STOMATAPODA

   The ground was covered in water. Gerald Hamilton couldn't tell how much, but based off of how it sloshed against the top of the bottom shelf of the bookcase, he would estimate about a foot.

   Which was bad. Very bad.

   Stomatapods, or Mantis Shrimp, are neither shrimp nor mantids. They derive their name from their eerie resemblance to both a shrimp and a mantis. Gerald thought they looked like evil lobsters with mantis claws. The ancient Assyrians called them sea locusts. They usually grow up to a foot long, but one species, odontodactylus Scyllarus, has been known to grow up to 15 inches in the nutritious muck from the runoffs into the Ala Wai canal of Hawai’i.

   Gerald didn't know if this was the species he was facing. He did know one thing, though: these were bigger than 15 inches. Much bigger.

   Alright, he knew two things: that the mantis shrimp that had come in with the flooding were bigger than fifteen inches, and that the only way out of the house from here was through the den. The den was lower than the rest of the house, surrounded on all sides by steps: the water level was much deeper there.

   Gerald cursed himself silently and leaped to a nearby chair. He proceeded to island hop from object to object until he stood, on the wet bar, looking into the den. A few sofa backs and the top of the television peeked up at him through the murky water.

   They weren't the only things peeking up at him.

   The mantis shrimp’s eyes are the most complex in the animal kingdom. Their visual spectrum is far larger than a human’s, and they possess vision so sharp that scientists are currently using them as a model for next, next-generation high definition technology. Both of their compound eyes have trinocular vision, and their mobile eye stalks make it so that they are able to see independent of one another. Gerald could feel thousands of compound eyes fix on him.

   There was a brief moment of absolute silence, before they charged at him all at once. He swung from the bar around the door frame, knocking drinks over and causing them to shatter against the table and go splashing into the frothing water. He swung onto the top of a cabinet and jumped from there onto the narrow spine of the back of a sofa. He realized he was stuck going this way, and had to think quickly. There was a bookshelf within jumping distance of the cabinet. He would use that. He jumped back to the cabinet, but hit the wall so hard that it knocked the bookshelf down, splashing tremendously. The mantis shrimp turned to him.

   From what he could see of their claws, he could deduce that these were smasher-type stomatapods. This meant that they could move their claws quickly, smashing into prey. In some instances the claws accelerate faster than a bullet.

   The mantis shrimp began pummeling the cabinet at faster than fifty miles per hour.

   The movement of the claws is actually so fast that it causes the tiny little bubbles underwater to implode in a burst of light, in an effect known as sonoluminescense. It is not known exactly how sonoluminescence happens; some say it is actually a form of cold fusion, while others hold that it is caused by quantum tunneling. Either way, sonoluminescence is a good thing for stomatapods, because the shock wave is enough to stun or even kill prey even if the attack misses.

   Gerald could see sparks of blue light burst out underwater as the cabinet was being pounded to smithereens. They were beautiful.

   They would probably be the last thing he would ever see.

   Light is not the only thing released by sonoluminescence. It also releases heat. Thousands of kelvins worth of heat.

   The combustion triangle is a model used to explain how fires are started. At one end of the triangle is heat. At another is an oxidizing agent, usually air. The other end is fuel. In this instance, the fuel was provided by the alcohol that was spilled from the wet bar as Gerald swung from it.

   The world caught on fire.

   There was a shrieking sound as dozens of crustaceans were boiled alive. In the end, Gerald received several third degree burns on his arms, legs and face, but at least he came out with his life.

Spooky Story 2013

   Based on actual science. I was doing a short story in the same vein as far as it-was-also-a-horror-story goes, about a haunted house, and I said that reality just kind of warped around the house in the same way that very large objects can warp the direction of light using their gravity, and, I don't know, man, I just got kind of distracted in my research. You know how Wikipedia gets. One thing led to another, and I discovered the real-life science behind what the real-life (if mutated and fictionalized) creatures do in tomorrow's horror story. Brace yourself. It's going to be a Michael Crichton of a ride.

Ender's Game: The Musical?

   More Hatrack Forum stuff. Some of these threads are really good; hold on:

   Here the loyal posters of the Hatrack forums discuss possibilities of an Ender's Game musical.

The main thread is here

Topic: Ender's Game - The Musical ://www.hatrack.com/cgi-bin/ubbmain/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=1;t=004700;go=newer

and the topic is discussed tangentially here:

Topic: Inconsistent Death http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=005157

With this thread imagining the Ender's Game cast as funny animals, and the subject comes up a bit:

If Enders Game Were a Disney Cartoon://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=005070

Hatrack River Forums

   There's a lot of talk over how Val and Peter build up their power though the nets. Like here: https://xkcd.com/635/. Even if you were a child prodigy specially bred and raised for intelligence, the internet would still crush you. I did a lot of the research for these posts on Orson Scott Card's Hatrack River forums. If all the forums in the world were as decorous and intelligent as the Hatrack River Forums, we'd be in no shortage of excellence, and their system would work. It's actually one of the most thoughtful debate forums on the internet. Occasionally Uncle Orson himself will even descend, Godlike, from the heavens, to clarify whatever points they're debating about him. It is possible for there to be prudence on the internet. And maybe one day the entire thing will be so, just like in Ender's Game. Who knows, maybe needing a citizen's access pass to get on the nets would spur such change.

   Of course, though, it's Orson Scott Card, who is not without his share of enemies. Those that try to spur a reaction, though, tend to get shot down in some rather deferential flames. Occasionally there are they who post just to take up a personal vendetta against OSC's politics, these trolls can be summed up quite nicely (and hilariously) in this thread, here:
http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003063

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, October 25, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: Even noticed how Wikipedia is some sort of hyperreality?
You know, a super-concentrated representation of something juxtaposed into an unnatural situation.
For example: a garden. Concentrated essence of nature forced into a boxy shape.
Nature as hyperreality.
So, Wikipedia as hyperreality. If the free, user-generated article about something- say, The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett- is funny, you can more or less be certain that the Discworld series itself is funny.
And if the article is fascinating,
Take, for example, the one about the Antikythera mechanism, or the Voynich manuscripts...
You can bet your life that the genuine artifact is fascinating.
or vandalised. 

NOTES:
   Absolutely heartbreaking punchline, I know. I was just running out of room with no punchline to end the strip, saw an exit, and took it on out.

   Last year's ward Halloween party, one year ago today, with my father dressed up as the men's bathroom (he was cheap for costumes I guess,) he wore a toilet seat and a t-shirt with the men's symbol on it (for signs, like bathroom signs and crosswalks and things- men are represented as people, and women are represented as people with dresses. There's a website out there that dissects why exactly we sequester women from men and men from women with their own separate facilities, but I forget what its name is and I'm kind of getting away from the point anyway.)

   I had helped him haul in some stuff for the party, like Halloween carnival games, for beanbag tosses and othersuch stuff, which we loaded into the back of the truck. As the men's bathroom, on the way over there, with part of his costume being an old toilet lid he had never gotten around to using as a hall pass, he was talking about the difference between the toilet seat and the toilet lid. They had always been indistinguishable, but then came an epiphany: there is a difference between the toilet seat and the toilet lid. The lid is a lid, and the seat is a seat.

   The kicker: Women want you to put the seat down, not the lid. A major revelation. One aspect of the mystery of the opposite sex revealed. Next up: why they go to the bathroom in clusters, which is true and not a myth, because I've personally observed such behavior firsthand at least twice in my life (though, no, wait, that first time, what she actually said was "let's all be together" instead of, well...)

SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

   The first sequel. Maybe they'd make this one before Ender's Shadow, maybe they'd make it after. I can see a parallel movie being released right after if this movie's successful, but a distant sequel...? The obvious problem here (besides a good voice actress for Jane) would be the design of the piggies. Oh, uh, and how to time-shift Asa. Just, like, digitally, makeup, or just get a new actor, or have him actually be that old when they do come out with this thing?

THE GOOD:

1. Olhado's metal eyes, already highly visual imagery in the book, would be strongly iconic when brought to a visual medium.
2. Juicy Novinha psychology, when every man she's ever loved died and she thinks it's her fault because the piggies killed them and the secret why is in her research.
3. The ensemble cast of the Ribeira family has already strongly drawn characters, so they don't all get muddled like, say, the dwarfs in The Hobbit (how'd they handle that, by the way? Alright?)
4. Jane.

THE BAD:

1. Oh, you know, nothing. Just, uh, how it's got almost nothing to do with Ender's Game, so a true adaptation, even with such a beloved property, would be almost impossible.
2. I can actually see this getting made into a movie, though. It'd be actually kind of claustrophobic, on-screen, with the narrow streets between the buildings and trees everywhere surrounding. Not like the hallways of Battle School, which you would expect to be more so, but that would be a sound stage and this would be on location, with completely different camera techniques used. It's a very loamy future, too, which is kind of weird.
3. The piggies are very fond of evisceration, and it's kind of tough to get away with that especially seeing as how they're the good guys.

THE UGLY:

1. How to depict of Jane-minus-Jane. When Jane cut off from contact with Ender, and has no solid contact or form. This would have to be done abstractly. There's emotion there, but symbolism of this sort would be the only way to show it. Maybe have some sort of "quirky" depiction of Jane earlier on that isn't in itself 100% in alignment with the book's depiction (screens, maybe?), but would make sense during the scenes of her being cut off when you consider its necessity. Maybe echo some designs from the Giant's Drink-- Jane's birth connected to Ender would give us access to depicting her early development existing entirely in the ansible network, and so they could fall back on that.
2. The piggies themselves. The design, that is, doubtless they've got technology enough to render them convincingly.

Television Autism: Tommy Westphallutin'

   If upwards of 80% of television takes place inside the snow globe and imagination of an autistic boy (now, like, autistic man, man) then how come television often get autism so wrong? Is it because he himself does not understand it? That seems the likeliest explanation.

   You'd figure he'd learn a little more over time and changes in his understanding would reflect in the shows, but, nope, there's only more room for more misunderstanding there as the issue creeps its way into the public consciousness in real life. Dang.

XENOCIDE

   Oh, Randall... http://xkcd.com/304/

   No, but Xenocide really used to be my favorite too. It definitely had to do with the Chinese culture of Path. Han Qing-jao is a "godspoken," a genius-level caste to whom the gods allegedly manifest their will, through the form of rituals. Spoiler spoiler spoiler, it turns out it's just a plot by the Starways Congress to have a hyperintelligent task force they keep in line through debilitating OCD. Qing-jao is tasked with figuring out how all outside communication was cut off from a fleet of starships heading to destroy the planet Lusitania, which houses a deadly virus. She deduces the cutoff was caused by something of a virus itself: a sentient ghost in the machine whom we know to be Jane.


THE GOOD:

1. Path would give Xenocide a unique flavor of all the films. I'm thinking even sepia for these sequences. At least the prologhue, when Han Qing-jao's mother dies. Others are out in space, the feel of this one could be more grounded.
2. The return of Valentine. 
3. The scene where the death of Quim causes Grego to inspire an angry mob. Heartbreaking.
4. The death of Planter, sacrificing himself to prove his species sentient without the virus they carried, to prove that replacing their virus with a synthetic wouldn't render them mere animals again.

THE BAD:

1. Miro's slurred, slow speech wouldn't be very good on film. Oh, I know, they could just have Christopher Nolan direct this one!
2. After revisiting Ender years later at the start of Speaker for the Dead, he's 30 years older again this time around!
3. Problems with Outside, which we'll get to soon.
4. Younger Val and Peter's actors will have aged by now.

THE UGLY:

1. There's a chapter there, just a long conversation about old seemingly disproven science that turns out to be correct. It's quite talky, but it's essential to the entire story. This is a great but necessary leap, as after that Jane is allowed to take people into Outspace.
2. Speaking of, the depiction of Outspace itself. It exists outside of space and time, so if you beam your ship into it, your ship takes up the entire universe. They're bound to run out of camera angles eventually, especially considering ships designed for Outspace travel are small and cramped.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, October 11, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Collin, thinking: The speech bubble is a fairly old invention, seen in ancient Olmec- or was it Mayan- drawings.
In Medieval times, speech was represented by scrolls coming from the speaker's mouth.
But the history of the thought bubble is much more difficult to trace. While the speech balloon has been in its present form since the 18th century, the origins of 'the cloud" are much less defined.
But I'm wondering what these things are made out of.
Collin: Marvin, I really need you for an experiment, 'k?
Think something. Think anything.
Marvin: ...
Marvin, thinking: Oh, this is ridiculous.
Collin: Good. Now I want you to, quite literally...
Marvin, thinking: Oh, this is ridiculous.
Collin: Hold that thought.
Marvin, thinking: Oh, this is ridiculous.

CHILDREN OF THE MIND, A Book Report I Wrote Once So Why Not

Children of the Mind opens on the Chinese planet Path, where a mysterious, somewhat angry young fellow calling himself Peter Wiggin steps out of a spaceship that seemed to have materialized out of thin air and whisks a girl named Si Wang-Mu away. He explains to her that he isn't the real Peter Wiggin -who was the ruler of Earth three thousand years ago- but rather a child straight out of the mind of the real Peter Wiggin's younger brother.

For thousands of years people have had to travel from planet to planet at the light speed limit. Relativity caused them to age less than those who hadn't gone at such a high speed, but this still meant that a voyage from planet to planet essentially cut one off from friends and family who didn't go on the trip, causing them to be either very old or dead when one arrived at the planet to which they were traveling. This is how Peter’s brother from thousands of years ago had lived so long, as to now create Peter II.

For the newly-discovered way to abolish the light-speed law, which is how Peter arrived at Path, had its own side-affect. This method required going outside of the physical universe itself, where time and space did not exist, to jump back at any point else in the universe. The lack of laws of physics made any human imagining come true. Ender Wiggin had subconsciously imagined younger versions of his siblings from thousands of years ago, and they had sprung full form from his head, his own children of the mind.

Peter further explains that he needed Si Wang-Mu, who, being from the planet Path, where children were raised to be especially brilliant, to help him. The International Fleet was sending ships to destroy the planet Lusitania, which allegedly housed a deadly virus known as the Descolada (Portuguese for ungluing) that “unglued,” as it were, the very foundations of DNA itself, causing horrible mutations and painful death. In reality, the problem of the Descolada had been solved by imagining an antidote for it in Outspace,  but there was no way for the International Fleet to know this because Lusitania wasn’t on the friendliest terms with them because of the way it handled the relations with its native life.  Peter needed Wang-Mu to help him stop the destruction of an entire planet.

They arrive instantly at the planet Kamikaze, whose Kyoto-spirit philosophers heavily influence the I.F.’s  policies. Peter needs Wang-Mu’s knowledge of the careful balance of the Oriental concepts of honor and dishonor into tricking one of the philosophers into revealing from where he gets his influences. Over an episode of power-play which Peter does not understand at all, he slips up, revealing himself to be a follower of the Ua Lava  philosophy of the planet Pacifica. Or, at least, implies it.

The final connection from him to the philosophy is made by the hyper intelligent Jane, who controls faster-than-light travel, and whose communication jewel Peter wears in his ear. Jane is much more than a computer program: she is actually a soul, or Aìua, whose body is the computer network between worlds. But the I.F. is on to her, and is beginning to shut all of the linked computers down, world by world. She is losing processing power, which she needs to hold the information of whatever she is sending to Outspace together. Faster-than-light travel will soon be ended, and without this, Lusitania is doomed to be destroyed.

So it is hurriedly that she sends Peter and Wang-Mu to Pacifica, and also hurriedly that she sends Ender’s other mind-child, Valentine, and Ender’s adopted son, Miro, to scout for planets to which the Lusitanians could escape before their planet is destroyed, even though all the hurrying is bad for Ender’s Aìua. Having one’s soul split into three- one part for yourself, and one for each of your two mind-children- strains it.  On the planet Lusitania, Ender lapses into a coma.

Valentine and Miro realize that there are enough planets to which the Lusitanians can flee, and realize that that isn’t their real assignment: they are searching for the planet of the alien species that created the Descolada.

On the planet Pacifica, Peter curls up into a ball in the sand as the jewel in his ear goes dead, and Jane dies. Orbiting around a sinister planet, with limited air supply and hostile aliens surrounding, Valentine, Miro, and other scientists are trapped, with no way out…

And the I.F.’s ships will soon arrive at Lusitania…

I’m going to end the plot summary section there. I am supposed to give the reader an incentive to read the book, aren't I?

I say that this was an amazing book, full of vivid detail and memorable, realistic characters. And the plot I’m giving isn't even the half of the thoroughly amazing universe presented to us between the covers of that book. I’m completely skipping out of the complex interrelationships the characters share. I’m not even mentioning the real Valentine, or Ender’s wife, Novinha, or Quara, or any of the Piggies, or Grace Drinker, or the Hive Queen, or Plikt, or the Fathertrees, or… etc, etc.

And yet I could. Each of these characters stands out vividly in my mind. I could tell you about Novinha’s tendency to blame herself for anyone’s death, even if she had nothing to do with it. I could tell you how spiteful and arrogant Quara is, or the Hive Queen’s lack of fear of death, or the way Grace Drinker’s husband makes jokes when he is trying to keep himself from going crazy and killing someone.

I could tell you about how much it hurt Miro to say mean things to Valentine when the situation forced him into it, or Peter’s evolution as a character, from being just the embodiment of a bad childhood memory Ender had of him to the young man who saved an entire planet by averting the Fleet’s ships.

In fact, I think that character is what moves the entire plot. Sure, there’s a little action, a little romance, a little humor, and a lot of suspense, but without characters those things couldn’t be there.
Although this book is actually forth and last in the Ender’s Quartet series, which began with science fiction classic Ender’s Game, I think that Card is a deft enough characterizer and plotter to make the complex plot and relationship issues understandable, making it possible to jump right into the book.

It’s still somewhat bittersweet to leave Ender’s universe behind, though. Luckily there’s also the Shadow Quartet, which chronicles the wars and political power struggle before the original, real Peter Wiggin came to power as ruler of the Hegemony of Earth. But those books have a much different feel than these ones. And then there’s always Ender’s Game itself, which is infinitely reread-able.
If you enjoy epic tales, philosophy, science, science fiction, good characterization, Portuguese culture, Japanese culture, Chinese culture, Icelandic culture, and metaphysics, then this book would be bizarrely, creepily suited for you.

If you enjoy a darn good yarn, then this book is good for that too.

CHILDREN OF THE MIND

   Don't have much of a plot review for you this time, because I figure I could just show you THE BOOK REPORT I DID ON IT. Just read that post, coming out tomorrow.

THE GOOD:

1. The suspense of Starways Congress shutting down the ansible network to kill Jane.
2. Two words: Bobby. Lands. 
3. Peter and Wang-mu doing freaking awesome crap on Divine Wind. 
4. Valentine and Val.
5. The exploration of the angst of Ender's imagines (yes, that's seriously what they're called- imagines. Ih-may-gin-ese. The world is awesome) would make some awesome cinema.

THE BAD:

1. Pretty much all of it's that. Imagines angsting. It works out fine in book form, but you'd probably need a fine director to bring that to the screen. Like Wes Anderson.
2. The stuff with the souls bouncing around in space, while fine on the page, is downright trippy. Jane causing a mothertree to bear hyperfast-growing fruit? That's pretty, but... what?
3. It's said Orson Scott Card just based this philotic science off of Mormon doctrine, so the entire thing could be seen as propaganda. The stuff with Ua Lava I can see that a little, but I don't remember anything in Sunday School Class where it talked about twining to the center of your planet through vibrations of love. Must have missed that part.

THE UGLY:

1. The subterfuge scene where Si Wang-mu and Aimaina Hikari have the humility contest, each trying to out-humble the other to show themselves as being the more respectful, would be the single coolest scene in the film if done right (even cooler than the bits with Admiral Lands.) It would also be the most difficult if not impossible to translate to screen.
2. More grounded scenes like that, balanced against the philotic souls-bouncing-around-in-space scenes.

Flaming Building

   You, your child, your spouse, and your mother are trapped in a flaming apartment building. There's only time to save one of them, and... sigh. What... Why do... I mean, what's up with that? Never mind.

   And, by the way the "correct" answer is your mother, because you can always get remarried and pop out more babies, but you will only ever have one mom. See? It's ever worse. Thanks for asking.

Math Tools for Planet Worldbuilding

   Hey, look, it's Hugo-nominated, Nebular-winning sf/f author Eric Jame Stone's Gravitator gravity calculator for astronomical bodies! Just, you know, enter in the radius and relative density for the object you wish to calculate, and it spews forth the relative gravity and acceleration due to gravity! It's useful for, well, exactly that kind of thing. I guess. Want to know the gravity of a diamond the size of the earth, for, say, some kind of story in which your characters find a diamond the size of the earth? Easy! It's .64 Earth normal gravity. So, uh, now you know.

http://www.ericjamesstone.com/blog/home/gravity-calculator-for-astronomical-bodies-based-on-radius-and-density/

   And there's this tool I found, "Density of the Terrestrial Planets," which is sort of an educational exercise where you have to adjust the ratio of rock to iron core for the Earth, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and the Moon. It's useful for calculating the relative density of a planet based on its core composition.

http://www.mesacc.edu/~kev2077220/flash/planet-density.html

Tom Cruise Day '13

   Tom Cruise day again! R0x0rs! This year's Tom Cruise Day comes with a movie recommendation, which I was really going to do the first time but got held up by the news of Jack Reacher. (How was that, by the way? Any good? Are they planning any sequels yet?)

   Knight and Day. It's a rom com, really, at its heart. Except the comedy here comes from playing with some of the more absurd tropes of the spy thriller genre, instead of wherever the heck the comedy is supposed to come from in normal rom-coms. The humor is really mature (no, not that kind of mature.) I mean, mature, like, it's... like a good cheese, or something. Tom is really free to crazy it up, which is one of the things that he does best. Some terrific action. Which would make it a great date film or something. Something in it for everyone.

   And I found the entire thing with way-off, Urdu-dubbed audio on YouTube! Oh, internet. Is there anything you can't do?

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, October 4, 2009

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
(Editor's Note: The Author wasn't able to meet the deadlines for this week's strip, so we have decided to offer you this cobble of all our favorite Thespis moments!)
(We hope it represents the Nietzschean subtext of the the strip without delving into the über-ipissimosity of the conceptual apparatus columbarium. In
Collin: fact, the "boy" in the name El Niño refers to baby Jesus, as the phenomenon was first reported around Christmastime by Peruvian fishermen in the late 1800s.
Marvin: Christmas Jones.
Collin: !
Marvin: It's...
Oohh, Never Mind!
Collin: I LIKE COOKIES!
Marvin, thinking: Yep, I'm definitely crazy.
Collin: Yo!
That's messed up.
Editor's Note: (On second thought, Nietzsche is over-rated.)

NOTES:
   I've changed my mind about Nietzsche since I wrote this, by the way. He was actually a pretty cool dude. I also would have used some different psychobabble had I wrote this strip nowadays. Well, had I wrote this strip nowadays, I wouldn't have even written it, as I realized that I had a deadline to do a strip and was in no position to draw and scan a new one, so I had to whip up a new one entirely using old strips and Paint. Later on I wouldn't care about missing deadlines so much. Keep an eye on those. They will be missed.

ENDER'S SHADOW

   We see the events of Ender's Game from the perspective of Bean. So brilliant, yet so simple.

THE GOOD:

1. The closest to Ender's Game in terms of tone, and a lot of other things. The other books aren't very like Ender's Game at all.
2. A sweet mystery going on meanwhile, back on earth.

THE BAD:

1. By the time they get about making this, Aramis is going to be... not little. Special effects, I know. And his rapid development actually becomes a plot point in the rest of the books. But this takes place the same time the first one did.
2. There's another one, which is actually more problematic than bad, so I'm putting it in "ugly."

THE UGLY:

1. How to make this seem different enough from Ender's Game to make it not seem like blind repetition? It does take place at the same time in much the same location, using the same scenes but from a different perspective.
2. The twist. It's no longer a twist. The problem in this lies on what they decide to do with the film of Ender's Game, and is not in itself problematic.

Patheticisms pt II: Unoriginality is A-okay!

   I'm not sure how I feel about that sort of pseudo-deepness you see a lot of in forums and blogs and, liner notes for webcomics, and these kinds of blogs. (Amateur blogs, of which, this is, you know, one, so I'll try not to get self indulgent/high and mighty, making out like I don't do that at times.) I'd been going to put "ie, strongly dislike" as a parenthetic after "not sure how I feel about," but I'll just let it stand for itself; I'm not sure how I feel about it. Pseudo deepness. It sounds pretty, as long as you have your brain switched off. If not... It's painful. Sort of, aww, cute, look, it's trying to form a coherent thought. It thinks it's people. With any form of expression, you have some who can navigate better than others, of course- some people, as well, aren't good at expression at all, so I give them a kudos or two for trying (kudos is singular! I know, isn't that surprising?) Even if you're super eloquent, though, and especially if you're not, well, you don't need to be. Ninety-nine percent of the stuff in the world has already been commented on after some fashion or another.

   That's why you don't always share your own beliefs and opinions, and don't always need to. You go with other peoples'. It would be helpful if you also agreed with them, of course, but even if you don't level 100% with them (and, once again, especially if you don't) you can also add your own commentary, advance the dialogue to your own degree of contribution (and even advance the dialogue by "contributing" something that someone else has already written.) It helps to source carefully and everything, too, looks more impressive if you admit that that sizzling slice of bacon ain't yours.

   How can deference make you look good? The better question is, why does it- and I've got a few reasons I came up with:

1. It proves you know things about the scientific and/or literary greats, even enough to quote them and/or reflect an understanding of their views,
2. It's less painful-- if not for you than certainly your audience; instead of having to come up with your own stuff and how to phrase it, just lift from someone else (once again, making sure to cite properly!) Why? because...
3. They're (ostensibly) professionals, which means that they've had time to do that thinking while using a lot of different support and have managed to form a superior opinion. You haven't had that time, and also enjoy being lazy.
4. Deference shows humility.

   Just cop someone else's that you know might be good, instead of go with your own stuff you suspect might be bad! Said the one who wrote this.

Patheticisms pt I

   I can't tell which is more pathetic... Well, not "pathetic," because that coveys too much pejorativism which isn't my intent at all, but, but... Pathé. That's the name of that, what, film company or something, right? (I think they distributed Chicken Run.) Whatever. It's a good word. Pathé. Which is more pathé. This is a written medium, so I realize that I've got time to look up the proper word and come back and continue this whenever and you wouldn't even notice or mind, but, I kind of like that.

   So. I cannot tell which is more pathé: blogs or forums. Speaking of electronic media here (and kind of having a breakdown for being a blogger) but it doesn't have to be; doesn't matter the medium. "Forum" is a good word no matter the medium for what I'm trying to get at, but the other guy-- lone commentators, not per se speaking as part of a larger community, only reacting when it serves his interests, that kind of thing-- I'm not sure if there's an intrinsic word for the concept, but compared against "forum" I think you can catch my drift. Forums, there's a community; blogs, there's, that thing I just said. The internet is a "flat" medium, meaning here, one that most anyone can access, and with content that ostensibly can be accessed equally (net neutrality politics aside- we're focusing on the web as ideally "flat," here.) In such a flat medium, is it better to be anonymous or visible? Or is that at the heart of the idea of the internet or any other flat space, taking away the third parties, as with the direct distribution market?

   So it comes down to the old apparent dichotomy, depth versus breadth (I say "apparent" dichotomy because I'm not sure if it really is or not- I haven't seen anything contradicting the notion, but I'm not about to make such a broad sweep on that alone.) Depth versus breadth- my own stance is, hey guys balance is nice, which seems to do me fine so far.

   A forum, you get to see this community in action, and get to see different minds coalesce, argue, joke. Argue. Blogging, on the other hand, is more, focused. A core sample taken from a tree (or... something. That's a good metaphor, right?...) In a forum, to see one individual's viewpoint you have to dig more to see within a post the allusions to past posts a poster has made, right? They're just one of the voices there, versus on something more personal like a web log, where it's primarily about their voice, so it'd be more worth it to invest in such an expenditure. And easier. Even with microblogging.

   ...Especially with microblogging.

   Why pay attention to someone when it's about their voice? We're fascinated by celebrities, aren't we. You don't mind listening to a speaker if you think the speaker is in some way talented. It's good to see that these people have lives, you know? You feel happy for them. It's good to see that they're living, or still alive, at least. We get something directly out of it; it benefits us in some way.

   Forums and comments boards can be a fine fine thing, providing you're interested in the subject (and really, why would you be anywhere if you weren't?) Such a wide variety can be fascinating. It can also be full of flamewars and arguments that quickly make you lose hope in humanity. The worst a blogger can do is make you lose hope in that one blogger, unless you perceive them to be holding an opinion congruent with the views of wider humanity-- (people are scum, except when they're not.)

   Speaking more generally now, in the wider "blogosphere" it is once more about combined opinions, but some would find the amount of time it takes to get the gamut to be a bit excessive. Microblogging comes back in here- it's a really nice balance. Hey guys, we found a really nice balance.

   And I'm done here.