopefuls, most notably that of propulsion. It also asks the important question of why.

I was just discussing with a college friend the differences between the humanities and the sciences. It's engineers like them -- like the people I know who work at tech companies up and down the Bay -- who give us the means to achieve what could scarcely be imagined a few generations ago. The sciences answer the question of how. But for what purpose? To what end? Those are the questions the humanities hope to answer -- but we have too few people asking, and too few caring to ask.

There's always hype about the next great "disruptor" in the marketplace, the technology that no one ever imagines he needs, but which he soon finds indispensable (see Henry Ford and Steve Jobs, for example). But I can't help wondering: what kind of society do these visionaries hope to create with their revolutionary ideas? (There's Google's "Don't be evil," but that's hardly descriptive. It's not proscriptions, but rather prescriptions that build a new future.) Beyond the often nebulous concept of improving quality of life, how do inventors imagine their products shaping our society? (Interstellar travel, a la Star Trek, would irrevocably change the way we live and our understanding of our place in the universe.) As the article points out, "Because we can" is not a sufficient reason--it doesn't tell us why.

Some food for thought. I'll likely revisit this topic after my trip.

I Won NaNoWriMo!

I clocked in at 50,133 words with about two hours to spare. I fell behind a bit this month, so I ended up writing 5000 words today. And look what I got!

That's the winner banner from the NaNoWriMo website's secret (or not-so-secret) winners' page.

This project is really just about personal fulfillment, so I don't "win" anything more than glory, satisfaction, and 50,000 more words of fiction than I had before. But that's something, and it was such, such fun!

Same time next year, then. Can't wait!

A Turkey-less Asian Thanksgiving

I read in the news that the President pardoned a pair of turkeys who would otherwise have landed on the White House dinner table tonight. Well, in an Asian household, we don't really eat turkey to begin with (my mom doesn't like the taste, and neither do all the other Chinese moms). Instead, this is what our Thanksgiving feast looked like:

Hotpot! It was delicious. Here's a picture of the pot itself:

The things floating in the soup are fishballs (the white ones), meatballs (the brown ones) and tofu cubes. The submerged orange things are pumpkin cubes.

I never quite appreciated being home for the holidays until I found myself eating dining hall turkey in college over Thanksgiving. It wasn't too bad, especially since I had friends whose folks lived too far away for them to celebrate Thanksgiving at home, but there's nothing quite like being home with the family. And having tasty hotpot.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Write Your Own Academic Sentence (or, the Problem with Academic Prose)

Academic writing is notorious for its opaque (sometimes unreadable) prose. This contributes greatly to the common perception that academia is irrelevant to the concerns of the general population, who don't care to puzzle through the stylistic challenges of academic papers to get at the often interesting ideas within. It's a tragedy, because our society would be so much richer if everyone -- not just specialists, not just the people with advanced degrees -- were engaged in the culture of ideas and had access to the latest developments across a variety of disciplines.

I recently found this amusing little program that parodies academic writing:

http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/write-sentence.htm

It's surprising how many of these randomly-generated declarative statements seem to make some semblance of sense. (Of course, the ones that don't are hilariously bad.) What's rather tragic is that a broad swath of society actually believes that all academic writing reads something like this -- and for the most part, they're not wrong.

Obviously, part of the opacity of any academic discipline is a product of the specialized vocabulary required to discuss said discipline -- they need words to describe concepts that might not even exist elsewhere. As the sum total of human knowledge has increased over the centuries, each discipline is now much more specialized than in the past. Newton, for example, could give public lectures about cutting-edge physics and expect to draw sizable crowds that included a diverse swath of of upper and middle class London, the vast majority without formal science training. Today, the equivalent would be a Brian Greene or Neil deGrasse Tyson lecture -- which seems to appeal to a more niche audience.

We're seeing something of a reversal of this trend with the online democratization of education (e.g. Coursera, Floating University, Crash Course, SciShow, &c.). So far, that hasn't gained much traction in the realm of written research (though who knows what academic journals will look like in a decade or two?). Given that the audience of said journals consists primarily of other academics, it's unlikely that they'll change drastically. Public outreach, on the other hand, has never looked more promising.

Written Kitten!

This one's for the intersection of "people doing NaNoWriMo" and "people who like kitten pictures." (Then again, who doesn't like kitten pictures?)

There's a website that I've started using this month which rewards you for meeting your writing quotas with pictures of kittens:

http://writtenkitten.net

I've started thinking of my daily wordcount numbers in terms of kittens -- i.e. if I set it for one kitten picture every 200 words, then 1600 words translates to eight kittens. It's actually quite helpful!

You can also set it to show you pictures of things other than kittens. For example, puppies:

http://writtenkitten.net/?search=puppy

That is all. Happy writing!

Empire State Sunset

A view from my office window at sunset:

It looks like a watercolor, doesn't it?

Carl Sagan Day

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

Carl Sagan was one of the first and most well-known American populist scientists. That is, he championed the worthy cause of bringing science (especially astronomy) to the non-scientist public. (For comparison's sake, he was a contemporary of Freeman Dyson, another such luminary, and the forefather of scientists like Brian Greene and Neil deGrasse Tyson.) Sagan is perhaps best known for his novel Contact, subsequently made into an eponymous film, and for the television series Cosmos. It's fitting that he should have his own day of celebration (he would have been 79 today), wherein people contemplate the great beyond.

In addition to popularizing science, Sagan was also one of the great advocates for SETI in his day, as well as a proponent of nuclear disarmament. He was, as were many great scientists, a profound humanist. He was the originator of the saying "We are all stardust," one of my all-time favorites. (If I were ever to get a quotation tattooed somewhere on my body, this would be a top contender. It helps that it's short.) In another life, I might have gone into astrophysics -- largely because I grew up reading books by people like him.

Addendum: the Library of Congress recently acquired Carl Sagan's papers, which include his reading lists. This is facinating stuff!

It's the Season for NaNoWriMo

It's that time of year again... NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, begins today. The challenge, in a nutshell, is to write 50,000 words of fiction -- roughly the length of a very short novel -- in one month. (It sounds mad, but this will be my sixth time doing NaNoWriMo, and hopefully my fifth time "winning.") You can track my progress via the little wordcount bar on the right.

Towards the end of November, my life might look something like this (which I consider a fine use of the Thanksgiving holiday, for the record):

So, friends (Romans, countrymen), forgive me for being a little antisocial and non-responsive for the next thirty days. I haven't fallen off a cliff, I promise.

Cover-a-Week #33: "Creepy Doll" by Jonathan Coulton

It's Hallowe'en! Ergo, today's the day for a spooky song:


http://youtu.be/f1hddcJiGZ8

This was such a fun piece to cover! (Jonathan Coulton is an evil genius.)

I was tempted to make Coraline-style button eyes out of construction paper to really get in the spirit of "Creepy Doll," but I realized that I couldn't see very well out of the tiny buttonholes...

Boston

I went to Boston this weekend to visit one of my oldest friends (we've known each other for most of our lives). It was wonderful to experience a different city with someone who knows the lay of the land. Here are some highlights of the weekend...

My trip apparently coincided with a major sporting event, so there were people wearing Boston gear all over the city. Someone decided to clothe the Public Garden's decorative brass ducks:

And this is what looks like a ballroom in the main branch of the Boston Public Library:

It's a stunning space, with wood panelling and frescoes running the entire length of the walls. I could imagine a medieval ball being held here.

This library could give the New York Public Library at Bryant Park a run for its money. It has an interior courtyard that looks like it was airlifted from Renaissance Europe:

I'm reminded of the courtyard of the Frick Museum. I could imagine Juliet leaning on the rail of the balcony on the left, beckoning to Romeo in the garden below. I've never been to Verona, but in my mind, it looks something like this.

Boston is also home to the world's only Curious George store! I didn't know this a few days ago.

This was taken on a bridge over a particularly scenic stretch of the Charles River:

I believe it was the Longfellow Bridge, which was named for the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He was one of the preeminent poets of his day; one of his most famous works, "Paul Revere's Ride," is a classic in the American canon. There is a plaque in his honor, and the poem is engraved on a stretch of the footpath on the bridge. I didn't think to get a photo of it at the time; I was too busy walking backwards reading the poem!

And that was Boston. It's such a quaint place (cobblestone streets! trolleys!) with so much history tucked into the fabric of the city.

Cover-a-Week #32: "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" by The Flaming Lips

Because it was recently Ada Lovelace Day:


http://youtu.be/K0Y8pf009yo

I have a lot of friends from college who were female computer scientists and engineers. I'm very proud of them -- of what they do, what they represent, and the hard work and extraordinary talent I know it took (I was there, after all). They might not be fighting pink robots, but they are, every day, combating the societal forces that created this unequal world. They're "destroying the status quo, because the status is not quo" -- and I love them for it. This one's for you, ladies.

Knights vs. Snail in Medieval England

A whimsical curiosity from the British Library's medieval manuscripts blog (the librarians post some fascinating stuff -- the rest of the blog is definitely worth a peek too):

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/09/knight-v-snail.html

The motif of knights fighting giant snails is apparently quite common in medieval illuminated manuscripts, though nobody knows why, or what it was supposed to have signified. (There's even snail jousting! And monkeys!) Was it all just marginalia? Bored monks -- who were only human, after all -- having a bit of fun with their transcription? Did snails moonlight as agents of Satan when not making nuisances of themselves in the monastery vegetable patches? Even among the eminent scholars at the British Library, nobody knows.

While the world of medieval archivists puzzles over this mystery, the rest of us get some Easter eggs in our manuscripts. Happy Monday, everyone!

Cover-a-Week #31: "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by Green Day

I used to listen to this song all the time in high school:


http://youtu.be/CDMJUeJTKcM

All I need are some strings in the background...

Also, I just had my seventeenth video (out of thirty-one) hit a hundred (a hundred?) views. I don't know who you are, but thanks for listening! (It's "Somewhere Only We Know" -- in case you were wondering.)

Cover-a-Week #30: "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen

I love this song (cliché but true):

http://youtu.be/1RbR-VORCAo

I'm getting over a cold, so I suppose I'm channeling more Jeff Buckley than Leonard Cohen here...

Statistics, Demographics, Music, Art

Last night, I went to Vienna Teng's concert at the Highline Ballroom with Brett, who was in town this week. Vienna's touring her new album, Aims. Her sound in this record is rather different from her earlier work -- it's louder, more electronic, more contemporary. But it's still the Vienna we all know and love, and it's not the first time she's tried something new (see "Grandmother Song" and "Radio" from her previous album, Inland Territory).

One of the aspects of Vienna the songwriter that I admire is how she incorporates a wonderfully diverse array of experiences, abstract concepts, and places into her work. One never forgets that she's a true renaissance woman -- she just finished up a dual degree in business and environmental science (one of her passions is environmental sustainability), and she was a computer scientist out of Stanford undergrad. Aims's album artwork, for example, is quite inspired -- it's a population density map of Detroit:

http://viennateng.com/album/aims

It makes the demographics/stats/sociology nerd in me really happy. I've always loved maps -- centuries-old ship's maps, star charts, subway maps, hilariously inaccurate classical and medieval maps (like those inspired by Herodotus, for example), Tolkien's maps... (The maps room is probably the coolest underrated exhibit in the Vatican Museums compound.) Maps that convey information beyond mere geography, like this one, are even better.

On the subject of demographics... I can't wait until The Signal and the Noise comes out in paperback! It's another case of excellent concept meets brilliant cover design (the art department at Penguin has turned out some really thoughtful covers these few years; Moonwalking with Einstein and The Painted Boy come to mind):

http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/features/the_signal_and_the_noise

I get the sense that Vienna must have read some Nate Silver, and not just because she's an intelligent, multi-talented person with a mathematical brain and two advanced degrees. This occurred to me while listening to two particular songs on the Aims album, "In the 99" and "The Hymn of Acxiom." The former includes the phrase "said the signal to the noise" -- while the phrase (or a variation thereof) didn't originate with Nate Silver, Vienna does use the line in a song about social (im)mobility and economic stratification. "The Hymn of Acxiom" was, more obviously, inspired by Acxiom, a marketing/advertising company that compiles databases of personal information. It's actually rather creepy how much it knows about us -- Vienna even said as much when she was introducing the song. (Just a year and a half ago, she'd said in an interview that she was trying to figure out how to merge the worlds of music and sustainability -- I suppose she found it!) Even in her Inland Territory days, one could sense from her music that she was highly aware of, and engaged with, the social context in which she was writing (see "Stray Italian Greyhound," inspired by the 2008 presidential election, and "No Gringo," a commentary on the illegal immigration issue). 

The first step to addressing any issue is understanding it -- which is especially difficult with broad, longterm problems like climate change, food security, infectious diseases, &c. I particularly admire people like Vienna Teng and Nate Silver because they're not necessarily on the front lines, not really within the system or calling the shots, but they've nonetheless found ways to achieve great things in fields that they love and simultaneously contribute to our understanding of how our world works and how we might face the challenges of living in it. (Vienna's taken the approach of having two mostly separate careers, music and sustainability, that inform each other; Nate Silver has found an innovative way to apply his expertise, quantitative analysis, to a largely unrelated field.) Interestingly -- and I'm sure it's no coincidence -- all of these areas deal with multitudes, the masses, the People.

One of the great advantages of civilization, which elevates homo sapiens above non-sentient species, is our ability to consider and attempt to solve problems which affect humanity as a whole, as opposed to merely dealing with issues that affect our genetic kin and the small populations we interact with regularly. We're capable of viewing our species (and indeed, our world) as collectively valuable -- even the pieces we can't see -- and of thinking in the big picture, in the long-term, in lightyears rather than miles and millennia rather than mere decades. We acknowledge that which is greater than the individual, the genetic, even the human, and embrace the possibility that comes with it. (I am one, but I am of the many, and my words, actions, ideas may one day sway the multitudes, whether they know it or not.)

Cover-a-Week #29: "Greensleeves" (traditional)

A Tudor era piece:


http://youtu.be/dMS42q0wPF8

The original is very long (not to mention that there exist many versions of the song, which was often learned orally, in true balladeer fashion), so I took the liberty of cutting a few verses.

io9: The Downs-Thomson Paradox is the Bane of Commuters Everywhere

This io9 article reminded me quite a bit of public transit in California (one of the things I definitely don't miss about university). It's also interesting to consider given the recent spate of service disruptions on MetroNorth (I have a few coworkers who commute from suburbs north of Manhattan).

http://io9.com/how-the-downs-thomson-paradox-will-ruin-your-commute-1152573927

Vehicular traffic, especially of the diesel variety, a huge environmental and economic impact on urban centers. There's debilitating smog (Beijing) that contributes to global warming and respiratory problems, and hours-long traffic jams (Los Angeles) that seriously decreases productivity and happiness, among other problems. Most urban planners, I would imagine, give serious thought to methods of reducing the number of cars on the road. 

The optimization of the weekday commute in urban centers is one of those challenges that is more important than it seems at first blush, and is extremely difficult to implement. It's largely due to massive user inertia, and the difficulties of transition. One of the major issues with any major urban infrastructure project is that the construction required to overhaul the system affects the millions of people who need to use said system every day. In order to avoid such disruption, most updates simply involve adding to, rather than substantively changing, the existing system. That's how we get, for example, redundancies in subway lines, or routes and hubs that are sub-optimal because population densities and distribution change with time. Over the years, problems in transit systems tend to be compounded precisely because our networks are augmented rather than remade anew. And, as the article points out, these inefficiencies drive people (no pun intended) to use cars instead of public transit. Who knew there was a formal theory to describe it?

The Renaissance Faire!

Last weekend, some friends and I went to the Renaissance Faire!

I've been to a few Faires over the years, both in California and here in New York. They're great fun -- cheesy as all hell, and you'll certainly be disappointed if you're a hard-core re-enactor or history buff who expects most everything to be historically accurate (that got me the first time, but I've learned to ignore it). There're all sorts of things to see -- human chess, birds of prey, dancing, acrobats, and even jousting.

Here I am at the archery range. The target is rather low to the ground. Full disclosure: the bow I'm using has a draw weight of only twenty pounds or so, and the fletching on the arrow is rather bent out of shape (not to mention that the entire kit is made of plastic!). I did ask for the heaviest bow they had on loan. (photo by Irina)

Here I am being kidnapped (and my bag being ransacked) by pirates! We are all too amused to look properly frightened/menacing. (photo by Irina)

And here is the castle and tourney field (click to enlarge). You can see the lions of England hanging from the castle walls, and the unicorn of Scotland above the stable doors. There was also a knight from France, and one from the Holy Roman Empire, though you can't see their heraldry in this shot. (photo by Deb and Terence)

I'm already looking forward to next year's Faire! Can't wait to break out the corset and skirts again. :-P

Cover-a-Week #28: "Half Moon" by Blind Pilot

In celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival:


http://youtu.be/91_ZVMVB-QM

It's such a wistful and oddly uplifting song. It reminds me of Thoreau and Emerson (in both the philosophy and the New England aspects), but also of cranes and kingfishers.

In related news, I notice that one of my Cover-a-Week videos, "Take Me Home, Country Roads," recently exceeded a thousand views!

Reality, Relativity, and Light

I read José Saramago's The History of the Siege of Lisbon last week -- in translation, of course, since I don't read Portuguese. It's excellent, and somewhat stylistically and structurally unusual. But I was struck, in particular, by this line, spoken to the protagonist by his lover (the relationship is rather more complicated than that, of course):

Switch on the light, she said, I want to know if this is real. (p264)

The relationship between any two people -- even within family, even between people who might have known each other their whole lives -- is a fragile thing. Within that relationship, there are layers of reality, of perception. It's a sort of relativity, even -- one that isn't governed by any laws of physics. His reality and hers could be completely different, and each moment's reality different from the next. It's odd to think that we can never know what another person's reality looks like; the closest we can come is to achieve an understanding of how our reality compares to what we perceive to be their reality, with full awareness that our vantage point colours our reading.

This is especially relevant to the subject matter because the 1147 Siege of Lisbon, about which the protagonist writes, was a manifestation of a centuries-old clash of cultures and religions, a battle between two peoples who understood the same God through different scriptures and different prophets. Elizabeth I once said, in another century about another religious conflict, "I would not open windows into men's souls." Such windows can only be approximated, even in the best of circumstances.

I'm also taken by the Saramago's use of light in this scene -- something one normally associates with visual art rather than with prose. It's ripe with symbolism; the notion of shedding light on something intangible, that our eyes can tell us about reality between two people, &c. I'm reminded of two things:

Perhaps we may frighten away the ghost of so many years ago with a little illumination...
~ "The Phantom of the Opera," Act I, Scene 1

So many years after the events of "The Phantom of the Opera," the very chandelier that was associated with the disaster perpetrated by the Phantom is now a source of illumination -- both as a refurbished light fixture, and as a window into the murky past, the audience's introduction to the story. Because it is an inanimate object with a lofty vantage point, it is, in a fashion, the impartial observer of the story. And yet, it is also a crucial "participant" in the story. Its impartiality is not so much due to its placement, a lamp hanging high above the human characters, but rather because it has no free will, no desires or motivations of its own.

The second thing is Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Our understanding of what goes on inside another person's mind is rather like to the prisoners' understanding of the shadows on the wall. Another person's reality undergoes several layers of translation before it becomes comprehensible to us; the "truth" is distorted by their perception, interpreted by their mind, conveyed by their words, filtered by our ears, and only then is it analyzed by our minds. Plato's prisoners are eventually unchained, but there is no way for any of us to overcome this process of interpretation. The amount that must get lost in translation is mind-boggling. It makes me wonder what a society of perfect communication (of telepathy, essentially) would look like.

Edit: Soon after writing this post, I chanced upon an io9 article about philosophical thought experiments: http://io9.com/9-philosophical-thought-experiments-that-will-keep-you-1340952809@AnnaleeNewitz. The third entry therein, "The Beetle in the Box" (aka the Private Language Argument), is very much like what I discuss above. The second entry, "Mary the Colorblind Neuroscientist" (aka the Inverted Spectrum Problem), is also quite similar to the Allegory of the Cave. It's well worth reading.

BuzzFeed: Schrodinger and Heisenberg Walk into a Bar...

Because we need more quantum mechanics jokes in the world, even if they're really corny:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/billypeltzer/20-jokes-only-a-physics-nerd-will-appreciate-ecuv

That is all. (I am such a magpie, I know!)

io9: Why Eugenics is a Bad Idea (aside from all the obvious moral reasons)

I recently read Paolo Bacigalupi's short story collection Pump Six and Other Stories, which is deliciously creepy and dystopian. That anthology, and this io9 article (which I read at around the same time), got me thinking about human genetic engineering on a macroscopic scale:
http://io9.com/5925024/why-eugenics-will-always-fail

Our notions of eugenics can be roughly sorted into two categories: ways to optimize our species (for some agreed-upon and likely artificial optimal characteristics), and ways to eliminate genetic weaknesses (an extremely aggressive, sentient form of Darwinism). The former option represents selecting for a hypothetical upper bound, and the latter would be selecting against a lower bound.

When we talk about eugenics, most of us imagine the first option. The cultural connotation of the term "eugenics" includes the Holocaust, the book Brave New World, and the film "Gattaca" -- all of which involve human rights violations. In selecting for a certain ideal, a society makes mincemeat of the rights of those who fall below the arbitrary cut-off. Because eugenics usually comes with gross restrictions of free will -- and in many cases, murder -- we tend to see it as a purely moral evil. This usually brings about international intervention (the timeliness and effectiveness of said interventions being a different matter entirely), or at least the common recognition that such atrocities ought to be prevented.

The above io9 article lays out a few intuitive arguments against eugenics from a practical perspective, contending that -- morality aside -- it simply wouldn't be effective. They boil down to: imprecision, biodiversity, and the limitations of human foresight. (In essence, the short-term microscopic, the middle-term macroscopic, and the long-term in both. The article explains in further detail.) We don't know enough (and likely will never know enough) to get away with attempting to fashion our species in the image of some ideal -- not to mention that it would be impossible to get all seven billion of us to agree on said ideal in the first place. These are all, however, problems that arise when selecting for an upper bound, a hypothetical ideal specimen of humanity.

A (very) soft version of a scenario where we select against a lower bound is already in place, given amniocentesis and women's right to abort. Many women choose to abort after they receive an abnormal genetic diagnosis -- when the fetus has a genetic or congenital defect that would severely diminish the hypothetical child's lifespan or quality of life. The logic is that never existing -- which, for the record, is distinct from ceasing to exist after a period of existence -- is preferable to a life of pain and suffering with little ability to self-actualize. Self-actualization is incredibly important -- it's what makes us human and distinguishes us from other animals. This form of selection, which can be considered a mild and diffuse form of eugenics, increases the average human being's ability to self-actualize, thereby increasing (in a thought experiment where sentience is quantifiable on a scale) our species's average sentience through conscious choice by prospective parents -- a rough extension of natural sexual selection, in the way that most technologies exacerbate existing dilemmas and play upon existing quirks of human nature, rather than creating new ones where they didn't exist before. (To be clear, I recognize that I just exploded a can of worms -- that humans aren't generally more or less sentient than other humans, and that legally, ethically, metaphysically, &c. we all ought to be considered equally sentient, except in cases of limited ability to consent (i.e. children, mentally disabled persons), in which case laws are made to protect said people.)

The danger, then, is where the upper and lower bound options meet in the middle. (I'm resisting the obvious temptation to make some horrible joke about quantum mechanics and relativity here.) It's significant, therefore, that the former option is mandated by an external force and doesn't allow parents to meaningfully consent; the latter option is voluntarily initiated by the potential parents. The lower bound scenario never turns into the problematic upper bound scenario precisely because of this element of free will. The moment it moves from a bottom-up to a top-down approach -- when it veers too close to selection for an ideal, thereby impinging upon the rights of the sentient but non-ideal population -- it becomes the morally degenerate form of eugenics of genocide and dystopian science fiction. There lies the bright-line we should be aware of.

And that's all for now. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cover-a-Week #27: "May It Be" by Enya, from The Lord of the Rings soundtrack

It's a week for mourning writers, so in honor of Tolkien's fortieth death-day, here's Enya's "May It Be" from the soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings:


http://youtu.be/juwu5tTC0hc

I maxed out the new microphone... again. (It's clearly the deadly combination of high notes, vibrato, and volume.) I tried putting a sweater over the mic -- perhaps next time, I should try sitting a bit farther back?

Cover-a-Week #26: "Nightswimming" by R.E.M.

I'm feeling a bit nostalgic this week...


http://youtu.be/JgwJ3Ti4j3s

The rhythm for this song was a bit tricky to figure out; it took me a few tries before I realized that the irregularities were in the chord changes rather than the strum pattern.

R.I.P Seamus Heaney

A literary luminary died today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13930435

I've owned a copy of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf for as long as I can remember, and I've read it cover-to-cover at least three times. It's beautiful, and not just because the parallel text (with annotations!) indicates just how faithfully Heaney translated from the original Anglo-Saxon. Rather, given the cadence and word choice of his modern English, it becomes immediately evident that the translator is himself a poet.

Few poets have been as universally revered in their lifetimes as Heaney was. It has been said, even before today, that he was Yeats's successor as Ireland's foremost poet -- and one would be hard-pressed to find a competitor for the accolade. His original poetry was not only sublime, but also widely accessible -- he was a true poet of the people. His laurels are too many to count (including the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Struga Golden Wreath, and the Irish PEN), but in my mind, one of his most significant accomplishments was that he brought poetry to those who might not otherwise consume poetry, who might consider the art too academic, too arcane. He brought beauty and wonder to generations of readers who saw something of themselves set on paper in his words.

He was, by all accounts, a compassionate and upstanding man who was profoundly aware of his position as a voice of the people in a land often rent by civil and religious strife. He tried to balance a sense of cultural heritage and pride of place with a concern for individuals that was evident in everything he wrote. One of my favorite of his poems, "Digging," describes his work as a natural continuation of the life's work of his forefathers, telling the story of several generations in just a few verses. (You can hear Heaney's own rendition of it here.)

A star has fallen.

Edit: I just discovered that Seamus Heaney's last words, delivered via text message, were "Noli timere" (Latin for "Be not afraid"). How fitting -- he was a poet to the last.

Morley Walk!

This is what I did last Sunday (August 18th):
http://morleywalk.tumblr.com

Christopher Morley was a novelist, poet, and journalist -- and the founder of the eminent Sherlockian society the Baker Street Irregulars. However, he is perhaps most well-known as a tireless advocate for the book trade. One of his best-beloved novellas, The Haunted Bookshop, is set in a used-bookstore in Brooklyn, and is essentially an ode to bookselling, wrapped in a cute romance and a quaint mystery.

The Morley Walk, organized by Melville House (which publishes what is likely the most recognizable edition of The Haunted Bookshop and its prequel, Parnassus on Wheels), was splendid. It was a reading crossed with a walking tour of independent bookshops around Prospect Park. A small horde of bibliophiles descended upon the streets of Brooklyn, where we attempted not to get run over by passing cars, parents pushing baby strollers, and over-eager dogs as we migrated en masse from shop to shop, taking turns reading aloud from a copy of The Haunted Bookshop.

There were some people who thought we were a cult -- come to think of it, passersby mistaking Morley for Scripture in a mob of bookish people is actually rather fitting. I doubt I shall see most of the other participants again, but for an afternoon, we had found our tribe. And much like a novella, it was over far too soon.

BuzzFeed: A Tale of Three Bookshops

This is what bookshops in Britain do on Twitter:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/aarong31/three-bookshops-had-a-twitter-fightand-it-ruled-dmhw

To all the bookstores in the US (but especially indies): please have an internet pissing contest. It would make my day. (@McNallyJackson, @StrandBookstore, and @StMarksBookshop, I'm looking at you!)

Cover-a-Week #25: "Doctor Worm" by They Might Be Giants

A bit belatedly, for Geek Week:


http://youtu.be/odJD73piZdc

This was meant to be good, nerdy fun, but ended up a little more introspective than I'd intended... (It was fun nonetheless!)

If I Used Twitter...

... I'd post this gem from last night:

Nutella is the spice of life. If I had to choose between variety and Nutella, I'd pick Nutella.

Words to live by -- a direct quotation from my sister, who loves food. (Seriously, she once said that if she were on Twitter, her handle would be something like "ilovefood".)

The Economist: On Pollution, China is Better and Worse Than We Think

I'm reading Jared Diamond's excellent book Collapse (you know it's important when it has its own Wikipedia page!), which devotes a whole section to the real sociopolitical dangers modern China faces as a result of environmental fragility and degradation. I rather serendipitously happened upon this article in The Economist, which discusses developments therein (both good and bad) since Collapse was published in 2005:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have

I subsequently ended up thinking a lot about the subject, so I thought I'd muse about it in prose. (Sometimes -- very occasionally -- I miss writing essays for college history classes...) This post is rather long, so I've put it below the cut:

My Totoros Have Multiplied!

I now have two Totoros!

I acquired the blue one in Japan five years ago; my sister got me the grey one for my birthday just a few days ago. (I promise I haven't put the latter through the wash; it's just the texture of its fur making it look particularly disheveled.)

"My Neighbor Totoro," despite having a rather thin plot, is one of my all-time favourite films (this is mostly due to its sheer cuteness). Miyazaki and his co-conspirators at Studio Ghibli are geniuses (genii?).

Curiosity Rover Sings Happy Birthday to Itself

Two days late (the rover Curiosity landed on Mars on August 5, 2012), but just as awesome:


http://youtu.be/uxVVgBAosqg

I am reminded of WALL-E. (I trust I'm not the only one?)

Cover-a-Week #24: "The House of the Rising Sun" (traditional)

People seemed interested in more folk/old-school material, and I'm happy to oblige:


http://youtu.be/_scn7y8uCis

I didn't realize until after the video went live that the angle of lighting makes me look a bit ghostly in the still-shot... I suppose it's appropriate for the piece.

The Problem with Time Travel

I recently saw, and was amused by, this Abstruse Goose comic:

http://abstrusegoose.com/526

History buffs are often asked (in the process of making an acquaintance) what time period they'd like to inhabit, or at least to visit for a little while. I find that I tend to give answers as if I were white, male, and Christian (my main area of interest is pre-modern and early modern Europe). After all, the Scientific Revolution, or Republican Rome, or the Italian Renaissance are fascinating times to have been alive if you weren't being downtrodden, persecuted, or discriminated against. (I imagine that, being both female and Asian, I would have twice as much difficulty as either of the above characters. I wonder if the probability of death by persecution would increase logarithmically with each undesirable trait?) If I were to actually consider the logistics of visiting a particular time and place, I'd be largely limited to China and, well... there really isn't a good historical era in which to be female.

Cover-a-Week #23: "The Ballad of Serenity" from Firefly

More geek-tastic covers!


http://youtu.be/hmlDnPYzsq0

Firefly is one of the best television shows out there, and it's a shame that only fourteen were produced before it was cancelled. I've not seen all of them -- this will be remedied in due time!

New York in Pictures

The past two weekends, I had two of my friends from college stay with me for a few days each. We explored the city, of course. It's always refreshing to experience one's hometown from a non-New Yorker's perspective. Much like how one gains a different understanding of one's native tongue in teaching it to a student of the language, there are certain aspects of place that are easily overlooked if one is immersed in it every day, that

Julie and I went for a bit of a hike in Central Park. We happened upon this interestingly-shaped copse of trees, and I couldn't resist a photograph:

Naturally (no pun intended), I was reminded of one of my favorite Robert Frost poems, "The Road Not Taken." (A pity it's not autumn; it would have been a beautiful picture with the thicket melting red and yellow around her.)

I also took her to see Alice, one of my favourite statues in the Park:

One of these days, I will sit by (on?) the Alice statue and reread Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (It's somewhat fitting, methinks, that there's a little girl (wearing purple, Julie's favorite color) climbing on the sculpture in the background.)

There were a few highlights that I ended up visiting twice in as many weeks, but they were absolutely worth seeing more than once. The High Line is, for instance, one of my favorite places in New York. This is probably the cleverest billboard along the path:

And yes, it's situated above one of the few street-level car parks in Manhattan (which appears surprisingly empty).

Lucas and I also spotted this intriguing bit of text writ large on a dark wall across from the High Line:

It's ironically (or perhaps intentionally) located next to a tavern/restaurant called The Half King (its sign is partially visible in the lower left).

I also went to the Met twice in as many weeks, because if you have out-of-town visitors, they absolutely must see the Met. We ended up in the musical instruments section twice as well, and Lucas and I had the same thought about this sculpture:

Air guitar! Given the style of the statue and the position of the hands, there was probably a lyre or a harp at some point. A disappointment for all of the Guitar Hero players out there, I'm sure.

We spotted this on the subway, and my first thought was naturally, "it's a policy tub!" (A debate thing. I did LD, PF, and college parli, mind you -- not CX.):

Julie had a bit of a laugh at my expense. I don't mind at all. :-)

I love having friends in from out of town. Come visit me more often!

Cover-a-Week #22: "One Tin Soldier" by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter

This week's ukulele video, a tribute to the 60s:


http://youtu.be/xorad7fLzkA

I've always thought this a rather wistful piece. I hope you all like it!

New York at Dusk

There are times when I walk alone in the streets of New York, when I'm surrounded by looming glass behemoths against the deep blue dusk, when the air is crisp and a fine mist of rain coats the pavement, when the hum of human activity permeates the corners of the city -- times when I'm happy to be alive and grateful to live in such a magnificent, vibrant place. There's nowhere quite like New York.

I took this picture near Rockefeller Center a few weeks ago (the lights of Radio City Music Hall are visible in the lower left). Something about the lone building lit up against a swathe of clouds reminds me of Egypt, of obelisks and monuments erected by long-dead Pharaohs.

This photograph was taken from the High Line. The red-and-white illuminated building in the center is the Empire State Building (I love the way the spire disappears into the clouds). The polyhedral glass rooftop structure, I discovered, contains what appears to be a small library, replete with armchairs, lamps, and a few shelves of books. (That has to be one of the coolest library designs I've seen!)

I took this picture a month or two ago at the piers on the West Side. (The "BEA on a Boat" party happened on that boat, actually.) I was struck by the "halo effect" of the setting sun behind the mast; the boat and the play of light on the water reminds me of the elven ships sailing into the west in The Lord of the Rings.

There's something melancholy and fiercely beautiful about this city when you're alone, spending some quality time with it, just drinking it in.

Cover-a-Week #21: "Summersong" by The Decemberists

In the spirit of the holiday weekend -- after which it feels like summer is really underway -- here's a somewhat dark and incongruously cheerful piece about the season, by (who else?) The Decemberists...


http://youtu.be/Ckrwx_AyL1A

I had, for the record, a much more pleasant Fourth than the song would suggest; I spent a few days in Philadelphia with my family.

U.S. History, Minus the Dead White Men

Happy Independence Day -- which, in the United States, means that we celebrate the Founding Fathers and the revolutionaries of the 1770s -- all of them dead white men. In studying Western history, it's easy to assume that anyone of interest or significance was male and white (and Christian), because those were the voices which were heard. (History is written by the winners, the saying goes.)

I happened upon this blog, which showcases the overlooked, ordinary American women and people of color who made history in ways large and small:
http://ushistoryminuswhiteguys.tumblr.com

It's inspiring, to be sure. It's also fascinating, in that members of such minorities often achieved what they did in unorthodox ways, because the establishment wasn't built to -- or in many cases, refused to -- support their aspirations. And of course, these lives often make the best stories (click through, above).

R.I.P. Met Admissions Tags

Just a few days after my trip to the Met, I saw this article in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/arts/design/metropolitan-museum-sheds-its-metal-admissions-tags.html?hp

Starting today, the Met is retiring its iconic metal admissions tags in favor of admissions stickers. While it's a logically sensible decision, the child in me mourns the passing of an era. I hung out at the Met in high school (I probably went there about as often as most normal girls went to the mall), and amassed quite the collection of Met tags:

Yes, I have a special bowl for them. I think I'm still missing one or two of the "official" colors (and I likely have a few colors that have since been discontinued):

It'll be a bit of an adjustment next time I go -- I'll receive a sticker, and stare at it for a second in bewilderment, before realizing that the colored tags with their Leonardo Ms are no more.

Cover-a-Week #20: "City Hall" by Vienna Teng

In celebration of the recent Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, United States v. Windsor:


http://youtu.be/lkrvnkgKTu0

The song was originally written about the 2004 same-sex marriage initiative in San Francisco, but it's just as relevant today; it commemorates the victory of love, justice, and human dignity over the prejudices of a shrinking minority.

Also, Oscar Wilde's two pence: http://www.gocomics.com/thenewadventuresofqueenvictoria/2013/06/27

Faulkner on Literature, Humanity, and Immortality

On Sunday, I had dinner with my friend Brett after an afternoon visit to the Met. I was telling him about an amazing, inspiring book talk I'd recently attended: it was a conversation between Adam Johnson, a Stanford English professor and this year's Pulitzer winner in fiction, and Fredrik Logevall, a Cornell history professor and the Pulitzer winner in nonfiction, moderated by their editor, David Ebershoff, of Random House.

Brett was reminded of (and sent me) this particular speech delivered by William Faulkner on the acceptance of his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html

It's brilliant and quite worth reading (and not very long) -- so do actually read it! Faulkner's claim is, essentially, that literature -- the written word, storytelling, art -- is humanity's way of achieving some semblance of immortality. He writes not of the genetic "immortality" perpetuated by our biology, of course; I think one of the prerequisites of sentience is a consciousness of meaning greater than base instinct. Rather, Faulkner speaks to our legacy as a species -- the ideas, the intellectual and creative achievements by which humanity might define itself.

Literature is one such vehicle. I would hesitate to call it a record -- that term falls too much in the realm of historiography (which is itself an ambitious and meaningful endeavour, of course) -- but perhaps one might consider literature the pared-down essence of what it means to be human. In books, in art, we see reflected not only the best (and the worst) -- but also the deepest, truest, and most beautiful aspects of ourselves. In literature, we are immortal -- not only the writer, and sometimes not the writer at all (Homer is the example that comes to mind) -- but we, as a sentient species, are captured, burnished, chased in silver -- forever.

Shakespeare expressed a similar sentiment centuries earlier:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
(Sonnet 18, lines 13-14)

BBC: A One-Way Trip to Mars

I've been reading Asimov lately, and consequently thinking about space colonization. One of the most often-cited barriers to human colonization of extraterrestrial worlds is the presumed lack of volunteers willing to make a one-way journey to another planet; it seems too conclusive, a course of action only the deeply desperate or truly dissatisfied would be willing to undertake. (Fortunately for human rights, but unfortunately for space colonization, penal colonies -- the interplanetary version of 19th century Australia -- don't seem to be a viable option.)

It seems, however, that not everyone shares said pessimism about human civilization beyond Earth:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120206-space-tourists-one-way-mars-trip

There are a number of examples of migration and settlement in human history that may be considered analogues of space colonization. The Thirteen Colonies, for example, were populated by settlers who never expected to return to their lands of origin, and who were largely unable to communicate with family and friends from their precolonial lives (a product of distance, the unreliability of mail delivery, and illiteracy). And yet, there was no shortage of people willing to make the trip -- there were convicts and bondsmen, to be sure, but also religious minorities, merchants, speculators, explorers, and all manner of people who believed that they could build a better life in the uncharted wilderness than in the known, civilized world. I don't believe that this strain of optimism and curiosity will have disappeared between then and whenever we are capable of sending colonists beyond our orbit.

Would I go? I must admit: probably not. I have too many Earthly attachments -- people, places, moments, experiences (especially people). I would have been reluctant, I think, even in the later eras of immigration by ship; see the song "Kilkelly." It's no coincidence that so many of the early colonists in North America were particularly fervent Protestants who believed that one's mortal existence was ultimately inconsequential (predestination, and the complete rejection of Catholic belief in deed as well as faith), or people with few ties to their original communities, for varying definitions of community. But in an age of faster interplanetary travel, I'd sure love to visit!

Also, I think the idea of sending a few intrepid journalists to document the development of the Martian colony is brilliant. It's not often that we get to study the development of a nascent civilization, and it would prove instructive to have such a chronicle on hand once the colonization of space really begins.

The article mentions a hypothetical poll; I would be very interested to see the results of that particular study. I'm especially curious as to the demographics of an all-volunteer Martian colony, and whether they would reflect a population roughly comparable to the New World colonists.

If I Used Twitter

tonight's post would be:

2nd place at YPG spelling bee: winner got "quixotic;" my word not found in OED. Still, pretty cool consolation prize: tinyurl.com/oac7w92.

It's a very graphically interesting cover design:

That is all.

Cover-a-Week #19: "Hotel California" by the Eagles

In honor of my friends who graduated today from various undergrad and graduate programs at Stanford:


http://youtu.be/cz5XiZooSMc

I miss you guys dearly, and can't wait to see those of you who are coming to New York this summer!

Today

was wonderful and quintessentially New York -- the sort of day that makes me enormously thankful to live in such a vibrant, diverse city full of old friends and affable strangers. I don't mean to turn this blog into a series of diary entries -- that would seem rather self-indulgent -- but today was full of sights and sounds and people that I want to remember.

It began with brunch with a dear friend who is returning to the city after college, a relocation for which I'm grateful because I've missed her these few years. We go back a long time; we played together as children, went to the same elementary school and Chinese school, and have seen each other through our best and worst moments ever after.

We ate at a Greek place in our neighborhood in Queens; we've been coming here once or twice a year since high school. I had an excellent crêpe and we caught up on each other's lives -- we talked about work and friends and our grand ambitions in life. She's one of the few people with whom I discuss the latter topic; despite pursuing radically different fields, we have similarly coherent and somewhat lofty visions of the future. Kindred spirits, I'd say.

After brunch, I met up with a college friend in Manhattan. On the way there, I spotted a group of people in 1920s garb:

There seem to be a number of Jazz Age-themed events going on this summer, even more so than usual (likely prompted by the recent The Great Gatsby film). I was reminded of the Gatsby party I attended in May -- exactly a month ago, as it happens -- which was an industry event hosted by Fitzgerald's publisher and included a costume contest. (I dressed up but didn't win; there were some truly spectacular costumes!)

So I got bubble tea in Chinatown with my friend (it seems like I have quite a few moments that involve bubble tea...). He's a Californian who moved to New York a few months ago, whom I didn't realize was in town until I bumped into him at an alumni event on Monday! He was a few years ahead of me in school and we'd lost touch for a while after he graduated, but he's now working at a start-up in Silicon Alley and lives downtown. 

We met up with one of his friends in Central Park, who was hanging out on the lawn with a few other people we didn't know. It was a gathering of, at least from my perspective, friends and strangers connected to each other by a few tenuous degrees of separation. Though it seems unlikely that I'll encounter these people again -- and in a few months I would be hard-pressed to even recognize them on the street -- for an hour or so, we shared a blanket, a conversation, a patch of sunlight in the Park -- a tiny slice of New York.

At one point, there was a moment of silence -- a completely natural, contented lull in the conversation. We watched a group of small children chase each other around on the lawn, and soon observed that they were all following one small boy who held aloft some sort of styrofoam disc. I was distinctly reminded of The Lord of the Flies -- it was an uncanny analogue of the conch! I said as much to the others, and we had an entertaining few minutes trying to spot the Piggy of the group.

Our group splintered apart in twos and threes. My friend and I wandered through Central Park conversing and taking in the sights and sounds of summer. We stumbled upon a guitarist/vocalist duo performing in front of the lake (with a very professional sound system) and sat in the grass for a few songs. We found a large, fenced-off section of road where people were rollerskating in circles around a rock band which had set up in the middle of the walkway. There was a chalked-off section next to the band where people were dancing, and so we ended up swing-dancing to live music in the middle of a roller derby! (My friend is, incidentally, an excellent dancer; it's a shame we didn't overlap at school for longer.) We also happened upon trio of busking musicians consisting of two drummers and a bagpiper:

The snare drum (obscured in this photo by the man in black), the djembe, the bongos, and the bagpipes seem like a highly unlikely combination (especially the bagpipes!) but they work surprisingly well together. It was a perfect microcosm of the diversity and cooperative spirit of this extraordinary city. (My friend got their card, afterwards; apparently they have a website.)

We then got coffee with a third friend, another Stanford alumnus making his way in New York. We only had an hour, but it was an hour well-spent: a potent reminder that even in this bustling, hectic place, we make time for each other because it's the small moments as much as the grand gestures that comprise any human understanding.

We had dinner near his apartment in Greenwich Village with his roommate. We tried an American restaurant she suggested, and passed a merry hour or two getting to know each other. She's an architect from Hawai'i, so naturally I broached the question of whether she can play the ukulele! (Passably, was the answer.) My friend plays the guitar and also, to a lesser extent, the ukulele, so we're going to play for each other sometime. (I didn't know this about him until today.)

And then we went our separate ways, the two of them to catch a film in the Village, and I to the F train headed into Queens. I spent a quiet hour reading on the subway, with the rumble of the train and a dozen indistinct conversations in the background. In Queens, I stopped by my favorite neighborhood bakery to buy a cake for Father's Day tomorrow.

All in all, it was a lovely day in the City. Here's to more such days in the future.