I just got my first probabilities test back today. A 90%.
95% is an A
94% and less is a B
Bah.
I should be comforted by the fact that mine was the highest score. Earlier in the week when I was having trouble with a problem, my prof said, Why don't you ask one of the other students for help, they seem to be getting it.
I always make a comeback.
Maybe if I hadn't taken a 7 hour nap yesterday I would have gotten ahead...
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Debunking Socrates?
The essay due on Monday morning--concerning the role of the individual and government in ancient Greece: to what extent did Socrates' ideas/behavior challenge Pericles' account of the Athenian state and society?
A year ago I had no knowledge of the ancient world. Knowledge can inspire us and challenge us.
Socrates, in Plato's account of his trial, says that a truly just man could never participate in public discourse because he would naturally oppose State practices and eventually be killed for his opinions. Rather grim perspective of the corruption of governing bodies. Instead of participating in the community dialogue, he allowed the young rich men of Athens to follow him around and listen to him ridicule and humiliate the prominent poets, craftsmen and politicians of the day, proving that their basic human motivations weren't logical. The young men ate it up--here were respected men of the city who had worked for years to develop their crafts and cultivate expertise in their fields--and Socrates made them look like confused children.
What a friggin hero.
Naturally, enamored with this wisdom and strength (not virtue), they imitated his obnoxious orthopraxy all around the city, probably creating a whole new class of professionals. Professional irritants. Pulling up wheat and weeds indiscriminantly.
I cannot hide the fact that I think Socrates was a fatalist who, seeing the Golden age of Athens stretched too tightly around him, perhaps felt that the debunking of status quo- whether in regards to piety, justice or freedom--was not only natural but also beneficial. Although it would mean the end of the State as it was and life as he had enjoyed it.
He bites the hand that feeds him, and finally, the hand closes around his neck. What I find a little grotesque is that he did his duty on the surface and then under many guises of curiosity and searching undermined the State that had required the duty and valor of him.
He seemed wise out of context, apart from neglecting the care of his family and hiding his opposotion in circular and sarcastic debunking. A man who really cared about others would have risked himself more. He shows people to be foolish by proving that people often have a very hard time defining the things they feel most passionate about, almost as if to say that you only have the right to feel strongly toward things you perfectly understand and can perfectly define. In every era, it's the things that mystify us that capture our fascination and enrapture our affections. We are slaves to powers we don't particularly understand and that's nothing to be ashamed of.
This essay is going to be hard.
A year ago I had no knowledge of the ancient world. Knowledge can inspire us and challenge us.
Socrates, in Plato's account of his trial, says that a truly just man could never participate in public discourse because he would naturally oppose State practices and eventually be killed for his opinions. Rather grim perspective of the corruption of governing bodies. Instead of participating in the community dialogue, he allowed the young rich men of Athens to follow him around and listen to him ridicule and humiliate the prominent poets, craftsmen and politicians of the day, proving that their basic human motivations weren't logical. The young men ate it up--here were respected men of the city who had worked for years to develop their crafts and cultivate expertise in their fields--and Socrates made them look like confused children.
What a friggin hero.
Naturally, enamored with this wisdom and strength (not virtue), they imitated his obnoxious orthopraxy all around the city, probably creating a whole new class of professionals. Professional irritants. Pulling up wheat and weeds indiscriminantly.
I cannot hide the fact that I think Socrates was a fatalist who, seeing the Golden age of Athens stretched too tightly around him, perhaps felt that the debunking of status quo- whether in regards to piety, justice or freedom--was not only natural but also beneficial. Although it would mean the end of the State as it was and life as he had enjoyed it.
He bites the hand that feeds him, and finally, the hand closes around his neck. What I find a little grotesque is that he did his duty on the surface and then under many guises of curiosity and searching undermined the State that had required the duty and valor of him.
He seemed wise out of context, apart from neglecting the care of his family and hiding his opposotion in circular and sarcastic debunking. A man who really cared about others would have risked himself more. He shows people to be foolish by proving that people often have a very hard time defining the things they feel most passionate about, almost as if to say that you only have the right to feel strongly toward things you perfectly understand and can perfectly define. In every era, it's the things that mystify us that capture our fascination and enrapture our affections. We are slaves to powers we don't particularly understand and that's nothing to be ashamed of.
This essay is going to be hard.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Pericles & The Dark Bat, Envy
"For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity."
-Pericles of Athens, during a funeral speech
I can handle hearing about the awesome things other people are doing if I'm doing those things; if I'm doing awesome things. How hard it is, however, to hear the praises for the person doing things I cannot or would not do.
And not everyone can be an astronaut. Not everyone drove down to the Gulf after Hurricane Katrina to help people put their lives back together. Not everyone loves their family the right way. Some things are out of reach. Because of time and opportunity. Because of ignorance.
And yet, some great acts---some noble gifts--are out of reach simply because we lack self-discipline. Because we haven't believed our contribution was important to anyone, or that it could be important to us. We don't do the really difficult, great things because there aren't incentives to doing them, and because we act in our own short-sighted interest 99% of our waking hours.
However, I'd wager that the most wonderful thing you'll ever do in your life won't seem courageous or glorious while you're doing it. You'll probably be forgoing other, better options to do it.
That's what makes the choice to do it so glorious.
Where did this start and where did it go and where will it end? Perhaps the difficulty of envy is that it afflicts the one who understands the glory of a good life but just can't convince himself to pay what it costs. It's hard to rejoice when someone else is doing what you should be doing. It would be a curious moment of the soul.
{Back to studying Ancient Greece}
-Pericles of Athens, during a funeral speech
I can handle hearing about the awesome things other people are doing if I'm doing those things; if I'm doing awesome things. How hard it is, however, to hear the praises for the person doing things I cannot or would not do.
And not everyone can be an astronaut. Not everyone drove down to the Gulf after Hurricane Katrina to help people put their lives back together. Not everyone loves their family the right way. Some things are out of reach. Because of time and opportunity. Because of ignorance.
And yet, some great acts---some noble gifts--are out of reach simply because we lack self-discipline. Because we haven't believed our contribution was important to anyone, or that it could be important to us. We don't do the really difficult, great things because there aren't incentives to doing them, and because we act in our own short-sighted interest 99% of our waking hours.
However, I'd wager that the most wonderful thing you'll ever do in your life won't seem courageous or glorious while you're doing it. You'll probably be forgoing other, better options to do it.
That's what makes the choice to do it so glorious.
Where did this start and where did it go and where will it end? Perhaps the difficulty of envy is that it afflicts the one who understands the glory of a good life but just can't convince himself to pay what it costs. It's hard to rejoice when someone else is doing what you should be doing. It would be a curious moment of the soul.
{Back to studying Ancient Greece}
The belltower is playing Moonlight Sonata. I walk out the glass doors, away from math, cheeks burning. Scribbling furiously for over two hours? I did well on my test--at least I felt like I understood most of it.
Now: one small thing achieved from a bowl of infinite goals.
I digress...Moonlight Sonata is playing now; somber bells mixing with the sound of a distant train whistle. The two sounds together are potent enough to form a feeling, but covered in relief the way I am right now, I can't say for sure what that feeling is.
I feel like I have no obligations now, just possibilities. A much needed breather that can't last; a small patch of blue sky overhead, surrounded by rolling dark clouds.
Sitting on cement steps that stretch out for half a block, a woman sits down within the boundaries of my. blue-sky reverie and lights a cigarette. She calls someone and talks loudly and unhappilly--she's irritated or irritable or both. I look up again from this little keypad and the blue patch of sky has been smothered by the grey, hanging ceiling that is always moving and never leaves.
Possibilities. Which to grab and which to let go?
Now: one small thing achieved from a bowl of infinite goals.
I digress...Moonlight Sonata is playing now; somber bells mixing with the sound of a distant train whistle. The two sounds together are potent enough to form a feeling, but covered in relief the way I am right now, I can't say for sure what that feeling is.
I feel like I have no obligations now, just possibilities. A much needed breather that can't last; a small patch of blue sky overhead, surrounded by rolling dark clouds.
Sitting on cement steps that stretch out for half a block, a woman sits down within the boundaries of my. blue-sky reverie and lights a cigarette. She calls someone and talks loudly and unhappilly--she's irritated or irritable or both. I look up again from this little keypad and the blue patch of sky has been smothered by the grey, hanging ceiling that is always moving and never leaves.
Possibilities. Which to grab and which to let go?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
It's not possible that he's gone.
The sky, so grey and so low to the ground today, doesn't feel full of possibilities but overcrowded with unreached goals.
Satisfaction, so fleeting.
Every second, single file and marching in this war. Against me? With me? I am too slow, too weighed down. I climb over the wall and see a thosand more ahead.
Today is the thing I wish were dead. Yet it lives on and meets me in my tired state again and again.
The sky, so grey and so low to the ground today, doesn't feel full of possibilities but overcrowded with unreached goals.
Satisfaction, so fleeting.
Every second, single file and marching in this war. Against me? With me? I am too slow, too weighed down. I climb over the wall and see a thosand more ahead.
Today is the thing I wish were dead. Yet it lives on and meets me in my tired state again and again.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Riding the Iron Horse
I'm back on the iron pill wagon again.
Any type of relief for my thought-stealing headaches that doesn't look like Advil liquid gels would be welcome this week. With Shelby being such a non-drug and pharmaceuticals girl, it's hard to take things like Advil without feeling just a little wussy. Ye ole coping strategies have often included giant pieces of coconut laced cake and large dregs of drip coffee. Now I'm shopping for a new cure to my mid afternoon listlessness.
Listlessness
Say that three times as fast as you can.
If only listlessness were equivalent to "having no lists."
On the perpendicular, actually, listlessness seems to accompany the state of having entirely too many lists and too little energy to accomplish anything on them.
I spent my lunch break sitting against a wall near our math complex, along a path that leads to nowhere in particular. I tried to absorb the sunshine, knowing that days like these are limited. After wedging my grey cardie behind my head, I almost fell asleep against the wall, at 1:00 p.m. It's definitely time to take up the iron supplement flag again and wave it to the beat of my unbearably productive schedule, which tick tick ticks on, whether I'm awake or asleep.
Here's hoping Wednesday goes down a little smoother.
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