The Tale of the Sanctimonious Scrivener: A Rant

There is an old joke that professors grade essays on their heft. The weightier the paper, the better the grade. Drawing from the idea that the longer the work is, the more time was put into it and the more deserving it is of a higher grade, the concept brings the flaws of human grading into focus.

Which brings us to a recent study evaluating the accuracy of computer programs created to score essays. These programs are by no means new- they have been in use for years, particularly in the world of standardized testing. With so many short essays being churned out by test takers the world over, it seemed a simpler solution to automate the grading process.

Of course, while automated grading of multiple choice tests is simple enough, cost effective, and accurate, can we really say the same for automated essay grading?

According to a study from the University of Akron and a consultancy called The Common Pool, the answer is a resounding yes. They took something like 16,000 essays (with sets that included different lengths, different rubrics, etc.) that had already been scored once by a human, then let a computer (well, several programs, actually) grade them again. The results were almost terrifyingly similar. Want proof? Here’s a chart of the scores on mean estimation… they are all so close that the lines all appear to be one goddamn line:

Of course, charting out other factors yields less impressive-looking graphs, but fuck truth when we have visual impact, right?

Regardless of potential data skew based on the most widely circulated chart from the paper, the study really did find a striking similarity between the human and computer graders. This is the first time a study like this has been done on this scale, and it does a lot to address the many flaws in computerized essay grading. Many programs favor essays with more complex lexical choices, as they are representative of an advanced vocabulary (never mind the fact that one can easily toss around a word without knowing the finer points of its meaning, i.e. thesaurus junkies). Programs also favor length, in both the entire paper and in the sentences in themselves. And, of course, they prefer proper grammar.

However, programs have been ridiculed for favoring these technical aspects at the expense of actual content. Can we honestly dole out high marks to students spouting eloquent garbage? The programs are those theoretical professors grading papers by weight, with no regard for the actual information within. A problem, to be sure.

As artificial intelligence technology advances, though, the programs have become more complicated. They are able to discern some relationships between words and phrases that help them “understand” the meaning of the essays. Last year, the University of Florida did some research on the usage of automatic grading systems using AI technology. The system in place was able to look at something like “the heart pumps blood” and find a relationship between the words “heart” and “blood,” essentially finding the meaning of the sentence by piecing together word relationships built through the rubric created by the teacher.

Interesting, to be sure, but it’s still a crude system that can, seemingly, be easily exploited by a moderately clever student. Like a child beating the square peg into the round hole until the corners break, the systems might be able to hammer out a rudimentary “understanding” of the essays, but just as that mangled square peg will never be a perfect fit for the round hole, so too will these programs never understand complex, intricate writing.

Why, then, would we let these systems do our grading for us? There are many purported advantages to removing the human component in grading. It does away with biases (personal, racial, gender-specific), which curbs grade inflation. It alleviates teacher fatigue (from which can stem errors).

There are pros and cons to both methods of grading, to be sure. And this study seems to add another entry in the pro column of computerized grading.

***

My issue with all this isn’t whether or not the Akron study is accurate. They obviously found a strong similarity between human and computer grading of these essays. To me, this is indicative of a far greater problem.

I am mere days away from completing my English degree, and there is a problem that has been gnawing away at me for the majority of my school-going years. A problem I assumed would vanish when I entered the collegiate world. But it didn’t. It continued on, this relentless march toward mediocrity.

It is a problem with the formulaic nature of writing education.

If a computer can grade an essay with nearly the same degree of accuracy as a human, this says less about our marvelous technology (sorry, but I follow AI research and know even the most cutting-edge experimental programs are nowhere near as impressive as any human mind) and more about the shabby state of our student writing. We teach our students the fucking five-paragraph essay, the rote rehashing of theses to form concluding statements. Pick a topic, back it up with two or three points, wrap it up. There is no room for creativity, for real cleverness, for anything that makes writing art and not just a series of rules to be regurgitated from the tip of a pen or onto a computer screen. As Alexander Pope wrote,

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Our students are less concerned with writing interesting, engaging pieces exploring novel ways of thinking or delicately bending the rules- they instead hammer out blocky, mechanical essays. They present bland topics with just the right number of supporting facts to net them a decent grade. That’s it.

I have had many professors, and I have never had one that really inspired me to be a more creative, interesting writer. There was one who broke the mold slightly, but even she wasn’t really a powerful force in my academic career. I know that many others have those professors that shaped them, that really touched them, that showed them something about themselves or their course of study or the world that makes the student grateful and better for having known them. I understand that, I respect that, but I neverhad that. My thirst for knowledge, information, and creativity has always best been sated on my own, outside a traditional classroom.

And while I’m sure there are many English professors [And since when are English professors the only ones expected to foster strong writing in their students? You might have a great idea, oh mighty chemist, but if you can't write a goddamn elucidatory (...fuck you, WordPress, that's a word) paper to share that work with the rest of the scientific community and the world, then you are shit out of luck, now aren't you?] out there who really work to engage their students, given my own experiences and the fact that most students, if they had an “inspirational professor”, only had one or two… statistically, most professors just teach their students that mechanical, boring writing.

I suppose it is time for me to clarify a few points here, particularly for those of you who know me and are pointing at the screen in horror, screaming about my hypocrisy. I am aware that I am known for being an exceedingly technical proofreader. Am I not just perpetuating this system I purport to despise? Well… yes, I am. Because there is technically nothing wrong with writing this way. And, in fact, I am a firm believer in understanding and utilizing technically sound writing, particularly in formal settings. And those five-point essays I was harping on about? Well, they are actually a very useful tool to teach young writers about structure. I do not think they are so much the devil as I find them a despicable crutch we are not only allowing older, more advanced writers to use, but we are actively encouraging this kind of lazy writing. While there is less room for creative flair in formal, academic papers, there should be breathing room for a personal voice to show through the formal technical aspects. It’s a delicate balance, tying the writer’s soul into the formal rules… but it’s certainly possible. But we are not teaching (or even encouraging) this kind of skillful writing. Which, I believe, is a travesty.

More on that in a second.

Just last night, I was teasing a boy for marking a diaeresis, as it’s considered rather archaic in modern English. That being said, I was only poking fun because I am a right and proper bitch (and because the two of us seem to communicate primarily in taunts, mockery, and faux arguments). In all actuality, I found the use of the diacritic strangely charming. I have always enjoyed people who strive to plumb the true depths of the English language. Perhaps that’s an English major thing.

But these finer points of language… they are not taught anymore. Or, at least, not to any real degree. Why did diaeresis diacritics fall out of vogue, anyway? Because the variants, sans markings, became more popular. And our schools teach what is popular. Which is fine, which is useful, but which becomes more and more diluted. Our vocabulary shrinks, the finer points of our language get lost, and then where are we? The loss of the flavorful bits of language, those accent marks and mellifluous phrases and cheeky verbage, cripples us. We lose more than just words, we lose imagination and creativity. And as those slowly degrade, so too do advances tied to them. Invention, discovery. This destroys us slowly, across all aspects of human knowledge and progression.

And we just allow it. That is what I have such a problem with.

Formula is a base, just as we have basic vocabulary. But as we continue through our education, we need to be advancing. We build on the base. We learn the rules, then we learn how to break them. Instead, we stop at a simple formula. After we’ve mastered this, we are done. The end of the line for our writing education. Oh, there’s a bit picked up here and there. But there’s no longer any real push to expand your skills.

Not even for English students, sadly.

Our writing can be graded by a computer program. That’s how basic it is, how fucking systematic it is.

Congratulations to us.

***

I don’t have a quick fix solution to this perceived problem. Perhaps you don’t even agree with me that this is a problem. So be it. These were just my bitter, scattered thoughts as I read about the Akron study.

Take this with a grain of salt, like you should all my posts, dear galleons.

Digital Assimilation: Human Hive Minds, Reverse Cyborgs, and the Power of Crowd Wisdom in the Information Age

Awaken my child, and embrace the glory that is your birthright. Know that I am the Overmind; the eternal will of the Swarm, and that you have been created to serve me. ~The Overmind, StarCraft

In 1912, Carl Jung published Symbols of Transformation, a work in which he began detailed development on his idea of the collective unconscious, one of his many enduring additions to the field of psychology (and, in my opinion, one of the more ridiculous, as it tends to feel like nothing more than refined mysticism). The collective unconscious as described by Jung is actually a knotty little thing, as he was often rather ambiguous in his various descriptions of it, allowing for a wide range of interpretations and suggestions as to its true nature.

In his The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung lays out his idea of the collective unconscious in the first few pages:

A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the “personal unconscious”. But this personal layer rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the “collective unconscious”. I have chosen the term “collective” because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.

His collective unconscious was based less on an all-encompassing, eternal world consciousness as it was a series of psychic structures underlying all human experience- the archetypes (the Self, Anima/Animus, Shadow, etc). From these spring archetypal images (like the hero, common across all cultures and times) and events (such as marriage and initiations). For Jung, the collective unconscious and archetypes served as a kind of DNA of the psyche. Much as genetics determine our physical traits through a mere handful of nucleobases and amino acids, Jung believed that the collective unconscious shaped the individual psyche through a small number of archetypes.

***

That’s as far as we’re going to go with that because I find most aspects of the collective unconscious to be nonsensical (I have a love-hate relationship with psychology in general).

I bring it up as a foil for what I’m going to discuss next. For if we have a concept for the collective unconscious, surely we have to have one for a collective conscious as well.

Actually, aspects of the collective conscious appear in psychology as well, particularly in the idea of groupthink. A phenomenon arising within groups of people, it’s a problem solving method wherein group members attempt to reach a consensus without conflict or critical evaluation of alternative ideas/viewpoints. William H. Whyte called groupthink, “a rationalized conformity— an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well.”

But groupthink doesn’t arise in all groups (…rather obviously). It’s most likely to occur when the group is comprised of members of a similar background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making.

I think my favorite example of groupthink is not one of the more obvious political ones, but rather the movie 12 Angry Men. I have a personal connection to this movie- story for another day, that. 11 of the 12 jurors in the case succumb to blind agreement that the defendant is guilty. Their inability to rationally look at the situation and consider alternative viewpoints makes them a strong example of groupthink (and a rather horrific look at the potential for blind judgments in the legal system).

Thankfully, smooth-talking Henry Fonda is there to turn the tables.

***

But the first thing that really pops into your mind when you think about the idea of a collective conscious isn’t some psychological phenomenon you read about in your Intro to Psych course that you took because your upperclassmen friends told you it was a blow-off class, it’s something that belongs in the realm of science fiction:

The hive mind.

The Zerg in Starcraft, the Geth and Rachni in Mass Effect, the Overlords in Childhood’s End, the Toclafane and Vashta Nerada (meep!) in Doctor Who, the Dark Ones in Metro 2033 (I haven’t actually played this game, so I’m taking the internet’s word on this- I’m including it because I just wanted to say that I was actually reading about this game the other day and really want to play it)… the list goes on and on.

Unnecessary, yet awesome, Magic the Gathering moment. Bask in it, dear galleons.

All of these species exhibit some form of hive or group mind. We are used to portrayals of hive minds wherein the individual members refer to themselves as “we” or “us,” denoting their lack of individuality. They are a collective- one mind in many bodies (or one memory shared between bodies or some variation thereupon), exhibiting a telepathic connection between individual units. Often controlled by a queen-type figure, the hive mind is a devastating creation. Because there are no individuals, there is no dissent. No alternative modes of thinking. No sudden spats of morality. No crippling love or guilt or other emotions.

It’s the Utopia Big Brother and Joseph Stalin both craved.

The thought of being part of a hive mind causes a cold shiver to run down my spine. I am a confusing, bizarre, nerdy, emotionally-retarded, introverted, sexually frustrated, abrasive, half-assed intellectual with a predilection for immature jokes, frequent cussing, rampant giggling, and making absurd associations. But whatever strange compound of personality flaws I am, the fact remains that it is me. An individual. And I wouldn’t trade that sense of self, that unique sensation of I, for anything.

I assume, galleons, that the same can be said of most of you.

So it isn’t surprising that my instinctive reaction when I first read about a “human hive mind” was one of horror. But if there’s one thing that has remained steady throughout my life, it’s my insatiable, morbid curiosity. Thus, I kept reading.

In the end, the article wasn’t really about a hive mind in the sense of the images we have from our science fiction favorites. Rather, it was about the power of  crowdsourcing (a portmanteau of “crowd” and “outsourcing” that is basically summed up by its parts- outsourcing to a crowd of people) in increasing the power of AIs.

Which made me breathe a quiet sigh of relief, naturally.

The information was interesting, however, and I think the concepts of crowdsourcing and crowd wisdom are worth discussing, so that’s what we’re gonna do.

***

What exactly is the wisdom of the crowd?

Crowd wisdom is the process of taking in the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert’s. Which sounds suspiciously similar to group minds and groupthink, doesn’t it?

The concepts are related in that we are looking at the power of the whole over the power of the one. The phrase “right reduces to might” has been popping into my mind at the oddest moments in the last two weeks, and I find this to be one of the situations where it actually fits. The might of the crowd’s opinions becomes what is considered truth.

If ever there was an argument for subjective truth in modern culture (I still feel historiography, the study of the shifting narrative of history, is the best one overall- maybe we’ll talk more about that in the coming weeks, because that’s an old favorite of mine that I don’t think I’ve really expanded upon here), the wisdom of the crowd would be it.

The internet has already started capitalizing on the wisdom of the crowd, as many of you have probably noticed. Crowd wisdom powers search engines like Google, which aggregates searches from across the globe. Have you ever wondered how Google’s search results are organized? Maybe you already realized that they are organized, in part, based on popularity- the more times users click a certain link in reference to a specific search term, the higher up the ratings that site climbs for that search term. Sort of. There’s a much more complicated algorithm at work, an algorithm they are constantly tweaking to prevent spammers from manipulating the system to land in the top results.

Then again, maybe they just use pigeons. Who knows.

What we do know is that the internet is changing. And it’s not a change we all immediately recognize, as most of us have been here through its gradual evolution. It’s only when you take a step back and really look at it that you start to see the incredible shift we’ve made from the simple organization-and-consumption-of-information model the internet has been running on. Now, we are looking at the age of user-generated content (created and shared by users) and social media, a strange new beast with a new set of rules.

Just what is so important about the overwhelming flood of social networking happening on places like the Facebook and Twitter? The strong socialization of the internet is turning traditional search and information gathering on its head. In the past, web socialization has been focused primarily in places like chat rooms (yes, those archaic institutions) and discussion boards. What we have now, however, is the ability for each user to carve out their own little microsite, an internet area and identity that is unique and centralized.

Within our individual internet realms, we have other denizens, our “friends,” those individuals in our social network that we know or respect. Just as we flock to real-life friends with similar interests, so too do we flock to internet-folk with similar interests. I don’t follow hockey players on Twitter- I follow geeks, scientists, sexual deviants, and people with wicked senses of humor. We create our online networks the same way we do our IRL ones. And web developers are looking at harnessing that information to further refine and personalize the internet experience.

Have you ever heard of Delver? Originally launched back in 2008, it began as a search engine that used your social network to generate search results. When you first got to the site, you’d type in your own name. Delver would then dig information out of your social networking sites, building its own network of associated ideas, institutions, and individuals around your personal internet community. Results were then generated with ratings based on sites related to, produced by, or tagged by members of a person’s social network. As Liad Agmon, a former CEO of Delver (I have no idea if he’s still CEO, and I really don’t care enough to look it up), once said, “you are searching the Web through the prism of your social graph.”

Delver no longer operates in this capacity- it has now switched to a social commerce site that works in a similar fashion, targeted at finding products for consumers based on their social networks.

And you thought those targeted Facebook ads were creepy. Here’s an entire site dedicated to ripping through your public profiles and spoon-feeding you things you should buy.

But don’t think Delver is unique. Remember dear old Google? While their algorithms use the power of the many to deliver strong search results, they couple this with individual search tweaking based on your personal searches. Imagine if Google harnessed the power of your social networks in the same way Delver tried to. What we’re looking at is targeted wisdom of the crowd, taking the opinions of your circles (yep, I used that word on purpose- anyone who’s been following Google+ might chuckle a bit there, mostly because the latest foray of Google into the world of social networking might just accomplish this search and social network merger we’re talking about here) and generating content that will be more relevant to you and your interests.

After all, your friends should know you better than an algorithm… right? As Udi Manber, Google’s vice president of engineering in charge of search quality, said, “The art of ranking is one of taking lots of signals and putting them together. Signals from your friends are better, stronger signals.”

***

This is a form of crowdsourcing, galleons. By essentially outsourcing the task of finding content relevant to you to your friends, search engines could get back the most relevant and fresh results.

And now we can use the power of our group intelligence on the internet to help refine and aid AIs.

Here’s a very basic example. I’m sure most of you have, at one point or another, used an online translation site to attempt to decipher something in a foreign language. And how often has it spit back almost incoherent strings of words and symbols? Better yet, have you ever translated the same sentence back and forth a few times between English and a second language? The result is usually something with little or no relation to the original sentence.

Obviously, online translators are flawed. But how do we fix them? The problem with language and AIs lies in the fact that our communication is flooded with metaphors, puns, and clever wordplay. This is difficult to translate to algorithms for an AI to recognize (though not, necessarily, impossible- remember the TWSS program?). Which makes it hard to get online translators to generate high-quality translations.

And that’s where an AI could tap into the power of people to help it:

Take the counter-intuitive idea of doing translation without bilingual workers. The idea, known as MonoTrans, is the work of Philip Resnik and Ben Bederson at the University of Maryland in College Park. Imagine a Russian and a Spanish speaker, neither of whom speaks the other’s language. MonoTrans software translates the sentence back and forth between the two languages, inevitably imperfectly. But after each translation, the Russian or Spanish speaker edits the text to make it clearer, and it is translated back again. Three round trips are usually enough for the translations to reach high quality, say Resnik and Bederson. A pair of workers should eventually be able to translate 1000 words a day, they add.

Having a crowd doing this, back and forth, would inevitably yield very strong translations. Distilling truth from the masses, the AI would become stronger and better at its job. Like reverse cyborgs, we now have machines tapping into the power of humans to augment their systems.

Amazon long ago realized the potential of using groups of humans to supplement their existing programs. They launched Mechanical Turk in 2005, a site that gives anyone access to an enormous group of online workers. Anyone can work for Mechanical Turk- and thousands do. Meaning that the speed of response can be astounding. For example, the average response time for an image query (applications created to identify images usually use some form of program to determine what the image might be- if the program fails, the image can be sent to Turkers for a response, which serves both to please the customer and teach the program AI) is somewhere around 25 seconds.

Much of this is thanks to the proliferation of smart phones. With the ability to connect from anywhere, at any time, the amount of humans available to help AI is staggeringly high at all times. And growing.

***

Remember The Matrix? Of course you do (because, frankly, if you are too young to get that reference, you need to get the hell off this blog). In the movie, super-intelligent machines had people trapped in pods (and, consequently, mentally existing in the digital world known as The Matrix), harvesting their bio-electrical energy and body heat to power themselves.

This is kind of like that, only less creepy.

Having a constant, expansive human “workforce” available does allow us to teach and train AIs to a startling degree of precision and, dare I say, humanity.

Here’s an entertaining AI training situation that might amuse you if you are ever bored late one night, dear galleons. Created by Rollo Carpenter, Cleverbot is an AI program learning to mimic human conversation. What makes it unique among the other chatbots littering the web is that Cleverbot uses algorithms to select previously entered phrases from its database of prior conversations when responding to you. Which can be either disturbingly accurate or hilariously off-topic.

However, each conversation Cleverbot has expands its database, giving it more and more to draw from. And the more it learns, the more human-like its conversations should get.

I don’t know. The two times I tried it, it kept trying to get me to talk about love, called me a vampire, and answered one of my pretentiously philosophical questions with “Tom Araya” (a member of the band Slayer)… Amusing, but hardly a believable human conversation partner.

Unless that partner was on drugs. Maybe that’s all Cleverbot can hope for- passing as a stoner.

Still, it’s entertaining for a short while. And hopefully, in the future, the power of the internet’s group intelligence will manage to train Cleverbot to the point where you will forget you are interacting with a computer (right now, there’s no way this sucker could pass the Turing test, in my opinion).

Though, frankly, if the group intelligence of the internet is the one teaching it, all it will probably do is insult you in misspelled, grammatically incorrect, bigoted nonsense. Just like any set of comments anywhere on the internet.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to use crowd wisdom to teach our AIs. Because the internet collective is fucking idiotic.

The Hewlett Snackard 2100

Ah, Cornell.

Cornell University, nestled atop one of Ithaca, New York’s two large hills, surrounded by verdant foliage and beautiful (albeit dangerous) gorges:

As an aside, I would also like to note that Cornell is home to the coolest on-campus student bookstore EVAR:

 

It’s hard to tell, but this is the front of the lovely green hillock from the first picture. That’s right- the bookstore is built underneath the little hill.

Cornell holds many a fond memory for me from that hazy summer of my junior year of high school. Thus, when exciting news comes out of the university… I tend to perk up even more than usual.

Today’s news does, in fact, come from the hallowed halls of Cornell herself. In the university’s computational synthesis lab, the latest and greatest in food/tech fusion has emerged.

Behold, a tiny scallop-and-cheese space shuttle created by a 3-D printer:

That’s right. This little culinary delight was created by a souped-up (Get it? Souped up? I’m hilarious) three-dimensional printer created by a combination of a high-tech Cornell team and New York’s French Culinary Institute.

Cornell’s team has created specialized software that uses complex geometries to create edible treats even the most skilled chefs would have a difficult time replicating by hand. Their special printer allows chefs to create pureed ingredient pastes which can be layered onto one another via extruding heads, similar to conventional rapid prototyping machines. By using their software, chefs and engineers can collaborate to design complex structures that can then be printed, brought into existence just like your English midterm paper is in the campus computer lab at 3 in the morning the day it’s due.

Thus far, our intrepid food designers have printed with cheese, chocolate, hummus, turkey, celery, and scallops, to name just a few ingredients.

The future is here. Forget capsule meals. Printable dinners are where it’s at.

The Final Days of Ghiert 2.0, With an Added Bonus in the Form of the Story of Ghiert 1.0 and the RAM Debacle

Once upon a time, dear galleons, I owned a PC.

It’s true. I am not proud of this fact, though I cannot say I am ashamed, either. The computer was not one I selected, after all. Purchased on Black Friday at Wal-Mart, it was a cheap laptop that was a Christmas gift given to me because my guidance counselor had told all the juniors (freshly ACT’d and SAT’d, poorer and mostly disappointed in their scores) that most colleges now required incoming students to have a computer of some sort. And despite their fervent bitching on the subject, my parents had grudgingly acceded to the wisdom of someone who actually understood something about the college experience.

These were the days before every member of my family owned their own computer. We had a communal desktop (an old eMachines model still running Windows 98) and dial up. As such, I didn’t tend to spend a lot of time on the internet. I used the computer for schoolwork. I checked my email every so often. I tried MSN Messanger a handful of times, but found it to be a supreme waste of my limited internet time (with dial up, I only managed to get online for short bursts unless it was late at night, as my mother didn’t want it interfering with the phone line).

Those days were a strange type of hell. I say that now, graced with the power of hindsight, filled with the knowledge of all I was missing out on during those days of ratchet-and-crank technology in my household. But I said it then as well. I was not immune to the charms of the Internet. Her siren song had long since cemented itself in my mind as a requiem of longing, a sanguine compulsion to experience all the wonders the web could afford me. I knew what the other kids did in the evenings (from gaming to porn, research to flash videos, forums to chat rooms).

If there was ever a strange time to be a bookworm, it was during those fulcrum years, the period when our world was truly beginning its shift away from printed material and toward the electronic epoch. These were those tentative first days, when teachers didn’t fully understand all the internet had to offer, when even the crappy Greybull library was still the first resource for papers and projects. My generation was coming into its own, and this was our transition period. The fact that I lacked the ability (and, therefore, the desire) to Xanga and IM with the crowd made me even more of an outsider than I already was.

I recognized all this as it was occurring (though I cannot say I knew then what a domineering bitch the Internet would become once I got intimate with her), but I lacked the resources to do much about it. I was not in control of the internet in my household. I was not yet proficient in navigating around the school firewalls in order to do all manner of devious, fun things on the net. And I didn’t even have a computer of my own, a tiny piece of tech heaven to delve into whenever I desired.

Even then, I realized I was missing something. It was a tangible lack of an intangible something that everyone else was experiencing. I was late to the technological puberty phase, and everyone was making fun of me in gym class.

It was middle school all over again.

To get back on track here, that gift of my first laptop was the moment when I became a new person. In some respects, a better person. One thing the internet has granted me, above all else, is instant access to more information, more knowledge, than I could ever conceive of in those days of ancient Brittanica encyclopedias. Of course, in many, many other respects, the internet has made a terrible person of me.

But we are all familiar with the evils of that whore of Babylon we call the interwebs, so we’ll move on.

My first laptop was christened Ghiert one night in the fall of 2006. I had owned him for nearly two years at this point, but I had never been one to name the inanimate objects I owned.

I know- this is the point where those of you who actually know me raise your eyebrows in combination confusion and disbelief, but there was a time when I didn’t name my electronics. The moment of Ghiert’s naming, however, was the point at which that all came to an abrupt and glorious end.

I remember being in my dorm room. It was late, and Grix, Ainsley, and I were piled on my bed, watching a movie on Shelley (Grix’s old beast of a laptop). Shelley had a senile moment, and while we all loudly lamented her failure (our moaning heightened by the screwdrivers we were drinking), I hurried across the room to disengage my laptop from the tangle of cords leashing it to my desk.

Upon returning to the bed, a new laptop in hand (and Shelley summarily relegated to floor status), Ainsley asked me what my laptop’s name was. Grix had Shelley, Ainsley had… oh shoot, for the life of me, I can’t remember what Ainsley’s was named. Regardless, it had a name. So, what was mine called?

I scoffed and explained that I didn’t name my computer. Only… about half of what I said came out in German (this was during my German studies, and I used to have a very bad habit of lapsing into it when intoxicated). Ainsley and Grix both started giggling. Ainsley then asked me what various words meant, and I answered as best I could. Then, she gives me this sly look and asks what “ghiert” means. It was not a word I recognized, so I just shrugged. She started giggling again and said she just made it up. We all cracked up.

In retrospect, I’m not sure why that was so funny…

For the rest of the night, we called my laptop by this imaginary word, laughing uproariously every time we did (and every time one of us managed to growl it out in a particularly guttural, wholly German fashion).

Somehow, the name stuck.

Ghiert 1.0 suffered many a torment, including having a 10ish ounce acrylic contact juggling ball dropped on its keyboard from a height of roughly four feet (I really shouldn’t have stored said ball on the top shelf of the bookshelves that used to sit on top of the Mason/Abbot desks). Ever after, the 4-6 and R-Y keys bowed noticeably in a small, sad arc. But I tried to take care of the silver beastie, keeping it clean and putting the very best spyware and virus protection software on it.

The problem, of course, was that Ghiert 1.0 was a cheap computer. A cheap computer with a very small amount of available RAM. This proved to be an insurmountable issue for me for one reason:

Kathie and Grix had finally convinced me to play WoW.

It haltingly ran on my computer, but it was so glitchy that I couldn’t stand to play it. When I bothered glancing through the system requirements, I realized I really didn’t have enough RAM for this puppy to work. Balls. Guess it was time to upgrade.

I knew next-to-nothing about buying RAM, but the incredibly attractive Andrew (he became a running joke for a while) of the Geek Squad at Best Buy helped hook me up. Anything for a girl who wanted to play WoW, for crying out loud. So, little memory chip installed, I settled in for some good old-fashioned WoWing. A game which I found, much to my surprise, to be rather fun (despite how much fun I’d poked at every else I knew who played).

Unfortunately, it was the end of the school year, and I was heading back to Greybull for three months of dial up disaster. By this point, I was a Facebooker, I had my very first AIM screenname (and IMed regularly) and was an internet junkie.

In short, I was going to die.

However, what with my own late-night proclivities and the revelation that WoW actually worked on a dial up connection, I soon found I could get by. The dial up was still pretty fucking torturous, but it was something.

One night after work, I was sitting in the kitchen, trying to teach my brother how to play WoW. He was seated at my laptop, his dwarf warrior running around like a moron. I was inwardly chuckling in that manner of the smugly superior gamer.

Then, the screen went black.

Because it was a Windows-based PC, I wasn’t overly concerned by the sudden crash (zing!). I just tried to reboot the sucker.

Except it wouldn’t reboot.

I leave it alone for a few minutes, then try again. No response. I remove the battery and put it back in. No response. I cry a little. No response. I’m flipping the fuck out. Eventually, as I sit there, pathetically jabbing the power button, the screen flickers to a slightly lighter shade of gray and the power button lights up. I’m frothing-at-the-mouth ecstatic at the sight.

I immediately get a BSoD. Of fucking course.

I try again. Same result. Only this time, after the BSoD, the screen goes a horrible shade of greenish-black, with random lines of color slicing vertically across the screen. I have never seen anything like this. Ghiert 1.0 looks beyond broken.

Naturally, I blame my brother.

After hopping on the ancient communal PC and Googling my problem (and waiting for-fucking-ever for the search results to be returned to me via dial up), I can’t figure out what’s wrong. And it’s not like I can just hop in the car and take it to the Geek Squad. First, because it’s, like, 4 in the morning. But second (and more importantly), because the nearest Best Buy is two hours away… in Montana…

To this day, I have no idea what possessed me to go get my old RAM chip. As per usual, I had traveled with all of my computer bric-a-brac (still do, I’ll have you know, because you never know when something like this is going to happen). So I switch out the two-week old RAM chip for the old one.

And like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Ghiert 1.0 lived again.

Of course, by this point, I hated that computer with every fiber of my being. It had caused me an undue amount of stress. It was a grudge I would hold for the next three months as I worked my shit summer job, shoveling the funds into my bank account with a malicious gleam in my eye.

Not more than a week after returning to EL, I found myself in Best Buy, buying my very first Mac.

It is not a decision I’ve ever regretted. I have bonded with Ghiert 2.0 (like my iPod, I’ve found it’s just not right to name my computer anything else) like a lover. I talk to him like a person. Him, you notice, not it. He’s a devilish, troublesome entity all his own. We fight. We make up. We go everywhere together. He’s like the clingy boyfriend I’ve never wanted, yet who somehow manages to make me happy.

However, Ghiert is three years old now. And his life has not been an easy one. I have dropped him all manner of times (including from my backpack onto the cement floor of the Sny/Phi basement… twice… while the backpack was on my back). His plastic casing is chipping off. He sports two tiny incisor marks from where He-Of-The-Oral-Fixation (*cough cough* BEN *cough cough*) bit him one day.

There’s no way around it- Ghiert is getting old. And I’m not just talking about the superficial bits, like his appearance. Lately, his performance has started rapidly going downhill.

When typing, I have to keep my palms from resting against Ghiert, else the pressure has a tendency to make the mouse click. In fact, the touchpad has lost its goddamn mind. Half my clicks don’t register. When typing, the touchpad comes alive at random, highlighting and deleting things as I go. I’ll lose entire paragraphs at the drop of a hat.

Command-Z has become my best friend, I shit you not. Typing this extremely long post (by the by, I apologize for that- once I started talking, I couldn’t stop, as is often the case with me) has been hellish.

Despite the fact that the pointer is hovering on the scroll bar on the side of the screen, my cursor will suddenly jump back three words and whatever I’m typing will end up sandwiched between what I’ve already fucking typed.

And, in the last week, Ghiert has started this new thing where, every so often, the mouse button just refuses to register. I can’t click anything until I hardboot the damn laptop.

Suffice to say, it’s becoming a major issue. And that means, before the year is out, Ghiert 2.0 is going the way of Ghiert 1.0, and Ghiert 3.0 will come into my life (in the form of a sleek and sexy MacBook Pro).

So, these coming weeks are the swan song of Ghiert 2.0. His time is coming to an end, and I can feel myself misting up just thinking about it.

Then he pulls the “magic moving cursor” trick on me again, and I decide that I’ll manage to get through it just fine.

***

In other news, in the shower this morning, I reached for my face wash and noticed it was sitting right next to a bottle of Axe body wash (both the males in my family use it). It was just after five in the morning, and I was reminded of a conversation I’d had the night before.

Naked, slippery laughter ensued.

The Post Where We Probe Deeper Into My Irrational Fear of Web Cams, Complete With an Extra Dose of Crazysauce

When I was a child, I got this green dinosaur bank from Wendy’s in a Happy Meal (or whatever they call their child meal there). It was turquoisy (totally a word) and had a weird little blond girl riding it, dressed like a cave child.

The dinosaur had these weird, overly protuberant eyes. Frankly, they disturbed me a little bit the first time that I saw the toy… bank… whatever (because can you really call a bank a toy?).

Here is where I have to note that, when I was a child, I was a major pack rat. I mean, it was bad. You know how most kids worry about a monster hiding under their bed? Yeah, I knew there was no way in HELL anything could fit under there, since I kept it crammed wall-to-wall with the world’s most random crap.

Therefore, I kept the creepy little bank. For a ridiculously long period of time. I was always torn in regards to it. On the one hand, it was a dinosaur, and man, I frickin’ loved dinosaurs. But, on the other hand… it was motherfucking disturbing.

Those eyes… *shudders*

After a while, I started to get über paranoid in regards to it. I started to think it was watching me. All the time. While it creeped me out a little, I could deal with it.

Except when I was changing. There is nothing weirder than thinking a bug-eyed plastic dinosaur is watching you get naked. It got to the point that, when I would get ready for school, I’d calmly turn the little dinosaur bank around so that he was facing the wall (why I didn’t just leave it facing the wall is a result of another piece of the crazy that is me which we’ll detail at a later date).

The day I got rid of it was an amazing day (after the gut-wrenching dear-God-don’t-make-me-throw-something-away reflex subsided, that is).

I also think it’s fitting that I have spent the last ten minutes Googling anything that might bring up a hit on that dinosaur bank, because I wanted to include a picture… I’m now convinced that it never existed except in that insane head of mine. Which makes its traumatizing effect so much weirder.

Anyway, I threw the dinosaur bank away. I grew up. One would think I would outgrow the crazy.

One would not know me very well, then.

It only got worse.

I cannot have pictures of people hanging on my wall. Or sitting in a frame. Or basically anywhere visible. When it comes up in conversation, I like to contribute this to my preference for simplicity in decorating, which I do prefer, but the real reason is that I get uncomfortable when anything with eyes is used in decor.

But even more ridiculous is my irrational fear that someone has hacked the web cam on my computer and is watching me through it. Which is like a blend of the aforementioned fear of being watched by inanimate objects and my narcissism.

Because, seriously, why would anyone hack my web cam? I’m not important… except in my own head, where I’m very fucking important indeed.

I leave my computer open all the time. And then I tend to do all kinds of ridiculous thing in its sights. Like get naked. Or dance… badly. Or get naked while dancing badly. Or any number of masturbatory endeavors. Or painting my toenails (I don’t like anyone actually seeing that I do girly things). Or crying while listening to Alanis Morissette (another woman in desperate need of ice cream).

I’m just kidding about the latter- not the crying part, but the Alanis part. Fix You or Hallelujah (and no, I don’t think Jeff Buckley’s version is best, so suck it), on the other hand, are totally candidates for a sob-fest.

And while this is a totally irrational fear because of how unimportant I am to the hackers of the world… it’s not irrational to think that my web cam could be hacked. Because that is actually pretty fucking simple. All you need is the right software. Or to use a virus to weaken and infiltrate your system. They don’t even need direct access to your computer to do it!

Curse you, hackers. CURSE YOU!

Now, you should be able to tell if your web cam is hacked (if you aren’t a complete idiot) because the little light that indicates it is on will, fancy that, be ON. I maintain that, if hackers can fucking remotely access my web cam, they can figure out a way to not make that little green light come on.

I know I could just cover the camera with opaque tape or a piece of paper or something, but I’m too anal about Ghiert’s appearance for that.

I’m a shallow, shallow person. Even my inner crazy cannot overcome that.

My weird preoccupation with the status of my web cam only got worse this February, when I saw that news story about the school that spied on a kid through his Macbook’s camera. It made me even more mistrustful of Ghiert’s little electronic eye.

See, it’s not just the idea of some strange person watching me that has me on edge with the whole web cam thing… it’s the idea that my computer could be watching me. Observing and learning. Growing stronger in his knowledge of my habits and eventually using that knowledge to destroy me in his quest to take over the world.

I’ve always worried my computer was a Decepticon. Observe this masterful Facebook graffiti image of Ghiert 1.0 from summer of my freshman year:

Truly, I am an artist.

But it’s not just Ghiert. Oh no. It’s all computers. All watching us and learning and preparing for the motherfucking robot uprising. Which is so much more terrifying than the zombie apocalypse.

Anyway, I was thinking about all this today because I saw this article about a man who infected himself with a computer virus. He has a radio frequency chip in his wrist that allows him to open keycard-locked doors and operate his phone. Which is weird, but that’s his business. Still, he infected the chip with a virus. Then he went through a keycard-locked door. The virus passed into the door… and then infected everyone who passed through it.

Now think about that in regards to web cam hacking. Because all it takes is the right virus to hack the crap out of your web cam. And if it could be spread in a way that doesn’t involve email links or flash drives…

MOTHERFUCKER.

…

…

I know.

I’m batcrap crazy.

But that’s why you love me, galleons.

Empty Inside: Sociopaths and Psychopaths in the Media

Song of the moment: In Too Deep Genesis (Why Genesis? I’d suggest skipping to 2:28 of this for the answer)

Galleons, why are sociopaths on television so goddamn attractive? What is it about them that manages to completely turn me (and, for that matter, a large number of people) on?

We’re going to talk about psychopaths/sociopaths today for two reasons. First, I promised you this post a month ago. Second… well, I don’t have anything pressing to talk about, but I didn’t want to cop out of an actual post by throwing up lyrics or something. Again.

Also, I’m actively avoiding finishing up the corrections on Stauff’s paper. Why did I agree to do this again? Oh right… because I’m a masochist.

***

A lot of people would be quick to say that’s a major part of it- that masochists are attracted to sociopaths because of the potential to be hurt. It makes a sort of sense, I suppose. Masochists do, for all intents and purposes, derive pleasure from being hurt. It would make sense for them to seek out particularly sadistic individuals in order to satisfy their desires.

Of course, there are many facets to masochism. And most people don’t take that into account when laying down their blanket judgments of people. Masochism can be a simple desire to have pain inflicted upon one’s person, but this can take many forms. Maybe you like inflicting it on yourself. Maybe you only enjoy receiving pain in a sexual setting. And, then again, maybe it’s not as much about physical pain as it is about humiliation. Maybe you want to be treated poorly- emotional/psychological pain. And, for some emotional masochists, maybe it’s less about deriving pleasure from the pain but an uncontrollable need for it that drives you into bad situation after bad situation, whether you enjoy it or not. You thrive on it, but it doesn’t mean you like it.

Masochism is confusing. And it’s not enough to drive people into frenzies of lust over sociopaths. There’s more at play here. Much more.

***

Let’s start by defining sociopaths and psychopaths. What are they, really?

Well, it might (or might not) surprise you to learn that the difference between sociopathy and psychopathy is blurry, to say the least. To be honest, many psychologists use the terms interchangeably, and even the ones who believe there is a difference can’t agree on what the specific differences are. Hell, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classes both sociopathy and psychopathy under the heading of “Antisocial Personalities” because they share such similar traits.

For all intents and purposes here (since the psychological community can’t seem to figure their shit out… goddamn soft sciences), we’ll assume the terms are interchangeable.

Psychopathy is mainly concerned with a lack of empathy and emotional base. As Patrick Bateman says in the phenomenal American Psycho, “I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust.” This is what distinguishes a psychopath- a lack of remorse/guilt. They rationalize everything or foist the blame on someone else. They’re tactless and egocentric. Because of their lack of discernable emotion, they are impulsive, reckless, and often violent. They have no “inner compass” telling them what is morally reprehensible.

That’s how morality really works- it gets tied into the emotive parts of the brain. Thus, when contemplating committing what would be a moral crime, a person feels shame, disgust, guilt, and horror. All manner of deterrent emotions. But psychopaths don’t feel that. At all. Therefore, the only thing keeping them from committing such acts is the need to keep up a “human” façade… or to prevent jail time.

So, that’s a psychopath. Note that it doesn’t immediately translate to “serial killer.” However, most serial killers are psychopaths (you know, a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square). In the media, the two terms tend to be interchangeable. Oh look, the media is being misleading again. There’s a fucking surprise.

Actually, sociopaths constitute 4% of the population. Yes, the percentage is that high. We’re not only talking violent psychopaths here, remember. So, we’ve all encountered at least one sociopath in our lives. Most of us… more than one.

***

I’ve always found empathy to be a… distinctly selfish thing. I’m not very good with empathy. I can never “put myself in someone else’s shoes”- I can only relate their experiences to my own life and draw conclusions based on my own emotions or experiences. In the end, any time I practice “empathy,” all I’m doing is logically analyzing someone else’s problem, comparing it to my life, and attempting to find a correlation. I am rubbish if I’ve never experienced what the other person is going through. I can’t even feign understanding.

No, I’m not a psychopath. Trust me, I used to be intensely worried about that as a child (despite the fact that I have extremely prevalent emotional states…). In high school, during my sociology course, I tested myself with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist- Revised. I exhibit some of the traits, but not enough to be classed as a full-on psychopath. Have no fear.

As Sheldon would say, “I’m not crazy- my mother had me tested.”

But back to empathy… I know it’s supposedly very important and all to determining whether a person is a normal functioning human, but I maintain it’s bullshit. In the case of psychopaths, it’s a word we slap half-assedly onto a concept we can’t define- an idea/definition of “humanness” that is lacking in a psychopath.

In his book, The Mask of Sanity, Dr. Hervey Cleckley describes the prototypical psychopath as “a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly… so perfect is his reproduction of a whole and normal man that no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real.”

We can’t say why or how he is not real. We just say that he lacks “empathy.” I feel like we’re using the term empathy as a substitute for the word “soul” because we’re uncomfortable slapping the term “soul” on anything remotely scientific. It’s a problem that crops up time and again (frequently in the discussion of human consciousness)- “soul” has become a spiritual term, thus making it a ludicrous term to be used in scientific discourse.

I’m not arguing that we should incorporate the mystic within the realm of science (in fact, I shudder at the concept). There’s a reason science and religion are constantly at odds- they don’t mesh well. But, I don’t really consider psychology much of a science, and I think the study of human motivation almost requires spiritual discussion. After all, religion and belief guide our morality and shape our goals in life. I think it’s important to look at them when discussing psychology.

You know, maybe I dislike the term “empathy” because I don’t believe in a soul…

***

But, I’m straying from the point of this post. We’re talking about the portrayal of psychopaths in the media. And why they are so damn attractive. Let’s look at some of them:

Patrick Bateman from "American Psycho"

Sylar (Gabriel Gray) from "Heroes"

Dexter Morgan from "Dexter"

They crop up in movies and television shows alike. Hell, I’m forgetting a big one that’s been around for ages- the fucking Joker from Batman.

We even recently saw a psychopath (a woman this time!) on House:

Every single one of these psychopathic characters are physically very attractive (even the makeup couldn’t hide Heath Ledger’s boyish good looks). Dammit, Hollywoodland, stop it! I don’t want to lust after psychopaths!

Well, the casting actually makes a lot of sense. True psychopaths can be exceptionally charming and charismatic- they are glib and confident. We all respect confidence and flock to confident people. It’s the way of the world. These people are capable of commanding a room or a group of people, of entertaining and charming them. Psychopaths are quite capable of this. They are the world’s greatest mimics (even better than Ditto). An easy way for filmmakers to translate that charm to the big screen is to cast someone who immediately draws the eye.

A pretty person.

It immediately gives the actor a leg-up on the whole charisma thing. If you manage to find an actor who’s both attractive and able to be charming, you’re fucking golden. Christian Bale does that really well. Zachary Quinto has the eyes that just bore into you and manage to scare you. His early stuff as Sylar was great (throwing the character into tons of emotional crises and giving him “mommy issues” really destroyed him as a villain- mostly because they stripped him of his psychopathy). And Michael C. Hall is abso-fucking-lutely perfect- from the often blank eyes to the disaffected voice-overs and the chillingly “off” facial expressions that break through his human mask… sheer brilliance.

So yes, the casting directors selected sexy people on purpose. Because it helps establish the character.

***

But, even when we’re just watching the television, we’re not that superficial. After we see what these people do, what they are, we should be properly horrified and repulsed.

And yet the attraction stands. Or, more often than not, grows. How do we explain that? Well, there are a number of factors.

We touched on the idea of the tantalizing taboo when we talked about the mafia not too long ago. That concept translates to our current discussion. The psychopath (remember, usually a serial killer in modern media) gets away with all the things we suppress in the name of morality and civilization and ethics and all that. We wouldn’t kill a person… but it doesn’t mean we haven’t entertained the notion. Briefly. Of course, we immediately shove it from our minds (and feel extremely guilty about even having thought about it in a half-assed manner), because it’s wrong. Very, very wrong. But a psychopath… they don’t have that filter, now do they? We hold our comments to people around us in check, for fear of insulting them. Psychopaths don’t. We get overloaded by messy, complicated, often rubbish emotions. Psychopaths aren’t burdened with all that rot.

Like with the mafia, it’s a healthy way for us to live out those dark fantasies we all have. We’d never do this in reality (and we wouldn’t date a psychopath, either), but it’s perfectly okay to watch it (and have a bit of a crush on a television psychopath). After all, that’s all it is- a fantasy.

I, for one, know that the “lack of emotions” thing is what really draws me to psychopathic characters. I hate emotions. I prefer logic. Here are examples of humans without emotion- naturally, I find them attractive on some level. I also found Spock attractive, mind you (Zachary Quinto, you are just sexy… period). Using logic over emotional reactions is incredibly appealing to me.

You know, I’d venture to state that this obsession with psychopathic villains and antiheroes is more prevalent now than at any point in the past because of our society’s reliance on computers. Roll with me on this, for a second. In The Devil in the White City, psychopath H.H. Holmes is described in the following manner: “Events and people captured his attention the way moving objects caught the notice of an amphibian: first a machinelike registration of proximity, next a calculation of worth, and last a decision to act or remain motionless.”

Because psychopaths lack emotion, they lack that undefinable “something” that separates man and machine. Boolean logic has no emotional component. We are fascinated by technology, by computers, by their power to do things the human mind can. We create stories of robots and the uprising of machines, because we see the logical power in the removal of the emotional component from the human machine. It would allow us to become so… ruthless. Of course, after the robots take over, we always have some rag-tag group of humans defeat them with emotions and shit, because we need to feel good about ourselves.

Okay, and because emotions (while usually complete rubbish) can actually be powerful tools in their own right.

Psychopaths are like those robots of science fiction. They are intelligent, functioning machines. They scare us, but they excite us. Even under the warnings and the danger (echoed in science fiction again and again), we see the potential such a system holds. In this age of computers, it’s easier for us to find a way to relate a psychopath to something we know. Therefore, it’s easier for us to handle them.

And, as tech is sexy, so are machines that look like scrumptious men.

Of course, there’s the whole “damaged people being drawn to superficial charm and confidence” bit. Emotionally compromised individuals are often victimized by social predators and sociopaths because they are easy targets. It’s easy to net them, easy to keep them… and easy to use them as an outlet to feed some of your darker tendencies. So, we’ll mention it here, even though we aren’t all damaged to such an extent.

And there are probably plenty of other reasons (and at least one big one that I’m blanking on… it’s gonna drive me crazy), but that’s all I have time to discuss right now. I should really finish Stauff’s paper. He’s taken to IMing me today to ascertain my progress…

I really need to start going out more. It’s a Friday night, and I’ve spent it talking about psychopaths and avoiding homework that’s not even mine…

***

As a complete aside, I am very happy right now, galleons. And no, I can’t tell you why. That could, potentially, spoil the surprise. I’ve been planning this for two months now, and today, the major part of my plan came to fruition. Or came into my possession. However you want to phrase it.

Anyway, I still have some time before I can reveal to you what this is all about. Suffice to say…

The war is not over. *wicked grin*

Mirrors of the Soul Still Require Polish, Apparently

Song of the moment: Mal’s Song Escape Key

You might not know this, galleons, but I am not blessed with perfect vision. I’m not even graced with okay vision. I have godawful vision. Corrective eyewear is not a choice for me. Without it, the world is a muddy haze of vague shapes and blocks of color.

I wish I was kidding. I’m not.

We’re talking about optic issues today because, as I was out walking this afternoon, I was struck by how bad my current prescription for contact lenses is. When I got my eyes checked last year, I was told that, while my eyes had worsened, they had not worsened enough to move to a new contact lens strength. Basically, I dropped more money than I care to say (…an entire paycheck) to have some jackass give me the same shitty lenses I had before- the same lenses that I knew were bad, thus my whole goddamn reason for going to the optometrist in the first place.

So now, realizing my contact prescription feels even worse than it did last year, I only hope that when I see an optometrist this year that my eyesight will have degraded enough to get stronger lenses.

Which is pretty fucked up, right? I’m actively hoping my eyesight gets worse.

***

Why do people drop hundreds of dollars on corrective eyewear and vision checks every year? How can eyesight degrade so significantly that prescriptions can change in a mere 12 months?

There are quite a few factors that contribute to eyesight failure. One is the condition of the cornea. Now, I don’t know how many of you dissected a cow’s eye in middle school, but I sure as shit did. For the record, it was totally awesome. Okay, you didn’t have to dissect a cow’s eye to understand the next part. But, seeing as I have no idea what your level of knowledge is on how the human eye works, we’ll do a quick overview.

This is a diagram of the eye:

…It pretty much sums everything up. Basically, light enters through the pupil, and the lens focuses the light (and, thus, the image) onto the retina. We don’t need to get more in-depth than that, really.

As you can see, the cornea is the clear, outside layer of the eye (the part of the eye you can readily touch, if you’re not squeamish). It protects the eye and helps the lens refract light (providing much of the eye’s focusing power). The cornea is a smooth layer, and damage to that (from scratches of even the tiniest size) can disrupt vision. There are a ton of eye diseases that affect the cornea, including keratitus, corneal neovascularization, and keratoconus, as well as the more common corneal abrasion.

So, damage to the cornea can negatively impact vision. Check.

The lens is the next problem area. Unfortunately, as you age, you are extremely prone to suffering from common lens-related problems, like cataracts and presbyopia. Cataracts are clouding of the naturally clear lens, and presbyopia is a hardening of the once-flexible lens. Both will cause the eye to stop focusing properly.

The retina and optic nerve are less-likely to suffer the effects of aging, barring any major eye disease. So, you’re probably going to be in the clear there. Unless you have glaucoma.

There are other factors that contribute to visual acuity, though. It’s true that excessive computer usage can damage a person’s vision (though you have to take into account that the extent of the damage depends on computer/monitor specifications), but that’s mostly due to fatigue and eyestrain. Which isn’t as scary and damaging as everyone wants you to believe, but it’s still better for you to give your eyes a break every now-and-again if you are spending vast amounts of time in front of a computer screen.

Same goes for reading a book.

And, of course, genetics can screw you, no matter how hard you try to take care of your eyes. You can be genetically predisposed to all kinds of eye diseases. Your genes can also impact the shape and malleability of your eyes. The shape of your eye can cause imperfect vision, and if your eyes are more malleable, they are more susceptible to the negative effects of things like computer usage and reading.

Corrective lenses can certainly help fix impaired vision. Proper corrective lenses can even slow or stop vision degradation. But note that just because you get contacts or glasses doesn’t mean your vision is going to be miraculously fixed. Degradation can (and often will) still occur.

Thus why we have to go back every fucking year to get new prescriptions (well, that and to make sure we haven’t developed any eye diseases…).

***

I hate people with 20/20 vision (or better than 20/20). They will never know the hell that comes with shitty goddamn eyesight.

My eyes are pretty bad. My current (incorrect) contact prescription is -4D in my left eye (OS) and -5.5D in my right (OD). If you don’t know what that means, the “D” stands for diopters, which is a measurement of lens strength (how much light is bent). The higher the diopter, the stronger the lens. The “-” denotes the type of lens (- for nearsighted/myopic, + for farsighted/hyperopic).

Without my contacts, I’m next to useless. Even you galleons who actually know me have never seen me without my contacts or glasses. Most people don’t. This is because, unless I’m sleeping, I am wearing some form of corrective eyewear (sometimes even while I’m sleeping…).

You would too, after you walked into one too many doorframes without your glasses on.

Not wearing corrective lenses makes me feel weak, because I am not able to function properly. I can’t make out faces or read anything that’s not 6 inches in front of my face. I miss nuances of gesture, from which I derive so much of my information about a person/what they are saying. Plus, I fall down a lot.

Well, more than usual.

You people with perfect vision are assholes. You never have to worry about this crap. I hate you all.

***

Let’s totally shift gears now.

Today was Ghiert’s biannual tune-up. He got a full chassis scrubbing. I even pulled up each key individually to clean underneath it (a real problem with a Macbook is the accumulation of dust and dirt under the keys). Then, he got an internal scrubbing. Old downloads were deleted. Old programs scrapped. Everything was tidied up and streamlined.

I take good care of my computer. He’s my man (and I treat my man right). So, on top of my usual maintenance routine, I like to give him an extremely thorough check up and cleaning two or three times a year.

I can’t believe I’ve had this laptop for three years. It doesn’t feel like it. Ghiert is aging gracefully, but he is starting to show his age. Little hiccups. Little problems. Nothing major. Nothing I can’t circumvent. Still… I know the time for me to acquire a new computer is in the not-too-distant-future.

And I’m so goddamn torn in relation to that. Because, while I straight-up adore my Mac and really don’t want to go back to a PC, PCs have two things going for them: they’re a fuck of a lot cheaper and they play all the games I want to play.

I know that I can get around that by just getting a good Macbook Pro or, better yet, a sexy 27″ iMac (*drools*) and use Bootcamp to just install a Windows partition on it. But I can’t get around the price. I’m still going to be paying out the ass for a Mac.

Still… I’m paying for the quality, right? This laptop has held up better than Ghiert 1.0 (who was decidedly not a Mac), which was crapping out after I had it a year. And I love not having to worry about viruses.

Yeah, we all know I’ll get a Mac. I can’t turn my back on the superior system. It’s just my frugal side bitching. I can logic it into submission. Or, at least, distract it with the shiny glory that is an Apple computer.

But Ghiert’s not out on the street, yet. He’s still my sweet little Decepticon, the boyo with the integrated circuits, the originator of the burn/brand on my left thigh. And despite the chips and cracks and bite marks (goddamn Ben) and scratches on his skin, he still has the heart of champion. And a pirate. And a musician.

He’s still gold, is what I’m getting at.

***

And finally, because I can’t help geeking out:

This week’s Doctor Who was fantastic.

Sam Rants About Books (…Again)

Song of the moment: The Queen and the Soldier Suzanne Vega

I actually have a purpose with this post. To rant.

I’m going to talk about books. Namely, my great fear that, with the advent of these stupid e-readers and such, the book is going to become obsolete.

Oh snap, that’s right, I just subconsciously made a Twilight Zone reference. I refuse to think it was purely accidental, seeing as I immediately recognized it after I wrote those words and this is one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes.

But I digress.

Let me be the first to admit that I’m not much of a collector of physical things. I own movies, but I tossed their cases long ago and keep the hard discs I own in a binder-case-thing. Hell, most of my movies are actually on my external hard drive. And all of my music is on my computer- I don’t own a single CD. Some people (like dear Squeaks) shudder and shake with a kind of repressed rage when I say this. But I just shrug and say that I use my computer as my primary media device anyway, so why not go digital?

Besides, I move around a lot. Discs get scratched to hell too easily for my tastes.

But there’s one thing I vociferously protest going digital. Books.

It’s about so much more than just my cheapskate desire to not purchase a damn e-reader, because I could just use ol’ Ghiert here for the purpose of reading these books. No, I am against this outrageous idea for many, many reasons.

Reason 1: Eye Strain

Do you know how much more of a strain it is to read from a computer screen than from the pages of a book? The answer is a lot (yes, that’s a very scientific measurement there). At first, that doesn’t make much sense. After all, whether on a screen or on paper, you’re still focusing on words of roughly the same size, black print on a white screen (unless you are on a thirteen-year-old’s first website or a teen’s blog [or my blog, depending on the month...], with a dark background and white lettering).

What makes reading on a computer screen so much worse than reading off a printed page has to do with the definition and contrast of words on-screen vs. off-screen. Words on a computer screen are created by combinations of tiny points of light, which are brightest at the center and diminish in intensity toward their edges. Our eyes have a hard time focusing on these images. In fact, our eyes drift toward a reduced level of focusing called the “resting point of accommodation.” Which is terrible because our eyes move into this RPA, then have to struggle to refocus on the words onscreen. It’s this continuous flexing of the eye muscles that causes weariness and strain.

Printed words, on the other hand, have dense black characters with well-defined edges. These are much easier for our eyes to focus on. And easier to remain focused on, even if it sometimes doesn’t seem that way when you are attempting to read a textbook at 4 in the morning and you have an exam the next day and you’re pretty sure none of the words on the page are in any language you’ve ever encountered because all you see is this fuzzy set of blurry black lines and dear-God-in-heaven you are going to fail and fuck it psychology sucks anyway and I may just be venting some old hatred here instead of making a real point so I’ll stop.

So books put less strain on the eyes than computer screens. There’s a huge reason to avoid reading large amounts of material on your damn computer. Instead, curl up in a well-lit area (my father still yells at me for not turning the light on when I read), relax, and pick up a damn book.

Reason 2: Being Able to Read in the Bath

I’m not a person who can idly sit by and do nothing for any stretch of time. I have to be doing something, even if that something is stupid. Like Stumbling.

The problem is, I also really enjoy taking baths. And really, who doesn’t enjoy a long soak in a tub of hot water? It’s relaxing and comforting. I am a ritualistic bath-taker, too. I can’t just fill up a tub and soak. Oh no. I have to light candles and play soft jazz and dim the lights… really, I have to seduce myself.

But then I’m in the bath. Foreplay is over, the action has commenced. But that’s the issue- there is no action in a bath (…hur hur, tub sex, shut up). The whole point of a bath these days is to sit there… doing nothing… just soaking and “relaxing.”

Yeah, that lasts about five minutes before I get too twitchy and bored to stay there. That is where a book comes in handy. Give me a good novel and I’ll stay in that water until I’m shivering from the cold.

With those damn e-readers, I couldn’t do that anymore. You know, because I hear it’s a bad plan to take electronic devices near water. And I already tempt fate enough by setting my laptop (my stereo system, remember?) entirely too close to the tub when I’m bathing. Best not give me an even easier way to accidentally kill myself.

Reason 3: The Bookshelf as Room Decor

Everywhere I have lived, my bookshelves have been the focal point of my primary living area- either the living room or my bedroom. My bookshelves are massive, colorful edifices that take up entirely too much room and loudly proclaim to all visitors that I spend too much time indoors. Curse my literacy.

But books make for such wonderful decoration. Bookshelves themselves come in such a fascinating variety, and you can even design your own, unique to your tastes and living space and library collection. Add to that the colorful array of books that will fill these cases, and you have a vibrant and exciting decorative piece. Better than any lame poster or tapestry, that’s for sure.

And who can forget about coffee table books? Serving as a quick way to keep your little living room table from looking empty and sad, they are also fascinating conversation starters.

My favorite coffee table book? Belle de Jour’s The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl (the version with Billie Piper sprawled out on the cover wearing nothing but lingerie and holding a riding crop). Squeaks’? Pink Box (about the sex industry in Japan). Now those are awesome conversation starters.

Reason 4: The Book as a Window Into a Person’s Character and Mind

We’ve all done this. We go to someone’s house for the first time, not knowing them terribly well, and they happen to leave us alone in the living room for a period of time while they change/freshen up/make dinner/whatever.

You know what I’m talking about. You’re awkwardly standing/sitting there, unwilling to turn on the television because it would seem too comfortable in this new place. So you look around the room.

And your eyes alight upon the bookcase. You drift that direction, running your fingers over the spines of the novels, taking in the authors.

More so than anything else in their house, a person’s bookshelf will reveal to you their innermost thoughts, ideals, desires, and intelligence level. It can help you find common ground with them. The bookshelf will also warn you if they are Stephanie Meyer or Dan Brown fans, so that you can let yourself out quietly and never speak to them again.

Reason 5: The Smell of Books

There are a few scents in the world that are, without a doubt, simply perfect. The musty, aged smell of old books is top of that list.

See, scent is a fascinating sense. It’s not one of our strongest, but certain scents can still link themselves inextricably to certain memories. And those smells cause those memories (and associated emotions) to come flooding back to you. Scents take us back to younger days, to different times, to happier states of mind.

When we were little, everyone would tell us that reading a book was like stepping into a whole new world. And, while that’s true, what they don’t tell is of the power a book can hold over our personal timelines. How the smell of a book can propel you into the past, to days long forgotten.

Besides, books smell like knowledge. And knowledge is bitchin’.

Reason 6: Books Have Not Yet Stopped Evolving as an Artform

Most people see books as nothing more than the house for the art contained within- the writing. But they’re wrong. Books, as objects, are often artworks in and of themselves.

I’m not just referring to cover art (though there are some pretty spectacular examples out there). I’m not even referring simply to bookbinding as an artform (though it really is fascinating).

No, I’m talking about the book as a whole. Words and images and design and size and shape. The entire book can be a work of art. Illuminated manuscripts are lovely examples of word and image blending together on a page to create a truly unique artform.

And authors are experimenting with the book as art all the time. We have not gone as far as we can with the novel. Experimental novels are dependent upon the physical reality of the book as part of their execution.

Look at Mark E. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. On the surface, it looks like any other slightly oversized book. One might notice that the cover is slightly too small for the book itself, but this clever design won’t become apparent immediately.

See, from the cover itself, House of Leaves is designed to completely immerse the reader in the text. And I mean that wholeheartedly. It’s written in a unique fashion, with some bits of text getting tangled and twisted depending on the plot at that particular point in time. The book wasn’t just written to have readers hanging on every word. Oh no. It was written to excite, thrill, and terrify the reader through artful design of the book itself.

A prime example of this occurs late in the novel (I will attempt to keep this spoiler-free, because this is a book I recommend highly and think you should run out and find if you haven’t devoured it already). At the climax of the story proper, the characters are locked in a desperate chase scene through a labyrinthian set of corridors. They can’t find their way out and as they get more and more terrified, the reader does as well. How? Because the typography dissolves, Cummings-fashion, as the narrative picks up. Snippets of text appear on each page, small sections of black amidst the field of white. And these bits of text are placed at all kinds of angles and in various positions, forcing the reader to twist and turn the novel (as if they are really traversing the winding corridors). And as fear overtakes the characters, we find only a single word on each page, forcing us to flip page after page at tremendous speed as we anxiously reach for the next piece of the story, heart pounding and palms sweating.

It’s one of the most innovative and brilliant experimental novels I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading (as is Only Revolutions, another of his books). By incorporating the book as a whole into his story, Danielewski is able to engage his readers in new and exciting ways.

The book as art isn’t dead- it’s still shifting and evolving. Don’t kill it by putting the text of novels on boring, flat screens.

Reason 7: Libraries and Bookstores Are the Happiest Places on Earth

Goddamn it, they are.

You walk into such an establishment, and you can’t help but feel smarter. There you are, surrounded by a vast opportunity for learning and personal growth and expansion of the mind. These are the voices of hundreds of authors calling out to you from row after row of shelves.

Perusing the shelves of a bookstore or library is really one of the few pure joys left in this world.

Also, libraries are gorgeous. They are often architectural marvels, with beautiful design work and rich color schemes.

Besides, where would you rather chat up a member of the opposite sex- in a bar or in the British literature section of a bookstore? I think you will be happier with the latter choice, in the long run. Because if you’ve read this far in this post, you are as much of a bibliophile as myself.

***

In conclusion, books are vastly superior to e-readers. Spread the word. Save the books.

“A Laptop Like You” Jonathan Coulton

A touching ode to one’s darling Mac. If you are a Mac user, you will understand this. It describes my relationship with Ghiert perfectly. Listen here.

Here you are at last
To bring my cold lonely soul sweet release
From my weary past
Always searching, the one missing piece was you
And I beg you, come away with me
And together we will find a place to call our own
I can’t wait to see what I can do
With a laptop like you

It’s not your CD slot
Or the Unix on which you are based
You make my lap hot
Cause underneath your aluminum case there’s love
And I forgive your strange one-button mouse
I forgive the way your keyboard leaves marks on your screen
I can overlook a fault or two
For a laptop like you

We will always be together
In love in spite of everything
Hang on tight through wind and weather
Heaven knows what time may bring

In a year or two
You will seem big and heavy and slow
I will carry you
To wherever it is laptops go to die
And don’t think it won’t be hard on me
How’m I ever gonna find a way to justify
The money I will spend on something new
For a laptop like you
For a laptop like you

La Tua Cantante

Song of the moment: Por una Cabeza by Gardel

It’s been so wonderfully cool and cloudy here the last few days, I barely recognize it as a Wyoming summer. It’s felt very Michiganesque, with on-and-off drizzles and persistent cloud cover. Then, this afternoon, there was a bitch of a summer thunderstorm that blew through. Ridiculous winds and torrents of rain, with absolutely gorgeous lightning.

Naturally, I was happy as could be.

It’s supposed to stay cool and rainy for the next few days. I’m soaking it all in, knowing that in the next week or two, temps will soar back up to 90º, and I’ll be bitching again. So it goes.

I got paid today. Damn, that felt nice. Tomorrow, I’m going out and buying myself some sort of delicious beverage. I’m thinking a six of Guinness. Or maybe some vodka (though, truth be told, not being able to get pomegranate vodka really makes that option seem unappealing).

I watched the movie Some Kind of Wonderful yesterday and decided I am Watts. Minus the whole bit about being a drummer. Sadly. That would be a wicked cool skill to have.

Besides, you know what they say about drummers and rhythm. Hehe.

On that mental tangent, this may be the most hilarious thing I’ve stumbled across in a while. There are some truly fucked up people in the world, and it always comes out in regards to sex.

Have been having computer issues all day. Namely, I got greedy and fucked myself over. I’ve been meaning to pick up a new, high-quality MMORPG for a few weeks now. Well, I finally settled on giving LOTR Online a try… but, in order to play it, I needed to be on a Windows machine. Now, I’ve been meaning to partition ol’ Ghiert again for some time now and create the abomination that is Windows on a Mac, so I went ahead and dumped my personal data on my external and reinstalled my operating system.

When I got Ghiert, it was on the very day they were switching over to Leopard OSX. So, while I technically have a Tiger OSX disk, I was also given a Leopard upgrade CD. Now, I was pretty much the only person with a Mac in my friend group who had Leopard, so I let the disk make the rounds.

Sadly, it came back to me a little worse for wear. Looking at it, I didn’t think it would be any real issue- my comp’s read disks in much worse shape.

Of course, I was wrong. Now, I can’t upgrade back to Leopard. So, I lose all the features I’m used to. And, because Bootcamp is on Leopard and not Tiger, I can’t partition my system. So, I downgraded my operating system for nothing.

Fucking super.

Now, I’m fighting Tiger, trying to download my old apps. I’m having to find new and creative ways to do what I used to do so easily on Leopard.

People always bring their computer issues to me as if I’m some all-knowing computer genius. I’m not. I know jack shit about computers, in all honesty. What I do know comes from me fucking around on them all the time. It’s really a trial-and-error type of learning for me.

Remind me to tell you the story of Ghiert 1.0 and the RAM debacle. That’s a good story… Come to think of it, that whole story came about as a result of an MMORPG as well (I was trying to play WoW).

Moral of the story: MMORPGs are the devil and are a death sentence for any computer I own.