Blog: Articles filed under me

Hello September. I have missed you. You might be my favourite among all months, but don’t tell the others. And no, it’s not because my birthday is in September (although that helps). Nor is it because September signals the start of fall television, with new episodes of Castle, Chuck, House, Stargate Universe, etc. More than any other month, even that notorious January, September is a month of changes and new beginnings. For those of us biased in our perceptions by our position in the northern hemisphere, summer will soon be a memory; the leaves will change colour; and I’ll be back in school, where I belong.

I spent this summer doing research and quite enjoyed it. We didn’t make as much progress toward a solution as I had hoped, but I learned a lot, both about mathematics and research in general. I’m comfortable using LaTeX (which is sexy) and have had some experience with Macaulay2 (also pretty hot). I even went to a conference, something that surprised me.

With my research finished, I have these two weeks off before school begins on September 13. Next week I return to work at the art gallery. I don’t look forward to returning to the job that much; my relative solitude of this summer has left me even less eager to interact with people in a customer-service-based position. But I do miss my coworkers, my fellow front desk attendants, so I look forward to returning to them.

I anticipate another great year of school as well. This is my honours year for my math degree, and the Honours Seminar will consist of a sort of research-based project supervised by a prof. We’ll have to write a math paper and give a talk. This is a nice departure from lecture-based courses (I don’t much care for lectures); also, having done research, read papers, and written up results for the past four months, I feel somewhat prepared.

And with summer endings and fall beginnings come changes. My site last had a major redesign over two years ago. I’m still happy with the design in general; however, there have always been certain rough edges I wanted to correct. Now I‘ve done so. A few weeks ago, I rolled out tweaks to the design and significant changes to the backend.

I’ve reorganized the content on the home page. It’s my portal on the Web, something that lets people access my content whether it’s on this site or elsewhere. I‘ve tried to lay it out so that everything is on offer.

You’ll also notice that I have a new background image. Now that is definitely tea. The other image was tea, but ambiguously so, and the berries were an odd addition—it was a very Christmas-like cup of tea. It was the best photo I could find at the time. This new photo is exactly what I envisioned when I originally decided to use a cup of tea as my background image, and I‘m very happy with it.

For a long time, the only real content on this site has been my blog and the About section. Everything else consists of links and a little aggregated content. I have plans to change that soon and add more pages dedicated to original content (or specific aggregated content). For example, you’ll notice that my home page no longer displays my most recent book review from Goodreads. I want to keep my home page compact, and you can easily access my 15 most recent reviews from the books on the sidebar. Instead, I intend to create a new section of the site devoted to my reading habits—not just reviews, but top 10 lists, statistics, etc.

This sort of flexibility is thanks to the new backend. I’ve finally gone over to the dark side and started using a CMS—but not just any CMS. It’s Symphony, an XSLT-based CMS that is both minimalist and developer-friendly. The custom-coded backend I was using was rubbish, and I don’t need anything as powerful as an entire framework. Symphony is exactly what I need, and I highly recommend it.

Hello, my name is Ben, and I am a genre snob. Or at least I was. I‘m trying to quit, but as fellow genre snobs can attest, it is not easy to surrender culturally-inculcated notions of genre and embrace a more nuanced approach. Still, I need to try. For the children!

This week I read Amanda Scott’s Tempted by a Warrior, which I won in a Goodreads giveaway. Had I paid more attention when entering the giveaway, I would have noticed that the book is historical romance, not merely historical fiction, and passed. I didn’t notice, however, and I won the book. As I prepared to write my review, I discussed the book with a friend—who, as it happens, reviews paranormal, romance, and even paranormal romance¹ for one of those review sites to whom publishers send books with the eager trepidation marketing people perfect after too many years in college.

I opened the conversation by quoting one of the sex scenes in the book:

Me: There is a list of words that automatically ruin sex scenes for me, and “tempestuous” is one of them.
Her: I can’t imagine why.
Me: Aside from that, this book isn’t that bad.
Her: “Turgid” tops my version of that list.
Me: Yes. And “tumescent.” Lots of T words, eh? “Throbbing” and “pulsating” don’t help either. Sometimes I can tolerate “throbbing”, but if any part of your body is “pulsating,” you should seek medical attention.

To be fair, the sex scenes aren’t actually that bad. There’s two of them, and aside from triggering my list with “tempestuous,” they are tasteful.

Oh, and this was before my friend realized which book I was reading:

Her: Are you reading that romance?
Me: Yes… . I‘m trying to parse everything now and make sure my reactions aren’t biased by the fact that this is romance. The rational part of me knows that there is nothing wrong with “romance” in general, just as there is nothing wrong with “science fiction” in general … but the irrational part of me insists this is not the case.
Me: Maybe it’s just fluff fiction I dislike, regardless of genre.

Sadly, this is wishful thinking, and I know it. Romance is the genre, for me, that belies my claim to be genre-neutral. I am sensitive to genre snobbery, because as a lover of science fiction, I dislike it when anyone shuns science fiction based on a claim that it is not “real literature.” But the moment somebody pulls out a romance, I recoil, and my prejudice rears its ugly head. I‘m worse than a genre snob: I’m a genre bigot!

And then my friend blew the discussion wide open by dropping the elephant in the room:²

Her: Remember, you have to review it as a romance.

Boom, suddenly my mind bifurcates. One Ben (we’ll call him Genre Ben) agrees with this proposition. The other Ben (we’ll call him Agnostic Ben) rejects it. A single sentence summarizes my internal conflict over how I write reviews and how I perceive books in general. It doesn’t help that I read a book about art criticism last week, so the subject is fresh in my mind.

Looking through my reviews, Genre Ben has left his fingerprints everywhere. Of thrillers, Genre Ben writes, “I don’t pretend to hold thrillers to the same standards as great works of art” (from this review). Even worse, when reviewing another romance, Genre Ben comes right out and says, “It’s unfair for me to expect this book to rise above its genre.” Right there, an implication that romance is somehow inferior. Oh, I am ashamed of you, Genre Ben.

The problems with genre are myriad. How does one define a genre? Who decides which genre—or genres, since a book can be more than one—a book inhabits: the author, the publisher, bookstores, the reader? I agree that as a naive labelling tool, genre is useful. For the purposes of criticism, however, Genre Ben makes me uncomfortable.

Agnostic Ben snickers, feeling victory is close at hand. Not so, for he does not hold the high ground. I happen to agree with Ursula K. Le Guin, who laments that she cannot review The Year of the Flood as science fiction. Le Guin respects Margaret Atwood’s desire not to be

… relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers, and prize-awarders. She doesn’t want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto.

Who can blame her? I feel obliged to respect her wish, although it forces me, too, into a false position. I could talk about her new book more freely, more truly, if I could talk about it as what it is, using the lively vocabulary of modern science-fiction criticism, giving it the praise it deserves as a work of unusual cautionary imagination and satirical invention. As it is, I must restrict myself to the vocabulary and expectations suitable to a realistic novel, even if forced by those limitations into a less favourable stance.

Le Guin’s point resonates with me, with both Genre Ben and Agnostic Ben. After all, genre influences our expectations. As Genre Ben observes in that earlier romance review, we expect westerns to have horses, outlaws, and guns; we expect science fiction to be filled with difference, whether it’s spaceships or robots. If the author insists her novel is not science fiction, then fine: it’s not science fiction, so all of this unrealistic language must be interpreted without the benefit of the science-fictional lens.

So at this point in my conversation with my friend, Agnostic Ben decides to move the marker:

Me: I only disagree in part. I agree that our conception of genre influences how we perceive a book, and that in turn affects how we write a review. Where I disagree is the premise that genre somehow alters the merits a book must have in order to judge its quality.

In other words, Agnostic Ben’s platform is that we should not condemn a book because it claims membership in a particular genre. My friend had none of it, however:

Her: It’s our job as reviewers to appraise whether or not the book meets the expectations of the genre … and to have a firm enough grasp of the intricacies and indiosyncrasies of each genre and subgenre to judge them as such.

Well said! I did not have an adequate response for this, and so I unfairly segued into an epistemological attack on the concept of genre, and a confession of my own insecurities on this entire issue.

In particular, I examined the fact that books often belong to more than one genre: the book that started this whole debate, Tempted by a Warrior, is historical romance. But is it really two genres—historical fiction and romance? Or is historical romance a subgenre of romance, much as, say, cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction? Or maybe the book is romance, and its setting is historical.

Sometimes when the debate over what constitutes science fiction comes up, I opine that science fiction itself is merely a setting rather than a genre proper. It makes sense, after a fashion. There are many different types of science-fiction stories: action-adventure, comedy, tragedy, even romance—the good old, classic genres, right? Science-fiction books belong to many different genres, sharing only the backgroup of a science-fictional setting in common.

I‘m not entirely comfortable with this argument. It does not seem to address the fundamental point both Le Guin and my friend are trying to make, the role of genre in a reader’s (or reviewer‘s) expectations and criticism. All I’ve done is relabel “genre” to “setting.”

So perhaps we cannot entirely rid ourselves of genre—it is here to stay, in one form or another. Then the question of defining genres becomes paramount. From the beginning, I have to dismiss any notion that genres can be disjoint. As “historical romance” makes clear, a disjoint definition will require so many subgenres as to make one’s head spin. Let’s go easy on ourselves and allow genres to overlap.

I will not attempt a general algorithm for categorizing a story by genre. I am an amateur at this game, and no doubt more learned people than I have tried. However, let me explore what passes for romance these days, since it is the central genre under discussion here.

Romance as a genre has undergone drift over the centuries. The Wikipedia entry for Romance (genre) refers to the traditional definition of epic or heroic narratives, tales of dazzling deeds. In the 19th century, Wikipedia explains, “the connotations of ‘romance’ moved from the fantastic and eerie … to novels centred on the episodic development of a courtship that ends in marriage.” Thus is born the the romance novel, which places its “primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an ‘emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.’” Wikipedia also notes that “the genre has attracted significant derision, skepticism, and criticism.”³

That definition comes from the Romance Writers of America, incidentally. The second clause, regarding an optimistic ending, surprised me in its specificity. It makes sense, however, because this clause differentiates romance from every other genre. People fall in love all the time—it is practically a disease—and characters in novels are no exception. The element of romance occurs in almost every story; after all, love is one of the most powerful sources of conflict. Some of my favourite books are love stories, wrapped in hilarious British absurdity. So a book just about romantic love between two people, even one whose primary focus is love, may not be a romance. Unless it has a happy ending. (I am a sucker for tragic endings, so maybe this is why romance and I part ways.)

My goal in this little exploration, in case you were wondering, was to find out why romance is its own genre when love is universal. The requirement of a happy ending is a good reason, but I‘m not sure if it is strong enough to make romance a genre in its own right. Agnostic Ben is shaking his head as I write this, but I want to deny any agenda here. I’m just investigating my own tastes, trying to discover why I avoid romance and whether I can rationalize this prejudice or banish it.

Nevertheless, I didn’t avoid this romance, and I did eventually write a review. I was more critical than I thought I would be. And that garnered a comment:

Frankly, I think more men should write romance novel reviews! Because they tend to cut directly to the problems and not gloss over what works and what doesn’t work. Whereas when women (like me) write snarky reviews, other women (hard-core romance lovers) get all bent out of shape—for whatever reason—maybe because they don’t want their novels have any mirror on reality or to be feasible/workable in real life.

While I don’t want to digress into a gender stereotype discussion, the notion that some reviewers (regardless of gender) “cut directly to the problems” instead of giving romance a free pass is an intriguing one. Because I think that was the visceral reaction Agnostic Ben had when my friend told me I had to review Tempted by a Warrior “as a romance.” Although she did not mean it that way, my first instinct was to interpret this admonishment as an instruction to be more lenient because, as Genre Ben would phrase it, “the book is just romance.”

No book is just anything though. Genre Ben and my friend might be right in that we cannot completely decouple genre from criticism—nor would be desirable, I suppose. By the same token, not all criticism stems from genre, and Agnostic Ben wants to give precedence to these genre-independent perspectives when deciding a book’s merits. Alas, it falls to poor, ordinary Ben, a mere mortal, to reconcile these positions and synthesize appropriate reviews. In the past I have often succumbed to genre snobbery; doubtlessly I will do so again, despite my vigilance. Hopefully, however, I will often succeed in going beyond—but not excluding—genre in my criticism.

Thanks to my addictive use of Goodreads, I have written a review for every book I have read since August, 2008—about 300 reviews in total. Many of them suck—more from being rushed without revision—but there are a few gems of which I am ridiculously proud. I like to take my endeavour to review the books I read seriously, and that requires serious thoughts about how I write reviews.

But I don’t want to take it, or myself, too seriously. So here’s a lolcat.

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• [ 1 ] You didn’t see that one coming, did you?
• [ 2 ] Warning: the preceding mixed metaphor may blow your mind. Sorry about that.
• [ 3 ] Because adjectives, like witches and wishes, always come in threes, children.

Last week, I discussed how maths is hard, but I spent plenty of time solving a Rubik’s cube anyway. At this rate, you are going to get the idea that I don’t do any work at all. Nevertheless, a desire for accuracy and lulz requires me to remain truthful regarding how I spent this week in the office.

We made a piñata.

We named him Stanley the Resurrection Pig.

I don’t recall who came up with the initial idea. As with all good, crazy plots, it starts off as an innocuous hypothetical scenario: piñatas equal fun, fun equal good, we could make a piñata! This is the last week all four of us will be in the office together—Aaron, Rachael, and I are going to Waterloo next week for a conference, and Jessica is off to Ireland, returning only after Aaron and Rachael’s contracts are finished. So if ever there was a time to set aside the math papers and construct a papier-mâché animal, then savagely beat it to a pulp, this was that time.

None of us are piñata-making experts, and that was probably for the best. Rachael had some experience with papier-mâché—also for the best—so we made her foreman and gave her a silly newspaper hat to go with the title. In remarkably little time, we gathered together the hodge-podge of materials required to manufacture a piñata. We decided on a simple shape, assembled the skeletal structure from balloons, and mixed up a batch of goo to begin the work of creating Stanley.

Over three days, Stanley emerged from a series of colour balloons. He grew stubby legs, ears, and a snout. We named him Stanley because none of us knew anyone named Stanley, and it sounded like a good name for something we would beat to death. (I apologize to all those named Stanley reading this.) Jessica, in particular, was quite bloodthirsty about the whole project. By Friday, however, as we stuffed Stanley full of candy and trussed him in string, we were all savouring the anticipation of Resurrection-Pigpocalpyse.

Stanley met his demise rather quickly. We took him outside, where it was the warmest it has been all summer so far, and suspended him upon a suitable tree branch. Jessica, as the aforementioned most eager participant in this piñata-bashing, got the first swing. I had brought a thin, metal beam that had been propped up in one corner of the hallway outside our office with other thin, metal beams, but we started with a stick to maximize Stanley’s torment. After a few swings from Jessica, however, the stick broke in two. Stanley one, us zero.

So we switched to the metal beam, and Stanley’s death came swift. Jessica pretty much decapitated him with a single, fearsome blow. Aaron, Rachael, and I quickly followed, each of us contributing to his destruction in our own way, until finally he lay on the ground, battered and broken, a shell of his former self.

Stanley was no more. But in his death, he gave us one final gift: lots and lots of candy. Oh, and math riddles. But moreso candy. Really, way too much candy. We had all brought candy, and even though much of the chocolate melted from the heat, there was more than we wanted to take home with us. There is still some of it languishing in the office despite our forthcoming week-long absence.

I could talk about what I‘ve been researching this week, how my supervising prof was in town only for the two days we were dunking our hands in flour-water to make a piñata in the office. I could mention that I’ve started running programs on SHARCNET and it’s awesome. Really, all of these things pale in comparison to spending a week making, and breaking, a piñata.

This was the eighth week of my research. I’m now halfway through my summer job, and it feels like I’ve barely begun. Wow.

Farewell, Stanley the Resurrection Pig. You served but a brief, miserable existence, but you served it well. So long, and thanks for all the fish—er, candy.

I like to joke with my friends about how easy I have it this summer. I‘m sitting in a cozy little office with a fan, proximity to a kettle, and a high-speed Internet connection. Unlike a summer research student in, say, chemistry or biology, I don’t have to manipulate lab equipment or sex fruit flies (Cassie :P). The extent of my experimentation will involve uploading programs to a high-powered computing network and asking it kindly to compute a few more numbers for me. I Google math papers relevant to my problem, try to understand what they say, and see if I can come up with my own ideas. One thing I love about math research, especially in my area of interest, is how much it’s thought. All I really need is a blackboard and chalk, or pencil and paper. (That being said, the high-powered computing network does help when I get to the computation step!)

Of course, it’s not all fun and games (even though I did learn how to solve a Rubik’s cube last week). Maths is hard! And right now, even though I’ve been in university for three years, I feel like an amateur groping around an unsolved problem. I know that research can be like that in general, and I’m still having lots of fun—and learning a lot. Nevertheless, sometimes I feel like a poser. And nothing is worse than a math poser!

I was all excited, two weeks ago, because I had almost finished an algorithm to compute the spreading number recursively. I was tackling the problem as one of finding a maximum independent set. The spreading number is, among other things, the cardinality of the maximum independent set of a certain type of graph. (The covering number is an analogous clique cover cardinality). The general problem of finding a maximum independent set is NP-hard. This means that there likely isn’t a very efficient algorithm for solving the problem (if there were, then P=NP, and that’s way above my pay grade). The best I could hope for was a good algorithm for my specific case; indeed, that was my hope for this algorithm.

After returning from the weekend, I finished the algorithm and happily set Macaulay2 to work, asking it to compute the spreading numbers and compare it with the values we already know. Alas, there were discrepancies, and I quickly understood why: I had made a fundamentally flawed assumption in constructing the algorithm. So while the algorithm did exactly what I wanted it to do, it turns out that what I wanted would not give me the graph’s maximum independent set.

Back to square one!

Frustrated but not very surprised am I. The problem is non-trivial, so I did not really expect such a simple solution. And I have plenty of summer left in which to try new ideas. Right now I am looking at Hilbert series. Most computer algebra systems, including Macaulay2, use Hilbert series to compute the dimension of rings (and this is how my professor’s orginal algorithm computes the spreading number). For larger rings, this computation takes up too much memory.

The easiest solution is, of course, to throw more memory at the problem. We had hoped my computer would be able to compute at least another two or three of the numbers, but this was not to be. Even without any refinements to the algorithm, however, SHARCNET should blow my computer out of the water. This week, I am looking at ways of breaking the computation of the Hilbert series into independent tasks so I can make use of throughput computing.

Oh, and I did learn how to solve a Rubik’s cube. I obtained one in my young adolescent days, but because I have poor spatial skills, I was never able to solve it on my own. Last week I observed Rachael manipulating her cube like a pro. I expressed my admiration and awe, and she just shrugged and mentioned that it was a matter of using certain algorithms (which makes sense). I was doubtful of my ability to learn the necessary algorithms; fortunately, I think I understand enough now to solve the cube reliably. I doubt I’ll ever be a speedcuber, but that is one puzzle down.

Now back to my shiny infinite polynomial series.

Yes, yes, I know. At this rate, my weekly recap will become bi-weekly. I didn’t do a lot the week before last, owing to Victoria Day making for a shortened week. So rather than two very short blog posts, I decided to forbear and write one short blog post instead.

The last two weeks have been more reading, more learning, and a little thinking. I hesitate to ascribe a label like “productive,” since it’s hard to quantify. I think I understand my problem now, but there remains a lot for me to learn in order to start trying solutions.

I tried running the original algorithm for computing the spreading number, which was written in CoCoA, on my computer. I had hoped that my 2 GB of RAM and 1.83 GHz processor would have enough memory to compute some additional numbers. Alas, CoCoA stubbornly crashed (after several long hours) each time I instructed it to do so.

So I ported the code to Macaulay2. It’s even slower, which makes me suspicious that I’m missing something—after all, I am learning both languages, so I‘m sure that in transliterating the code I managed to miss an obvious way to make it more efficient. Still, it looks like the original algorithm won’t produce many more useful results, at least not until I stick it on SHARCNET.

My supervising prof pointed me to a series of lectures he gave on combinatoric commutative algebra. Last week I started working through those, and I’ll continue doing so this week. He’s given me several promising “leads,” I suppose you‘d call them, but at this point, I have to start exploring avenues of interest and seeing if they produce any interesting results. I’ve already toyed with some alternative approaches in Macaulay2, familiarizing myself more with the language, but I think I need more experience with the mathematics first.

Probably the most significant news of the past two weeks would be my decision to attend the Canadian Undergraduate Mathematics Conference at the University of Waterloo and the Combinatorics & Optimization Summer School preceding it. Initially I was reluctant to go, because I don’t like to travel, but Aaron and (maybe) Rachael are going, so I won’t be alone. Plus, I’ll get to visit my grandparents. That’s July 5-10, a few more weeks away. Until then … time for more learning.

Shorter entry this week, as I didn’t do much new and exciting in week 2 of my research project. I‘m still having fun, but because it’s so early in the summer, that fun mostly takes the form of reading.

As tweeted earlier, the secret to reading (and understanding) math papers is simple. First, always read it twice. Then read it again. But to make sure you really understand, you need to take notes. Write down what’s implicit in the paper, the steps the author leaves out because “it is obvious” or “it is clear to the reader” or, even worse, “this has been left has an exercise for the reader.” Once you‘ve done that, the final step is to read the paper again.

I spent all week reading two papers, one of which expands on the findings of the other. The first investigates the spreading and covering numbers in relation to the ideal generation conjecture. Much of the paper goes over my head. Nevertheless, there were some very useful figures, and the use of graph theory in one paper and set theory in another helped improve my comprehension of what these numbers are. The second paper, in particular, was devoted to finding explicit values and bounds for the covering number using a combinatorial/set theory approach.

One of my goals is to improve, if I can, upon the bounds found in these papers. The actual values computed by my supervising prof suggest that there’s room for improvement. I’m a little daunted by this prospect. I feel like I understand the proofs present in these two papers regarding the bounds for the covering number … but I‘m not so sure I understand the procedures well enough to build upon them. Granted, I’ve only been doing this for two weeks. As the summer progresses, I’ll learn more and become more confident. For now, however, I’m just a wee bit intimidated by what I will try to accomplish.

Don’t mistake trepidation for discontent. The best is yet to come! Soon I’ll be playing with CoCoA and Macaulay2. This week, I‘m learning about resolution, which leads to a generalizatio of dimension from ordinary vector spaces to modules. Oh, and I’m having a lot of fun learning how to typeset my proofs in LaTeX. Math is totally the language of the universe, and LaTeX is its markup.

I am now into the second week of my NSERC summer research project. So far, I’m having a lot of fun. The subject of my research is interesting and exactly the type of mathematics that I want to study. The “daily grind,” such as it is, does not grind at all—it helps that there are three other undergraduate students doing research this summer, and we all share the sessional lecturer office. We can distract each other, when needed, and pick each other’s brains for help with particularly puzzling proofs.

So what exactly am I doing? Well, it’s esoteric even for those who enjoyed math up until the first years of university. I‘m going to drop some math jargon in the next few paragraphs, so don’t worry if your eyes start to glaze over. Photos and hilarious video will follow!

Since my prof was leaving town at the end of the week, we met several times so he could give me some lectures and we could discuss my project. The work I’m doing relates to ring theory, which is a course I took nearly two years ago, so I have a lot of review to do. Most of the week, like the next few weeks will, involved preliminaries. I found all of the references my prof recommended to me. I began reading the three textbooks among those references, learning about monomial ideals and simplicial complexes.

These, however, are but means to an end. After I have mastered the secrets of these wonderful algebraic concepts, I can use them toward the eventual goal of finding better algorithms for calculating the spreading and covering numbers. These relate to the maximum and minimum dimension, respectively, of a monomial subspace of a vector space over all polynomials of a given degree such that the subspace fulfils two respective properties.

On Thursday, my prof went over what’s changed since he and his colleagues wrote the paper from which my research project comes. In particular, they’ve learned about a connection between edge ideals and the Stanley-Reisner ideal. In the paper, they showed that calculating the dimension of the Stanley-Reisner ring is sufficient to find the spreading number. (A similiar result makes calculating the covering number possible.)

This connection is really cool for two reasons. Firstly, it makes the connection to graph theory stronger, which gives us another avenue for exploring the problem. Secondly, it might provide an alternative way ofcalculating spreading numbers (graph theory is also useful in this respect). The algorithm in the paper finds the Stanley-Reisner ring and then uses a computer algebra system to find the dimension of the ring. They did this on a Pentium II, so they could only find a few of the numbers before the calculations became impractical given the available computer memory. Computing power has improved considerably since then, so my first step will be to see how my little laptop compares against their Pentium II using the algorithm in the paper. Later in the summer, I’ll be creating alternative (hopefully more efficient) algorithms in Macaulay2 and running them on SHARCNET.

Of the three other students sharing the office with me this summer, Aaron is in the same year as me, and Jessica and Rachael are a year behind us. Aaron and Rachel are working on the same project, which involves fractals and Cantor sets. Jessica is also working on something related to commutative algebra (affine varieties and Gröbner bases). So not only do I get to learn about simplicial complexes and monomial ideals, but I’ll be learning about affine spaces and some more real analysis as well.

And for those of you who wonder exactly what math research looks like, I can attest that it’s pretty much like this clip from The Big Bang Theory. Aaron and I spent a good deal of Friday afternoon staring at my faulty proof regarding prime ideals on the chalk board. I did manage to figure it out eventually, but imagine if we had had a montage!

Last night, all four of us who work at the front desk went out for dinner and bowling. I don’t go out that much—and in fact, I probably spend more time hanging out with these three at work than I do going places with my other friends. But it was Brittany’s last weekend in town, because she’s biking back home to Guelph next week. So we had one last hurrah—and a little bit more.

First we went to Applebee‘s, which is pretty much the baseline measurement for normality on this outing. I had a steak that was supposed to be medium but was rare and soggy French fries. Thea and Dayna had more luck with their pasta dishes, and Brittany made quick work of her sizzling fajitas. Surprisingly, they appeared as advertised and were actually sizzling. There was also spicy rice, which she saved for another friend, because she didn’t like it. More on that later. Many stories were exchanged that cannot, of course, be repeated here. Brittany and I ordered desserts while Thea and Dayna demurred; I got a chocolate chip sundae, and Britany made the better choice of a delectable soft brownie. That was probably the best food part of the meal.

After Applebee’s, the plan was to go bowling. I, being the careful and attentive driver that I am, promptly drove the car forward out of the parking spot, intending to cut through the adjacent parking lot and leave that way. The only problem was the concrete parking barrier standing in my way, small enough that I had forgotten it was there. The front wheels of the car made it over. The back wheels … not so much.

Or, as Thea likes to tell the story, “You just sort of … kept going. And there was a scraping noise.” Thanks Thea.

So I called my brother, who is the car expert in our household. He would know what to do. Fortunately, while we were waiting for him to arrive, someone else stopped and helped us extricate the car from its new perch. We put the car in neutral, and then all of us lifted the rear end and pushed it forward. Manual effort for the win!

Shortly thereafter, my brother rolled up in a very badass manner, his bright green truck as obtrusive as possible as he parked on the grass in front of where I had parked the car (as far from any barriers as I could manage). After a quick look at the underside of the car and an inspection under the hood, he prounounced us good to go.

And so we went bowling.

Thea’s mom and her mom’s friend showed up at the bowling alley at the same time that we did. This, of course, prompted the nth retelling of my already infamous adventure in the Applebee’s parking lot. It will go down in history alongside the phone book story.

The six of us bowled together. I love bowling. I don’t know why. I’m not great at it—good, not great—but there’s just something about the collegial atmosphere, the shared experience of hurling a massive object on a collision course with those pins… . It’s one of my favourite group activities. And my dancing went over well. We all had fun, I think. Despite my excessive posturing to the contrary, however, Thea emerged victorious in both games.

So I had an interesting night, and a good night. It was a good way to celebrate this year at the front desk. I’ve been lucky to have awesome coworkers pretty much consistently for the entire four years I‘ve worked at the art gallery. Trying to compare them would not do them justice. They’re all wonderful, and while I miss some more than others, I have stories to tell about each and every one of them. That is, without a doubt, the best part of working at the gallery: my front desk coworkers.

We move on. This is the one constant in my life with which I will always struggle. I don’t like change, and once I find equilibrium, I am loath to see it thrown out of balance by someone’s absence. It can’t be helped, though, and it’s for the best. None of us will be working at the gallery during the summer, and it remains to be seen who will be back in the fall. We’ll stay in touch, I hope, and continue sharing stories. But I can always celebrate the times we’ve had together.

This year, I got to share and create stories with three great women. I got to see high school again, see the first year of university through an art student’s eyes, and have good conversations about books, movies, and yeah, even art. We made a good team, we had each other’s backs, and we got the job done. I couldn’t ask for more. And if I had to lodge my car on top of a stubby concrete parking barrier, I wouldn’t want to do it in the company of any other people.

This January, I applied for a summer Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) from the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council (NSERC). Lakehead University has 20 such awards to give to applicants this year, and on Monday, I learned that I am the recipient of one!

I was (still am) a mixture of elation and trepidation. Part of me is still in a state of shock and can’t quite believe that this is real. I spend a good half hour after learning I got the grant just trying to calm down so I would not run up to everyone I encountered and yell, “I GOT A GRANT!” Another part of me is saying, “What do you think you‘re doing, Ben? You don’t even understand what it is you’re going to be researching!” As anyone who has ever looked at a higher math textbook knows, the language is just scary sometimes.

I applied for the NSERC grant for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a different summer employment opportunity than my default, which is the art gallery. Don’t get me wrong: I love working at the gallery. You can’t beat the hours, and I have an awesome boss—she took the news that I wouldn’t be working there over the summer much easier than I thought she would. Nevertheless, I’ve worked there for four consecutive summers. I‘m not averse to trying something new, particularly something related to my area of interest.

Secondly, since this is a research position, I’ll get a chance to experience exactly what “math research” is all about. Sometimes people will ask me why I’m becoming a high school teacher instead of going on to graduate school and becoming a professor; usually my answer is somewhere along the lines that I‘m not sure I’d like doing “math research” and writing “math papers.” I‘m more in it for the teaching. This grant is a perfect way to see if, in fact, I like or dislike doing research, without committing to something like graduate school first.

So I’m excited about this change, but also just a little bit anxious—it is a big change in how I’ll be spending my summer, and a different responsibility. After four years at the gallery, I’m so used to doing the same thing every summer that it’s hard imagining myself doing anything else.

The position itself is a full-time for 16 weeks. My area of interest in mathematics lies in commutative algebra, so Dr. Adam Van Tuyl has agreed to be my supervisor. He’s come up with a neat project for me, and I’ll try to explain some of it. I don’t fully understand what I’m doing yet myself; for the first few weeks I’ll need to review my ring theory from last year and then work to learn new concepts we didn’t even cover in that class.

Ultimately I’ll be continuing work that Dr. Van Tuyl did on computing spreading and covering numbers for monomial ideals. One of the issues he and his colleagues encountered when they first worked on this problem was a lack of computational power for calculating values for these numbers. Later in the project, I’m going to be writing my own algorithms for calculating these numbers, and I should be able to run them SHARCNET, a network of high performance computers maintained by several academic institutions in Ontario.

I plan to blog about the project as the summer goes on. I start working on May 10, so I probably won’t have much to say on the subject until then. For now I need to focus on finishing the school year!

Some people I know lead off their blog posts with massive photos of the minute and the mundane, photos that set the mood for the entry that follows. So I‘m going to be a copycat and do the same. Muwahahaha.

There are some objects that, against all odds, manage to stay with us through childhood, adolescence, and into our adult years. These objects acquire and then store memories for us, exceeding their original purpose as they become receptacles for our past. And they acquire scars, reminding us that we can’t travel through life unscathed, but we can always somehow emerge OK. In a society renowned for its throwaway culture, these objects might be old, battered, and bruised, yet we keep them still. They have more than a material worth. At the same time, however, they might not have much sentimental value—that is, they haven’t survived all this time because we’re overtly fond of them. They’ve just stayed with us.

This tape measure is one such object—and a surprising one, at that, considering I‘m not especially handy nor prone to measuring things. All the marks on its body tell me a story about my past, and about who I was. I don’t remember who gave it to me or when, but I obviously put it to good—and not so good—uses. The missing pieces at the top are probably the result of one or many ill-fated drops; stress-testing just doesn’t account for the overzealous measuring abilities of a 12-year-old. The black splotches along the top and side appear to be paint. I don’t remember what I was painting, or indeed if I’m even the one who was using it at the time. This tape measure has made its rounds through my immediate family, so I can’t take responsibility for every little scrape and scar.

The shark sticker, though, is all me. I went through this phase where I obsessively decorated my possessions with stickers—I think, even then, I didn’t like acquiring stuff I wasn’t going to use, and I had all these stickers … and one thing led to another. Every so often I’ll come across an artifact of my stickering phase.

But most quixotic and endearing is the fact that this tape measure isn’t particularly valuable, isn’t precious or handmade. It was made in Taiwan, in fact, one of many tape measures identically mass produced. Handmade objects are exquisite, but if there’s anything mass production reminds us, it’s of how quickly two identical things diverge and become unalike. No doubt this tape measure’s extant brothers and sisters have acquired their own battle scars. I hope some of them still have owners who, like me, are grateful more for what they remember than what they measure.

Do you have an object that bears your battle scars?

Tonight Stargate Universe premiered, and I wanted to share my thoughts on it. However, I feel guilty blogging about a television show when I haven’t blogged about arguably more important matters, such as life.

With a month behind me, I feel good about the school year so far. I only have four courses this year: Introductory Analysis, Partial Differential Equations (PDEs), Introduction to Mathematical Probability, and Speculative Fiction. Three math courses and an English course. All of my math courses are interesting, and I was excited to take the English course the moment I saw it offered. I’ll discuss it first, since the rest of the post will be about math.

My Speculative Fiction course is covering only science fiction this section—which is fine. Although I love literature in general and would gladly have taken something like Victorian Literature if this course hadn’t been offered, the chance to read and discuss science fiction for credit is not something I was going to overlook! We’re reading The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, The Left Hand of Darkness, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Neuromancer, Dawn, and Singularity Sky. We also have to watch Blade Runner (a film based on Do Androids Dream).

Of my math courses, Introductory Analysis is my favourite because it comprises my favourite aspect of math: proofs. Specifically, I love algebraic proofs—the more abstract the better. I love math but don’t like numbers so much. PDEs are fascinating and challenging as well; the course is very much oriented toward application, however, whereas I‘m more interested in theory. Unfortunately, my ardour doesn’t quite extend to probability, but I think I’ll survive—so far it hasn’t tripped me up too much.

My involvement in math at the university extends far beyond courses! Last term I marked assignments for a first-year calculus course; this fall I‘m marking a second-year linear algebra course. Moreover, I’m tutoring in the new Lakehead Math Assistance Centre (LUMAC for short). Both of these jobs are paid positions, which is a nice income in addition to my gallery job while also providing me with relevant experience for my future career.

Having spent a few sessions tutoring, I can already say that I enjoy it. We’ll see if it stays that way once the flood of people arrives the week before midterms! For now, however, it’s fulfilling. Plus, it gives me a nice review of first-year courses, like basic calculus, that contain skills I’ll always be needing but don’t always practise as I should.

So I have a very math-filled term, it appears. I like to use the phrase “inundated by math—and I love it.”

Two weeks ago to this day, I broke my favourite mug. I was heartbroken.

I don’t like calling myself a materialist, but we all place sentimental value on certain items when they become important to us. Up until two years or so ago, I rotated among three or four different mugs for my tea—yes, mugs. “Cups” are for prats and amateurs. Hardcore tea-drinkers drink tea by the mug, and the really hardcore tea enthusiasts (I am not) drink it by the bowl in elaborate Japanese tea ceremonies. There’s literature about this sort of thing. But I digress.

Then I started using only one mug. My mug. It just felt comfortable: perfect shape, an attractive colour and calm design on the outside, and a handle that didn’t hurt my fingers. It held a good amount of tea. I’d use it for every single cup, rinsing it, washing it out with baking soda every couple of days. I treated that mug like royalty. But ultimately, I failed it.

We were sitting outside; I was reading and Mug was relaxing on the table next to me, holding some tea. I went to take a sip and was pleased to discover that Mug had allowed it to radiate just enough heat that the tea was now cool enough to drink but not so cool as to be unpleasant. I went to replace Mug on the table … and that’s when it happened. I missed the table, and when my hand released its grasp on Mug, it plummeted to the cement stones beneath us, cleaving cleaning in two.

I was in shock.

My first reaction, of course, was denial. It couldn’t have happened. Anything but this. People in Iran were protesting about the relection of Ahmadinejad, and all I could think about was, “No way, no way, that’s my favourite mug.” Shallow, yes. But it had a certain immediacy that cast a spell over me. I knew that nothing I could do would make it better. I needed a montage, one of those sappy ones where Mug is sitting on a swing and I‘m pushing it back and forth. That kind of thing.

Yes, it was a fairly clean break, but not a perfect one. My brother has glued it back together for me, and now it sits on my desk, a facade of wholeness. I may use it to hold pens or something. Yet never again will I taste tea from its lips.

After rushing inside and pondering how I could fix the situation, I determined I had only one viable option: find a replacement. Now, I realize that this isn’t a healthy response when losing a loved one. You can’t go around replacing children after all, and I can never truly replace Mug. However, I had to find a … successor.

For all I loved Mug, it was completely anonymous. It bore no identifying marks, not even a “Made in China” label (even though it probably was). I can’t remember where I acquired it, or how, or even what company made it. Without any of this information, all I could do was search eBay for “blue mug” and hope for the best.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an identical match to Mug in any of the fourteen pages of search results. It was a long shot at best. However, I did find a mug of a similar size with a picture of Eeyore on it, and that was the next best thing.

Today, my Eeyore mug arrived. I have already consumed several cups of tea from it; it’s the beginning of a beautiful new relationship. Although it can never truly replace my favourite Mug, in time my wound will hurt less, scab over, and I’ll have all those fond memories of Mug and myself, together with tea. Until then, I can only drink more tea to assuage my pain, and stare at my smiling Eeyore (made in Taiwan).

This post is dedicated to the memory of Mug, 2006-2009. Everything a tea-drinker could ask for, and then more.

During the summer, I bike to work. I could pretend that this is because I want to be green and stay in shape, but it’s really because I don’t have consistent access to a vehicle. Although it is good exercise, I must admit.

The ride is about twenty minutes one-way. I usually listen to music on my 1 GB iPod Nano. Yeah, that’s right: I haven’t upgraded to the latest model. Shocking, I know. However, this usually means I end up listening to the same music over and over all summer. I suppose I could create weekly mixes or playlists to help keep things fresh, but I‘m just too lazy.

So this year, I’m going to try something different: audiobooks. It furthers my goal of reading more, and it’s much safer than trying to read a book while biking. Rather than purchase audiobooks, I’m going to try Librivox, a crowdsourced repository of public domain audiobooks. I’ve gone ahead and created a shelf at Goodreads to track my summer listening. Now only one thing remains: to what should I listen?

I‘m open to suggestions. I’m considering some Victorian fiction, thinking that it may be less dry if I listen to it rather than read it. Or should I try some non-fiction? If you have some favourite public domain books, especially ones you think would be better in audiobook form, please let me know.

I’m still alive.¹

Actually, when all is said and done, the wisdom teeth extraction was Not That Bad. I went in, the assistant hooked me up to various Machines That Go Ping!, gave me some nitrous oxide to relax, then stuck me with an IV. I drifted off to neverneverland. The next thing I know, the assistant is asking me to come lie down on a bed in a little recovery room. I do so and start to read my book. In about five minutes I‘m fully lucid and feeling quite well.

I won’t rub it in, but I had no swelling, no bruising, and no pain. I took a couple of painkillers on Friday but kicked them after Saturday morning. I had pizza—in small bites—for dinner on Friday, although I stuck with yogurt, Jello, and very soft food until Tuesday. My jaw feels a bit different when I chew, but overall it was a painless procedure.² All that trepidation….

These past few weeks—I‘d like to say almost all of May as well, but I don’t want to be melodramatic here—have been draining. Or maybe it’s just that today was draining and I’m projecting. Nevertheless, the jumbled sequence of one-off events and above-average activity has left me breathless and tired. I need a vacation, but that was my vacation. Next week I start working full time. Yay.

While I could digress now and talk about how I‘m not all that enthusiastic about working full time this summer, there would be no point. It’s going to happen. And my job isn’t bad at all—I just find it difficult to spend eight hours there, especially on the slow days. So I‘m going to focus on the positives. There’s the money, of course. My fellow front desk attendants are nice people, and I’m essentially being paid to hang out with one of them for eight hours.³

Aside from the money, the other big advantage is that I’ll finally have a schedule again. Now, I’m not a creature of routine. My daily routine has constants, true, but I often vary most of my activities. I am, however, a creature of habit. Hence, May and early June’s dense schedule of stress has played havoc with my habits. Even though working full-time eats up my free time, it at least means I can stop worrying that I’ll be asked to work a bingo or take on three extra shifts at the end of the week….

I’m also feeling creatively unfocused as of late. I have plenty of projects on the go, some of which are in danger of becoming brain crack. Every time I try to sit down and work on one, however, my mind turns to the other projects, and I find it hard to accomplish anything. Even writing blog posts feels lacks lustre; I‘ve some ideas for potential posts but very little desire to actually compose them. This isn’t an “I Suck” phase (thankfully) but a “Why Bother?” phase, and my apathy is beginning to annoy me.

Additionally, I seem to be stuck in a passive-receptive mode when it comes to information. There’s an incredible amount of amazing and cool stuff happening in the world outside the Box That Is My Room. So much so that all I can do is absorb it osmotically. My feed subscriptions push hundreds of articles at me, and Twitter and Facebook push a myriad of other interesting items in my direction. It’s not information overload though. I don’t fanatically check my feeds; I read them once or twice a day. Other people just seem to be producing so much, it only strengthens my apathy toward creating my own things. And that’s just a wrong-headed idea, and I know it’s a wrong-headed idea, and I am severely disappointed in myself.⁴

About the only thing that pushes my buttons right now is reading (as always). I had to order a couple of books for birthday presents, so I took the opportunity to order everything that was in my Chapters shopping cart, even though I still have plenty of books waiting from my last trip to Chapters! And naturally, I had to buy duplicates when I didn’t own the book I was giving away…. Anyway, I placed the order on Sunday, and the first part arrived on Wednesday. I love Chapters.

Of course, there’s so many books I read and not enough time in which to read them! I’m coming across more and more interesting books that I mark as to-read; it’s staggering. Thus I feel a soul-wrenching, pent-up desire to devour literature at an awesome and terrifying rate. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

I’ve always been an avid reader, but over the past couple of years my passion has only intensified. Part of this is due to Goodreads, of course, but it’s not the sole culprit. I’m not sure why else though. Maybe as I‘ve matured, I’ve started to pursue my interests in a more organized, systematic fashion (and Goodreads facilitates this for my reading). As a result, knowing that I have a plan, knowing that there’s all these books I want to read now, makes me more eager to read as much as possible. Maybe I’ve always been this crazy and my friends were just too afraid to tell me, lest I murder them in their sleep by inflicting a thousand tiny papercuts. I’d never do that, of course!⁵

Suggestions for how to focus my creativity are welcome, but I’m not interested in GTD evangelization here. My projects are not to-do style endeavours—although I have tried keeping track of them with to-do lists. Aim more toward the area around reconciling your desire to devote time to creating stuff with your desire to drink prodigious amounts of tea while reading books by the truckload.⁶

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• [ 1 ] Although chances are equally good I’m just a component of a massive set of equations which we happen to perceive as the Universe.
• [ 2 ] Aside from the part where I give them a substantial chunk of money, of course.
• [ 3 ] It’s dangerous to get into that mindset, though. I’m actually being paid to work, not socialize.
• [ 4 ] Bad Ben! Don’t make me use the newspaper!
• [ 5 ] I’d hire ninjas to inflict the thousand tiny papercuts.
• [ 6 ] If someone ever installs vending machines that serve “tea and a book”, I will be doomed.

I intended to post this two days ago, but somehow never got around to it. You know you need to blog more when your grandparents remark on your inactivity. So let’s do this!

The past few weeks have been, for the most part, uneventful (and that’s good). I worked a bit more than I would like, but there’s not much to be done. I’ve tried to use all the free time I have as wisely as possible, mostly reading. Now that the snow is gone—even though the frost warnings are not—I like to sit outside the front of the house on the nice days.

Having finished playing Mass Effect a second time, I tried playing Tomb Raider: Anniversary again. Unfortunately, the controls continued to frustrate me as I fell back into the rythym of “No, Lara, jump that way—oh, and you died.” So I tried Tomb Raider: Legend instead. While it’s the same engine, the levels are shorter and more varied, so I’m less frustrated with it.

I’m greatly anticipating Mass Effect 2, and a few days ago I saw the trailer for Assassin’s Creed 2. I enjoyed the first Assassin’s Creed, although the story was somewhat weak, and the second one looks like it will be worth picking up eventually. Video games remain a side hobby, however.

Not too much happening in June, but it is a month of firsts for me. This Friday, I’ll be getting my wisdom teeth out (for the first and, logically, only time). Then a couple of weeks after that, I’ll be attending a wedding—my second wedding ever and my first wedding as an adult. So we’ll see how that goes.

Rogers released the HTC Dream and HTC Magic on June 2, the two headsets currently using Google Android. Those of you who aren’t into technology can safely skip this next paragraph; suffice it to say, I find Google Android sexy.

The Apple iPhone indubitably revolutionized the way we see smartphones. Where the BlackBerry and Palm were function, the iPhone was all about design—after all, it’s Apple. Unfortunately, Apple is starting to use its reputation for innovative design (i.e., its coolness) to sell uncool products. Because the iPhone is sort of like the North Korea of smartphones, in that Apple has control of what’s sold through its apps store and ultimately what’s on your phone. That’s why I find Google Android so appealing. Anyone with the coding skills can write Android apps and distribute them to anyone with an Android-powered phone. Thus, you can have all the functionality of an iPhone without any of its draconian drawbacks. The major disadvantage, of course, is that you risk the scorn of all your friends who are slaves to the Big Mac—er, Apple.

So the prospect of getting a Google-powered smartphone is extremely tempting. Yet I‘m not willing to become a slave to Rogers. I don’t need a smartphone. It would be nice to be able to check my email or update my calendar from anywhere, but honestly, I don’t get that much email, and my calendar seldom changes. If the plans were less expensive and Rogers were less evil, I’d jump at this opportunity in a second. Fortunately, I just have to wait until tomorrow, and mobile phone prices will be the least of my concerns.

Yes, tomorrow I get my wisdom teeth out. I’m nervous; I’ve never had any procedure like this done before—and would like to avoid them in the future, naturally. My wisdom teeth are fully grown in, and they don’t cause me any pain, so I’m hoping that means the surgery will go as smoothly as such things can go and my convalescence will be short. We shall see.

An interesting week lies ahead of me.

Sometime between November and … now … it became now. I’m not quite sure when this happened, or how it happened¹ … but it happened. Now that it’s now and no longer then, that which was must become what was going to be when then became now—which is now.

In that same spirit, the university felt it right and proper to commence a second term of classes following on the heels of the first term. I have six courses this term, three math courses, two philosophy courses, and an English course masquerading under the horribly ambiguous name of “Advanced Rhetoric.”

Two of my math courses, Linear Algebra II and Group Theory, are continuations of two of the courses I took last term. Linear Algebra II is, unsurprisingly, the conclusion to Linear Algebra I. We‘re learning about eigenvalues, eigenvectors, and diagonalization. I’m finding this course easier than the first part, in which I struggled somewhat. Group Theory and Ring Theory are related areas of abstract algebra. “Group theory” always sounds to me like some sort of bizarre sociological phenomenon, but I assure you, it’s a math course—complete with dusty chalkboard, incomprehensible symbols, and theorems named after dead white guys.

The third math course is Vector Calculus, which appears to be the answer to the question, “What happens when you design an art course for mathematicians?”² Not only do we learn about parametric equations, polar curves, vectors, lines, and planes—we get to draw them too! I signed up to write down incomprehensible symbols, not draw them! :P

I’m taking both Logic and Critical Thinking, which complement each other nicely. Logic also comes in handy with math, and my background in math means the symbolic aspect of the course is easy.

Also complementary to logic is rhetoric, embodied in my “Advanced Rhetoric” course. The name is ambiguous because the particular topic is left to the professor. This year, the prof teaching the course specializes in classical rhetoric, so that’s what we’re learning. We’re starting with the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and rhetoricians, particularly Aristotle³ In keeping with the course material, all of our assignments come from the progymnasmata, which is a sequence of fourteen assignments that students would begin at a young age and complete throughout their education. We’re doing a fable, a refutation, an encomium, and an argument. Additionally, we have to keep a “commonplace book.” At the beginning of every class, the prof dictates passages from a book of his choice—we‘ve done Virgil’s Aeneid, Tacitus’ Agricola, and even some I Corinthians. One of the not-so-secret consequences of this exercise will be an improvement in our ability to take down dictation, an ability that was integral to students in ancient Greece and has significantly lapsed since the 19th century.

Edit: Forgot to add my favourite quotation so far from my rhetoric prof:

Aristotle loved to classify things. A platypus would have really messed him up.

Win.

But that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you for a moment. Did you know that you may just be a hologram? No? But wait, there’s more! The entire universe may just be a hologram. How unbelievably awesome yet intensely weird is that?

Hoping, as always, to post more regularly—I have some interesting ideas! I just need to find a good, routine spot in my weekly schedule where I can write blog posts.

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• [ 1 ] If you know, please do explain it to me.
• [ 2 ] The real answer should be: DON’T.
• [ 3 ] He wrote an entire book called Rhetoric, dontcha know!

Last updated Friday, January 23, 2009 at 7:27 PM

We all have humbling experiences that remind us we aren’t as smart as we think we are. And even if we are that smart, sometimes we still lack common sense, and other times we just plain don’t think.

A couple of days ago, I woke up to the a slow but inexorable cracking noise coming from the vicinity of my bedroom door. Sometimes my cat scratches at my door in order to gain entry, oblivious as to my current state of consciousness. This sound wasn’t like a cat scratching, however, which was why I had trouble placing it at first. Unlike the frantic scrabbling noise of claw on wood, this had the deliberate sound of something going horribly, horribly wrong.

Several seconds later, the sight of the hooks on the back of my door falling out, taking my coat with them, confirmed this fear.

I had stupidly placed my library book bag on these hooks. When the bag is empty, this isn’t a problem. Yet as I gradually fill up the bag with each book I read, it becomes heavier, adding strain to the hooks.

My brother originally installed the hooks; he was also the one who affixed them to that dandy little wooden plank. Since I‘m inept at anything involving tools, I had my brother put the hooks back up. This time, I had him add anchors, which he didn’t use the first time around.

Of course, I won’t be putting my book bag on there ever again….

Speaking of books, here is a photo of my brand new shelving:

As you can see, I have much more room to grow as my book collection expands. My DVDs may soon need to usurp part of another shelf as well, unless I find an alternative storage area. The second shelf from the bottom provides a handy spot to house books I intend to read (they previously squatted on the floor and played poker while I wasn’t looking). On the left are library books—currently empty, since I’m reading my last one right now—and books I’ve bought are on the right. A LOTR boxset—touted by Metheun publications as an “authorized Canadian edition of the heroic tale”¹ separates these two categories. The boxset originally belonged to my dad, but I “borrowed” it sometime in grade five or grade six to read, and I just never gave it back. Muwahahaha. One of these days I need to repair the binding on the first volume….

But I digress! To answer the question that is burning in your mind at this point: yes, that is an inflatable crayon. I‘ve had it for years, but never has it looked more at home than as a finishing touch on my shelves.

And that’s it for this week’s edition of “Ben has no common sense, but look at all his pretty books.” Next week: why we don’t run with power tools!²

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• [ 1 ] In the 1960s, Ace Books published unauthorized editions that subsequently made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move.
• [ 2 ] Not really. I’m not that dense. Most of the time.