Erectlocution

We begin as pulses of electricity.

2011-06-06T00:00:00-07:00

Patterns develop. Stimuli arriving in near-simultaneity become linked structurally. Impressions are formed, impressions in the physical structure of the brain, affecting the strength and reach of signal passage. The brain grows in sophistication, in connectedness. Basic if not simple functions, those coded for in DNA, are used as the building blocks of yet higher connections and functions. We bend the brain's capacity to detect visual features, like vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines, into the ability to recognize a chair or a face. We feel pain, associate it with the visual and spatial attributes of the stovetop, and learn to avoid it with our fingers.

On December 12, 2010, I graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in mathematics.

2011-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

I'm still trying to figure out what I think about that. I started in February of 1998, studying physics at [Miami University (Ohio)](http://muohio.edu), and soon after decided that I might as well pursue a dual math/physics major. Some years later, logistical practicality prevailed, and I chose to study only mathematics. I'm still skeptical that I ever did.

People and me, we're a hot and cold thing.

2009-08-05T00:00:00-07:00

I get lost in a flesh-colored sea of mundanity, and feel powerless by virtue of membership. I may be awed by a feat of community, only to be horrified by the quickness of depravity. Hot and cold. Hidden somewhere in my DNA is whatever code whose execution makes me need community. I don't pretend to understand it, and I'm nearing the end of my too-cool aloofness toward the idea of sharing my concern with others, even putting theirs above mine. Each time I roll my eyes at Christian goodness expressed as a bumper sticker, I'm hoping someone sees it. I want to share my weak outrage, cleverly if possible.

Who knows what lies in the hearts of men?

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

The Shadow knows; and you don't want to. Conspicuous monsters aren't monsters. They're neighbors. This is why we still delight in dirty jokes; we all know their subtext, and can often predict their punchlines. We need these contexts, these distorting frames of awareness, to make sense of the world. We know we won't achieve parity of understanding and reality; our hypotheses will always need refinement. We accept that all our knowledge is approximation, and *need* it to be so.

Even with a balanced coin, it's no mean feat to make sense of the world.

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

It's quite daunting to have only yourself to rely upon for guidance toward purpose. It doesn't follow, however, that the truth need not be dire. Invoking fruitlessness or direness as illustrations or proof of absurdity would seem relevant only if we take as given a need for life, a purpose in it other than as a means to excrete and feed other life by dying. That effectively cuts to the heart of the issue, and begs the question of whether or not humanity exists to serve a designed purpose.

There's an invisible hand beyond economics.

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

Two superficially unrelated blog posts caught the same glint in my eye. Herewith my earnest and hopefully readable attempt to create value by shredding their contexts.

The tailbone's connected to the funny bone.

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

It's not just our hubris, but our ignorance thereof, that damns us.

Some folks deified George Carlin, which I find wholly ironic.

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

Carlin died in June of 2008, at the age of 71. It's hard to estimate Carlin's value in the Western culture; his "Seven Words are bit less immodest today, and no matter his one-time popularity, their deflation is not significantly his doing.

I need help, and I need to help.

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

Of all our social memes, I suggest that the greatest compels some to describe helpful normative domains, and compels others to seek these out.

Let me put you in your place.

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

I sometimes run into a VP who comports himself with all the delicacy of a Khanian pillager. He sits in our corporate mythos as the God of Tactless Condescension. He wears gruffness like it was tailor-fit. He is, in short, an asshole.

Is incalculability a defense for ignorance?

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

We talk a good deal about pragmatism. It's as if being pragmatic sidesteps more difficult issues. Some might say, "Don't try to be right. Just try to be right enough, right now." I understand this. Trying to consider every configuration of choices yields the same sort of error your calculator returns when you divide anything by zero. There are too many.

I read Atlas Shrugged over the course of about a year.

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

Yes, a year; maybe more. I wrote an essay in the in an effort to earn/win cash for school. Alas, my piece was dumped with the rest of the slush pile, not quite cutting the muster. In the two years since, I've encountered almost unanimously antipathy for Rand's novel, of which more later. Here, though, the essay, mostly untouched.

Does prayer beget opposable thumbs?

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

I found this in [a discussion about the study in the Galilean Library](http://academy.galilean-library.org/showthread.php?t=6693), which is a wonderful resource for thoughtful, and almost more importantly, civil discussion across the philosophical spectrum. I added a (typically long-winded) point of consideration, summarized by saying that, as much as "God" might just be a label for the collection of "all things we think we don't know, or which are currently ineffable and beyond our scrutiny," then any such study, however expensive, really aims to investigate just one in a class of cultural metaphors, models, for things we want to understand.

I wax quixotically for giants.

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

I've seen, from atop a mountain, a storm pass slowly, deliberately over a valley below. I've seen storms dutifully cleanse a land scarred by industry. I've seen storms rip trees from the ground and casually discard them in the path of industry. I've seen storms compel the tide to crash ashore, pushing salty foam through 15 feet of porous rock, spouting from the top like from a craggy, volcanic whale.

I'm afraid to write. I'm afraid to sketch. I'm afraid to math. Sometimes, I'm afraid to put on a shirt.

2009-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

I sweat a little in the intimidating glare of a blank canvas of any material, e.g., canvas, paper, LCD, blackboard. Each new stroke, each new keypress, seems only to gather me closer to the most imminent and unavoidable failure. I would not have honestly written that in 1989, when I claimed I would write my own exhaustive dictionary of the universe. Somewhere in the interim, I came to join this fear as a daily companion. Think *[The Last Unicorn](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084237/)*, who—upon learning of regret—slowly loses her magic. Except my case might be so common as to be archetypical.

Amen

2009-07-16T00:00:00-07:00

I'm rather depressed these days. It's been years since anything I've done has turned out successfully -- with a few rare exceptions -- and I'm falling into the thing which afflicted you a couple of years ago -- a failure of the will, shall we say. My ambitions seem far beyond my talents, and light-years beyond the vicissitudes of my character, and I think of this enormous novel I'm now starting, which could well take ten years, and if done properly, it must be unpublishable except in green-backed French "dirty" editions, and I'll be middle-aged when it's done, and somehow I just don't believe in myself the way I used to, and indeed, worst of all, it doesn't even seem terribly important. I'm beginning to have the tolerance of the defeated -- people I would have despised a few years ago now seem bearable -- after all, I say to myself, I haven't done very well with all the luck I had, and perhaps I do wrong to judge them.