Upswinging It

[paulhope]

Back on my feet today.

Today I was woken up in just about the best way possible. And from then on, everything's been coming up me--largely because the new perspective makes me see the bright spots of the past few days as so much brighter.

• I got an email today telling me that I've been hired to TA CS141 (Introduction to Artificial Intelligence) next semester. A new professor is taking over the class and, somehow, he got the message that he had to be the catalyst of the revolution against the old syllabus, which revolved around a Swedish Trading Agent Competition project which was rife with problems and universally disliked by everyone who's taken the class. This means that TAing will be a great opportunity to get my fingers dirty with a lot of machine learning stuff I've been only thinking about. And it should be sweet.
  
  Also, it means that for another semester I get to be the rogue non-member of the CS department. While I sometimes feel the burn for not actually knowing how to program, it's important to me to keep plugged into that community, even if it is just as important to me that I'm keeping distance from it.
  
  To my pleasant surprise, the Aristides Connection is on the TA team with me, which should be excellent--although the fact that I didn't know he had applied accentuates how we've fallen a bit out of touch, a fact I had not been attending to before. It's interesting (although a bit dismaying)--and wrapped up with a lot of relevant but complex business (in the sense of "none of mine") and non-business that it would be inappropriate to get into.


• But speaking of all that business, I'm still patting myself on the back for doing a good deed the other day.
  
  Huh. This won't make any sense, but in considering and retyping what I was going to say right here, I just realized something a little disturbing. Right now, at least, I'm having trouble of thinking of the world in terms of action and substance. Has my world view (or at least the one I'm using right now abstracted so much into simply information and communication? Is that a problem?
  
  I say this because the good dead was communication--of an encouraging word at an appropriate time, I guess--and I was happy that I had been able to perform a compassionate act. But it wasn't an action in any concrete sense. Just the transmission of information. And my own happiness and unhappiness lately have been in a similar frame.
  
  As I right this, my eyes are glued to the text unfolding before my eyes. My awareness of my hands battering away at my keyboard is only peripheral. I try to shift my attention to them, but they slip away. It's only ideas here. These are some clouds to have my head shoved in, eh?
  
  But getting back to the point: aside from its contribution to the rebuilding of my pride (as disgusting as it is--I know, it disgusts me too. But how can you live without it? Please forgive me...know that I don't congratulate myself ever without scoffing at my vanity in the same breath, really), I was fascinated by the reaction to it: an outpouring of emotion, with some of the richest cliche's of romantic thought, although heavily stylized by the literary tendencies of the writer.
  
  And my reaction to the reaction? Confused. I used the word "cliche" above and it's true, but I don't mean that in a derogatory way, since the very day before I had spilled my guts on this journal is affected crapular style that I don't dare reread because I know that from this position it all looks so...I don't know...unnecessary. But no! Cliche's are there for a reason--I see them now. It's not a bending of a diversity of raw emotion into a mold. It's just the repeated expression of the same quality of emotion experienced by many people. Of course.
  
  So I can't really laugh at it all any more--it's all too real. Except maybe--yes. The most comfortable position for me, and one that I think maintains itself even during my own personal distress, despite the complications that causes, is one of Horacian satire--
  
  'Sunt quibus in satura videar nimis acer et ultra
  legem tendere opus; sine nervis altera quidquid
  conposui pars esse putat similisque meorum
  mille die versus deduci posse. Trebati,
  quid faciam? praescribe.' 'quiescas.' 'ne faciam, inquis,
  omnino versus?' 'aio.' 'peream male, si non
  optimum erat; verum nequeo dormire.'


• Other neat news, without the pretentious Latin: Remember Invented Usage? Cristi and Scott invited me to be a writer for it, along with some other people, largely because they didn't think they could keep the pace up themselves. It's funny, since it's a language--linguistics and theory of--and poetry blog with some pomo, and my comments have tended to be "from the right"--pro-science over social construction; for something like the objectivity of truth over a softer, contextualized view; for the centrality of an individual's thought over the centrality of a community's language. I don't know jack about poetry. Last summer there was a long period where I was the token stirrer-of-controversy, and as the primary writers of the blog they had the angle and prerogative to come out victorious for the public, but I had a hard time letting the point go. Now, I suppose, I can be comfortable in my status as permanent recurring villain. Maybe in the dramatic season finales, I'll be allowed to gain the upper hand. (Contrast this with the -ive-ournal philosophy communities, where I get the impression that I'm coming "from the left"--with a half-baked theory of justification that promises to be just a little too loose if I can every articulate it. However, it's probably more accurate to say that on those communities I'm more often coming from a position of naivete.)
  
  Sometime I'll write my first post--I plan to enter like a cross between a smack-talking freestyle rapper and a pro wrestler, then bust out cognitive science research of concepts in order to take on "vagueness" and demonstrate why it's not a big deal at all.
  
  Of course, that writing--and this writing--is not so wise since I am
  
• screwed for finals
  
• but I'd rather not think about that since I want to express reservations about being part of a revolution I didn't start. What? Nevermind.
  
  One day, I'll form an awesome for-the-greater-public blog in my own image.


• I mean, other than this one, for the Diplomacy game, which is rolling right a long and will also, no doubt, make me suck at finals. However, it is just as rewarding as I expected it to be, and just as fascinating. The first turn was a little sleepy as some of the 57(!) teams didn't seem to be emotionally on-board. But I think that will pick up as the slower (less dense) parts of the map start having more conflicts and more supply center turnover.


• Charles Sanders Peirce is my new favorite-philosopher-by-whom-I've-never-read-anything. I have a hunch that I've mentioned him before on this journal, but I don't think I've announced that he's officially replaced Karl Popper. More on him later.


• Finally, Katie is awesome. She's the real source behind my ups and downs these days, but I wouldn't have it any other way.