Sunday, October 15, 2006
Paper & Pencil = Rambling?
OK, I finally got Saturday's intended post and fixed up the inevitable spelling errors. ----
I'm sitting in Legends, a local campus town eatery/sports-bar, having just finished a reasonably tasty hamburger basket. The joint is near empty, which surprises me somewhat. I suppose college day traffic is much higher at lunchtime and by tonight the establishment should swell with nighttime jocular activity.
There is really no point to the description of my surroundings (as is probably true for 99% of everything that gets posted in blogs) other than that today I'm jotting these thoughts down on a pad of paper rather than plodding along waiting for each letter to be recognized on my Nokia. I also don't have to concentrate on writing each letter in just the right way or avoid dotting my i's and crossing my t's after I finish a word, something that sends the Nokia's handwriting recognition up the wall.
This is a small experiment of sorts to see if my posts have a different flavor between the three input methods: Nokia, keyboard, or pencil and paper. The Nokia may force a type of brevity that reads more quickly and is more suited to readers who just like the little slices of life they gather from their blog surfing. For me these "brevity" type post are of little interest in and of themselves other than to keep recurrent readers coming back and letting them know my blog has not been abandoned. I wonder how many blog corpses litter the internet landscape?
What I really want to achieve is more like a series of mini essays each with some witty or profound insight (I haven't quite mastered summoning witty or profound on command yet) occasionally indulging in really long serious essays to be referred to, but stashed down in my Slashdot Journal. I am working on just one such essay now, but can't seem to get just the right tack on what to me is a very important issue -- the issue of "fairness." Not what is fair, but how to step back and not be blinded by our own preconceptions, needs, and wants to understand the true nature of fairness and why many things we think of as fair and unfair are mere societal illusions.
Even this half started essay (which has bogged down) stemmed from another half started essay on the increasing unfairness of intellectual property right laws, which I realized rested on some ill defined assumptions of fairness. There is a lot going on right now and I may not get around to finishing either them anytime soon (though I do plan to whine from time to time how poorly my progress on them is going).
I have just finished reading an article in "New Scientist" on confabulation and how to a degree we all do it, mostly unknowingly, and its especially chronic exhibition in some brain damaged individuals. This floats around in my head along with a quote from a recent South Park episode, "25% of all Americans are retards". Put another way (and less crudely) Americans choose to believe all sorts of incredible things not based on facts but emotionality. Putting all these things to together it is not hard to see why getting to the core of what is fair is such a hard chore.
Finally what is this post all about? This is mostly a procrastination post; a diversion before I dive back into my GRE studying. As to the experiment in writing styles, one conclusion might be that writing first on paper tends to lead to a more rambling writing style. Then again I just have a tendency to ramble in general, ask any of my co-workers.
