Nell's new friend

For those that haven't met her yet, this is my beautiful bike ! She's adopted, but I show her off like she's my own child.

Her name is Nell, I named after the character Princess Nellodee from Neal Stephenson's excellent sci-fi adventure The Diamond Age. In the book, Nellodee (aka Nell) is a poor, low-caste girl born to a turbulent family. After her father is shot and her mother goes through a string of abusive relationships, she somehow manages to get her hands on a piece of revolutionary technology. This is the primer, a magic book that ends up playing a huge role in raising her. By the end of the novel, she goes from a poor and pitiable little girl to a strong and intelligent heroine. (no spoilers- you really should read it)

Nell has a new small friend today; I bought her a cute little duck wearing a pineapple hat. Taiwan has quite the selection of the most adorable plush keychains.

Contact + Vocabulary Volume #2

"She had spent her career attempting to make contact with the most remote and alien of strangers, while in her own life she had made contact with hardly anyone at all. She had been fierce in debunking the creation myths of others, and oblivious to the lie at the core of her own. She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: for small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."

Carl Sagan, Contact

Contact is the novel behind one of my favorite movies of the same title. When I found out that the film was based off a novel, I made a mental note to read it, and was excited to spot a worn copy at the campus used book sale.

Although many decry the film for fabricating an entirely different ending plot twist, I have to give merit to the creative minds behind both versions. Though different, both endings offer that sense of closing satisfaction, while still leaving behind that tiny speck of what-if that characterizes great science fiction.

If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, I highly recommend it. It's an exciting adventure, as well as a thought-provoking exploration of personal spirituality in an open, non-religious sense.

The scientific nature of the novel's subject matter also makes for an interesting vocabulary volume:

organosilicate: being made of both silica and organic substances. silica is a compound known for its hardness, and is found in diatom cell walls.

subcodicil: supplementary content that explains, modifies, or revokes all or part of a will

naked singularity: a gravitational singularity without an event horizon

(uh... what??)

- gravitational singularity: central area within a black hole, where gravity is thought to be infinite

- event horizon: simply put, the 'border' of a black hole

arcana: secrets or mysteries

contact binary: a binary star system (two suns, like those seen from Tatooine) whose stars are so close that they appear or are actually touching

sundry: various small items that are not important enough to be listed out individually

reconnoiter: to make a military observation of a region; to scout out an area

ecdysiast: basically a fancy word for a stripper

eschatological: regarding the ultimate destiny of humankind and the world

punctilious: paying great attention to detail

samizdat: the clandestine copying and subsequent hand distribution of banned literatures, as in communist Russia

Earring

I made an earring :D

It's made of four faux pearls on a headpin.

Currently, it is only a singular earring... because I only had one headpin. If I happen to find more laying around the house, then maybe I can make a set.

Hooray for casual arts and crafts !

Frequencies/Thinky Thoughts

Every now and then, my dad delves into a mix of science/theology/philosophy discussions over the dinner table. In the past, it's been resurrection over ramen and Star Trek over sushi, and last night's was another interesting one.

Somewhere in the midst of the evening's conversation, the topic turned to the current news broadcast and how prevailingly negative it is: people killing each other, political conspiracy theories, and the usual slew of petty crime that gets onto the local Bay Area news. My dad began explaining what seemed to start off as the usual stream of Asian-dad cynicism, but his thoughts became became more and more interesting as I listened. The following is as much as I can remember of his mealtime musings (probably with some butchering of physics terminology):

The world that we currently live in glorifies two aspects of a person's life: money and reputation. Having one or the other, or ideally both, is what makes a person well known and received, and the path to success is often defined by one's accumulation of these two things. This sort of society is shallow and materialistic- one that continually insists on placing the wrong types of people on pedestals that they buy with the excess wealth of their own gilded wallets.

Imagine now another world in which the two highlighted aspects are wisdom and personality. Unlike money that glimmers and reputation that shines, wisdom and personality are things that are generally invisible in our current society. Those that have done nothing but possess wealth and fame are greatly publicized, while many that do good go largely unnoticed, while . But, what if these two positive traits were just as visible as money and reputation? In this other world, wisdom and personality are expressed as two overlapping halos that emit light based on the amount that the owner possesses. The wiser, or better of a person you are, the brighter your respective lights are. With these two being so visible to the public, and thus being what most prized by society, it then becomes more important to accumulate these, rather than money and reputation.

Why are these two traits suddenly visible in this alternate world ? Because the whole world operates on a different frequency scale. Whereas our current world has our familiar spectrum of colors, sounds, etc that are apparent to the senses, there are also many frequencies that are undetectable by humans alone but only with the help of machines (ultraviolet, x-rays, etc). What if there exists another range of frequencies that are still undiscovered- frequencies that display such things like the vital traits of wisdom and personality as visible light ?

Even in our current world, individuals that have complementary levels of wisdom or personality naturally tend to get along quite well. The currently indescribable and inaccurate "science" of "vibes" and "vibing" well with others would finally turn tangible in this alternate world of frequencies, just as the science of sound, light, radio, etc has become an established science here. Constructive interference would occur among those that possess the desired traits of wisdom and personality, and destructive interference (or even discordance) would occur between those that are poorly matched.

In this very tangible way, the positive traits are continually encouraged, and communities are built up based on the cumulative wisdom and personality of their participants.