An Educated Guess

Musings on life in general

[austinsirkin]

A Lesson in Applied Mathematics

Hello, Christopher Sawyer.

Chris sat bolt upright in bed, fumbling at his side table for his glasses, and then casting his panicked gaze frantically around the room. His night light shone a warm, yellow glow on the dirty clothes scattered across the hardwood floor and the inoffensively gray walls covered in posters of Billie Eilish and MGMT. But he was all alone. He’d been on the verge of sleep, so maybe he just… 

Excuse me, Christopher, I apologize for bothering you. Is this a bad time?

Chris jumped up onto his feet this time and looked under his bed: nothing. He tiptoed to his closet next, cursing the wood squeaking beneath his little feet, and pulled open the door: again, nothing.

“H… Hello?” he finally asked aloud, his enormous whisper ringing out in the quiet room.

Yes, I’m here. Are you able to do me a small favor?

Now that his wits were more about him, the voice sounded like it was coming from everywhere, but also nowhere. Maybe it wasn’t even sound at all.

“W-who are you?” he asked, tentatively. “Where are you?”

My name is Emily, and I’m… Well, I’m far away from you. I was hoping you might help me.

“Are you a ghost?” he asked. He licked his suddenly dry lips. “Or a... monster?”

There was a short pause before the voice returned.

No, no, don’t worry. I’m alive, and I don’t mean you any harm.

Chris narrowed his eyes. “You know this is sus one hundred, right? Are you going to kidnap me or something?”

Definitely not, I promise. You don’t even have to leave your house. One quick favor, and then I promise you’ll never hear from me again.

“That’s exactly what a kidnapper would say!” Chris declared.

Have you ever met a kidnapper? “Ummm… no.” Then how do you know what they would say? “Everyone knows. They’re all over the internet.”

Of course. The internet knows everything.

“I’m 11, but I’m not an idiot,” Chris declared. “I can tell that you’re making fun of me, you know.” My sincere apologies. I do have to admit that a kidnapper would be unlikely to admit their intentions. They would probably say something like, “I’ll give you a ride home”, or “I have candy in my van”.

“How do you know? Have you ever met a kidnapper?” Chris asked, mimicking Emily’s aloof tone.

...Not in person, no. “Hah!” he declared, triumphantly.

Okay, you got me. Neither of us know any kidnappers. But that means that because I know myself, and I must not be a kidnapper.

Chris pursed his lips and folded his arms across his chest. After a moment, he blew exasperated air out of his nose. ”Fine. I guess… I guess you’re right.” 

Excellent. Now, Christopher, I was wondering if you might do me a small favor.

“Chris,” he said.

I’m sorry?

“My name is Chris. People only call me Christopher when I’m in trouble. If I help you, I won’t get in trouble, right?”

Of course, my apologies again, Chris. No, you’re not in trouble, and I promise that if you help me, you won’t get in any trouble. I just need you to read a book downstairs for me.

“You want me to read a book? Ugh.”

You don’t like reading books?

“No way. They’re too long. I get bored.”

I used to love reading books. Perhaps you’ll like them when you’re older.

“How old are you? I bet you’re super old.”

I’m 34 years old.

“Yikes, I was right, you’re old as dirt. What are you doing talking to a kid in the middle of the night?”

Is 11 pm too late? I don’t have any children, so I’m not really sure what time kids go to bed.

“Yeah it’s late! I was almost asleep and you legit scared me out of bed.”

That wasn’t my intention. I just needed some information from a book that’s downstairs in your house. There are no other copies, and your parents are currently asleep, so I couldn’t ask them.

“Normal people just wait for the next day.”

Do I seem like a normal person to you? “I... guess not,” Chris said, grudgingly. “Fine, where’s this book?”

It’s in your mom’s office.

Chris sighed loudly and exaggeratedly. “Alright. Hold on.”

He slipped his feet into his Adidas sandals, stuffed his phone into his pocket, and opened the door to his bedroom. The hallway was dark, but he knew his house like the back of his hand; he’d lived here since he was born. Navigating downward by feel as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he put out his hands to touch familiar landmarks: his door frame, the banister for the stairs, followed by the cool stone entryway at the bottom of the stairs. His parents’ bedroom was upstairs, so once he got downstairs he flipped the lights on without fear of waking them.

Blinking a few times as his eyes adjusted, he sighed and turned the corner to his mother’s office. The room was full of books, framed certificates, and small engraved things that bore her name that were probably awards; old people liked to get things with their name on them. Chris closed the door behind him as he entered.

“Hey, I’m here,” he said, unintentionally whispering.

Chris waited a few long seconds, but there was no reply. A few more seconds went by, and Chris tapped the toe of his right sandal on the ground, settling his foot deeper into the shoe.

“Emil-?”

I’m here, Chris. My apologies, I’m doing… many things at once.

“Weird flex, but go off,” he said.

The sound of a dry chuckle moved through his head. Okay, I suppose I deserved that. Now, the book I need is in the form of a stack of papers on your mother’s desk.

Chris climbed up into his mother’s chair, sitting on his feet, and surveyed his mother’s desk. It was officially the most boring desk ever. Her laptop was there, but the desk was also absolutely covered in books and papers. On the left was a stack of loose, unbound papers nearly three inches thick. The top page was full of small rows of text, the margins of which were thoroughly covered in handwritten notes.

“I can’t read this,” Chris complained. “I’ve never heard of half these words before, and even the sentences have sentences!”

Don’t worry, Chris, I’ll help you get through it. You’re really only looking for a specific formula, so we can just skim until we find it.

“A formula? Like a recipe?” he asked.

Of a sort, except this recipe is for math.

“Math is okay. I’m learning how to multiply fractions now, and I don’t like it.”

I understand. Math can feel very cumbersome, but it’s also very beautiful and elegant once you get beyond rote memorization and you begin to understand not just what the formulas are, but why the formulas are.

“Why the formulas are what?”

Why they exist. Why the letters are where they are, and what it all means.

“You mean like algebra, where you solve for x? Why do I have to do that? What does it mean?”

Another dry laugh. I wish I could answer that question for you, Chris, I really do. But picture math as a ladder. In order to see what’s at the top, you have to climb all the rungs first. Right now, even if it doesn’t feel like it, you’re still near the bottom of the ladder, and it will take time and effort to climb higher.

“Like in college? Is that when I’ll get to the top of the ladder?”

Maybe, but in this case, the ladder doesn’t really have a top, so you can keep climbing forever. The higher you are, the more you can see. You can even build extra rungs onto the top as you go so that you can see farther than any person ever has. That’s what your mom has done, and why I need you to read this book.

Chris furrowed his brow. “My mom… can see farther than anyone?”

When it comes to her specialty, she really can. She’s kind of amazing.

Chris furrowed his brow even deeper and he wrinkled his nose, too. “That’s weird.”

Why is that weird?

“It just is,” Chris said, shaking his head. “Look, do you want this formula thing or not?”

Alright, let’s look for it. Take a peek at the book and see if there are chapter titles. If so, read them to me. It doesn’t matter if you understand what the words mean or not, just do your best.

“If you say so,” Chris said, shrugging. He picked up the first page and looked at it. It had a chapter heading that said ‘Introduction’.

Perfect, the introduction. Now you can skip through the pages and only read the other chapter titles.

“How do you know it says ‘introduction’? I didn’t even read it yet,” Chris protested.

I’m communicating with you telepathically, so there’s no need for you to read it out loud. As soon as you look at it, I can see it, too. You don’t have to talk to me out loud, either, if you don’t want, though most people find it more comfortable. Directing your thoughts without speaking them aloud takes some practice, trust me; otherwise it’s just a jumbled stream of consciousness.

“You’re even weirder than my mom,” Chris complained.

You have no idea. Your mom isn’t weird at all. She’s exceptional. But yes, I’m very weird.

“I knew it,” he said, with a hint of smugness. “Okay, here goes. I’m going to read these chapters for you. You better be ready, because I won’t do it twice.”

Chris picked up the next page and flipped it over. Then the next. And the next. That was when he began to realize just how many pages there were in a three-inch stack of paper, so he picked up the whole stack and began flipping through them with his thumb. It was big and awkward in his hands, but he did his best.The chapter titles, bolded at the tops of the pages, were full of words that he’d never seen before and didn’t understand like “vectors” and “metaphysical implications”, but he sounded them out in his head as he went and Emily didn’t correct him. About three-quarters of the way through the stack of papers, Emily finally spoke up.

This is it, Chris! This is the chapter I need. Now, if you could go through each page and look for any math, that would be great. You don’t have to read the words at all.

“I’ve never heard of anyone ever in the history of the world who needed to learn math this badly.”

You’d be surprised. Mathematicians take their work very seriously, and I doubt I’m the first one to make a late-night call over a formula.

“Are you a mathematician, too?”

Not exactly. You can think of me more like an engineer. Your mom is a mathematician, so she does mostly theoretical work. What I’m doing is using applied mathematics for practical work.

“Hmmm,” Chris said, chewing his bottom lip. “I… think I get it. My mom makes the math, and you use the math.”

Exactly! You’re very clever, Chris.

“....Thanks,” Chris said after a moment, his cheeks tinted with red. “Anyway, let’s find this thing you need so bad.”

Moving his finger across the pages, he looked for things that might be math instead of words, and he found them in abundance. There were equations everywhere, not just in the printed text, but also handwritten in the margins. Some parts were crossed out and overwritten, too. Chris shook his head.

“How does anyone make any sense of this?”

It’s not easy, that’s for sure.

“It’s hard for you, too?”

Of course. Your mom is way smarter than I am.

“Ugh, stop saying things like that! It’s too weird. Mom is just…. Mom.”

Maybe someday you’ll feel differently. It can be tough to think of your parents as real people, but it’ll happen eventually.

“If you say so,” Chris said, shaking his head. He went back to skimming the pages, again using his finger as a guide so he didn’t lose his place. A few pages later, Emily stopped him again.

Yes! This is it! My god, your mother is a total genius.

“I said-” Chris began, irritably.

I know, I know, I’m sorry. Hold on just a moment, I need to make some adjustments based on this formula.

“Alright. Does that mean I can go back upstairs now?” he asked.

There was no response. Chris sighed, took out his phone, and began watching videos on Tiktok. There was no sense going back upstairs if Emily was going to make him come back down again, so he sat and watched videos of people doing the cell phone challenge.

After a few minutes, he switched from Tiktok to Twitter and was surprised to discover that there were tons of tweets trending about an #earthquake in California. And Nevada, and Arizona. He read a few tweets about it, and then saw that there were a bunch of new tags starting to trend: people were using #blackout, #darkness, and #whereisthesun. It was right around sunset over there, and people in cities all over the southwest were reporting that the sky had gone dark. No stars, no sun, just... dark.

Then came the pictures.

From Oregon and Mexico, people began posting pictures of an enormous thing on top of most of California. The first few pictures were denounced as photoshops, but more and more kept getting posted. Videos, too.

The thing was so huge that it was nearly impossible to take in all at once due to the curvature of the earth and the sheer height of the thing; it dwarfed the highest mountains like the highest mountains dwarf humans. Plus, it was sunset so the sunlight was getting filtered through the atmosphere, making it hard to see clearly. To Chris’s eyes, it looked like a mottled brown and gray, but some people were arguing on the internet that it was red and white.

The online world was on fire with speculation, with suggestions of everything from aliens to rock eruptions to some sort of weapon.

Ten minutes had passed since the thing first appeared and, engrossed in his phone, it never even occurred to Chris to wake up his parents. That was when Emily startled him again.

I seem to have caused a bit of a stir. Emily’s words held the barest suggestion of a sigh. That was my mistake; I seem to have misread your mother’s handwriting and thought a G was a C. Anyone could have made that mistake, really; C would make way more sense, given the context.

“Hey! You scared me. And I have no idea what you’re saying,” Chris said, distractedly. “Have you seen the thing in California? What’s up with that?”

Ah. Well, there’s no real delicate way to say this, so. Um. I am the “thing” currently above California, and parts of Nevada and Arizona. I didn’t intend to make quite a… scene. But with the mistake I made in the formula, I ended up in the wrong place. This is actually something of a best-case scenario, all things considered.

“Now I really have no idea what you’re saying.”

A sigh caressed Chris’s brain. The thing that you’re seeing pictures of? That’s me.

“That doesn’t make any sense. You’re a 34-year-old girl named Emily and a weirdo, not some big mountain thing. I hate when adults try to talk to me like I’m stupid. You’re the stupid one,” Chris said retorted, more venomously than he intended..

You asked me earlier if I was a monster, and I said no. But that wasn’t strictly… true. It’s hard to explain. But I understand if you’re angry. The thing everyone is looking at -- me -- isn’t an alien, and it’s not a weapon. It’s a woman named Emily, who is 34 years old, and who is also probably the biggest crab in the universe. And I don’t mean that metaphorically, like I can be crabby sometimes. I mean that I am literally a megacrab. Six legs. Claws. Armored exoskeleton. Size of Texas.

Chris blinked a few times, then asked, “So.... What’s that like?”

You know what? It’s okay. I miss things about having a normal human body, like being able to… Well, nevermind. Maybe when you’re older. Overall, though, I’m pretty happy.

“You mean you can’t have sex?”

Christopher!

“What? It’s not like I don’t know about it.”

I’m going to leave that conversation to your parents. Meanwhile, I came back to say thank you, and goodbye. I did promise you that you wouldn’t hear from me again after this, after all.

“Wait, forever forever?” Chris asked, taken aback. “But what if I don’t want you to go... forever?”

I’m afraid there’s no choice. If I stayed here, I would disrupt the course of human history. The various world governments would fight over me. It wouldn’t be a good look, trust me. So I’m going away. That’s why I needed your mom’s book. Maybe I’ll come back some day, but not for a long time.

“Oh. If I didn’t read the book for you, would you have stayed?”

Oh, Chris, you’re a sweet boy. It would only have delayed me by a day or two, so don’t beat yourself up. I suggest that you keep our little talk tonight between us, too. If it gets out that we talked like this, I can’t promise that you’d be safe. Powerful people would try to target you in order to get to me. So this’ll be our secret, okay?

“Emily, you’re… You’re scaring me,” Chris said, his voice cracking a little.

I know, but it’s very important that you follow these directions. If you do, you’ll be okay, and everything will be fine. I’ll try to check up on you from time to time, too, okay?

Chris fought the lump in his throat and looked at the floor. “Okay. I’ll… I’ll miss you.”

Thank you, Chris. That means more to me than you know. It’s rare that a… creature… such as myself gets treated like a friend.

“You’re welcome, Emily. Have a… have a safe trip.”

One last dry laugh floated through his mind. Don’t worry about me, Chris. You just make sure you stay alive until I come back, okay?

“I promise,” he said, wiping his nose on his arm as he blinked away his tears.

Several long seconds passed.

“Emily?” he asked, with a note of helplessness.

There was no answer.

After a moment, he checked his phone again. Twitter was overrun with the news that the “thing” had disappeared entirely. It was night, so no one saw exactly where it went, or how. People were already posting about the whole thing being a hoax.

Chris put down his phone and sighed. He sat at his mom’s desk in silence for several minutes, and a few tears left lines down his face. Then, slowly and deliberately, he pulled out some blank pages from the desk and grabbed a pen. Methodically, he began copying down everything he could remember about his exchange with Emily.

About an hour later he put his pen down and looked up at the ceiling, his work done.

“If she won’t be back for a while…” he said to himself, “I guess I’d better learn some more math.”

After a pensive pause, he mused, “I wonder if Mom will teach me.”

He leaned back in the too-big chair and watched the ceiling fan spin, his thoughts whirling around inside his head at the speed of light.

Art by Zhen Fu Li https://www.deviantart.com/zhenfuli

[austinsirkin]

“The Blue Door Symbolizes Sadness”: Lies Your English Teach Told You

It seems to have become a point of shared American culture that Gen-X’ers and Millennials hate how they were taught literature in high school. Nearly everyone from those generations has the memory of sitting in English class, listening to their teacher explain how something in a book meant something that seemed ridiculous, especially if said teacher was explaining that some minor detail, such as the color of a door, was a part of an elaborate plan by the author to express something incredibly subtle. As a result, many of those students came to feel that literary analysis was stupid, and honestly, I can’t blame them. However, today I’m going to explain why literary analysis is important, and why you’re right to hate the way it was taught to you in high school.

Who Were Your English Teachers?

I’m going to go ahead and throw high school English teachers under the bus, metaphorically speaking. I apologize in advance if you’re a high school English teacher and are reading this (I love you, you’re under-appreciated, and you do important work), but nevertheless it has to be done.

I’m not currently aware of the education levels of high school teachers around the country at the moment, but back in the 80′s, 90′s, and 00′s, the vast majority of high school teachers, especially in English, did not have post-graduate educations. The only requirements to teach in high school were to have either a Bachelor’s degree in the field you wanted to teach, or a Bachelor’s degree in education. In some places you didn’t even necessarily need that, and you could just get a certification. I say this not to diminish teachers themselves, but because it’s important to bear in mind when considering what these teachers said in their classes that they were not experts in these fields. Most of the time, they were teaching from a primer of sorts, which effectively told them what to say. These were the “teacher versions” of the textbooks you had in high school, which came with footnotes containing not just solutions to problems or answers to questions, but general knowledge that would be useful for a teacher to know.

So really, the people who wrote those books that your teachers used are the ones responsible for this whole mess. In that sense, it’s not your teacher’s fault, and you shouldn’t hold it against them; if we’d required advanced degrees in order for someone to be a high school teacher, there’d be teacher shortages all over the country. At least, that was the case a decade or two ago.

While I don’t know exactly who was responsible for writing all of those textbooks, my best guess is that whoever it was, they wrote them a long time ago. I mean, after all, it’s not like Shakespeare’s works have changed in the last few hundred years, right? Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is still going to be “The Scarlet Letter” a hundred years from now. Right?

Well, not exactly. And that brings us to my second point.

Living in the Past

While specific works don’t change over time (with some notable exceptions including translations and multiple published versions), our understanding of them certainly does. For example, if you’d asked someone to analyze “Romeo and Juliet” in 1597, I guarantee you that their analysis would be markedly different from our analysis today; it’s well known that his plays were seen as common entertainment of the time, rather than high-brow performances for the educated only.

This is important to note, because the field of literature analysis and criticism is a constantly-evolving, changing environment, and what’s most relevant to this article is the idea of “author intent”. This is what lots of us learned in high school, and hated; the idea that by picking apart certain details of a given work, we could discern the intent of the author, where we assumed that every detail was consciously chosen to represent something. For example, as in the name of this article, that the author intended for a blue door to symbolize sadness. Or for a green light to symbolize greed.

The problem with this was that as anyone who has ever written anything knows, sometimes you just choose things arbitrarily*. Note the asterisk there, as we’ll come back to this later.

As a result, the idea of considering author intent was largely abandoned by literary scholars in the 1960′s, so the fact that it was still being taught to high school classes as late as the 00′s (and maybe even still today, but I’m out of touch with high school educations of the 10′s) is not just ridiculous, but rather deplorable. It did a disservice to multiple generations of students, and turned them off to something that’s a precious skill of tremendous importance: reading. Reading critically, specifically.

If you hated the idea of being told what the author thought, or what something symbolized in a book in high school, you were probably right, and your teacher was wrong. As the 20th century went on and the field of psychology developed, literary scholars came to realize that not all decisions in a book were conscious choices by the author. However, that doesn’t mean that those choices have no significance whatsoever. Remember that asterisk up above when I said that things were chosen arbitrarily? Well, we’ve come to understand that when it comes to a creative work, nothing is truly arbitrary, as the human subconscious is full of all sorts of weird things just waiting to get out. So if, for example, you’re writing a story and choose to use a blue door, that may not necessarily mean that you consciously intended for it to represent sadness. Instead, perhaps the scene in question reminded you of an experience you had as a child, where there was a blue door, and you drew upon that as you wrote. If someone were to ask you, “Why did you make this door blue?” you’d likely respond, “I don’t know. It doesn’t really mean anything,” but the reality is that it DOES mean something, it just wasn’t an intentional choice. The author made a correlation in their own subconscious that informed their work, and we may never be able to know exactly why that choice was made.

Thus, the deeper we delve into the idea that the author doesn’t necessarily consciously control every element of their work, the more we undermine the idea of the author as an expert of their own work. That’s why in modern literary analysis, scholars will explicitly ignore things that an author says about their own work (in most cases), and why we don’t usually ask authors questions like “what does this mean?” anymore.

That’s because there’s been a larger paradigm shift in our understanding of literature; we’ve shifted from using literature to explore the one specific person who wrote it to instead using literature to explore humanity. That is, to explore everyone who isn’t the author. And as every reader of a given text has a unique set of experiences and associations, there are huge numbers of possible readings of any single given work.

Often, scholars will perform a reading of a work according to a given critical framework, such as a feminist reading, where they read the text for feminist themes, or a Marxist reading, where they read the text for classist themes. But these themes all exist separately and together all at once, and there’s no longer any misapprehension that we’ve “solved” a text, and have come up with the single, unchanging meaning of the work. That’s because the things that are important about a given work aren’t the things that the author intended to put in it, but the things that the readers took away from it.

What’s It All For, Though?

Thanks, I’m glad you asked! Seriously, though, what’s the point of studying literature from 1597 or 1895 or whatever? You probably thought something like, “I understand why we should read these things in order to understand the greater context of the works of today, but why do we need to analyze them? It seems like a waste of time, and like it doesn’t accomplish anything.”

Well, I can see why you’d feel that way. Performing a poststructuralist analysis of a novel from the 1800′s, for example, may not seem like it accomplishes much. No one is going to use that analysis to stop people going hungry, or create peace in the world. Then again, neither will most work done in America.

What literary analysis does, though, is provide insights into humanity itself, and our search for meaning, not just of our own lives, but of the human condition. Learning it in high school helps guide students toward critical, self-evaluative thinking in a way that no other class does. When there’s no “right” answer, students need to be able to evaluate a text, identify correlative elements, and create an argument around them. That’s a valuable skill on its own.

What’s even more exciting is that as you progress in literary criticism, you come to understand that a “text” is more than just a book. A video game can be a text. A TV show. Even a billboard. Or a chair. Anything created by humans is something that can be analyzed and interpreted. So literary criticism is sort of a middle ground between philosophy and anthropology; it studies things that humans have made, and asks the question, “What does this mean?”

If you don’t care what things mean, and how the things surrounding you in your life fit together into a framework that helps explain who we are, where we are, and where we’re going, then cool. You don’t have to, and that’s fine. But that’s what literary analysis is for, and maybe now you understand why people want to do it. I hope, too, that you can forgive your English teacher for lying to you; they likely didn’t know they were doing it, and they were probably just trying to do their best to help you learn and grow as a person.

Also, you can abandon your dreams of going back in time to ask an author what they meant in the hopes of proving your teacher wrong. You can now prove them wrong without going anywhere at all!

[austinsirkin]

(Mostly Spoiler-Free) Why the Heroes of Star Wars: The Force Awakens are Secretly Terrible People

Finn, Rey, Poe, Han... They’re all terrible people. In order to understand why, we’re going to have to go back to the original and -- God forbid -- prequel trilogies, so let’s take a trip down memory lane and examine why these new characters are so much worse than the old ones.

The original trilogy, episodes 4, 5, and 6, is about mass murderers, but that’s nothing new. While the films themselves gloss over this fact, there are various memes on the internet (such as the one above) that gleefully point out that in A New Hope, Luke kills (presumably) hundreds of thousands of stormtroopers on the first Death Star when he blows it up. Maybe innocent support staff, too, but they don’t count and I’ll explain why in a bit.

Forget all of your Expanded Universe knowledge for a second because all of that is gone. When the first trilogy came out, the audience knew nothing about the storm troopers: they were nameless, faceless evil, and that was okay. We didn’t need anything more than that because they demonstrated their intent with their actions. Those stormtroopers were bad people because they kept doing bad things all the time. Right away, they killed a bunch of rebels, which is a morally questionable thing to do. They were enemy combatants, though, so let’s give the stormtroopers the benefit of the doubt and say that they were at least not wrong to kill them. 

But then we have the innocent Jawas who sold R2 to the Lars. And then the Lars themselves are slaughtered for seemingly no good reason. Those two actions are unequivocally morally wrong, and they set the tone for the rest of the series. In fact, those two actions are pretty much the entire moral justification for why the Empire is bad, because once the main characters join the Rebellion, they become enemy combatants and thus it’s more or less acceptable to respond to them with force. But this is a movie, and they only have so much time to demonstrate that the bad guys are bad, so let’s just accept that they’re bad and move on. We’re certainly given no indication that they aren’t bad, so let’s go with it.

When Luke blows up the Death Star, all of those people he kills are enemy combatants. Even the technicians and staffers are there of their own volition, so are willingly participating in an evil Empire. It’s against our rules to kill medics and crew members and the like, but given their willing participation, it’s at least morally questionable rather than outright terrible. That may not entirely absolve Luke of the guilt of killing that many people, but at least it seems to help him sleep well at night.

Lucas, for his part, seemed to be aware of this problem in retrospect. Remember his shameful quest to prevent Han from shooting first? That’s because he wanted his characters to be morally justified in the violence that they commit. Shooting first is wrong; shooting in self-defense is okay.

That’s why, when he went to go make the prequel trilogy, he not only made the generic enemies robots, who can be slaughtered willy-nilly with no moral repercussions, but he also showed that stormtroopers are actually all clones of a bad man, thus reinforcing that all of the stormtroopers that Luke killed in the original trilogy were bad people. We got it, Lucas... Our heroes are meant to be heroes, and we should shut up and like it.

Then Lucas passes the reins, and along comes Finn. This bit is slightly spoilery, but given that it’s revealed within the first few minutes of the film, I’ll just go ahead and say it: Finn is an ex-stormtrooper who develops a conscience and quits the First Order. His very existence calls into question the moral standing of the main characters in the film, which is probably one of the things that Lucas hated about the new movie.

Finn tells us that he was kidnapped as a child, and indoctrinated into the First Order. Brainwashed, in fact. But he breaks free of his programming, and goes on the run.

Regardless of any other events that transpire in the film, let’s look at the moral implications of that alone. The stormtroopers are no longer clones, and are no longer “bad people”. They’re haven’t even chosen to be there of their own free will. No, the stormtroopers aren’t villains in this movie, they’re victims. These were literally innocent children who have been forced to participate in the First Order, and that’s not all. Using innocent children as stormtroopers is awful, and an utter tragedy, but all that’s required for our heroes to have Lucas’s cherished moral superiority is for them to be irredeemable. After all, if our heroes can’t save them from their programming, then killing them is all that’s left.

But then along comes Finn with his big, doe-y eyes and his charming awkwardness, and he screws everything up. We don’t know exactly how Finn came to his senses, but if Finn can recover from his programming, then potentially anyone can. Saving stormtroopers is something that the heroes could actually do, but instead they slaughter them by the boatload, shooting them down like Luke, Han, and Leia did in the original trilogy.

But these are different enemies, and a different situation. The movie wants us to forget that, but when Lucas left, he took his moral superiority with him. These heroes are stained with the blood of their enemies, and those enemies are innocent children.

[austinsirkin]

Voting With Your Eyes is the New Voting With Your Dollars

I've seen a lot of great media come and go in the last few years. Often times, seemingly the best shows will get pulled. Why is that, and what can we do to stop it?

Well, as I've said many times, this is truly a golden age of television and visual media... The things being created today are absolutely amazing compared to those I grew up with. As nostalgically fond as I am of the shows of my childhood, let me tell you something: He-Man is an awful, awful show. Practically every show produced today is better than He-Man, excepting maybe some reality shows that shouldn't exist.

Anyway, I don't want to digress into the He-Man Scale of Awfulness, which rates shows by how much better or worse they are than He-Man. What I actually want to talk about is why TV shows and other forms of media go away or get canceled.

In order to do that, I need to talk a little bit about our current advertising-driven model of funding. This model applies equally to both large-scale television productions and small-scale YouTube shows. Many of these shows are effectively free to you, the viewer, because in the business model you are the product, not the customer. Television networks (or individual shows) are selling you, the viewer, to advertisers in the hope that you will then go on to purchase that advertiser's product. Whether you actually purchase said product is largely immaterial to this model; science says that you will be more likely to do so, and that's good enough for us.

What IS important is that you actually put your eyeballs on the show, because your eyes are worth money. I don't mean money on the black market, either, where they trade in excised eyeballs. I mean that it is worth money to people when you look at things.

Isn't that an odd thing to think about? I mean, we sit and stare at stuff all day... It doesn't seem like an especially sparse commodity, right? But as far as advertisers are concerned, those eyes are practically currency. Okay, I'll admit that one pair of eyes isn't worth a whole lot, but once we get into thousands or millions of eyes, it adds up pretty quick. 

So all you have to do in order to show content producers that you enjoy and appreciate their work is to give them eye-money by watching their shows through measurable channels. "Measurable channels" is a bit tricky, though, given the outdated reliance on Nielsen ratings. I don't have the latest ratings information at my disposal, but what I do know is that in order to give Nielsen ratings information, you must be notified that your watching habits are being recorded. So you'll know if you're a Nielsen participant. Thus, what you do with your regular television shows is sort of up to you. That's primarily why I haven't written this article before.

However, things have changed. There's plenty of internet-only media out there now that's judged based on total views, regardless of the Nielsen demographics. That means that the responsibility for funding internet-based media rests solely on your shoulders! And you can't put it off, either... Many of these producers watch how quickly new views accumulate, so it's important to put your eyes on things as soon as possible. Don't want to see any more videos from Miley Cyrus? Vote with your eyes, and don't watch them on YouTube. Want to see more cool sci-fi videos? Vote with your eyes! Watch the trailers. Share them so that your friends can see. Sometimes the simple act of clicking "like" on Facebook is enough to signify your interest!

It's so simple and easy, and yet so few people do it. I'll frequently watch as amazing indie videos get a few thousand likes while the latest popular atrocity gathers millions of views in only hours. Did you know that Grumpy Cat has turned into a multi-million dollar business just because people put their eyes on her? They didn't even need to spend any money... All it took was eyes!

So the next time you're browsing through the internet, remember how much power your eyes have. Remember to put those eyes where you want them to be. If there are articles, pictures, videos, or songs that are pertinent to your interests, look at them! Consume them! Or else they'll go away, because they think no one is interested.

In the immortal words of He-Man, "YOU HAVE THE POWER!" Or, wait, I think that was how it went. That show was so bad.

[austinsirkin]

Has Steampunk Peaked in the US?

The simple answer to the title question, if Steampunk has peaked in the US, is yes.

I'll explain why I think so, but before I do that, let me throw a disclaimer out there: I feel like I more or less "have my finger on the pulse of Steampunk", to use an awful cliche, but I haven't done any specific research to back up this claim. So I may very well be wrong, and your differing opinion may be just as valid. However, lend me your ear (or your eye(s), at any rate) for a short time, and I'll explain why I think Steampunk has peaked, and what that means.

There are a few reasons I think the way I do, though I'll admit that the primary one is strictly a gut feeling. Without any hard numbers to back it up, what I can say is that it feels like Steampunk has reached its pinnacle of influence in the US, and I say that as someone who got involved back in 2006, when Steampunk was just beginning its rise to popularity. So I've watched it grow, and I've seen it change forms a few times as it developed.

What I see happening now is something that's been happening all along, but it's on a bigger scale now because we have a bigger audience: namely, people are getting tired of it.

Some people are getting tired of the paradigm of Steampunk and want to move away to other things, which is understandable; they like to change it up every now and then. Others, however, are getting tired of the ceaseless bickering that takes place in Steampunk online communities. Unfortunately, the bickering is driving people away twofold: it's pushing away not only the people involved in the arguments, but the people who read them and think, "Wow, I'm not getting involved with this!"

Of course, we can't simply not talk about things; that never works out. So it's left us in this weird gray area where no one really knows what to do, or what to talk about, which makes literally everyone uncomfortable. And who wants to be involved in a movement that makes them uncomfortable? Other than masochists, that is!

In addition to that, the relatively poor quality of Steampunk book and movie titles has driven non-Steampunk audiences away from the genre. Sure, we have a handful of good writers in our corner (and a few particularly good anthologies), but precious few. As a result, many times a newcomer's first impression of Steampunk is something like the recent Three Musketeers film, which was not only terrible, but also not a very good representation of Steampunk. Someone once asked me to recommend a good Steampunk movie to them, and I only-half-jokingly replied that a good Steampunk movie doesn't exist.

I'm not sure if you know this, but I have it on good authority that most Steampunk fiction has been selling poorly, and thus the publishing industry is starting to move away from looking for Steampunk manuscripts. I mean, if you have a great Steampunk book, they'll still print it, just like in any other genre, but the "push" to get Steampunk books out there seems to be over.

In the other corner of the Steampunk movement, we have conventions. For a few years, a new convention would open up every couple of months. The country was practically peppered with them, but now, not so much. Many cons are still going strong, but the rate at which new cons are opening has slowed, or possibly even stopped. That means that the need for Steampunk conventions is being met, meaning that we aren't seeing the hordes of new Steampunks that many thought we'd get. Or perhaps we've already gotten them, and now we're running low on recruits. Either way, it seems unlikely that the growth of Steampunk will resume, barring a great blockbuster Steampunk film (which I haven't seen on the upcoming docket) or a runaway television hit (Lantern City? Are you actually happening?). Those sorts of things can always bring attention back, but I won't be holding my breath.

Let me take a moment to clear something up: peaked and died are two different things. Steampunk may never actually die, because for many of the people involved, it's a way of life. They'll keep doing it until the day they die, because it's who they are, and that's great. Instead, I suspect that Steampunk will slowly lose popularity until it's just one more genre of many, and no longer the favored child. So I'm not predicting doom and gloom; in fact, peaking may be the best thing to happen to Steampunk. It might mean that the people who are still here when the dust clears are the people who will actually work all of this nonsense out, and figure out a way to be inclusive, happy, and also thoughtful. Which is a difficult proposition, because thoughtfulness and happiness rarely go hand-in-hand!

[austinsirkin]

I present to you: Reading Fail Guy

[austinsirkin]

Why Tesla Was Really Awesome, But Not That Awesome

There's a recent comic about Nikola Tesla by The Oatmeal, and it's been making the rounds on the internet. This comic essentially goes on at length about all the amazing things that Tesla invented, but were either credited to others or simply ignored.

For the most part, this is true. Tesla did get pretty screwed by Edison. Several times, in fact. However, the comic makes a big deal of how Tesla died penniless and insane, and also villifies Edison. Again, everything it says about Edison is true. He was certainly a magnificent bastard.

However, this comic which people have been spreading around really paints an unfair picture of the real life of Tesla and Edison.

First of all, Tesla's worst enemy wasn't Edison, it was himself. Tesla was a Grade A genius, but he paid a high price for it. In many ways, Tesla was like a real version of Sherlock Holmes; he traded high-functional, genius-level intellect for poor social skills and extreme eccentricity. Except that it eventually got to the point where his mental disabilities were so overpowering that they prevented him from accomplishing anything, whereas Holmes simply retired to be an apiarist (beekeeper).

Despite Tesla's many inventions, as he got older he began to blur the line between fact and fantasy, and many of his later 'inventions' were never built. There remains to this day no proof that some of them were even possible, much less feasible. His failure to deliver on certain projects made him an unreliable investment, which is the real reason he wasn't able to monetize his inventions later in life. Not to mention that the man was absolutely awful at managing money.

Second, Edison did a lot of good in addition to the awful things he did. Despite the comic's claim that he wasn't a scientist (he wasn't, really) he most definitely was an inventor. Even if we eventually prove that every single one of his inventions was first made by someone else (which has frequently happened throughout history, I should add), we can still put him down as the inventor of the modern research laboratory.

We tend to look back and see technological progress as inevitable, but that really isn't the case. In almost every single era, there are people who fight change. Do you know how long it took for the electro-magnetic telegraph to be adopted into use after its invention? Despite its immense practical value, it took nearly 30 years before people were willing to treat it as anything more than a curiosity. That's because the optical telegraph already existed, and was 'good enough'. This is far from an isolated incident; as a modern example, the first tablet computer was made twenty years ago, and yet it only now caught on.

The point is that technology doesn't just need innovators, it needs champions. That's the role that Thomas Edison played, and he played it very, very well. His talent was not just getting technologies adopted by the general public, but in monetizing them. Without his work, many of the inventions developed during that time may have languished in obscurity.

So the point of all of this is that Tesla was a deeply flawed genius, and Edison was an enormous bastard who did a lot of good in the world.

They're both just people, for better or worse. Putting either of them on a pedestal is going to be problematic because neither of them are without blame for the way things turned out.

So honor Tesla for who he was, a man who overcame tremendous difficulties to invent amazing things, but don't make him a martyr for the archetypal figure of the underdog.

[austinsirkin]

Question Nothing

It's sad that the above quote is entirely useless. If you teach your children to question everything, what good will that realistically do them? I'll tell you!

It will make them extremely frustrated, because our entire society, from the ground up, is predicated on people NOT questioning things. I'm not even talking about politics, here, I'm talking about your average day-to-day life.

You're not supposed to ask questions in school. Sure, you can ask for clarifications of the material being taught to you, but if you start questioning that material? Not only are you slowing down the class so that everyone else gets behind, but it's entirely possible that your teacher may not even be able to give you a satisfactory answer until you get to college, and sometimes not even then. The current school system simply isn't set up to accommodate students who really want to learn, because a student who really wants to learn doesn't just want to study individual subjects, they want to learn about everything.

You're not supposed to ask questions at work. When you start a new job, there's a tremendous pressure to simply DO the work. The more time your job spends training you, the less money they're making. Everyone has their own job to do, and no one wants to take the time out of their day to answer your questions.

You're not even supposed to ask questions at the doctor's office or the hospital. The doctors are all overworked and literally don't have time to sit and explain to you exactly what's going on inside your body. Especially at the hospital, where you may only see a doctor for five minutes. And if you think of a question after the doctor has gone? Too bad. You probably won't see him or her again until tomorrow.

The one place where it's acceptable to ask questions is at home, with your parents. But what are their qualifications, and how much can you trust their answers? They may not be trained or schooled in order to provide the answers you want, but at least nowadays you can find most of the answers you seek on the internet. Even then, there's no gatekeeper for that information, so how can you know if it's true?

Sure, you may say, but what about in the sciences? They get paid to question everything, right?

Wrong! In fact, we've created such a climate of results-oriented research that people are often afraid to question established theories and papers. Most scientific journals aren't interested in publishing research that simply reinforces established theories, or even worse, contradicts established theories. This creates a "chilling effect" in which scientists refrain from even doing those experiments since they know they won't get published. And if you don't get published, you can lose your job.

So where exactly is the place to question things, in our society? Where are these children who are being taught to question everything going to fit in?

Nowhere. They're going to end up sad and frustrated, and THAT is sad and frustrating.

What do we do about it? Instead of just teaching your child to question everything, you have to be willing to take time out of your day to answer other people's questions. We have to work to create a society that welcomes questions, so please teach your child to ask questions, but also teach them to answer them.

[austinsirkin]

Sherlock Holmes: Chauvinism and Irene Adler

The renewed interest in Sherlock Holmes of late, due in part to the American film series starring Robert Downey, Jr. and also to the British television show Sherlock, has made me aware of exactly how little most people know of the actual character of Holmes as was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Many of the people who are now "fans" of Holmes have, in fact, never read the original stories. That's not an altogether new phenomenon, as films have been the primary source of mainstream Holmes-related knowledge since somewhere in the early 20th century. You know the line, "Elementary, my dear Watson!"? That was never said in the stories, but instead likely came from a 1929 film.

However, one area of misunderstanding has been perennially perpetuated, and that's Holmes's misogyny. It's well-documented in the various Holmes stories that he doesn't like women. The quotes in which he says negative things about them are nearly overwhelming. Doyle, known for his subtlety, was really trying to drive this point home. Here's the most famous:

"Women are never to be entirely trusted—not the best of them." -The Sign of Four

While most of the others are contextual and don't make for easy quotability, Holmes is generally described as being very courteous and polite to women, but having no respect or understanding of them. He essentially considers them to be fundamentally irrational, and thus beyond the ken of his keenly rational mind.

At the time that the original Holmes stories were written, being a misogynist was more widely accepted in mainstream culture than it is today, but by no means was it considered 'okay'. Doyle absolutely used misogyny as a way to show that Holmes was an unfeeling, monstrous machine of a man. Doyle even famously remarked once, "Holmes is as inhuman as a Babbage's calculating machine and just about as likely to fall in love."

And yet we're presented with the problem of Irene Adler. Not only is her role in the Holmes universe contradictory to what we've come to expect in Holmes's behavior, but she also appears in the very first non-novella story. In case anyone in the world is unfamiliar with the character of Irene Adler by now (since she appeared in both the American films and the British show), Adler is renowned as being the only woman to ever "beat" Sherlock Holmes, and she occupies a special place in his mind if not his heart as "the woman".

Much has been made of her as a character over the years, and many men and women alike look at her as an excellent example of a strong female character. So much so that when the television show Sherlock portrayed her as falling in love with Holmes and needing to be rescued like a damsel in distress, the outcry was immense. The blogosphere (I love that word) lit on fire with people condemning the portrayal as sexist. Whether it was or not is beside the point for now, but let's look at Adler's character in the only story she appears in, "A Scandal in Bohemia".

First of all, here's the full quote in which Watson recounts how Holmes considers Adler to be "the" woman:

"To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen.... And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory."

There's a lot going on in this quote, but the very first thing you may notice is that the quote specifically mentions that Holmes doesn't love her. While Watson could in many ways be considered an unreliable narrator, given the meta-textual quote from Doyle that I mentioned earlier, I think it's safe to assume that this was intended to be the truth. This is important, because both recent film versions of Holmes have in some way had a relationship with Adler.

Second, Adler has a reputation for "outsmarting" Holmes, or of beating him at his own game. Because of this, an unreasonable expectation has arisen about Adler's capabilities. The fact of the matter is that we don't really see much of her capabilities in the story. Let's take a look at her accomplishments in the original text:

She threatens the King of Bohemia that she will ruin his marriage by sending an "indiscreet" picture of the two of them to his bride-to-be's family.

She gets married to Godfrey Norton, a lawyer, in a secret ceremony. Holmes, in disguise, witnesses this marriage.

She lets Holmes in another disguise into her house when he pretends to be wounded.

When Watson throws a smoke bomb into her house and Holmes yells "Fire!" she accidentally gives away the location of the picture in question.

When Holmes leaves her house, she dresses as a man and follows him, then bids him goodnight.

Then she immediately leaves the country, taking the picture with her and promising not to use it to ruin the King's marriage.

That's it. That's the whole story. 

Now let's examine it.

First of all, it's never made entirely clear why she's trying to ruin the King's marriage. There are vague allusions to her being spiteful and not wanting the King to be with anyone else, or something. It's pretty confusing, and Holmes doesn't seem to bat an eye at this. This sort of undermines the idea that Adler is somehow "better" than Holmes, or at the very least, not an emotional, irrational woman. Though there's nothing to say that you can't be emotional, irrational, and also extremely smart, so let's move on.

Second, when you look at the plot of the story, the entire way in which Adler "beats" Holmes is that she recognizes him. That's it. The story hinges on Holmes returning to her house and retrieving the picture from where he successfully divined its location, but when he returns, she's gone and has taken the picture with her. This is due only to the fact that she successfully recognized Holmes while in disguise. While she did quickly dress up as a man to follow him in order to make sure that it was him, it's made clear that she has worked in theatre, so dressing up in costumes is in her line of work. Not to mention that working in theatre may have made her more likely to recognize people in disguise.

So, the story hinges on Adler recognizing Holmes. How big of a feat is that, really? Well, much is made of Holmes's ability to disguise himself. He does this in many stories, and even fools Watson on occasion. Watson, unlike the bumbling idiot he is sometimes portrayed as, is a competent guy in the stories, so it's not an entirely unimpressive feat.

However, remember that Holmes appeared to Adler twice in one day, in two different disguises. First as an out-of-work groom who was the witness at her wedding, and then once as a wounded priest. In both cases, she would have gotten a good look at him. So far as I can recall, in the entire canon of Holmes stories, he never again appears to the same person in two different disguises, and he definitely doesn't do it in the same day. Even an ordinary person may have a weird sense of deja vu when interacting with the same person twice, albeit in disguise both times.

That she puts on men's clothing and then follows him is quick thinking, but given that she was already on alert from the King having sent men to ransack her house twice, it's safe to assume that she might be slightly paranoid.

What I'm trying to get at with all of this is that Irene Adler wasn't really anything special according to the text. She's apparently vindictive (threatened the King), of average intelligence (gave away the picture's location), and quick-thinking (recognized Holmes and followed him).

But if Irene Adler wasn't anything special, how did she elude Holmes?

The answer is simple, and it also explains why this story appears first among the short stories: Holmes messed up. He underestimated her because of his misogyny, and assumed that she wouldn't recognize him when he disguised himself for the second time.

Doyle designed Holmes to be the perfect analytical machine, capable of inferring vast amounts of information from only tiny details, and all of his personality flaws are made to enhance that capacity. He's rude, over-dramatic, self-indulgent, and some would argue sociopathic, but all of those things in some way contribute toward making him a better crime-solver. Except for his misogyny, which in his very first regular case contributes to his failure. This, I believe, was a sly nod and wink from Doyle, who was distancing himself as an author from the views of his character, as if to say, "Look, Holmes hates women, and look where that got him." This was actually a subtle jibe at misogynists.

So while the story both opens and closes with Irene Adler, "A Scandal in Bohemia" is, like all Holmes stories, really about Sherlock Holmes. It's an important story for feminism not because Adler was really a strong female character who beat a strong male character, but because Doyle was implying that Holmes would be a better man if he respected women's abilities. It may not exactly be a positive role model, but at the same time, it's certainly better than nothing. So when you watch adaptations of Holmes stories, remember that Adler was both more and less than a romance and an equal: she was an object lesson in what happens to those who underestimate women.

[austinsirkin]

Why Study Literature?

I'm a graduate student in English Literature, and for the past several years that I've been involved in graduate-level literature scholarship I've become hyper-aware of what people say about studying literature. The sad fact is that I see lots of people saying disparaging things about lit studies, and about scholarship in general. The sad part isn't that they say things like that; they're allowed to hate it or be critical of it. The sad part is that they don't understand the issue well enough to truly judge. So I'm going to attempt to explain why those things are important, and why they're not stupid.

You study literature, right?

Yes, we do, but we also do a whole lot more than that. In fact, as the state of the larger field of critical analysis has grown and developed, we've come to realize that (in the words of critical theorist Jacques Derrida) everything is a text. The mouse under your hand right now was created by a person (or people) who wanted to imbue it with both a function and a form, and that conscious effort to create an object also creates a text that can be both read and evaluated. For example, is your mouse ergonomic, or is it just rounded? Is it a bright or subdued color? What do those things say about the mouse itself, and where does the mouse fit into both the chronology and development of mice? Further, what does that mouse say about us as a society, and what does it mean that we developed computer interfaces in the form of the mouse and keyboard?

There's nearly a never-ending well of questions that can be asked, and as we try to answer them, we learn more about the human condition, and about what it means to be human.

Wait, hold on. What about my high school teacher who made all these sweeping generalizations about what the author of Moby Dick was thinking about when he wrote it?

Yeah, I know, most people hated that. I've heard all sorts of complaints about how their high school teacher would make ridiculous lessons about how the repetition of the color blue in a story meant that the author was depressed rather than just, say, a person who liked the color blue.

That's not really indicative of what we do when we study literature. First of all, the idea of reading a text as an insight into the author's subconscious has largely fallen out of fashion, and quite a long time ago, at that. We still do it, but that's only one type of analysis out of many. Second, while we all love high school teachers for making the ultimate sacrifice and teaching teenage kids, the vast majority of them never went to graduate school. Some of them didn't even go to college for the subject they're teaching, but instead got a degree in education with a minor in some other subject. So those teachers who told you about the color blue in high school? Yeah, they may never have read any real literature scholarship or theory in their lives. And there's the other problem that even if they did at one point, there's no requirement that they stay on top of it once they begin teaching. So they may have been teaching what they learned twenty years ago, which has become significantly out of date.

Way to render my entire high school career meaningless.

Sorry. High school does give you a good basic knowledge of things, but there's just no way for them to really give you a fair understanding of everything, given how underpaid and underappreciated they are. If we paid teachers like we pay athletes, I guarantee you that you'd come out of high school up-to-date on the latest scholarship.

But why do we care about learning about humanity and all of that stuff?

Well, it's important for a variety of reasons. Human beings are on a constant quest to understand ourselves. That's why those stupid quizzes make the rounds on the internet, because we have some silly belief that a "What Harry Potter Character Are You?" quiz will actually tell you more about yourself. It may have something to do with our brains being hard-wired to see patterns, which, while it makes us great at identifying faces, sometimes also makes us see things that aren't there. Or it may have nothing to do with that at all.

However, the more we know about ourselves, the better we can become. It's like science, but for culture. Science can make you a pair of cybernetic legs, but it can't teach you how to be happy, or how to come to terms with the death of a loved one.

How does something like a feminist reading of Shakespeare teach people how to be happy?

Well, it doesn't, directly. But think about how many different scientists, working on unrelated things, it will take to first develop and then build a pair of cybernetic legs. That's sort of what we're doing by working on all of these things: we're hoping that each little step that we make in seemingly-unrelated or unimportant fields will in some way lead to a better understanding of human nature, which will in turn make people happier and better-understood.

Literature scholarship is really an attempt to find some deeper truth about life, and isn't that what we all do? Don't we spend most of our lives trying to figure out why we're here, and what it's all for? While I doubt that anyone will ever definitively answer that question, each time we do something like a feminist reading of Moby Dick, or a Marxist critique of Faulkner, we try to better understand not just those works, but everything that I've mentioned in this article. Truth, happiness, life, etc. All of those things that science can't answer.

You're just using me for a Socratic Dialogue, aren't you?

Damn, am I that transparent? Well, Socrates was a philosopher, and he greatly contributed to our understanding of the world at large, much like we try to do in Lit Studies. In fact, we combine a whole lot of different disciplines in what we do because they help us see the bigger picture. For example, we use some philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, and many more.

How in the world do you justify calling that "literature"?

Yeah, you got me. Literature actually isn't a very good name for what we do, and the literature department of colleges around the country (if not the world) are right now trying to deal with this very crisis of identity. See, it all started out fine and dandy by exclusively studying literature. At first, so-called "literature" programs only studied Greek and Roman texts, and it was required that students learn Greek, Latin, or both. In fact, it was only during this century that the works of William Shakespeare started being taught in literature classes, despite the fact that they were written four centuries ago.

In other words, the study of literature has gotten progressively larger, and has dealt with progressively newer texts. Eventually, as I quoted earlier, Derrida declared that everything was a text, and while we do primarily concern ourselves with actual literature, it's becoming more and more common to see scholarship on graphic novels, television shows, and films, if not computer mice and desk chairs. However, the tools that we use to evaluate those books and movies are the same tools that we can use to evaluate the aforementioned mice and chairs.

Come on, isn't this really just a way for you "educated" folks to feel superior to everyone else?

No, that's just an extra perk.

Seriously, though, there are people in every field who use their skill/knowledge/breeding/whatever to lord over other people. So yes, I'm sure that there are some people in Literature Studies who use their powers for evil rather than good, but that's not what the whole field is about.

I promise that we're just trying to help people understand themselves and each other!

I hate you anyway.

I'm sorry. =(

[austinsirkin]

Steampunk's Dirty Little Secret

Steampunk is Victorian Science Fiction, right? Or at the very least, it draws upon the science fiction written during that era as its inspiration.

Right?

Yeah, I know, when someone asks something like that at the beginning of an article, it's always a trick question.

Steampunk is about brass and leather and whatnot, but above all else, it's about steam power. After all, steam is in the name, isn't it? Everyone knows that steam power was used during the Victorian era, and that the 19th century was when the steam engine achieved massive commercial and popular success even if it had first been invented thousands of years before.

We all take for granted the 'steam' in 'Steampunk' because we're looking backwards in time. We already know what the Victorian era was like, and we know how things turned out. We know that electricity wasn't really used commercially until the 20th century. So clearly all of the science fiction of the Victorian era used steam power.

Let's take a look at some of the so-called inspirations for Steampunk and see what we find, shall we?

The very first example of modern science fiction was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. This is often cited as being an inspiration for Steampunk. And yet... There's no steam. None. The 'futuristic' technology of the book is electricity (specifically galvanism), not steam. Hold on to your butts, because you're about to start seeing a trend.

Here are some other books that feature zero or almost zero steam power:

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

From the Earth to the Moon

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Robur the Conquerer/Master of the World

The Time Machine

The Invisible Man

War in the Air

The War of the Worlds

When the Sleeper Wakes

The Lost World

Where, then, is all of the steam power in the things that Steampunk is based on? Well, nowhere. Only one piece of Victorian Science Fiction featuring steam springs to mind, and that's Jules Verne's The Steam House, which features a steam-powered elephant that pulls a house around. That's it. Seriously.

Any student of history can tell you that research and development into using electricity had been underway for hundreds of years by the time the Victorian era came around, and that in the latter half of the 19th century, electricity helped drive the second Industrial Revolution. In other words, the end of the Victorian era was all about electricity, not steam.

If anyone didn't buy my earlier argument that Steampunk isn't really about the Victorian era, I should hope that you do now.

That said, I should clarify that when I said that the steam power of Steampunk came from nowhere, what I meant is that it didn't come from the 19th century. It's something that we've imposed upon them from our time, because electricity is too much a part of our lives today. Machinery powered by electricity is all around us, and Steampunk just wouldn't be any fun without steam. Additionally, we picture the Victorian era a certain way based on its portrayal in films, and we're playing with what we think the Victorian era was like, not what it was actually like.

That's why it's important to realize that Steampunk is based more on the films of the 50's and 60's that were, in turn, based on the books of the Victorian era, rather than on those books themselves. The films would occasionally have steam-powered machinery in the background, or in a lab, or whathaveyou, but those things never appeared in the original books that they were based on. As a result, the idea of steam-based technology appearing in those books became reified as time passed and more and more people simply saw the movies (or just heard a friend talk about them) instead of reading the books. Even in the movies, steam power appears infrequently, and yet the "Victorian Science Fiction = steam power" paradigm has thoroughly ingrained itself into our cultural zeitgeist, and thus into Steampunk.

That's why I cite "The Wild Wild West" television show as the beginning of Steampunk, because it was the first example of science fiction that actually used steam power for some of its ridiculous gadgets rather than electricity or some other futuristic power source.

The fact that Steampunk is based on a cultural misconception, my friends, is our dirty little secret.

[austinsirkin]

7 Ways for Artists to Deal With Negative Feedback

If you're like me, you've frequently seen people get their feelings hurt on the internet. In fact, it's such a common occurrence that all sorts of words have been created to describe the process, my favorite of which is 'butthurt'.

One of the most tragic ways in which people end up getting hurt is when they post an original creation on the internet for others to appreciate, and it gets torn to shreds by harsh critics who have no personal stake in being considerate to strangers. There are many sides to this problem, and all of them have some degree of merit. For example, some people suggest that you shouldn't post something to the internet without understanding that it may receive negative feedback, while others suggest that online critics should learn to be more constructive and considerate.

Everyone wants to be praised for their work. It's the extremely rare individual who creates things and doesn't care how they're received. I've seen mass-market, award-winning authors break down in tears because of a bad review, so it's not just the mark of an amateur. However, in the case of said award-winning authors, they can console themselves with the piles of money that they should (but don't) have, and with all of the other people out there who think their work is great. The average person on the internet has no such recourse, and may even give up their art entirely based on too much harsh criticism.

Making someone give up their work isn't what criticism is about. What it's about is giving people the feedback they need to get better at their craft. At least, ideally.

In reality, many people don't understand the difference between criticism of a work of art and criticism of a person. And that's people on both sides of the issue, critics and artists alike. I've seen many artists get personally offended by legitimate criticism of something they've created, and I've seen many critics cross the line and start criticizing the artist rather than the art.

Regardless of whose fault it is, this situation still arises every day, if not every few minutes.

So artists, here's a list of things that will help you deal with it:

1. No one can 'make' you feel bad. They can say nasty things, or even do nasty things, and the only part of that process that you can control is how you respond to it. It may feel like your response to negativity is 'natural' or out of your control, but it isn't either of those things, I assure you. The way that we respond to stimuli is a thoroughly learned behavior, and you CAN control it. It's easier said than done, of course, but it's a good first step toward developing a thicker skin.

2. Anything that you create, no matter how excited or proud of it you are, is flawed. "Perfect" works of art just don't exist because their value is inherently subjective. Find me a single work of art in the entire world that everyone thinks is perfect, and I'll eat my hat. I'm serious, I will literally eat my hat. People who are far more talented than you, and far more successful than you, have been torn to shreds over their work many times; even people who you hold in historically high regard, like Shakespeare.

If people like William Shakespeare are at the mercy of bad reviews and nasty comments, what hope do you have? Best-selling novels, blockbuster films, and classical works of art have all garnered their share of criticism over the years.

3. You are not your work! I can't possibly stress this enough. If someone insults your work, they are not insulting you; they probably don't even know you well enough to make a real judgment about you one way or the other. People are fully capable of both liking you as a person, and disliking your work, and that's okay! Not everyone has to like both, though it's probably best if your significant other does. Still, it's incredibly important to realize that even if you feel like it is, your work is not a part of you. I know you've worked very hard on it, and have labored and put your heart and soul into it, but the people who see/read/hear/whatever it don't know that. They can't tell how much of yourself you've put into your work, and you can't expect them to treat your work nicely just because you tried really hard.

4. Find a balance between accepting and ignoring criticism. This is a hard thing to do, because it's really easy to go too far to one side and either listen to too much criticism, or not enough. That's a balance that you'll have to strike for yourself, but if more than one person has the same criticism of your art/book/costume/sculpture, there's probably something to it. Bear in mind that art is subjective, and if several people see your sculpture of a nude woman and think it looks like a monkey and an octopus having sex, it's probably not because they're 'just not getting it', but because you somehow failed to express yourself properly through your art. There's always going to be that one weirdo who sees monkey/octopus sex in everything, but when you start seeing trends, that's when to listen.

5. Always thank people who have offered feedback (provided that you've asked for it), even if it's really negative. That person took time out of their day to comment on your piece of art, and they didn't have to. Maybe they were motivated to just be a jerk to someone on the internet, or maybe they genuinely wanted to help you refine your art; there's no real way to know, which is why you should thank them anyway. If someone was being a jerk, you'll be the bigger person, and if someone was being nice, they'll really appreciate it. Above all, don't argue with someone who has expressed their opinion on your work. It's their opinion, and they're allowed to have it. Additionally, you're almost never going to convince someone to like your work by arguing with them, so it doesn't even serve a purpose. You can certainly explain your work to them, because that may help them understand and appreciate it, but don't do it defensively or argumentatively. A simple 'thank you for your comments' will suffice, though it's always nice to see a thoughtful consideration of the criticisms that were brought up.

6. Positive feedback is useless. I'm not talking about positive reviews, those are great because they convince other people to see/read/listen/buy/whatever your work. I'm talking about people who leave comments on your post with things like, "I love this!" or "Wow, this is great!". While it may make you feel good and let you fall asleep with a smile on your face, it won't help you become a better artist. Even comments like "I thought the third sentence in the last paragraph was awesome!" are useless, because of course YOU thought it was awesome... You wrote it!

Generally speaking, people will simply accept things that they think are good. Since you've presumably made this work of art according to your own artistic vision, garnering no negative comments on certain parts of it probably means that you should just keep doing things the way that you are.

Negative criticism is the best way for you to really get a feel for how people have received your work, and it's the only way that you'll really be able to grow as an artist. Look at negative criticism as having done you a favor by providing you with ways to improve your work. It may or may not help you to think, "Now I have to make it even better than before, so that X, Y, or Z critics will like it!" I don't think that creating things for the approval of critics is necessarily the best tack, but hey, whatever works, right? Better to turn those negative reviews into the fuel that powers you to continue on than to quit. Which leads to our next, and last, point...

7. Don't ever stop creating. Most people who create things are driven to do so because it satisfies some internal 'itch', or desire. No matter how negative someone else is, don't ever let them take away your faith in yourself. The world is a big place, and there's space for many different artistic visions. Your talent may be small and weak like the flame of a tea candle, but with the proper nourishment, you can grow it into a sizable campfire; that nourishment is your perseverance, not the praise of others. Have faith in yourself, not in your work, and you'll continue to be able to grow as an artist.

[austinsirkin]

Visit Original Link

This is a short blogcast demo that I made using my new microphone.

I originally intended to post this on Facebook, but when I went to do that, I discovered that Facebook doesn't allow you to upload audio files, just video.

Jerks!

[austinsirkin]

What is Steampunk?

It’s come to my attention lately that many people still don’t seem to really have any idea what exactly Steampunk is. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that it involves gears and leather and stuff, but what is and isn’t Steampunk? Where did it come from, and what does it mean?

I’ll do my best to answer all of those questions for you. As someone who’s studied Steampunk extensively and has been a part of the movement for many years, I feel that I have a unique perspective on all of these things. I know that I’m not the Only Steampunk Authority In The World, but bear with me and maybe we’ll come to some understandings about Steampunk.

So, what is Steampunk?

That’s a hard question to answer, which is why so many people still struggle with it. Part of the problem is that Steampunk means different things to different people, so it naturally defies easy defining or explaining. However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t do it!

The term “Steampunk” really applies to a wide variety of people who use the aesthetics or affectations of the past in their costuming and/or daily life. Steampunks are specifically concerned with the aesthetics and affectations of the Victorian era (approximately 1837-1901), but some people expand it earlier or later. Seems straightforward, right? Well, the problems begin to arise when you start to realize that Steampunk isn’t really about the past at all.

Why isn’t Steampunk about the past?

Lots of reasons! First of all, let’s lay to rest the idea that Steampunk is about the Victorian era. Yes, it *sort of* draws on Victorian aesthetics, ideas, and culture, but there are enough differences that a real Victorian would be embarrassed. The fact of the matter is that we, today, have no real conception of what life was like at that time, and no amount of historical films or history books will really give us an understanding of that. Instead, Steampunk draws on what we THINK the Victorian era was like, which is far more of a reflection on how contemporary society has treated history than it is of the actual historical period itself.

The fact is that we just don’t think about the world in the same way as they used to. My favorite example is how we think of H.G. Wells’s time machine as looking vaguely like an airboat, with the big dish in the back and a seat with some levers in front of it. Well, that conception of the time machine is from the 1960’s, after the car became prevalent in society. When Wells designed the time machine, he thought of it not even as a bicycle, but as a tricycle, because that’s what he was riding at the time. He didn’t learn how to ride a bicycle until after the time machine was published.

There are a million other little examples of how the things they thought of would just never occur to us today, thus separating Steampunk from the fiction written during the Victorian era. Instead, most of what Steampunk is REALLY based on are the films created in the 50’s and 60’s that were, in turn, based on those Victorian works. As another example, how many science fiction drawings have you seen from the Victorian era that really showcase how people of the time were envisioning the future? Probably few to none, and those that do exist don’t even always line up with what we think they should look like.

Second, need I bring up the harsh realities of the Victorian era? It was dirty and full of disease, oppression, and outright slavery. Those aspects frequently get swept under the metaphorical rug, even further distancing Steampunk from the real Victorian era.

If Steampunk isn’t about the past, what IS it about?

Well, it’s about the present. Steampunk has experienced such a meteoric rise in popularity due to the fact that it resonates with lots of people, and that’s because it’s sufficiently broad as to allow people to come for lots of different reasons. Let me highlight some of those reasons for you:

1. People are tired of the sleek, minimalist aesthetics that are currently popular, and want things that are intricate and interesting.

2. People dislike the trend of casualness in all aspects of modern culture, and want more formal and rigid rules that dictate social interaction.

3. It’s sad to see people walking around at the mall wearing practically their pajamas and looking like they just rolled out of bed, and people want other people to at least try to look nice.

4. Some people think it’s inappropriate to wear so few clothes out in public, and think that people should wear more modest styles.

5. For the first time in human history, there is no longer a frontier to expand to, and so people find themselves feeling ‘trapped’ by how small the world is and long for a time when the world was bigger.

6. The workings of modern technology are literally incomprehensible to the average person, and the lack of control that it creates makes people want easily-understood machines.

7. Most people no longer make things with their hands, and find that they crave the ability to just make something, and Steampunk gives them that opportunity.

8. Modern clothes are simple and boring, and so people crave more interesting, ornate, complicated clothing.

These are just a few examples of a list that undoubtedly goes on for quite a long time. While all of those examples don’t apply to everyone, at least one of them applies to everyone in Steampunk, if not more than one. Though again, this is just a small sampling of a full list, which I can’t fully anticipate. I do not, after all, speak for all Steampunks.

However, all of the items on the list have the same thing in common: they’re all reactions to something going on in modern society or culture. In that way, you can consider Steampunk a counterculture. People are drawn to Steampunk because it supplies them with something that would otherwise be missing from their lives.

If Steampunk is about the present, then why does it look Victorian?

Here’s the first point of this article where we enter the realm of speculation. Bearing in mind for a minute that it DOESN’T really look Victorian, I think that the popularity of Steampunk isn’t actually intrinsically related to the Victorian era at all, but instead is drawn to that time because of a confluence of traits. Remember that all of the examples listed above for why people become involved in Steampunk would all still exist even if Steampunk didn’t. So what this says to me is that the Steampunk movement arose because it was time for it to do so. Remember also that Steampunk has existed for a very, very long time, during which it languished in obscurity until around 2005. 

I think the reason why Steampunk is so popular right now is because it’s a so-called ‘perfect storm’. That is, it meets all of the criteria listed above, as well as a few not listed. For example, the Victorian era is long enough ago so as to no longer be problematic for most people, but long enough ago as to be exotic. But none of those are inherently Victorian, it’s just that the Victorian era hits all of those points.

Where did Steampunk come from?

Steampunk, as I said, is based on the Victorian era in the same way that Hollywood movies can be based on a true story. That is, hardly at all. So since there’s such a big difference between Victorian Science Fiction and Steampunk, it’s pretty clear that they aren’t the same thing. Not only that, but the things that modern Steampunks are reacting to are in many ways the opposite of the things that Victorian writers were reacting to, thus separating Steampunk from Victorian Science Fiction ideologically as well as aesthetically. There is one thread that ties those two times together, and that’s massive technologically-based societal change, but that alone isn’t enough to account for the huge variety of reasons why people come to Steampunk.

So if Steampunk isn’t the same thing as Victorian Science Fiction, what IS it?

I usually cite “The Wild, Wild West” TV show (1965) as the start of modern Steampunk, as it was the first example of the blend of the past and the future. Also that year was “The Great Race” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”. Either way, it started around then as purely an aesthetic, and evolved into a genre somewhere around the 1970’s. You can read about all this on Wikipedia, so I won’t go into too much detail on this point.

What’s important to note is that the genre and the movement/subculture/counterculture of Steampunk are inherently different phenomena, and often don’t even interact. Many of the makers I know don’t read Steampunk books (as opposed to Victorian Science Fiction, which they may read), and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone dressed as a character from a Steampunk book. However, I’ll explain what makes them different.

The short answer is that books provide context, and costumes don’t. That is, when you go to read a book, it’s more than just a ‘look’. It has a full story that takes place in a fleshed-out world featuring characters with goals and personalities.

Costuming doesn’t have any of that, it’s just pure aesthetic. So the people making the costumes have to fill in the rest for themselves. However, a problem quickly arises; that is, in a book, the characters can interact with each other due to the provided context, or setting. In real life, there’s no generically Steampunk setting. By which I mean that Steampunk isn’t like Star Wars, for example, in that the Star Wars universe has specific rules and events and people. But with Steampunk, one person’s Steampunk world could be post-apocalyptic, whereas another’s could be in the past. There’s not necessarily any common ground between people’s outfits or characters, which means that Steampunks are forced to interact in the real world.

That’s why the genre and movement are different, and why the movement is even more specifically about the real world than the books are.

But is my outfit Steampunk? I want to make sure my outfit is Steampunk!

Who cares? Whether your outfit is exactly Steampunk or not is of absolutely no importance to anyone except you. Steampunk is more than just an aesthetic, as I’ve said, it’s a counterculture. But whether you’re wearing an ACTUAL Steampunk outfit or not, you can still participate in the counterculture, and I have yet to see anyone get ejected from a Steampunk event because someone’s outfit was Dieselpunk instead, or Neo-Victorian, or even anime-inspired. The point is to participate in the community and to make things happen. Support the people who put on events or make Steampunk clothes or props, and show the world that you want something more than what you’ve been given. 

Is X, Y, or Z Steampunk?

Maybe. Probably not. The word ‘Steampunk’ necessarily needs to apply to a specific set of things or else it loses all meaning. If we start saying that everything with a pair of goggles in it is Steampunk, then why are we even bothering? Use your best judgment, and try not to see Steampunk in everything. Beyond that, just go out and make a difference.

Photo by Taryn Truese, caption by Michael Salerno. Model is G.D. Falksen, mechanical arm by Thomas Willeford.

[austinsirkin]

Mass Effect 3 has proven incredibly unpopular among the gamer community, ironically not because it isn't good, but because it's too good. Or rather, too good for the lackluster ending it provided for the series. But is the ending really lackluster, or is it just a question of our perception?

I'm going to argue that the ending was actually fine, and that if you're upset about it, it's your own fault.

EA, over the last several years, has perpetrated a gigantic hoax. They managed to convince millions of gamers that their decisions in the Mass Effect series mattered. Even more impressively, they did this while the first two games provided no proof of  it whatsoever. Frankly, the degree to which they pulled this off is staggering, and the amount of backlash on the internet right now is indicative of the sheer scope of it.

Consider, for a moment, the first two games in the series. Both had a definitive starting and ending point, and at no point was there any way for those to change. Yes, by jumping through a variety of hoops you could influence which characters were there at the end with you, but overall that had no bearing on the actual story. In Mass Effect 3, likewise you could influence which characters lived and died (to a lesser extent). In fact, there are no real examples of player decisions impacting the story of the game anywhere throughout the entire series.

So why did people suddenly expect that to change for Mass Effect 3? Well, this largely has to do with EA and the way they promoted the game. They kept deferring the 'payoff' of the player's decisions from game one to game two, and then from game two to game three. When the eagerly-anticipated changes failed to materialize, the players were understandably upset.

Or is that understandable?

The sad fact of the matter is that people should have expected this. It's sort of a "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" situation. EA had the opportunity to have Mass Effect 2 actually diverge in storytelling, but they didn't take it. They didn't take that opportunity in Mass Effect 1, either. So really, if you're playing through the whole series, you've essentially been fooled twice already by the time you even get to the third installment of the series. The fact that you're still holding out hope by that point reflects poorly on your gullibility.

That said, what this clearly requires is a completely different paradigm in order to appreciate these games. They're obviously not awful games, because millions of people have played them. Presumably not all of them were tricked into doing so.

Some of you may be familiar with the game Knights of the Old Republic. It was intended to be a stand-alone game (we'll ignore KOTOR 2 for the moment), and it fully capitalized on the ability to make choices and have those choices be both A) satisfying and B) wildly divergent. This type of freedom was what people expected from the Mass Effect series, but even in the first game it was apparent that this was not what was going to be given.

The Mass Effect series didn't actually have any real freedom of choice in it, but instead gave players only the illusion of choice. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It allows the developers to tell a compelling story that in other mediums may have afforded no choices to the player whatsoever. Furthermore, it increases the player's involvement and attachment to the series by allowing cosmetic changes to the plot based on the decisions that the player makes. Essentially, it's a step up from the purely linear narrative, and I expect that in the future, nearly all video game narratives will be told in this form.

When you look at the Mass Effect series in that light, the entire series not only makes sense, but it's internally consistent and rather satisfying. Part of the reason why the backlash is so strong is because the addition of choice has added the concept of ownership to the player. That is, the player, through having made these decisions and played for hundreds of hours, feels like they in some way own the story and should have some say in how it ends. Take away that misconception of ownership, and suddenly the ending becomes much more palatable because players can appreciate that essentially the entire game was the ending to the series rather than just the last five minutes.

So was the ending good? It was okay, but not great. But hopefully I've shown that it was as good as the rest of the series was, and it was appropriate given everything that had come before it. EA certainly bears some responsibility for mismanaging the expectations of its fans, but the fans also had every indication that things weren't going to work out the way they wanted. Don't be so quick to buy the hype in the future, and I promise that you'll be less frequently disappointed!

[austinsirkin]

A Culture of Inaccuracy (or You Tried Your Best)

How many times have you seen the above quote used to promote individuality, or not "taking the easy road"? Probably a lot.

But guess what? That's not what it means. In the poem, a man finds two paths diverging in a wood and thinks to himself that both paths are about equally as well-traveled, with one maybe being slightly less so. He chooses one and walks down it, and then thinks to himself how, many years from then, he will likely be telling the tale with a sigh about how one day he chose one path over another, and that's how he arrived at where he ended up. That sigh is one of regret, because he anticipates, like many people, not being satisfied with where his life has gone.

The only real important part of this is that in the poem, making one path more or less traveled is entirely an arbitrary decision by the narrator. So what the quoted portion above really represents in the poem isn't some sort of moral about always choosing the least-traveled path, but instead is a reflection of humanity's tendency to attribute blame to things that don't deserve it.

This is akin to another quote that pops up all the time, "This above all: to thine own self be true." You may recognize this one from Hamlet. People use it all the time to espouse the benefits of being true to yourself. But guess what? When Polonius says that to Laertes, he means the exact opposite. He doesn't mean that Laertes should be true to himself, he means that Laertes should damned well do what he's told.

Any half-witted scholar could tell you these things. It's not like these are hidden gems, or anything. All you need to do is read the original source material and these things practically jump out at you.

To make matters worse, people will actually defend their inaccuracies with statements like, "That's what it means to me," or "It means different things to different people."

No. It doesn't. You're welcome to make your own textual analysis of Hamlet, but if you don't create a supporting argument that's textually relevant and makes sense, you're just wrong.

You don't see engineers saying things like, "But Newton's Second Law means something different to me."

Don't get me wrong; there's a lot of gray area out there in the world. What's in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? What happens next in Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49"? Does a Jackson Pollock painting REALLY mean anything?

While I want to say that some things are simply not up for debate, that isn't true; we should always question. That's what science is, after all: constant questioning. There's always the chance that some core belief we hold may be wrong.

There's a huge difference between questioning something and supplanting it with your own explanation. Questioning is saying, "Is that really true?" Supplanting is saying, "Hamlet is a play about oranges."

People seem to have forgotten where to draw the line. It's as though that method of questioning everything has removed our culture's ability to put faith in anything at all, and as a result we see people putting faith in completely inappropriate places.

This is further expressed by a society-wide fear of telling someone else that they're wrong, especially where children are concerned. In a politically-correct culture, making someone else feel bad is tantamount to a crime, and nowhere is that more true than in the schoolroom. If a teacher makes a student feel bad, the student complains to their parent, who complains to the school (or the board), and the teacher gets reprimanded. What are we teaching our children? That they can't be wrong? What an awful thing to do to a child.

The sad fact of the matter is that not everyone is good at everything, and it's far more important to learn where your real talents lie than it is to be good at everything. A student who gets all A's should be a rarity; how many people do you know who are good at everything? And yet A-students have become the norm. It's expected for a child to bring home straight A's, or there's something wrong with them. You should not get an A for having "tried your best".

This is just another example of promoting inaccuracy, but instead of being inaccurate about the meaning of a play or a piece of art, they're helping to create an entire life of lies.

As a culture, we need to start praising the truth and the pursuit of truth, or else we're going to end up in a hopeless mess where no one knows anything. I don't mean to imply that there even IS always a truth to espouse, but in those cases, espouse that there's no truth! I understand that incorrect, inflammatory articles get more attention, but someone needs to stand up for accuracy and be willing to correct those who spread false information.

That someone is you. Do your best... The future of humankind rests on your shoulders.

[sarahxmay-deactivated20140620]