This is what it's all about

I just saw this on another blog today, and was reminded of it. Yes. This is why I enjoy programming, and this is why I think it is worthwhile.

Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. (...)

Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separately from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.

From "The Mythical Man-Month", by Fred Brooks.

Cooporation and Morality

This is an interesting blog post... not because I think it's correct (I don't, read my comments on it). But it states an interesting problem very clearly.

Give it a read.

Starting again...

I was shocked yesterday when I visited my blog, and realized I had made no new posts in over a year and a half. That's a lot. But then, it's been a busy year. Moving, getting married, starting my first job out of college...

At any rate, I feel like I have things to say, again, so I expect I will be posting more frequently. No promises, though. And I'm not going to commit myself to writing a profound essay every time I post, which should make for more frequent updates, albeit shorter.

Oh, and one more thing... I am reading some of my old posts, and while my opinions haven't really changed very much, some of my posts do sound very naive, if not cheesy, to my ears now. I was tempted to delete them, but then, I realised, some might still be interested. So let them stand as a historical record of me as I was two years ago, and, if you're just beginning to read this blog, take them with a grain of salt. I'm not necessarily the same person.

The Medical Mistake

Today, I ran across an interesting and extremely applicable thought from G. K. Chesterton, in his book "What's Wrong with the World."

It is a nearly universal trend in politics to look at various social and political problems as diseases that must be fixed. Candidates argue about who will be able to provide the best cure for poverty, the best solution to terrorism, how to stop the illegal immigration problem.

By and large, people tend to think that responsible voting means trying to analyze which solution would be most effective at eliminating the problem: applying cures for specific diseases. But as Chesterton points out, this approach is entirely backward. A doctor does not merely attack sickness in a body - his fundamental goal is to restore the body to normal and healthy functioning.

This analogy is completely faulty in the case of policy. There is no consensus regarding what a healthy nation looks like. This is the real reason that people cannot agree upon the "best" solution for a social malady, because they have completely separate conceptions of what a healthy society is.

Unfortunately, in our times even more than Chesterton's, this is not the focus of political discourse. Voters choose candidates based on which, to them, seems to have the best solution to a problem, but what they do not realize is that solutions differ because they belong to ideologies and philosophies that are far larger than any one problem. And yet, candidates squabble endlessly about which solution will be more effective while ignoring the larger issues at stake.

For example, taxation is a perennial political issue. Those in favor of of lower taxes provide numerous arguments for why they boost the economy and the private sector, trickling down to those who need it, while those in favor of raising them point to all the good that the government could do with more money, both to the populace and the economy. And this debate is in principle impossible to decide, since both arguments are equally aimed at "problem solving," while their relative effectiveness is a problem far to vast, with far to may variables for anyone to actually be certain of.

What is really at stake is the question of what a person's relation to their government ought to be, and what is the role of government is in general. Yet I an safely say that I have never heard
a political debate, advertisement or pundit addressing this question. People who do discuss it - philosophers and academics - are dismissed by the populace as ivy-towered intellectuals who speculate on matters of no importance to real life.

Practicality, it is said, is the thing. Which policy will provide practical results? Choose thusly. But in politics, trying to evaluate based on practicality is itself impractical. Before a cure can be decided upon, there must be a decision upon what the healthy body looks like. Usually, when the goal is decided upon, the practical solution becomes apparent. But without a goal, solutions will be chosen ad hoc, based on whatever candidate can be more persuasive at the moment, and multiple doctors working towards different ends will create only a patchwork Frankenstein monster.

Therefore, we ought to focus more on ideas and less on specific courses of action. Once the ideas are in place, the actions will follow, but without argumentation and refinement of political ideology, the country must inevitably flounder, with no direction, no goal, only stop-gap measures pulled from whichever philosophical basket is nearest.

Back in Black

Ah, but it feels good to be a student again. I can feel the blood returning to my atrophied brain, and the grist of homework is already flowing smoothly through the mind's mill.

Truly, for some reason, it as if my mind had been dammed up and now it's loose again. I've only been back for a day, but after working for 2 hours, doing chinese homework, reading 2 philosophy essays and translating a chapter and a half of the Bible from Greek, not to mention going to class, I feel more lucid and have come up with more creative ideas than I have in many weeks.

And tired, too. So I'm going to bed. On for more, tomorrow!

The Paradox of Virtue

Most people would admit that there are certain traits which it is morally good to possess. These are known as virtues, and it is easy enough for any sensible person to recognize them - courage, justice, friendliness, honesty, ect. These are offset by vices - bad or immoral traits such as cowardice, unfairness, rudeness or treachery.

It is also clear that there is some relationship between the vices and the virtues, and lay out various schemes for how they are all related. One intuitive idea is that vices and virtues come in pairs, and refer to the same quality, that for each quality there is a spectrum, with the virtue at one end and the vice at the other. For example, they would say there is a continuum of bravery, with the very brave on one end, and the very cowardly on the other, and the closer one could come to the brave end, the better and the more perfectly they possess the virtue.

A fault with this is that it is quite possible to possess too much of a virtue, to the point where it becomes a negative attribute rather than a positive one. Therefore, Aristotle advances another idea, that virtue is defined as the point of balance in a continuum with vices at both ends. In this system, rather than having a simple scale between bravery and cowardice, Aristotle sees the virtue of bravery as the balance between the vices of cowardice and foolhardiness.

However, both these systems seem to fall short of representing one very important facet of human virtue - that virtues that bear some sort of exclusionary relationship with one another. For example, prudence and bravery, generosity and financial responsibility, mercy and justice, loyalty and impartiality, or innocence and cunning. How is one to choose a virtuous lifestyle when faced with contradictory virtues.

An obvious answer, inspired by Aristotle, would be that the key is moderation. One could even be led to believe that each virtue is the same as a vice when unmoderated by another vice/virtue.

The problem with this is that it seems as if it could, very easily, lead to stagnation and mundanity. If everyone ought, with every virtue, to aim for a specific point of moderation, then it would seem to eliminate individuality - if everyone tried to be equally witty, equally phlegmatic, equally equanimous, it seems to me that the world would be a pretty boring place.

Furthermore, it seems wrong to state that every virtue should be moderated. Virtues, by definition, are good, and it is counterintuitive to say that they are good only when moderated by their opposite. But I want to believe that courage IS good, that prudence IS good, and good even when taken by themselves. I want to be able to respect both the soldier who boldly charges under murderous fire, and the prudent general who stays in the bunker, without chiding either of them for their immoderation.

There is a paradox about these contradictory virtues, a way in which they are in constant tension with each other, and yet still complimentary. Neither would be what they are without the other, and yet, unlike the moderation approach, they do not weaken each other either. They remain strong, and because of the dynamic play between them there is far more room for variety - indeed, it is only by such an interpretation of virtue that there can be variety among the virtuous.

Thus, I am free to support many varied views, and recognize the goodness of them, and apply that goodness to my life, without emasculating them. I salute both the optimist and the realist, and give a nod of approval to both the demure and the flamboyant. I am free to endorse the need for tolerance and acceptance in society, but also to stand up and make rugged, solid claims. And life is far more interesting, this way.

Poetry and Popularity

This is a response post to another blog post by an acquaintance - He posted it originally on facebook, so I take the liberty of reposting it here, for reference, accompanied by my response.

The original can be found at http://radford.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=2217485911

I have just recently realized that people like H. W. Longfellow, Lord Byron, Tennyson, etc. were celebrities in their day. I also noticed that Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Stanley Kunitz, Billy Collins, and Louise Gluck (not necessarily in that order) are not celebrities. Most of you reading this probably don't know any of those names in the last sentence, but I'll bet you know at least two of the names in the first sentence. Hall, Kooser, et al are the U.S. poets laureate since 2000. I initially thought that the difference between Longfellow and Hall is that the public today is less cultered and less educated than the public of the 1860's. This may be the case, but I don't think that is the primary reason why very few of you know the names of the last 5 U.S. poets laureate. The primary reason is that they write very poor poetry. If they all wrote like Byron, then they would be much more famous than they are. Kooser believes in dumbing down poetry, which is just what all five of the above (except maybe Kunitz) have done. Their poetry doesn't hold a candle to people like Longfellow, Byron, Shelley, Housman, Hopkins, and Tennyson. It isn't your fault that you don't know the last 5 U.S. poets laureate... it is their own.

----- My response -----

Well, I think your comparison isn’t exactly sound, for several reasons.

One, as Aleah said, is that without many other forms of entertainment, poetry naturally had more “room” to become popular to general population than it does now. This is not to say that people were more educated back then or to bemoan the current lack of culture. It’s a simple matter of what was and is available. Poetry was quite exciting, back then, and fashionable – now, not so much given that our culture has so many other ways to divert itself.

Secondly, your selection of poets to compare is quite unfair. The list of Tennyson, Byron, Longfellow, ect. reads like a list of worldwide poetry’s greatest hits of the 19th century. The poet laureates since 2000 are a much more limited set… You can’t validly compare the most popular poets from a six year period, all from the US, with a veritable poetic “dream team” from a longer period, selected from all over the world. There are only a few great poets for each generation – Of course we know about Tennyson and Byron and Longfellow, they were indeed the greats. But have you heard of Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye or Robert Southey? No? They were England’s Poet Laureates during that same age of when poetry was popular on a large scale. Have you heard of T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost or W. B. Yeats? I’m guessing yes – yet they were poets well past the time when poetry was seen that way. Basically, if you’re going to draw comparisons, you’re going to have to do so between equivalent sets of people.

Thirdly, you do not account for taste. Poetry, like music and art, goes through various movements throughout history. There was the romantic style in the 19th century, which you mention, and various movements since then. There is the current modern style, as well – you evidently don’t like it as much as the High Romantic. But other people do, and to a certain extent you can’t even make comparisons between poets across different styles. Kooser is one of the best (maybe, we’ll have to see who else comes along) at the current style, as Byron was one of the best Romantics, and given that most people have a strong preference for one style or the other it’s nearly impossible to compare the two with regard to individual ability. It’s like trying to compare Bach with U2. (Incidentally, U2 is far more popular within their lifetim than Bach ever was. Must mean that Bach sucks.)

Fourthly, it takes time for poets to become known and recognized as something special. Most famous poets, with a few exceptions, were not widely appreciated in their own era. Byron and some other Romantics were the exception, given that the culture at the time, for various reasons, was very receptive of poetry. But it’s hardly fair to compare their fame with modern poets that have not yet had time to be appreciated, or to work their way into the anthologies the average high school student must read (which, honestly, is the only reason most people know about even the most famous poets.)

Fifthly, the poets you mention were mostly public figures anyway. Half Byron’s popularity was as much due to the fact that he was a scandalous lord as the fact that he was a poet – Would you say Britney Spears or Courtny Love are good artists, in our own time? No, they have just managed to somehow seize the mind of the masses. As Byron did. He had the added advantage of actually being a good artist, but that quality seems largely incidental to popularity, if you look at history.

Anyway, you have a point – it’s good to think about how poetry used to be more popular, and certainly there were some exceptional poets in those days. But I’m not sure it’s justified to simply say that it’s because modern poets are no good. Times change, society changes, and individual tastes vary extensively, and I think it’s gross oversimplification to equate a poet’s notoriety in their own era to their objective quality.

Tis the Season of Good Music

This fall, there has been an exorbitant amount of good music released. So much so, I have spent way too much money, and feel I am doing all these bands injustice merely because I don't have time to listen to them enough. Just a quick rundown of this fall's releases, in no particular order:

Blind Guardian - A Twist in the Myth. Brilliant poetic lyrics. Powerful sound. One of the best voices in metal - and Twist in the Myth delivers more of the same, progressed and matured in exciting new directions.

Iron Maiden - A Matter of Life and Death. It's amazing that these guys are still around - and they havn't changed at all. Their songs are just as rocking as ever, and just as full of wailing, grinding guitar, soaring tenor, and lyrics that mean something.

Skillet - Comatose. With their own unique blend of worship-metal, this band has forged their own unique sound that brings the power of hard music in to extremely inspiring songs, while leaving all the cheesiness, and meaningless modern christian cliches far, far behind.

Evanescence - The Open Door. Unlike the other albums on this list, there are a lot of songs on here that I don't like - take the single, "Call me when you're sober." That pretty much sums up the lyrics, and would fit a lot better in a country song, I think. However, there are still a lot of songs on here that are classic Evanescence. Depending on your perspective, that can be a good or a bad thing. For me, it's good. There are a lot of better bands out there, but Evanescence has a unique blend of styles and ethereal quality that I do like. Sue me.

Machinae Supremacy - Redeemer. This album is actually already out, already, in independant release. But it is to be released in November with a real record label, and this amazing, unique, and tremendously underrated band will finally have a chance to show its worth among the big players. You can download lots of their stuff for free at www.machinaesupremacy.com (currently being redesigned, so if you can't access it now, try again later).