It's too long for the NPR series by the same name, but it remains true none-the-less. I'll be interested to hear any commentary.
-- GID
------
I self-identify as an atheist. I also tell other people I'm an atheist. But I'm not. Not really. It's just that what I believe about the nature of the divine isn't easily expressed in terms of a single symbol, or even a bumper-sticker-length catch phrase. So I fudge it a little bit, but as far as most people are concerned, it's close enough.
The thing is, I approach the question of god in the same way I approach questions I come across in computer science : logically, methodically, always with an eye on the fundamental principles which can be used to solve every problem I've come across so far. Computer Science consists of learning a set of basic skills, and using them to construct complex systems which can do things like simulate the collision of galaxies. The end result may be stupendously sophisticated, but the path is always built using the same blocks you learned in your freshman CompSci class. What you learn is really a WAY to think about big problems, and not a WHAT to think. You learn to break things down into smaller and smaller parts until you get a piece you know how to cope with, and then you work on that. If you keep doing this, you eventually can solve everything, given enough time, patience and discipline.
So, here is my thinking on god.
God is given 4 aspects : Eternal, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient.
Eternal : God has always existed, and will always exist. There is no point at which God has not existed. God is the sum total of the past, present, and future.
Omnipotent : God is all-powerful. This doesn't just mean that God has all the power in the universe, it means God *is* all the power in the universe. God is the mover of all things, the stopper of all things, the cause, source and destination of every action. You cannot say God didn't cause the hurricane – this means that some other power did, which means that there's power in the universe outside of God's, which violates God's Omnipotence. God is the mover of the heavens, the burning in the suns, the metamorphosis, the photosynthesis, all processes, all energy.
Omnipresent : There is no place God is not. God is in old candy wrappers and on the moon; God IS the moon, and all the space between the moon and the Earth; God IS the Earth; God is in every molecule, every atom, in all of the universe, God is located in them all. God IS them all.
Omniscient : All knowledge is God's. The reason for all things is known by God. All possible outcomes of any given set of potentialities are known by God.
Most atheists will tell you that an entity containing all of these aspect doesn't exist. The thing is, I can think of exactly one. It's the only possible entity that encompasses all of these concepts, and I know for a fact that it exists. What is that entity?
The universe.
Call it “everything,” if you like. All-that-is. The infinite Unity. The sum total of all places at all times and everything that happens therein. We live in it, with our limited life spans, so we are part of it – part of God. The divine lives in all of us – we live in the divine. God is everywhere, so that means I'm part of God, and God is part of me. God is every-when, which means last Tuesday, tomorrow, and right now. God is every action, which means all that I do is expressing the divine. This is crucial : the divine is an expression of my self. God knows everything, which means all that I know, and a whole lot of stuff that I don't. But I'm reaching for it. The knowledge is out there somewhere, if I have patience, discipline, and curiosity enough to ask, and can overcome the fear to take the risk.
So what about Jehova, Allah, Baal, Zeus, and so on? Maybe they exist, I don't know. But I know they aren't God. If they do exist, they're nothing more than super-powerful entities with their own limited lifespans, their own limited understanding, and their own limited power. This puts them far ahead of me on the food chain, so maybe they can affect my life. But it seems to me that if Jehova is up there toying with us all, and he has a plan, and he's proceeding according to his own whim without regard to our desires and dreams, then that's not benevolent, that's just being mean. And if his purpose for me crosses my own desires for my life, without reason or explanation, then he's nothing more than a pathetic bully for doing it. And we all know this truth from our childhood : bullies rule through fear, not love.
In fact I find the idea of a God like this thoroughly depressing. The very idea of it pales in my heart, in comparison to the possibility that we're all responsible for one another, that we're supposed to be taking care of one another as best as we can. For in the end, WE are the ones expressing the divine – and the divine does not express itself to us except through the actions of others. So if we are evil, then God is evil; if we love and care for one another, then God truly is love. There's no external bogeyman forcing you to make the decision, or threatening you with punishment if you aren't good. YOU are the one responsible for how you exist in the world – it's your own power, your own knowledge, your own actions that creates God every moment of your existence.
For if you believe in Jehova, or Allah, then make no mistake about this : what you express through your belief has nothing to do with your God, but with YOU. If you hate homosexuals, it's not because God does, it's because YOU do. If it's your opinion that women are inferior it's not because God thinks this, or because it says so in your scripture, it's because that's what YOU think, and you're using your religion as an excuse, as a crutch, as a way to disavow responsibility for your own actions. Conversely, if you love everybody, and reach out to others and do good things, then that's not Jehova, that's YOU being a good person. YOU are the benevolent God. You need no proxy to claim your goodness, you ARE your own self-expression.
So, my question to you is this : How do YOU express God to others?
Monday, July 4, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
The Death of Things That Spin
The CD/DVD is dead. Or at least, it should be.
I know, Blu-ray won the format wars. Now we can all get behind this great new format and watch our videos in beautiful HD. But I'm wondering - why are we supporting any kind of mechanical-based format any more?
Let me explain.
Way back when, there were LPs. LPs were great, analog, and very specifically limited to a known degree as to how much information they'd hold (i.e. roughly 45 minutes of sound). You put the LP on a rotating platter and dropped the needle, and sound came out of the speakers based on the amplified micro-vibrations of this needle. The quality of the final result relied largely on several known factors : the quality of the needle (<Steve Martin>Moon Rock needle. Sounds like shit.</Steve Martin>); the quality of the amplifier; the quality and power of the speakers. It was a simple idea carried out with varying degrees of elegance, if the vast available array of these supporting technologies is any indication. I still have LPs, (but no turntable), and will admit that there's some undefined, nostalgic instinct which is driving me to keep them.
Next came the digital era, with the sound further discretized into 1s and 0s, and essentially glued, again, onto a plastic disc. But still the medium of delivery relied on a mechanical device: a much smaller, much faster turntable. DVDs, both the first generation and the new blue-ray versions, are exactly the same - we just got better at making the bits we glue onto the plastic discs really, really small so we can put more and more bits on the same sized plastic disc. More bits means more data means higher fidelity sound or video, all of which is well and good.
But it's not all that good.
I can tell you for fact that the things-that-spin method of data delivery is no longer either practical or necessary. I can't recall the last CD/DVD drive I bought for a computer which lasted more than 3 years. Hell, even DVD players only last 4-5 years and then the things explode in some fashion. Most last significantly less time than that.
This is horribly inefficient, not to mention that it creates a lot of extra trash when people buy a $30 DVD player from Wal-Mart every 18 months, including all the packaging (box, styrofoam packing materials, unread manuals, etc), and then throw all of it away and do it again. I'd love to know what percentage of space in a typical landfill is dedicated to the dessicated remains of things-that-spin technologies.
On the other hand, a typical thumb drive (also called flash drive) holds about 32 GB these days. This is WAY MORE data than you get on one dual-layered standard DVD. Hell, you could put FOUR standard-def DVDs on the thing. There are no moving parts required to access this data. The amount of packing for these drives is a fraction of what's required for LPs/CDs/DVDs, and there's nothing to break. Imagine buying a thumb drive with Wall-E on it. You pop it into the slot on front of your player, and INSTANTLY your menu screen comes up. No waiting for the drive to spin up, no wondering when the thing is going to break. Neither the player nor media has any moving parts to cause any issues. Drop the thing on the floor all you want, it won't break. You can't scratch it. And storing it takes up a fraction of the space the DVD did.
Even better, this same thumb drive ALSO has the soundtrack on it. You get into your car, pop the drive into the front of your audio player, and listen to the soundtrack as you drive to work (or, if you want to, play the move audio and watch it in your head as you drive). No waiting for anything to slide in and out of any slot. No hoping the thing spits out that old Thompson Twins CD that's been stuck in there since 1994. And no mechanical parts at all, so no skipping.
But what about the new Blu-ray discs, you ask? Aren't those supposed to hold more data?
Indeed they are. A single layer Blu-ray disc holds about 25 GB, a dual layer 50 GB. You'll recall, the more data I can store on my media, the higher fidelity I achieve, and so the better my listening/viewing experience. As is the general rule with computers, however, the technology is advancing with harrowing speed. As I said, you can already buy 32 GB flash drives for $30, enough to hold more data than a single layer Blu-ray disc. And while this is too much to spend on a DVD, there are two things I can promise you with absolute certainty:
1) This is a HUGE profit margin. These things cost probably around $5 or so to manufacture en masse no matter how much data they hold. In the same way that you can now buy an 8 GB flash drive for about $8 (which is a little cheaper than the cost of a normal DVD now), in a few months there will be higher capacity flash drives available, and the top-of-the-line drives available now will cost almost nothing.
2) These new drives are already ready to go, the manufacturers are simply waiting for the right time to hit the market with them so that they can maximize their profit margin on the current version before they make them the new old version.
So, the technology exists to make this a reality already. It's nothing more than mule-headedness which keeps us using these idiotic things-that-spin.
However there's even more benefit to solid state media - it can be re-written infinitely. So what, you ask, who cares? Well, if you get tired of the Rocky collection, you can simply buy the Rambo collection and replace the old Rocky movies on the same media. You waste nothing (except the time and brain cells you killed trying to re-enact the wrestling scene between Balboa and Thunderlips from Rocky III), and don't have to be embarrassed while trying to dump your old collection on Craig's List.
But, even better, take the following scenario:
You have an old media style which is permanent. Suddenly, a new technology is available which allows you to store more data on a different kind of media. Now, suddenly, your huge library of old-media entertainment is obsolete. You'll have to buy a new player and host of new media to get the advantages of the new technology. Your old media and player becomes landfill fodder, and you spend tons more money you didn't want to to own something you already own.
Now let's pretend you have re-writable solid state media.
You have a huge collection of 20 GB media iGimmicks (tm). Some of them hold a movie and its soundtrack, others hold a few different versions of your favorite musical. You plug them into your player, which checks out the contents and brings up the appropriate interface for allowing you to experience your data.
Suddenly, it is announced : new compression scheme available, higher fidelity, better sound, available now!
Worst case, you don't have an internet connection. You take your media and iGimmick player to your local iGimmick retailer (you were going to have to go to the store anyway to buy the new player and media, so this isn't actually imposing additionally on you at all). Hand them your player and box full of iGimmicks. One by one, your iGimmicks are plugged into the upgrader. The upgrader looks at the media, sees what you have, and converts or upgrades, as needed. You now have the newest version of your stuff, same media, no garbage generated. While all this is happening, they also install the new version of the player software on your iGimmick player (for the record, called iSprocket). It may be that your storage capacity, in some cases, isn't enough to hold the newest version of the item in question (you are obsessed with Cats, alas, and have every version ever produced on one of your iGimmicks). No problem. You can upgrade that particular iGimmick to the new higher-capacity version, and continue to use the old one for something else. Would you like to check our stock of available media which will fit on that model of iGimmick? We have a lovely selection of Equus home videos...
Or, if you're like us and have high-speed internet in your house, all of this can be done without you even having to leave the living room. Your iSprocket is internet ready, and can tell you when new versions are available. It downloads and installs the new player software automatically, and lets you convert your media as you sit there in your own home. Those iGimmicks which can't be converted, take them to the iGimmick store, they'll hook you up.
This scheme works for more than just movies and music. Any data can be handled this way. Software (new version of GTA, anyone?), books (Robert Jordan series coming right up!), you name it. iGimmick can handle it, with all the same advantages.
So let's review.
Solid-state media (thumb drives, and other similar technologies which have no moving parts) is cheap to produce, cheap to buy, generates less waste from packaging, doesn't break under normal circumstances (you still shouldn't put it in the microwave), does entirely away with player-based mechanical failure and hence decreases waste further by not clogging landfills with old broken players, takes up a fraction of the space of traditional disc-based media, is almost infinitely upgradeable without wasting media or delivery systems, and can be implemented immediately with existing technologies.
What the hell are we waiting for?
I know, Blu-ray won the format wars. Now we can all get behind this great new format and watch our videos in beautiful HD. But I'm wondering - why are we supporting any kind of mechanical-based format any more?
Let me explain.
Way back when, there were LPs. LPs were great, analog, and very specifically limited to a known degree as to how much information they'd hold (i.e. roughly 45 minutes of sound). You put the LP on a rotating platter and dropped the needle, and sound came out of the speakers based on the amplified micro-vibrations of this needle. The quality of the final result relied largely on several known factors : the quality of the needle (<Steve Martin>Moon Rock needle. Sounds like shit.</Steve Martin>); the quality of the amplifier; the quality and power of the speakers. It was a simple idea carried out with varying degrees of elegance, if the vast available array of these supporting technologies is any indication. I still have LPs, (but no turntable), and will admit that there's some undefined, nostalgic instinct which is driving me to keep them.
Next came the digital era, with the sound further discretized into 1s and 0s, and essentially glued, again, onto a plastic disc. But still the medium of delivery relied on a mechanical device: a much smaller, much faster turntable. DVDs, both the first generation and the new blue-ray versions, are exactly the same - we just got better at making the bits we glue onto the plastic discs really, really small so we can put more and more bits on the same sized plastic disc. More bits means more data means higher fidelity sound or video, all of which is well and good.
But it's not all that good.
I can tell you for fact that the things-that-spin method of data delivery is no longer either practical or necessary. I can't recall the last CD/DVD drive I bought for a computer which lasted more than 3 years. Hell, even DVD players only last 4-5 years and then the things explode in some fashion. Most last significantly less time than that.
This is horribly inefficient, not to mention that it creates a lot of extra trash when people buy a $30 DVD player from Wal-Mart every 18 months, including all the packaging (box, styrofoam packing materials, unread manuals, etc), and then throw all of it away and do it again. I'd love to know what percentage of space in a typical landfill is dedicated to the dessicated remains of things-that-spin technologies.
On the other hand, a typical thumb drive (also called flash drive) holds about 32 GB these days. This is WAY MORE data than you get on one dual-layered standard DVD. Hell, you could put FOUR standard-def DVDs on the thing. There are no moving parts required to access this data. The amount of packing for these drives is a fraction of what's required for LPs/CDs/DVDs, and there's nothing to break. Imagine buying a thumb drive with Wall-E on it. You pop it into the slot on front of your player, and INSTANTLY your menu screen comes up. No waiting for the drive to spin up, no wondering when the thing is going to break. Neither the player nor media has any moving parts to cause any issues. Drop the thing on the floor all you want, it won't break. You can't scratch it. And storing it takes up a fraction of the space the DVD did.
Even better, this same thumb drive ALSO has the soundtrack on it. You get into your car, pop the drive into the front of your audio player, and listen to the soundtrack as you drive to work (or, if you want to, play the move audio and watch it in your head as you drive). No waiting for anything to slide in and out of any slot. No hoping the thing spits out that old Thompson Twins CD that's been stuck in there since 1994. And no mechanical parts at all, so no skipping.
But what about the new Blu-ray discs, you ask? Aren't those supposed to hold more data?
Indeed they are. A single layer Blu-ray disc holds about 25 GB, a dual layer 50 GB. You'll recall, the more data I can store on my media, the higher fidelity I achieve, and so the better my listening/viewing experience. As is the general rule with computers, however, the technology is advancing with harrowing speed. As I said, you can already buy 32 GB flash drives for $30, enough to hold more data than a single layer Blu-ray disc. And while this is too much to spend on a DVD, there are two things I can promise you with absolute certainty:
1) This is a HUGE profit margin. These things cost probably around $5 or so to manufacture en masse no matter how much data they hold. In the same way that you can now buy an 8 GB flash drive for about $8 (which is a little cheaper than the cost of a normal DVD now), in a few months there will be higher capacity flash drives available, and the top-of-the-line drives available now will cost almost nothing.
2) These new drives are already ready to go, the manufacturers are simply waiting for the right time to hit the market with them so that they can maximize their profit margin on the current version before they make them the new old version.
So, the technology exists to make this a reality already. It's nothing more than mule-headedness which keeps us using these idiotic things-that-spin.
However there's even more benefit to solid state media - it can be re-written infinitely. So what, you ask, who cares? Well, if you get tired of the Rocky collection, you can simply buy the Rambo collection and replace the old Rocky movies on the same media. You waste nothing (except the time and brain cells you killed trying to re-enact the wrestling scene between Balboa and Thunderlips from Rocky III), and don't have to be embarrassed while trying to dump your old collection on Craig's List.
But, even better, take the following scenario:
You have an old media style which is permanent. Suddenly, a new technology is available which allows you to store more data on a different kind of media. Now, suddenly, your huge library of old-media entertainment is obsolete. You'll have to buy a new player and host of new media to get the advantages of the new technology. Your old media and player becomes landfill fodder, and you spend tons more money you didn't want to to own something you already own.
Now let's pretend you have re-writable solid state media.
You have a huge collection of 20 GB media iGimmicks (tm). Some of them hold a movie and its soundtrack, others hold a few different versions of your favorite musical. You plug them into your player, which checks out the contents and brings up the appropriate interface for allowing you to experience your data.
Suddenly, it is announced : new compression scheme available, higher fidelity, better sound, available now!
Worst case, you don't have an internet connection. You take your media and iGimmick player to your local iGimmick retailer (you were going to have to go to the store anyway to buy the new player and media, so this isn't actually imposing additionally on you at all). Hand them your player and box full of iGimmicks. One by one, your iGimmicks are plugged into the upgrader. The upgrader looks at the media, sees what you have, and converts or upgrades, as needed. You now have the newest version of your stuff, same media, no garbage generated. While all this is happening, they also install the new version of the player software on your iGimmick player (for the record, called iSprocket). It may be that your storage capacity, in some cases, isn't enough to hold the newest version of the item in question (you are obsessed with Cats, alas, and have every version ever produced on one of your iGimmicks). No problem. You can upgrade that particular iGimmick to the new higher-capacity version, and continue to use the old one for something else. Would you like to check our stock of available media which will fit on that model of iGimmick? We have a lovely selection of Equus home videos...
Or, if you're like us and have high-speed internet in your house, all of this can be done without you even having to leave the living room. Your iSprocket is internet ready, and can tell you when new versions are available. It downloads and installs the new player software automatically, and lets you convert your media as you sit there in your own home. Those iGimmicks which can't be converted, take them to the iGimmick store, they'll hook you up.
This scheme works for more than just movies and music. Any data can be handled this way. Software (new version of GTA, anyone?), books (Robert Jordan series coming right up!), you name it. iGimmick can handle it, with all the same advantages.
So let's review.
Solid-state media (thumb drives, and other similar technologies which have no moving parts) is cheap to produce, cheap to buy, generates less waste from packaging, doesn't break under normal circumstances (you still shouldn't put it in the microwave), does entirely away with player-based mechanical failure and hence decreases waste further by not clogging landfills with old broken players, takes up a fraction of the space of traditional disc-based media, is almost infinitely upgradeable without wasting media or delivery systems, and can be implemented immediately with existing technologies.
What the hell are we waiting for?
Saturday, May 28, 2011
How to Fail at Art While Really Trying
My brother is an architect and designer. His entire life he's had an amazing ability to draw just about anything with stupendous detail. He's also able to disassemble shit and put it back together again with ease - he just SEES things so clearly, and is able to translate that vision from his brains to his hands.
Me, not so much.
In fact you might say my abilities in both of these areas is, ah... impractical, at best. I'm not bad at taking things apart, but it's 6-5 odds against my getting them back together again and functioning properly. My limitations in this regard led to my two Theorems of the Conservation of Stuff:
1) If you take something apart and put it back together again, you will always leave one piece out, but the thing will still continue to function perfectly normally.
It should be noted that, through repeated practical application of this theory, you can take a thing apart and put it back together enough times such that it will no longer have anything in it at all, and yet it will still continue to function perfectly normally.
2) If you unpack a suitcase and repack it, there's always one thing which just won't go back in no matter what you do.
It should be noted that, through repeated practical application of this theory, you can unpack a suitcase and repack it enough times such that it will be completely empty, and yet you cannot pack anything into it at all.
It was my failure to master any sort of artistic endeavor, perhaps, that led me into the computer sciences. No drawing required, and my ability to translate what I'm THINKING from my head to my hands appears relatively intact. Couple this with a keen tendency to focus an unholy amount of attention on one thing at a time, and it makes for a good coder, and, later in life, a good systems designer. But it does NOT make one any better at drawing. And, being as I've always admired my brother for this ability of his, I decided, in my senior year of college, to attempt to better myself in this regard. For all intents and purposes, we will call the class I attended "Drawing For Complete Morons".
I was actually very excited to purchase the required materials for DFCM. Pens! Pencils! Charcoals! Gigantic Paper Pads! Fixatives! I felt as if an entire new world was opening up, with an arcane language all its own, and I was going to be indoctrinated into a cult of magic practitioners. No longer would I bear the shame of my overly developed left-brain-hemisphere - I was going become an arTEEST! Take THAT, Pascal! Kernighan and Ritchie can kiss my ass, thank god almighty, free at last! And so I arrive at the very first session of DFCM, backpack bristling with the implementations of my upcoming transmogrification. I am ready for anything.
The first thing I realize is that nobody else has brought anything but a few pencils and a Gigantic Paper Pad. I don't feel too badly about this, as I'm a total, complete philistine, and I know going in I'm starting with nothing - anything I do wrong I'm going to chalk up to this and keep forging ahead. I plotz myself down and try very hard to affect the extreme, almost pathological indifference everyone else in the class seems to manage effortlessly, but I'm so excited that I keep breaking into smiles, all the while looking around at different people, not wanting to catch their eye, trying to figure out their major. After ten minutes of what seemed to me to be an unbearable buildup, the professor finally arrived, and he's got with him an enormous box of, of... of STUFF : kitchen utensils, dinnerware, handheld yard tools, and the like.
At this point I experience my first real pang of discomfort. Holy crap, I can't even draw with a pencil and you want me to try to compose something with an EGG BEATER? Have you lost your fucking MIND, man? What am I gonna do, fucking make you an omelet that looks like the Mona Lisa?
But no, the idea, as the professor explains, is simple. Pick whichever of these things speaks to you. Pick whichever implement you have with you that you like, and do your best to draw it. All I want to do today is to see where everyone is, so I know how to structure the class. Well, shit! That seems perfectly reasonable, let's get to it then! I expect there to be a mad dash to the box, as there would have been had you thrown the same challenge to a room full of CompSci majors for whom social skills are not particularly manifest, but everyone is well behaved instead, bordering on that disinterest that fascinates me so.
It is at this point that my left-brain-hemisphere starts to assert itself : I don't want to tip my hand, as it were. I know I suck, but I don't want EVERYONE to know that I suck. So I need to pick an implement which isn't going to be impossible for me to draw, which isn't also something imbecilic like a straw, but that might give me some small chance at showing that I do indeed have some untapped genius simply waiting for the right small appliance to come along to allow it to reveal itself to the world. The guy in front of me picks the egg beater (show off), I pick something that looks like a long handled colander in miniature, or an enormous tea strainer, with a leather thong tied to the end of it, presumably for hanging. Not too complicated of a device, I think to myself, I should be able to manage this. So I sit down and begin to sketch.
The pad I'm drawing on is quite large, 18x24, so this is going to be, by a considerable margin, the biggest drawing I've ever attempted. My enormous tea strainer is nothing like as large as the pad, so right away I'm experiencing difficulty getting the scale right. First the handle is too long for the size of the strainer part (wad up, throw away). Next the strainer part is gigantic and I don't have enough space for the handle (tear up, throw away). Then I get the bright idea of starting in the middle, but that also ends poorly (tear up, wad up, throw away). Forty five minutes into a ninety minute class and I've got nothing to show.
The fucker next to me, meanwhile, has loosely sketched about the most beautiful god damn garden trowel I have ever seen. He's using a pencil, but he's got so many shades of grey I can't believe he's not cheating somehow. The fucking REAL TROWEL doesn't look as real as the one that's on the page. This is when I get my second pang of discomfort. There is no way this ends well for me. It is at this moment that the professor starts to stroll around the room, starting, thankfully, on the other side, to see how we're doing. So now I've got to really start humping it.
As the professor slowly wends his way around the room, I just totally disconnect my left brain. I remember a quote about something or another that says to make a statue of a horse, cut everything away from the block that doesn't look like a horse. I'm not sure how it applies to my current situation as I've no scissors, but it makes me feel better. I calm down, and begin to sketch.
The professor alights behind the guy next to me, pauses for a moment, and breathes "Very nice!" But me, I'm focused, a drawing machine, totally In The Moment. I barely register the professor standing behind me for what must be at least a minute. And then I hear it, at last, the affirmation I have sought my entire life:
"What are you DOING?!"
The tones are unmistakably horror-struck, bordering on hysteria. Left-brain-hemisphere takes total control again, and I snap out of my trance and see what I have done. What I see is, without question or fear of contradiction, a gigantic penis, caught in the act of ejaculating.
This isn't to say I meant to draw a gigantic penis. I MEANT to draw the little-big tea strainer. But picture it : I have a large, mostly round bulbous thing with scribbled lines which are meant to be the strainer net but instead looks like pubic hairs. Attached to this I have a large handle with knobby bit at the end onto which the leather thong is attached, only it looks like... well, it looks like a gigantic penis with a bulbous (circumcised) head with a little hole at the end, and out of the hole is shooting a liquid of some sort. And given the painfully tumescent condition of the handle, with regard to the over all scale of the thing, it is not likely to be urinating. No man I ever knew could urinate under that particular circumstance.
"I," I respond, "have drawn what appears to be a gigantic penis. I swear to you I'm trying to draw this tea strainer thing here, I'm just... just... I'm really awful."
"Well," says the professor, "At least you know it. How could you improve this drawing?"
Left-brain-hemisphere starts talking, then, and I can't shut it up. I don't even try.
"Well, aside from it's a gigantic penis, it's just all out of proportion. Nothing is the right size. And I can't draw a perfect circle so the strainer rim looks all wrong. And I tried to get the little ridge at the end of the handle but then made the two sides of handle on either side of the ridge different sizes. And then there's this business with the actual strainer material, which I didn't have the first idea how to manage so I tried to sort of abstract it out, otherwise it would have, if you can believe it, looked even worse. I'm afraid I can't explain the leather thong at all."
The professor nods, thinking to himself for a moment - I'm pretty sure he's trying very hard not to laugh. I, on the other hand, am trying very hard not to cry. "Well, at least you can SEE what's wrong, and that's a good start."
Me, not so much.
In fact you might say my abilities in both of these areas is, ah... impractical, at best. I'm not bad at taking things apart, but it's 6-5 odds against my getting them back together again and functioning properly. My limitations in this regard led to my two Theorems of the Conservation of Stuff:
1) If you take something apart and put it back together again, you will always leave one piece out, but the thing will still continue to function perfectly normally.
It should be noted that, through repeated practical application of this theory, you can take a thing apart and put it back together enough times such that it will no longer have anything in it at all, and yet it will still continue to function perfectly normally.
2) If you unpack a suitcase and repack it, there's always one thing which just won't go back in no matter what you do.
It should be noted that, through repeated practical application of this theory, you can unpack a suitcase and repack it enough times such that it will be completely empty, and yet you cannot pack anything into it at all.
It was my failure to master any sort of artistic endeavor, perhaps, that led me into the computer sciences. No drawing required, and my ability to translate what I'm THINKING from my head to my hands appears relatively intact. Couple this with a keen tendency to focus an unholy amount of attention on one thing at a time, and it makes for a good coder, and, later in life, a good systems designer. But it does NOT make one any better at drawing. And, being as I've always admired my brother for this ability of his, I decided, in my senior year of college, to attempt to better myself in this regard. For all intents and purposes, we will call the class I attended "Drawing For Complete Morons".
I was actually very excited to purchase the required materials for DFCM. Pens! Pencils! Charcoals! Gigantic Paper Pads! Fixatives! I felt as if an entire new world was opening up, with an arcane language all its own, and I was going to be indoctrinated into a cult of magic practitioners. No longer would I bear the shame of my overly developed left-brain-hemisphere - I was going become an arTEEST! Take THAT, Pascal! Kernighan and Ritchie can kiss my ass, thank god almighty, free at last! And so I arrive at the very first session of DFCM, backpack bristling with the implementations of my upcoming transmogrification. I am ready for anything.
The first thing I realize is that nobody else has brought anything but a few pencils and a Gigantic Paper Pad. I don't feel too badly about this, as I'm a total, complete philistine, and I know going in I'm starting with nothing - anything I do wrong I'm going to chalk up to this and keep forging ahead. I plotz myself down and try very hard to affect the extreme, almost pathological indifference everyone else in the class seems to manage effortlessly, but I'm so excited that I keep breaking into smiles, all the while looking around at different people, not wanting to catch their eye, trying to figure out their major. After ten minutes of what seemed to me to be an unbearable buildup, the professor finally arrived, and he's got with him an enormous box of, of... of STUFF : kitchen utensils, dinnerware, handheld yard tools, and the like.
At this point I experience my first real pang of discomfort. Holy crap, I can't even draw with a pencil and you want me to try to compose something with an EGG BEATER? Have you lost your fucking MIND, man? What am I gonna do, fucking make you an omelet that looks like the Mona Lisa?
But no, the idea, as the professor explains, is simple. Pick whichever of these things speaks to you. Pick whichever implement you have with you that you like, and do your best to draw it. All I want to do today is to see where everyone is, so I know how to structure the class. Well, shit! That seems perfectly reasonable, let's get to it then! I expect there to be a mad dash to the box, as there would have been had you thrown the same challenge to a room full of CompSci majors for whom social skills are not particularly manifest, but everyone is well behaved instead, bordering on that disinterest that fascinates me so.
It is at this point that my left-brain-hemisphere starts to assert itself : I don't want to tip my hand, as it were. I know I suck, but I don't want EVERYONE to know that I suck. So I need to pick an implement which isn't going to be impossible for me to draw, which isn't also something imbecilic like a straw, but that might give me some small chance at showing that I do indeed have some untapped genius simply waiting for the right small appliance to come along to allow it to reveal itself to the world. The guy in front of me picks the egg beater (show off), I pick something that looks like a long handled colander in miniature, or an enormous tea strainer, with a leather thong tied to the end of it, presumably for hanging. Not too complicated of a device, I think to myself, I should be able to manage this. So I sit down and begin to sketch.
The pad I'm drawing on is quite large, 18x24, so this is going to be, by a considerable margin, the biggest drawing I've ever attempted. My enormous tea strainer is nothing like as large as the pad, so right away I'm experiencing difficulty getting the scale right. First the handle is too long for the size of the strainer part (wad up, throw away). Next the strainer part is gigantic and I don't have enough space for the handle (tear up, throw away). Then I get the bright idea of starting in the middle, but that also ends poorly (tear up, wad up, throw away). Forty five minutes into a ninety minute class and I've got nothing to show.
The fucker next to me, meanwhile, has loosely sketched about the most beautiful god damn garden trowel I have ever seen. He's using a pencil, but he's got so many shades of grey I can't believe he's not cheating somehow. The fucking REAL TROWEL doesn't look as real as the one that's on the page. This is when I get my second pang of discomfort. There is no way this ends well for me. It is at this moment that the professor starts to stroll around the room, starting, thankfully, on the other side, to see how we're doing. So now I've got to really start humping it.
As the professor slowly wends his way around the room, I just totally disconnect my left brain. I remember a quote about something or another that says to make a statue of a horse, cut everything away from the block that doesn't look like a horse. I'm not sure how it applies to my current situation as I've no scissors, but it makes me feel better. I calm down, and begin to sketch.
The professor alights behind the guy next to me, pauses for a moment, and breathes "Very nice!" But me, I'm focused, a drawing machine, totally In The Moment. I barely register the professor standing behind me for what must be at least a minute. And then I hear it, at last, the affirmation I have sought my entire life:
"What are you DOING?!"
The tones are unmistakably horror-struck, bordering on hysteria. Left-brain-hemisphere takes total control again, and I snap out of my trance and see what I have done. What I see is, without question or fear of contradiction, a gigantic penis, caught in the act of ejaculating.
This isn't to say I meant to draw a gigantic penis. I MEANT to draw the little-big tea strainer. But picture it : I have a large, mostly round bulbous thing with scribbled lines which are meant to be the strainer net but instead looks like pubic hairs. Attached to this I have a large handle with knobby bit at the end onto which the leather thong is attached, only it looks like... well, it looks like a gigantic penis with a bulbous (circumcised) head with a little hole at the end, and out of the hole is shooting a liquid of some sort. And given the painfully tumescent condition of the handle, with regard to the over all scale of the thing, it is not likely to be urinating. No man I ever knew could urinate under that particular circumstance.
"I," I respond, "have drawn what appears to be a gigantic penis. I swear to you I'm trying to draw this tea strainer thing here, I'm just... just... I'm really awful."
"Well," says the professor, "At least you know it. How could you improve this drawing?"
Left-brain-hemisphere starts talking, then, and I can't shut it up. I don't even try.
"Well, aside from it's a gigantic penis, it's just all out of proportion. Nothing is the right size. And I can't draw a perfect circle so the strainer rim looks all wrong. And I tried to get the little ridge at the end of the handle but then made the two sides of handle on either side of the ridge different sizes. And then there's this business with the actual strainer material, which I didn't have the first idea how to manage so I tried to sort of abstract it out, otherwise it would have, if you can believe it, looked even worse. I'm afraid I can't explain the leather thong at all."
The professor nods, thinking to himself for a moment - I'm pretty sure he's trying very hard not to laugh. I, on the other hand, am trying very hard not to cry. "Well, at least you can SEE what's wrong, and that's a good start."
"Am I allowed to burn it?" I ask
"Not in here," he says, and walks on.
I never went back to that class. I went directly from the doorway to the registrar and dropped a class for the first and only time in my entire life. I NEVER give up on an academic subject, but in this case it was clear to me that I should circle the wagons right away, circle tightly around the wounded little animal comprising my right-brain-hemisphere, quivering with embarrassment and shame. I avoided that building for the rest of the semester.
To this day I am a miserable drawer-of-things. I stand in complete awe of people who are really good at it - the entire process is an utter and complete mystery to me. If you want a new distributed security system designed and implemented from the ground up, I'm your guy. Just don't ask me to try and draw a picture of it for you. We will both be sorry.
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