Wednesday, December 7, 2011
US Military bases in the Middle East
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Plant Breeding Lab
I'm currently at my plant breeding job. I've spent the morning learning how to extract DNA and use the various lab tools involved, it's been fun. And easy. Working in a lab is mostly cerebral and minimally physical. It's a good way to spend a morning, almost like spending it organizing papers or whatnot. And, there's downtime. I've a half-hour break, essentially, and am 9 minutes away from working again. What an easy job! I hope I learn a lot about breeding. I'm going to have to start reading their plant breeding texts during downtime.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Hammer, By Fabio Morabito
I should have posted this long ago. It's eloquent and profound, and will change your thoughts on hammers as well as on life.
A hammer is at once the easiest of our tools and the most profound. No other tool fills the hand as much as a hammer does; none inspires the same degree of dedication to the job and such a total acceptance of the task. With hammer in hand, our body acquires its proper tension, a classic tension. Every statue ought to have a hammer, visible or invisible, like a second heart or a counterweight to offset the weight of the limbs. Wielding a hammer, we get rounded out, more integrated; it is exactly the one extra thing we need to feel ourselves permanent. Grabbed by the hand, obtuse, cyclopean, childlike with its weight and its feel, it gives us once again that sensation of freshness in a tool, a satisfying extension to our bodies, of an effort directed without waste or frustration. O first rate hammer! Willing brother! Few things are straightforward as you!
It acts like and epic poem; it’s bilious, goatish and eagle like. The force of a juicy anger has been attached to a wooden handle and has been left to ferment and toughen there. That’s the way we get hammers- from a slow drip-drip of rage, which finally forms a scab at the end of the handle, an amalgam of wrath. Just shape that and polish it, and your hammer is ready to go.
Passivity and power co-exist in a hammer. In fact, a hammer works by surprise, by nasty surprise, and its bruising strength is indebted not so much to its force as to its laconic delivery. It doesn’t affirm; it skewers. All of a hammer’s rage, slowly absorbed by the handle, slowly fermented, slowly assimilated, is expressed in one sharp bang! There’s no time for anything else. A man who hammers, it would seem, combines in the hammer head the best of himself and his forefathers. The man himself, as a particular individual, is symbolized by the handle, which determines the willingness and direction of the blow, but the impact itself is entirely indebted to his past, a past heavy with the weight of the dead. A horde of dead are packed into every hammer blow, your own dead, all that has been distilled in times before yours, everything tough that preceded you, and it’s that toughness you hammer with, along with all your dead kin, whose purpose is to serve the living as a final hardness, as their sharpened steel, their armor plating. Anyone who tries to live without the dead, without a family tree, is barely alive and won’t last long.
Thus a hammer never says anything that hasn’t been said before; no novel emotion ever changes its tone. The dead always produce the same response. Their productions get weaker with the passing of time, vast areas of memory crumble away, and their vocabulary gets smaller until at last it is reduced to a single syllable, hard and obdurate.
Upon reaching the kingdom of the dead, every dead person loses definition and his faltering voice is erased by the voices of others. Every hammer blow is like that, flowing lava of voices that has been reduced to one sole syllable. Every hammer blow raises to the surface our lowest depths, which are often close to a petrified inertia, their connections with here-and-now shrunk to a few dreams, a few pangs of conscience, a few blows from a hammer. That’s why the hammer blows of one man are vastly different from those of another; they glue together parts that are peculiar to the individual, matters that defy translation. Maybe at some point, in the farthest distance, they do touch each other and mingle, but even so they retain their separateness. Only the most sensitive of instruments could sort out those crude banging’s into all their strata of voices that have been lost in the passage of time. But it would be a hellish instrument. We’d hear the warm of our dead speaking one by one, in a terrifying whirlwind of sound.
We have to bring the dead together and confuse them, to stop them frightening us, so that they’ll let us live. We have to amalgamate them, squash them together, rub out their features and voices, until they linger on only as a choir, a far-distant clay pit, a half shadow. That’s the reason behind the invention of the hammer, its unified force. With a single blow it binds us to our dead and at the same time plunges them deep into the past. It buries them, gets them out from under our feet. When we talk to the dead through a hammer, we liberate ourselves from them. We can then go forward. The hammer flattens out, opens up a pathway, crushes down bumps in the road, levels off the track, heads toward tomorrow. A hammer is a prow, no more no less. But like every prow, it leaves behind a large wake, a choir of voices that are out dead kin, re-echoing in every blow. To move ahead is to move toward the dead. In every blow those who went before and those who are coming after, our yesterdays and our tomorrows, our liberty and our origins touch each other and fuse. In every blow we are nailed to the earth, redefined in a burst of bright flame, as if we were statues, not wholly alive, not wholly here, mildly classic and forever.
A hammer is at once the easiest of our tools and the most profound. No other tool fills the hand as much as a hammer does; none inspires the same degree of dedication to the job and such a total acceptance of the task. With hammer in hand, our body acquires its proper tension, a classic tension. Every statue ought to have a hammer, visible or invisible, like a second heart or a counterweight to offset the weight of the limbs. Wielding a hammer, we get rounded out, more integrated; it is exactly the one extra thing we need to feel ourselves permanent. Grabbed by the hand, obtuse, cyclopean, childlike with its weight and its feel, it gives us once again that sensation of freshness in a tool, a satisfying extension to our bodies, of an effort directed without waste or frustration. O first rate hammer! Willing brother! Few things are straightforward as you!
It acts like and epic poem; it’s bilious, goatish and eagle like. The force of a juicy anger has been attached to a wooden handle and has been left to ferment and toughen there. That’s the way we get hammers- from a slow drip-drip of rage, which finally forms a scab at the end of the handle, an amalgam of wrath. Just shape that and polish it, and your hammer is ready to go.
Passivity and power co-exist in a hammer. In fact, a hammer works by surprise, by nasty surprise, and its bruising strength is indebted not so much to its force as to its laconic delivery. It doesn’t affirm; it skewers. All of a hammer’s rage, slowly absorbed by the handle, slowly fermented, slowly assimilated, is expressed in one sharp bang! There’s no time for anything else. A man who hammers, it would seem, combines in the hammer head the best of himself and his forefathers. The man himself, as a particular individual, is symbolized by the handle, which determines the willingness and direction of the blow, but the impact itself is entirely indebted to his past, a past heavy with the weight of the dead. A horde of dead are packed into every hammer blow, your own dead, all that has been distilled in times before yours, everything tough that preceded you, and it’s that toughness you hammer with, along with all your dead kin, whose purpose is to serve the living as a final hardness, as their sharpened steel, their armor plating. Anyone who tries to live without the dead, without a family tree, is barely alive and won’t last long.
Thus a hammer never says anything that hasn’t been said before; no novel emotion ever changes its tone. The dead always produce the same response. Their productions get weaker with the passing of time, vast areas of memory crumble away, and their vocabulary gets smaller until at last it is reduced to a single syllable, hard and obdurate.
Upon reaching the kingdom of the dead, every dead person loses definition and his faltering voice is erased by the voices of others. Every hammer blow is like that, flowing lava of voices that has been reduced to one sole syllable. Every hammer blow raises to the surface our lowest depths, which are often close to a petrified inertia, their connections with here-and-now shrunk to a few dreams, a few pangs of conscience, a few blows from a hammer. That’s why the hammer blows of one man are vastly different from those of another; they glue together parts that are peculiar to the individual, matters that defy translation. Maybe at some point, in the farthest distance, they do touch each other and mingle, but even so they retain their separateness. Only the most sensitive of instruments could sort out those crude banging’s into all their strata of voices that have been lost in the passage of time. But it would be a hellish instrument. We’d hear the warm of our dead speaking one by one, in a terrifying whirlwind of sound.
We have to bring the dead together and confuse them, to stop them frightening us, so that they’ll let us live. We have to amalgamate them, squash them together, rub out their features and voices, until they linger on only as a choir, a far-distant clay pit, a half shadow. That’s the reason behind the invention of the hammer, its unified force. With a single blow it binds us to our dead and at the same time plunges them deep into the past. It buries them, gets them out from under our feet. When we talk to the dead through a hammer, we liberate ourselves from them. We can then go forward. The hammer flattens out, opens up a pathway, crushes down bumps in the road, levels off the track, heads toward tomorrow. A hammer is a prow, no more no less. But like every prow, it leaves behind a large wake, a choir of voices that are out dead kin, re-echoing in every blow. To move ahead is to move toward the dead. In every blow those who went before and those who are coming after, our yesterdays and our tomorrows, our liberty and our origins touch each other and fuse. In every blow we are nailed to the earth, redefined in a burst of bright flame, as if we were statues, not wholly alive, not wholly here, mildly classic and forever.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Answer to Pascal's Wager
This was written for my philosophy class, Knowledge and Reality, in November 2011.
Blaise Pascal, in his famous wager on the belief in God, gave credibility to the reasoning of a man pursuant of eternal happiness. However, in the centuries that followed the publication of Pensées, where the wager was explained, many philosophers have offered critiques of his reasoning. I have compiled some of these critiques and will organize these by asking some fundamental questions about Pascal’s Wager, of his argument’s validity and soundness. Of first concern however, is the actual wager.
The Wager explained
Pascal’s Wager is a common argument for belief in the existence of God. It is simply stated as the combination of two choices, one of belief in God and the other of possible afterlives. Pascal argues from his cultural heritage of Christianity, so the deity he speaks of is the Christian one and the afterlives he speaks of are also Christian. Pascal argues that, since reason cannot give a sure answer to the question of the existence of God, we are left with only the possibility of God existing and of God not existing. Since we cannot know anything about the probability of either outcome, we must give equal chance to both – a 50% chance to each. He further argues that if God exists, then there is a choice between believing and not believing, and the corresponding infinitely happy or infinitely unhappy afterlives. He describes the possible outcomes of our belief in God and of God’s actual existence, describing four possible situations which are as follows:
Pascal concludes by saying that if one is naturally and through reason an opponent to belief, one should put all effort into belief. He says that the heart should be the source of belief, since reason cannot help us decide. He reiterates that reason cannot answer the question of belief, and that the heart should answer it using faith. Thus, Pascal lays out a claim that since we cannot know by reason, we should know by faith.
Is Pascal’s argument Valid and Sound?
Several answers have been given to Pascal’s argument over the centuries, most of which have attacked it’s soundness. Now, for an argument to be sound, the conclusion must follow from the premises and the premises must be true. Pascal’s argument is this:
Criticism has been made of the first premise, that God exists or does not. Pascal assumes that there can be only one god and that that god is the Christian one. He is really saying “if there is a god, it’s the Christian monotheistic one.” It is possible, however, that the Christian god does not exist but some other single deity does. It is also possible that multiple gods exist. Another of Pascal’s assumptions is that God and the afterlife are inseparably linked. However, there could be a god and no afterlife, and vice-versa. These seem to go together, but lacking any evidence of the supernatural, we cannot know.
The second premise is that we must make a choice. This is harder to question, but there is one situation, at least, where we may draw questions. Pascal, in this premise, is speaking to those who are conscious enough to know there is a choice. What is to be said of babies, who do not have the ability to consider this question? What is to be said of those ignorant of the idea of god? There do exist human beings who cannot make a choice, whether due to their ignorance of it or their inability to process it.
The third premise is that our choice should be made by a weighing of the benefits of each outcome This is, in my mind, near impossible to attack. Pascal argues that we cannot know one way or another that god exists, leaving us without an angle to work with. There is no knowledge possible, only belief. Therefore, we must choose whatever alternative is best. Pascal exhorts us to reason with our hearts rather than our logic, because the usual, logical approach to philosophical questions is useless here.
Now what can be said about the conclusion? If the premises are unknowable, can the conclusion remain sound? It is not so. Pascal’s Wager is a very good way of explaining the merits of belief if only one faith is concerned – the Christian faith. But we face a more complicated decision. There is more than one god to choose to believe in, and belief in any one god makes belief in another impossible. Should the god most likely to exist be chosen? How are the religions to be judged for potential universal truth? Should the god who offers the happiest afterlife be chosen? How are we to know what will make us most happy? These questions touch on our hopeless ignorance on the possibility of a god’s existence as well as on our ignorance of the potential deity’s attributes.
Is manufactured belief better than none at all?
Robert Green Ingersol wrote another critical reply in Some Reasons Why (1881). He said “Belief is not a voluntary thing. A man believes or disbelieves in spite of himself, they tell us that to believe is the safe way; but I say, the safe way is to be honest. Nothing can be safer than that.” He promotes the idea that humans cannot change their minds to believe a thing they think unbelievable, and that it is better to be honest than dishonest, even for the sake of eternal personal gain. Extrapolated from here is the belief that a just god would more reward honesty than dishonesty, even if the dishonesty promoted belief. Pascal answers this to some extent by saying that one should, given the possible outcomes, pretend to believe and strive to believe, and by striving to believe, to eventually convince oneself. I have actually seen this in practice, at a church. In this church, I was told that one could know the truth by studying the truth, and that this was more effective a method than any method which studied falsehood. They likened this argument to the experience of a bank teller, who, after handling thousands of real, legitimate bills, could easily spot a counterfeit. By focusing on truth, they shunned alternatives and put blinders on their minds, seeing only what agreed with their values. The faith they had was great in direct proportion to their blindness to anything critical of their faith, and they succeeded in convincing themselves of the existence of God and Heaven. In this way they used Pascal’s method of creating genuine belief and were entirely honest in believing their belief to be true. They made no false claims, but they did fail to fully utilize their intelligence and so limited their ability to find truth.
We have explored Pascal’s Wager and the several answers which have been made to it. Some have indicated that the choice to believe in God or not to believe in God is a false dichotomy, that there is another option of multiple gods existing, not just one or none. Another criticism is that God and an afterlife do not need to coexist – there could be one without the other. These criticisms address the truth of Pascal’s premises and indicate more possibilities than Pascal anticipated. We have found that his argument, though valid, is not sound.
Blaise Pascal, in his famous wager on the belief in God, gave credibility to the reasoning of a man pursuant of eternal happiness. However, in the centuries that followed the publication of Pensées, where the wager was explained, many philosophers have offered critiques of his reasoning. I have compiled some of these critiques and will organize these by asking some fundamental questions about Pascal’s Wager, of his argument’s validity and soundness. Of first concern however, is the actual wager.
The Wager explained
Pascal’s Wager is a common argument for belief in the existence of God. It is simply stated as the combination of two choices, one of belief in God and the other of possible afterlives. Pascal argues from his cultural heritage of Christianity, so the deity he speaks of is the Christian one and the afterlives he speaks of are also Christian. Pascal argues that, since reason cannot give a sure answer to the question of the existence of God, we are left with only the possibility of God existing and of God not existing. Since we cannot know anything about the probability of either outcome, we must give equal chance to both – a 50% chance to each. He further argues that if God exists, then there is a choice between believing and not believing, and the corresponding infinitely happy or infinitely unhappy afterlives. He describes the possible outcomes of our belief in God and of God’s actual existence, describing four possible situations which are as follows:
- God exists and you believe in him and you are eternally happy in Heaven,
- God exists and you don’t believe in him and you are eternally unhappy in Hell,
- God does not exist but you do believe, and you lose some happiness to be gained in this life by unbelief but gained nothing in eternity, and
- God do not exist and you do not believe, in which case you’ve gained some happiness through a life of unbelief and lost nothing in eternity.
Pascal concludes by saying that if one is naturally and through reason an opponent to belief, one should put all effort into belief. He says that the heart should be the source of belief, since reason cannot help us decide. He reiterates that reason cannot answer the question of belief, and that the heart should answer it using faith. Thus, Pascal lays out a claim that since we cannot know by reason, we should know by faith.
Is Pascal’s argument Valid and Sound?
Several answers have been given to Pascal’s argument over the centuries, most of which have attacked it’s soundness. Now, for an argument to be sound, the conclusion must follow from the premises and the premises must be true. Pascal’s argument is this:
- God exists or does not exist,
- You must believe either that God exists or that he does not,
- The benefits of belief and being right outweigh the benefits of disbelief and being right, so
- Therefore, believe that he exists – the potential for reward is infinitely greater.
Criticism has been made of the first premise, that God exists or does not. Pascal assumes that there can be only one god and that that god is the Christian one. He is really saying “if there is a god, it’s the Christian monotheistic one.” It is possible, however, that the Christian god does not exist but some other single deity does. It is also possible that multiple gods exist. Another of Pascal’s assumptions is that God and the afterlife are inseparably linked. However, there could be a god and no afterlife, and vice-versa. These seem to go together, but lacking any evidence of the supernatural, we cannot know.
The second premise is that we must make a choice. This is harder to question, but there is one situation, at least, where we may draw questions. Pascal, in this premise, is speaking to those who are conscious enough to know there is a choice. What is to be said of babies, who do not have the ability to consider this question? What is to be said of those ignorant of the idea of god? There do exist human beings who cannot make a choice, whether due to their ignorance of it or their inability to process it.
The third premise is that our choice should be made by a weighing of the benefits of each outcome This is, in my mind, near impossible to attack. Pascal argues that we cannot know one way or another that god exists, leaving us without an angle to work with. There is no knowledge possible, only belief. Therefore, we must choose whatever alternative is best. Pascal exhorts us to reason with our hearts rather than our logic, because the usual, logical approach to philosophical questions is useless here.
Now what can be said about the conclusion? If the premises are unknowable, can the conclusion remain sound? It is not so. Pascal’s Wager is a very good way of explaining the merits of belief if only one faith is concerned – the Christian faith. But we face a more complicated decision. There is more than one god to choose to believe in, and belief in any one god makes belief in another impossible. Should the god most likely to exist be chosen? How are the religions to be judged for potential universal truth? Should the god who offers the happiest afterlife be chosen? How are we to know what will make us most happy? These questions touch on our hopeless ignorance on the possibility of a god’s existence as well as on our ignorance of the potential deity’s attributes.
Is manufactured belief better than none at all?
Robert Green Ingersol wrote another critical reply in Some Reasons Why (1881). He said “Belief is not a voluntary thing. A man believes or disbelieves in spite of himself, they tell us that to believe is the safe way; but I say, the safe way is to be honest. Nothing can be safer than that.” He promotes the idea that humans cannot change their minds to believe a thing they think unbelievable, and that it is better to be honest than dishonest, even for the sake of eternal personal gain. Extrapolated from here is the belief that a just god would more reward honesty than dishonesty, even if the dishonesty promoted belief. Pascal answers this to some extent by saying that one should, given the possible outcomes, pretend to believe and strive to believe, and by striving to believe, to eventually convince oneself. I have actually seen this in practice, at a church. In this church, I was told that one could know the truth by studying the truth, and that this was more effective a method than any method which studied falsehood. They likened this argument to the experience of a bank teller, who, after handling thousands of real, legitimate bills, could easily spot a counterfeit. By focusing on truth, they shunned alternatives and put blinders on their minds, seeing only what agreed with their values. The faith they had was great in direct proportion to their blindness to anything critical of their faith, and they succeeded in convincing themselves of the existence of God and Heaven. In this way they used Pascal’s method of creating genuine belief and were entirely honest in believing their belief to be true. They made no false claims, but they did fail to fully utilize their intelligence and so limited their ability to find truth.
We have explored Pascal’s Wager and the several answers which have been made to it. Some have indicated that the choice to believe in God or not to believe in God is a false dichotomy, that there is another option of multiple gods existing, not just one or none. Another criticism is that God and an afterlife do not need to coexist – there could be one without the other. These criticisms address the truth of Pascal’s premises and indicate more possibilities than Pascal anticipated. We have found that his argument, though valid, is not sound.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Flowery Language for Flowers
I wrote this piece for a horticulture class taught by Dr. Alex Niemiera in Fall 2011. I tried to be flowery in language.
In a small town near Philadelphia I held a shrub trial of grand proportions. Or at least it started out that way. Fortune, for a shrub in my trial, was fickle, their most universal attribute being eventual death. My story is of the survivors, those hardy species which, though dealt the blows of capricious climate, were able to eke out a living under the vicissitudes of my premeditated culture. And all of this took place in that little town near Philadelphia, more known for the devourers of the dead[1] than horticulture village known as Kennett Square.
My intentions were admirable. Scientific progress would be made; the knowledge of mankind would be increased. The goal was simple – to determine the hardiness and ornamental performance of diverse shrubby plants. Hundreds were to be planted and observed, and manpower[2] was summoned. Into the deep my research subjects went, half-buried in the crumbly soil of an old cornfield, their verdant exterior at times muddied with that grime which makes agricultural livelihoods. ‘Twas no small task, my shovelbearers strained to thrust yet purer iron into the already iron-rich soil, pocking the ancient grounds with their implements. When all were planted, diverse species were arrayed in threes, huddled together, each with their own kind, each sharing the same future. As one entity the subjects of my noble experiment aspired to scientific relevance, and, unified, the toil of my project’s initiation was completed.
The subjects were watered in for the first year, I looked kindly on them in their youth. After this first year, however, my compassion dried up. The flush of youthful vigor which had flown into each tenant seemed a dim memory of a vibrant past, and the field now slowed in phenological pace, stepping in time with the rain and sun nature saw fit. The peaks of color now segregated and the species emerged from deliberate cultivation distinct in form and seasonal pace. I now traversed the meadow regularly, no longer searching for the pangs of transplant stress, but for the seasonal vapors of botanical attraction. Initially I noticed an abundance of brightness, but with each passing season the remnant, incrementally weaned of runts, developed a habitual seasonality and consistent genetic identity. What had been a vast plain brimming with diversity was now a desolate desert lodged with the carcasses reaped of my insufficient care. The sole survivors were cultivars of Japanese Meadowsweet, Spiraea japonica, which hid in the crepuscular shadows of overgrown weeds. Spiraea japonica, with the hubris of a woody perennial, stood unrivaled in a field of invasive annuals. Some sixty individuals of indomitable spirit persisted, detailing the conclusion of my monument to horticultural trial. I remembered the dead properly, each memorialized in sporadic notations; each observed in the height of life and in the acme of vigor. My record, now and forever, details too the decline and demise of each individual, and of the unique struggles of each with the droughts and bracing winds of Kennett Square’s meteorological penury.
I rambled through the grounds of the trial in recent months, touched by the utter absence of cultivation. All the unworthy plants, those whose independence from culture could not be maintained, expired long ago. Their skeletons litter the field in the rows they were confined to. Occasionally I chance upon a set of fresh dug holes, also in neat rows. These voids mark the absence of a survivor – a specimen which has been paroled from the yard, given to a friend. Each has a new master and a new purpose. Having paid its debt to me, each individual is now laid to rest in a more permanent and hospitable landscape. In this way the field becomes holey ground, a hazard for sandaled feet and weak ankles. Soon my plough with erase all memory of the trials, blotting out my toil of years forever. All that is left to me is the data, the ghost which haunts with tales of seasonal variation and growth. It will be sufficient.
In a small town near Philadelphia I held a shrub trial of grand proportions. Or at least it started out that way. Fortune, for a shrub in my trial, was fickle, their most universal attribute being eventual death. My story is of the survivors, those hardy species which, though dealt the blows of capricious climate, were able to eke out a living under the vicissitudes of my premeditated culture. And all of this took place in that little town near Philadelphia, more known for the devourers of the dead[1] than horticulture village known as Kennett Square.
My intentions were admirable. Scientific progress would be made; the knowledge of mankind would be increased. The goal was simple – to determine the hardiness and ornamental performance of diverse shrubby plants. Hundreds were to be planted and observed, and manpower[2] was summoned. Into the deep my research subjects went, half-buried in the crumbly soil of an old cornfield, their verdant exterior at times muddied with that grime which makes agricultural livelihoods. ‘Twas no small task, my shovelbearers strained to thrust yet purer iron into the already iron-rich soil, pocking the ancient grounds with their implements. When all were planted, diverse species were arrayed in threes, huddled together, each with their own kind, each sharing the same future. As one entity the subjects of my noble experiment aspired to scientific relevance, and, unified, the toil of my project’s initiation was completed.
The subjects were watered in for the first year, I looked kindly on them in their youth. After this first year, however, my compassion dried up. The flush of youthful vigor which had flown into each tenant seemed a dim memory of a vibrant past, and the field now slowed in phenological pace, stepping in time with the rain and sun nature saw fit. The peaks of color now segregated and the species emerged from deliberate cultivation distinct in form and seasonal pace. I now traversed the meadow regularly, no longer searching for the pangs of transplant stress, but for the seasonal vapors of botanical attraction. Initially I noticed an abundance of brightness, but with each passing season the remnant, incrementally weaned of runts, developed a habitual seasonality and consistent genetic identity. What had been a vast plain brimming with diversity was now a desolate desert lodged with the carcasses reaped of my insufficient care. The sole survivors were cultivars of Japanese Meadowsweet, Spiraea japonica, which hid in the crepuscular shadows of overgrown weeds. Spiraea japonica, with the hubris of a woody perennial, stood unrivaled in a field of invasive annuals. Some sixty individuals of indomitable spirit persisted, detailing the conclusion of my monument to horticultural trial. I remembered the dead properly, each memorialized in sporadic notations; each observed in the height of life and in the acme of vigor. My record, now and forever, details too the decline and demise of each individual, and of the unique struggles of each with the droughts and bracing winds of Kennett Square’s meteorological penury.
I rambled through the grounds of the trial in recent months, touched by the utter absence of cultivation. All the unworthy plants, those whose independence from culture could not be maintained, expired long ago. Their skeletons litter the field in the rows they were confined to. Occasionally I chance upon a set of fresh dug holes, also in neat rows. These voids mark the absence of a survivor – a specimen which has been paroled from the yard, given to a friend. Each has a new master and a new purpose. Having paid its debt to me, each individual is now laid to rest in a more permanent and hospitable landscape. In this way the field becomes holey ground, a hazard for sandaled feet and weak ankles. Soon my plough with erase all memory of the trials, blotting out my toil of years forever. All that is left to me is the data, the ghost which haunts with tales of seasonal variation and growth. It will be sufficient.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Nov 11 - remember the dead
15,000,000 in WWI
60,000,000 in WW2
60,000,000 in WW2
10,000,000 in Korea
5,400,000 in Vietnam
100,000 in Gulf War
12,000 in Afghanistan
150,000 in Iraq
These are only wars America was involved in, and only since WWI.
Would these 90 million men, women, and children thank any veteran for being a part of their annihilation?
Let's think of scale. Take the nine last people you talked to.
For me, this is my fiancee, my two roomates (my friends for the past year), two of my fiancee's coworkers, my younger brother, my father, and two neighbors.
Now imagine you killed them. Some of them you shot, some of them you bombed, others you gassed.
Now, multiply that experience by a million. That's only a tenth of the anguish caused by a handful of world leaders who thought war was the best solution. That's a tenth of the destruction caused by the veterans who did their part helping the cause.
I'm not saying killing is never a good thing. I'm just saying that we see the tip of the iceberg on Veteran's Day. We see nice uniforms and manly faces, but no pile of corpses, each of which had a story and once meant the world to somebody.
If we could only regret death more than we celebrated killing.
5,400,000 in Vietnam
100,000 in Gulf War
12,000 in Afghanistan
150,000 in Iraq
These are only wars America was involved in, and only since WWI.
Would these 90 million men, women, and children thank any veteran for being a part of their annihilation?
Let's think of scale. Take the nine last people you talked to.
For me, this is my fiancee, my two roomates (my friends for the past year), two of my fiancee's coworkers, my younger brother, my father, and two neighbors.
Now imagine you killed them. Some of them you shot, some of them you bombed, others you gassed.
I'm not saying killing is never a good thing. I'm just saying that we see the tip of the iceberg on Veteran's Day. We see nice uniforms and manly faces, but no pile of corpses, each of which had a story and once meant the world to somebody.
If we could only regret death more than we celebrated killing.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Last days at Longwood
Cyprepedium at Mt. Cuba, 2011
Rhododendron calendulaceum, 2011
Liriodendron tulipifera, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Abstracts and Tessellations
Inspired by a blotter paper, 2005
Asymmetric tessellations, 2005
Stitch, of Lilo and Stitch, 2008
Abstract Texture inspired by Pyrite crystal patterning, 2005
Nude on Sofa, 2004
Study and rehash of Escher's Three Worlds, 2005
Square tessellationish, 2004
Triangle tessellationish, 2004
Misc art
Study of Clumsy, 2008
Cubist minute-portrait of my father, 2005
Line attack on the Girl with the Pearl Earring, 2006
My Grandmother's advice on drawing faces and ratios, 2004
Study of Hairy, 2008
Minimalist monochrome of a pretty face, also a study, 2008
Study of The Mercy Men cover, also a portrait of my brothers and I, 2008
Study of Touch, 2008
Emperor, 2004
Study of Kurt Vonnegut's "Three Faces", 2009
Abstract Art Portfolio
Triangle windmill, 2004
Doodle, 2004
Decreasing Tessellation, 2004
Tessellation, 2004
Tessellation to illustrate what a tessellation was, 2004 in Taiwan
Smoother decreasing tessellation, 2004
First tessellation, 2003
Nine-sided knot tessellation, 2003
Continuation of a triangle into a tessellation, 2003
Attempt at a color wheel without the necessary colors, 2004
Graph for dodecagonal tessellations, 2004
Tongue-wagger, 2004
Pretty Lady, 2004
Cartoon Dancer, 2006
Graph for three-sided knot puzzle piece tessellation, 2006
Graph for three-sided chessboard and tessellations, 2006
Knot tessellation, 2006
Two-type knot tessellation, 2006
Knot tessellation in matrix, 2006
Tessellation, 2006
Dichrome study, 2006
Triangle tessellation graph, 2005
Clashing colors, 2000
Mountains tessellation, 2006
Claw tessellation, 2006
Dove tessellation origin, 2006
Conception of a repeating block print tessellation, 2005
Missing pieces, 2002
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