When Symbols and Semantics Collide

8/6/17
Late Morning
Clear

Languages based on sound, like English, are pretty easy to denote. Whereas logographic/ideographic languages use symbols to represent objects or ideas, the symbols in languages like English represent sounds. This is convenient, as there are many more objects and ideas in the world than there are possible human mouth sounds, so we only have to memorize a handful of symbols to function.

Though linguists generally agree that the precise symbolism used in English is arbitrary (i.e. there is nothing of the letters in English meant to signify more than just sound), there are times where the symbolic representation of the word is surprisingly close to the referent of the word. A classic example of this is the word 'bed', in which the 'b' and the 'd' make up the headboard and footboard of the bed and the 'e' forms the cushioning.

This can happen in more subtle ways, too. Take the word 'through', for example. A pretty arbitrary mapping from symbols to meaning, if you ask me. But compare this to the word 'thorough', which is a mere letter difference from 'through'. If you imagine the meaning of 'through', you can picture an arrow going through an apple, a ghost passing through a body, wind blowing through branches, etc. All of these suggest some object (or continuous force) travelling beyond the permeable outside of some other object and travelling beyond to the other side. To illustrate this:

The word 'thorough' is semantically and visually more fleshed out, as though one took the word 'through' and stretched it from the first and last letter, popping an extra 'o' out. To do something thoroughly is to do it rigorously and completely. If an action is done to an object thoroughly, that object has been completely permeated, every facet acted upon; not simply a passing through. A diagrammatic representation could look as follows.

I wonder if the semantic-symbolic connection can carry further from this line of reasoning, perhaps growing in completeness with the word 'throughout'. Though there are many related words that are symbolically close to these words but would not semantically fit, like 'though' and 'trough'. The words 'thorough' and 'through' are etymologically related also, which could account for their similarity in meaning. Regardless, this is a pretty neat example of the consequence of arbitrary symbol-meaning mappings:  order where there shouldn't be.

Note:  I choose pretty narrow definitions of the subject words in this post. This is mostly done to illustrate my point, which is about as practical as the study of autological words. The self-reference is a bit different, though.

The Unsung Heroes of Media

6/18/17
Sunday
Noon
Too Hot

Generally speaking, one can determine the taste of a generation. Things like "Top XX Charts" for music or Academy Awards for TV shows and movies exist to help people understand the general consensus of the likes and dislikes in media of a certain group of people at a certain time.

Regarding this is the growing accessibility to creating new media. Platforms like Soundcloud and Bandcamp, and smaller electronic devices like the GoPro* and iPhone make picture-taking, video-shooting, and music-recording available almost literally at the push of a button. Because of this, there seems to be a surge in how much media is being created, as though the flood gates of creation have been swung open by the hands of technology. Even the stereotype of the Soundcloud rapper--a young teen trying to rap about his upper-middle class lifestyle through the medium of Garageband and Soundcloud--has formed from this generation of new creation.

One problem that can stem from this flood of new media is how it affects consumption. How could taste possibly be defined for a generation with this much new music in the clouds? Moreover, since new music is being created, genres are sonically propelling themselves further and further away from one another, thereby partitioning the music-listening population into more niche genres of music. In this way, there is no unifying "pop" sound.

One answer to this question is to say that there never was. Perhaps music was always this different, and people stuck to each other based on their taste, and there are different lineages of influence in genres that have persisted to today. Then, the explanation for the Balkanization of genre nowadays can be explained in the same way as how people have different tastes.

Another answer can be found, though. Consider the career of Herman Melville, American author famous for writing the seminal Moby Dick. Throughout his life, Melville only saw mild success; his writings did not sell very well. Even before his death in 1891, Melville witnessed the printing of his own books being halted in 1876 because of their disastrous sales. Despite all this, Melville is now considered one of the greatest authors of all time, having enormous influence on modern literature. What this means is that somebody (or some group of people) found Melville's Moby Dick somewhere along the way and decided that it was a good book. This person decided to read this book (which is not a trivial task) and decided to tell people about it. It is this kind of person that is the subject of this post.

The unsung hero of media is the finder, the active consumer. Especially in an age so saturated with media and information, we need these people to find the gems among the piles. The active consumer is what forms trends and tastes, independent of the influence of advertisement or radio endorsements. The band Neutral Milk Hotel, for instance, did not reach such critical acclaim until many years after the release of their sophomore album, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. Needless to say, there was no advertising uprising for the album or the band. Instead, it was the work of active consumers and critics actively listening to the forgotten, thus leaving us with an album that was definitive in the indie genre.

In media, we give much credit to the creator, and rightly so. The creators are the ones employing their knowledge and skill to produce something to enjoy, or at least something to think about. However, we mustn't forget the active consumer who shares and filters through the waves of new media. I end with this:  if an amazing song is released in the woods, but there are no people around to hear it, is the song amazing?



Note: As music is the form of media with which I am the most familiar, I will mostly discuss the state of the music industry (if it can be even called such). I am fairly certain many of the topics I will touch upon apply to other forms of media, such as film, photography, even writing. Hell, I'm writing an amateur blog on a Google-endorsed, free platform.

*The GoPro can almost be considered obsolete at this point, but that should only further illustrate the acceleration of technology.

How Martha Copeland's "Second-Hand Daddy" Is Like Jam On Toast

6/16/17

Friday

Night/Early Morning

Hazy

In a lot of ways, the song "Second-Hand Daddy" by Martha Copeland (and, in similar ways, any song) is like toast with jam spread on it.

First, notice that the song can be split into instruments and voice. The background instruments, namely the bass and the piano, make up the piece of toast. These parts of the song are very fundamental. Both the bass and the piano do almost all the keeping of the rhythm of the song, and the notes of the bass and the piano establish the key and chords played throughout the song. Even more illustrative of how much of a foundation these background aspects are is the style the instrumentalists themselves are playing:  the classic blues style, twelve-bar blues, is a very fundamental concept of all modern music:  jazz, rock, pop, all influenced from blues. However, on their own--*even with the flowery flourishes of the piano in the background--the bass and piano feel bare. A dry piece of toast.

It is in Copeland's voice that we find the juice of the song. Her voice really floats above the more repetitive, mechanical motions of the instruments. Disregarding even the lyrics, one can note the way her voice slides between notes and creates a single, smooth, glassy melody. The higher ranges of her voice are like the tangs we experience from, perhaps, a tart blackberry jam. The seeds really get stuck in your teeth, and you feel your tongue futilely trying to fetch them out from between your gums. The jam really adds a great flavor, and that flavor is balanced with the dry, but structural, piece of toast beneath.

It is noteworthy that the jam and the toast are both pieces of human creation, like all music. Regardless, when you bite through that sweet and tangy jam into some crusty bread, it is quite the experience. Give this song a listen.

*I have noticed--even when I find it on Google and copy-paste the little bugger of a symbol--that the em dash does not display on Blogspot. This is unfortunate for me, as the em dash is one of the more elegant forms of punctuation, but I suppose the double hyphen will work for the time being. Perhaps I will send Blogspot an email.

Different Senses of "Axiom"

6/16/17
Friday
Late Morning
Clear and Bright

There are, at least, two definitions of the word "axiom."

In one sense, a set of axioms is a set of fundamental truths of a logical system. More broadly, humans try to use axioms to describe the natural world, as though axioms are laws of nature. If we find a certain phenomenon in nature, we should be able to trace it back to the basic axioms to find an explanation for why this thing happened.

The Ancient Greeks thought of an axiom as a self-evident truth of the world. Indeed, Jean Piaget's theory of development of mind indicates that at a very young age, children have and develop strong intuitions about nature, such as object permanence and contact between objects. Eventually, this definition of axiom brought us to Euclid's geometry, the postulates of which are all fairly easy to grasp with one's intuition.

The scary part is trying to understand that these two concepts of axioms are different. Perhaps what we perceive to be true is different from the truths of the physical world. Consider the case with the well-worn, but classic paradox:  what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? "It must be impossible," cries the human. "The unstoppable force cannot be stopped by the object, as it is unstoppable. However, the immovable object cannot be budged by the force, as it is immovable. Nonsense!" The solution to this paradox is so puzzling to us because it contradicts our basic assumptions. We know* that objects cannot pass through each other. Nevertheless, within the constraints of the problem, the only way these objects can continue to obey their inherent descriptions is by passing right through one another.

Another example of this disconnect is Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. Kurt Godel proved** that, if there is any sufficiently strong system of logic (specifically a consistent arithmetic), then there is always a way to deduce a theorem that is true, but cannot be proven. That is, there are true statements in the universe that we cannot show to be true from our basic assumptions. Of course, we can take these new unprovable true statements as new axioms, and any unprovable truth we find can be added to the list, but that probably fails to capture the self-evident aspect of an axiom; also, who thinks the consistency of arithmetic is intuitive anyway?

Maybe we'll never know the entire truth of the universe. Maybe that's a good thing.


*Or at least, this belief is as deeply ingrained in us as knowledge.

**Of course, a human-made proof is a shaky concept if human intuition fails to capture universal truths.

The Common Use of "Filter"

6/15/17
Thursday
Early Morning
Serene

There is a certain use of the word filter that must have been introduced to our vocabulary in the very recent past. Clarendon, Gingham, Moon, Lark, Reyes–these are just a few examples of what we call a filter. We use filters to alter the color or contrast of a photograph we have taken, and thus we can evoke a certain aesthetic or feel from a picture when we post it on social media. This is a relatively recent invention.

The original use of the noun filter is straightforward:  an object that filters. We of course define the verb to filter as to remove excess or unwanted material, to purify. This modern sense of filter as an additional aesthetic change to a photograph is influenced from the noun form of filter. We attach a filter to an object to add a filtering capability to a device. We add a coffee filter to a coffee maker so we don't have grounds in our coffee. We add water filters to sinks so we can drink clean water straight from the tap. In the same sense, we add Snapchat filters to our pictures so we can have a nicer looking image–a cute dog overlay, for instance.

Nevertheless, there is a sense in which the adoption of the word filter to this modern meaning is precisely opposite. To filter means to remove excess. However, a Snapchat filter (or Instagram filter, etc.) adds vanity, adds extra fluff to an image before sending it. These are precise antonyms:  a removal versus an addition.

Perhaps we should use a more technically informed word for the concept of filter. Perhaps "alteration" or "enhancement"?


Note: above, italics are used to indicate reference to the usage of the word, not the meaning of the word

Anti-Anti-Vapes

6/10/17
Saturday
Night
Dark

I hate the hateful culture that surrounds vapes. People who vape are criticized heavily, stereotyped to be douche-bags and posers. It must be said that society's* anti-vape tendencies are justified, or at least have reasons. Taking a look back at the history of tobacco consumption, cigarettes were (are) cool because they signified a sort of nonchalance. Cigars are associated with corporate fat cats sitting on big office chairs, puffing away at their cigar, laughing at they piles of money. On the other hand, cigarettes are less pretentious, the working man's source of pleasure. Of course, cigarettes have been portrayed as cool and sexy in media since the early 20th century.

Cigarettes even have their place in modern media. Now, it is common knowledge that cigarettes are carcinogenic, and that has certainly put a damper on their coolness. The perception of cigarette-smoking has changed accordingly, showing a lack of care for even one's own life. One of the more prominent figures in modern cigarette smoking is Mac Demarco, shown pictured with cigarettes falling from the sky or smoking cigarette after cigarette in casual interviews.

Nevertheless, cigarettes are destructive. Those who vape should not be seen as wimpy or fake, but rather as a people who choose the safer option.** The stigmatization of vapes is akin to peer pressure:  "you're not cool for doing this safe thing, you should be doing this more dangerous thing!" Expressly, we should not stigmatize safety. We vapers are simply choosing the better alternative. Besides, nicotine feels fucking awesome.

*"society" ugh c'mon.

**To be fair, the safer option hasn't historically been seen as cool. Regardless, my argument still holds for practical purposes.

Series and Their Philosophical Significance

6/4/2017
Sunday
Sundown
Sunny

A series is the sum of an infinitely long list of numbers. The most classic example is presented as a paradox attributed to Zeno of Elea:  how can one travel across a room when first one must travel halfway across the room, but before that one must travel half-of-halfway across the room, but before that one must travel half-of-half-of-halfway across the room, and so on? Expressed mathematically, this question asks:  what is the sum of the reciprocals of the powers of two?

A brief study of series reveals that there are two kinds of series, convergent and divergent. A convergent series has an actual value. For example, Archimedes answered Zeno's paradox in 212 BC by finding a value to the sum of the reciprocals of powers of two; namely, the series sums to one (this, of course, reflects the fact that one can indeed walk the length of the entire room). A divergent series does not have a real value, and thus blows up to infinity or negative infinity. An example is the series whose terms are all one, as adding one an infinite number of times will yield infinity*.

The aspect of philosophical significance is the following:  although a divergent series does not have a limit that exists, the divergent series itself does. This mathematical object, a sum of infinitely many elements, exists and can be reasoned about regardless of the existence of its totality. This has the implication that something can exist in terms of its constituents (in the example of a series, a series can exist contingent on the existence of its summands) but taken as a whole, that thing might not exist. God, for instance, in all of His power, might not exist, but perhaps the elements of God do – love, knowledge, goodness.


For further reading:  Zeno's other paradoxes (Achilles and the Tortoise), Riemann Hypothesis, the length of my dick (the series given by measuring the length of my dick is divergent (IF YA KNOW WHAT I MEAN))

*I feel like this sentence is the equivalent of saying something "equals infinity" which is technically problematic, but for lack of better phrasing I'll leave it.

Prototype Albums

4/27/2017
Thursday
Afternoon
Windy

It is well-known that Radiohead's fifth album Amnesiac is a collection of "you weren't good enough" songs from the album Kid A. This puts Amnesiac in a unique situation; when listening to this album, one sees the scratch-work of Kid A, the early drafts. In this way, Amnesiac allows us to learn more about Kid A, one of the greatest albums of the early 2000s.

Something to note is that both albums have the same song, Morning Bell (called Morning Bell/Amnesiac on Amnesiac), one being an older version of the other. The main difference between the versions of the songs is that the song on Amnesiac is in standard time signature, 4/4, while the version on Kid A is in 5/4. I think this is a testament to how Radiohead writes songs. Instead of coming up with the technical aspects of the song, like the time signature, they focus more on the general feeling the song is supposed to elicit; in the case of Morning Bell, futuristic, soft, ghostly.

Why I and you should be taking a poli sci class.

4/13/2017
Thursday
Dusk
Cloudy with a chance of rain

Today in my Poli sci class we had a discussion about Locke that gradually shifted to a conversation about our(the United States) political system. Within the time I spent answering questions and discussing with my the class I had my own internal dilemma about whether or not I wanted to stay in the class.

The answer I came up with was no but I have to tough it out. Most college student reading this (s/o to Nathan probably the only one) might think I am doing this because Poli sci would be the least painful GE, but that would be wrong. I already have the requirements for that section filled; however what I don't have is my requirement to know how and why my government works. You might delude  yourselves with the knowledge from your AP government classes taken in High School, but that's not enough. Most of you probably didn't pay attention half the time and for the time you did how much of it do you remember. All I am saying is that for centuries the greatest change a country could go through would be when the young people educated themselves on Politics and then got involved. Getting an education on our system no matter how faulty or stupid is the first step to changing it.

So that's my rant on why you should at least take a class or two on politics.

(Praise) The Sun

3/23/2017
Thursday
Early Morning
Beautiful

I stood in the sitting area on the bluff by the beach, the one that faces the Sun. It was 6:30 AM, roughly, when two of my fellow students came shivering into the area. They proceeded to document their expedition, taking Snapchats of the sky when the Sun's not even up. Then, they leave, never seeing the sunrise.

Of course, I wonder if this is another marker of the shorter attention spans caused by the heightened use of social media, a facet of instant gratification.

The sunrise was fucking beautiful, by the way. As the Sun rose higher behind the horizon, clouds farther ahead of me were already hit by the sunlight, and it made the edges of the clouds glow like gold. The sky grew more and more orange. In many ways, the sunrise was like a good classical song, or a good handjob: a lot of build-up, so much that when the end is finally reached, the feeling is incredible. And indeed, when that bright, golden sliver peaked above the horizon, it felt holy.

Bonus question to the reader: though I'm somewhat criticizing the masturbatory nature of social media, how masturbatory is it to post the same experience on a blogging website, which is a form of social media?

Nothing is Clear-Cut (e.g. Math)

3/20/2017
Monday
Afternoon
Partly Cloudy, but Chilling

Of course, nothing is clear-cut. Nothing fits nicely into boxes/categories/sets we create for them, but rather things are blurry, multifaceted, and they fall into many different groups. Here is a specific example related to, you guessed it, math.

Consider the fact that the derivatives of the sum of two functions is the sum of the derivatives of the composite functions. Stated a bit more symbolically, given two differentiable functions f and g, we see

(f+g)'(x)=f'(x)+g'(x).

A high-school calculus student would see this and recognize "a-ha! this is the Sum Rule!" On, say, the AP Calculus AB exam, this would be sufficient reasoning behind this fact; it was dictated in the class, and the students have memorized it, either through brute force or through much practice of finding derivatives of functions.

Of course, there is different justification for this fact from different mathematical perspectives. For example, consider Real Analysis:  calculus' rigorous, proof-based older brother. A mathematical analyst will tell you "well, the definition of the derivative is given by a limit, and since we can add limits, we can add derivatives." Moreover, the analyst could relate these limits back to sequences, and reason that the Sum Rule follows from the arithmetic of limits of functions, which follows from the arithmetic of limits of sequences.

From another perspective, consider Linear Algebra. A linear algebraist would tell you that the set of real-valued, differentiable functions form a vector space with the operations of function addition and multiplication of real numbers. Therefore, such a mathematician would say that the Sum Rule follows from the fact that the vector space of differentiable functions is closed under addition.

This is something about math that I like; you learn one thing, and it pops up everywhere, in a bunch of different fields of math. I suppose this tells us that math is less like a library, each field belonging to a bookshelf, each bookshelf containing an exhaustive list of the ideas in the field. Rather, math is like a swamp, where concepts lurk beneath the fields we've constructed.

Think different. Think DASANI.

Underrated Snack

3/7/17
Tuesday Night
Temperate, Windy

There's a lot of value in the concept of chips and dips. Some classic, popular examples are tortilla chips and salsa and pita chips and hummus. Such snacks require no heating, but just putting two different things (chips and dip) in two different bowls, and eating the dry substantial bit (chips) with a flavorful wetness (dip).

Yet, people forget their god damn roots. The simplest of all of these is right in front of us, the most basic of all chips-and-dip variants: bread and olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Dry, spongy bread soaked in savory oil and tangy vinegar is a simple staple, and should be enjoyed in larger variety. We, as a people, need to open our eyes to simplicity. We need to open our eyes to bread, olive oil, and vinegar.

On Seemingly Arbitrary Changes, namely in the Classroom

2/9/17
Thursday
Around noon
Foggy

One of the things that I have been hearing in classrooms and lectures a lot recently is "easing the monotony." For example, my Intro to Real Analysis professor will often ask the class, "What should I name this variable this time?" Or Sal Khan, in one of his Khan Academy videos, will switch up the colors he uses when he is demonstrating a mathematical concept, switching from magenta to teal, for instance.

On the surface, these changes seem arbitrary or inconsequential. That is, in what way are these tiny changes affecting the absorption of the course material? These variables could be named anything (within reason, of course) and the color of the pen could be any color, and one would think that the material would be unchanged. There is a tangible purpose to this, though: breaking the cycle. We all adhere to some sort of routine day after day; as Douglas Coupland once wrote, "Most people can't handle an unstructured life." Such a routine can make one feel trapped, fixed in a treadmill, or a hamster wheel, repeating a structure day by day, mindlessly functioning, robotic. Yet, an important part of the human experience is choice*. Freedom. We should be able to do whatever we want! We should be able to brush our teeth with our left hand instead of our right, we should be able to have a Mocha this morning instead of an Americano, and we should surely be able to name the limit of a function "D" instead of the conventional "L." These arbitrary changes are not useless, but rather expressions of our freedoms as conscious people. Sal Khan and Prof. Zimmerman understand this, and and they choose to break the dreary cycle of monotony with which mathematics is often associated. Sal and Birge, I thank you. And God fucking Bless America.

*The illusion thereof, at least.

Ay oh weh

1/18/17

Wednesday 

2:33pm

Rainy

Today I tuned into the number one Super Smash Brothers Melee player's (Armada's) Twitch stream, and he was doing his number-one player stuff and I was enjoying it. Then he left the stream and when he came back he began talking about how he turned the heat up too high in the house and that he was bad with the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius. I thought that was really interesting, because I have never imagined a European person struggling to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, only vice versa, and I think this is just a cool comment on how much more isolated we are even with magical things like Twitch. Thanks for reading!

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