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Holidays are a time to remember. For many, it is a time when the entire family shows up in the same space to share a meal and fellowship. Traditions form as people bond to a specific food or ritual. As older members die and newer people join the family, traditions mutate and change.

Sometimes, however, traditions last until they are questioned. I’m reminded of one from my own family, where we used to trim the ends off of each roast before cooking. When we finally reconstructed the narrative, it turned out that the only roasting pan one of the family owned was too small for the roasts. Even as we got larger pans, however, we continued trimming the roast.

Yesterday, I was reminded of this as I prepared the only family recipe I get from my mother’s half of the family. Now, earlier drafts¹ focused far more on the specific dish. I think that it’s worth taking a step back and thinking more about what family recipes tell us in general.

Until just a few years ago, for instance, I thought that we had a family recipe for green bean casserole. In some regards we do. We prepare the meal the same way, and it’s a recipe we use for every important meal.² However, it turns out that the recipe we follow comes directly from the French’s Fried Onion box.

I have read a number of so called family recipes that adapt³ from a recipe book that someone’s mother or grandmother or aunt read. In the times before the internet, it was difficult to source information. If someone brought a dish you liked, asking them for a recipe would not necessarily come with the recipe’s provenance.

Honestly, my mind is blank today, and I do not know what else I could say. I’m sure that there’s more I could muse on, but I don’t know what.

Draft 2: December 22 (abandoned part of the way through)

Holidays are a time of memories. For many households in modern America, holidays are the one time a year that the entire intergenerational family is under one roof. Flavors and specific preparations can be handed down from the people with the greatest attachment to them. As the oldest members of the family die and younger family members are born, recipes and meal plans change. Sometimes, things continue to be done the same way, simply because there is no need to question the way things are always done.

Sometimes, however, someone new⁵ will ask what the point is of some tradition. I’m reminded of one from my own family, where we used to trim the ends off of each roast before cooking. When we finally reconstructed the narrative, it turned out that the only roasting pan one of the family owned was too small for the roasts. Even as we got larger pans, however, we continued trimming the roast.

In my own household, we have very little of this generational memory. In part, it comes from the fact that many members of my family in recent generations have disowned or been disowned by their relatives.⁶

Draft 1: December 22

Today I made one of⁷ the family recipes I’ve inherited. We’ve always called it halishki⁸: a dish of dropped egg noodles in a chicken and cream sauce. When you google the word, I mostly find a Polish word for a dish with noodles and cabbage in a pork based sauce. There’s more or less nothing in common with my family recipe and that.

However, this presupposes that my family recipe is Polish. We really don’t know where most of my family came from, especially this part of the family. I’ve always been told it was somewhere Slavic, but that really does not narrow it down too much. If we start searching for Polish drop noodles, we find kluski. Wikipedia for kluski takes us to a similar dish in other portions of Eastern Europe, halusky⁹. Halusky is small dropped egg noodles, which does accurately describe the dish that I make, for all that it is also described as typically being served with cabbage.

However, I know that many members of my family have been unable to eat cabbage. That could explain the lack of cabbage in the family recipe. At this point, though, I was excited to learn more.

I got the last name¹⁰ of the person we initially got the recipe from.¹¹ The last name does come from the areas listed in the second Wikipedia article, which is pretty cool. One of the two variant spellings is allegedly Jewish in origin, which is interesting. I’m sure that there’s a fascinating history there that is now lost to the mists of time.

So, what is the family recipe? As far as I can tell, the recipe is more or less just chicken and dumplings in a cream sauce. I don’t see many recipes for chicken and dumplings that call for cream sauce.

How do I make it, though? I think that every time that I have been personally a part of making it¹², I’ve followed a slightly different recipe. However, this time through I think will be my recipe going forwards.

I started by melting some butter in a large stock pot and then browning some chicken.¹³ The goal was really just getting a bit of color on the meat and a touch of fond on the pan. Once the chicken was browned, we put some butter in the pot and then some white onion. Once the onion looked soft, I added in the chicken stock and let it come to a boil.

We made a very simple dumpling dough¹⁴ out of egg, flour, salt, and pepper.¹⁵ We then spoon some portions of the dough¹⁶ into the boiling stock, chop some celery and add it in, and add the chicken¹⁷ back. From there, I let it simmer covered fora bout an hour, and then uncovered it to let the stock reduce a fair amount. Just before serving, we taste the broth for seasoning, and then add cream to taste and texture.

This time around, we made a huge recipe of it, which should be really nice for leftovers. Historically, it’s tasted far better the next day, as all of the flavors have had time to meld together.

As I look at the past six hundred words, I realize that I want to focus more on the family recipe aspect than the specific recipe we followed. Let’s see how that goes, moving from the specific case to more of a general one?¹⁸

I think that there’s something to be said for referencing earlier drafts in these musings, since they’re still available. Idk how I feel about it, though, so we’ll see if this ends up being a one off↩
that’s not entirely true, but it feels like it’s true, which is something↩
if even that↩
the chord, which is needed for the key of E Major↩
often a spouse↩
family here only refers to the ones who we are not estranged from↩
apparently the only from my mother’s side, because her mother didn’t really like to cook↩
spelling nonexistent because oral tradition.↩
which has a diacritical over the s, making it pronounced more or less how my family’s recipe is↩
or the potential spellings for the last name↩
who died when my mother was newly born, which means there’s no way to question anything↩
three times now↩
today was boneless skinless breasts, which I’m less thrilled about, but that’s ok↩
or maybe batter↩
as we joke, we make peasant food, and so use black pepper instead of white pepper↩
batter↩
after chopping↩
also, as you might have guessed from my musing yesterday, my goal is always to write a few more words at a time↩

Flash Fiction Friday

Draft 1

Another Friday, which means it’s time to try to answer another prompt. The prompt this week is among any option. I had no idea how to respond to this prompt, and reading the description didn’t make the prompt any more sensible. However, it did give me some ideas.

The prompt implies a choice. If we keep that in mind, then the prompt shifts to choosing between any option. What could be a good response for that prompt?

My mind is falling immediately to love, but I have to wonder how much of that is just me choosing a new creative rut. I think that the last few times that I’ve written a FFF, it’s been about romance of some sort. What else could we set as a number of choices?

I mean basically anything can be a set of choices, which makes this prompt feel almost too broad. I guess that more or less any writing I produce will be good for the prompt. A part of me really doesn’t like that, though, because part of my ideal for prompts is that it constrains my writing.

Given that we did a family recipe for dinner¹, I’m finding that I’m thinking about choosing foods. As the new Percy Jackson television series² is coming out, there’s choices about media we consume, hero’s choices, and the like. Since we play board games as a family, the idea of what game to play comes up a lot.

The hero’s choices feel like something that I want to interact with. What do heroes do? Or, rather, what terrible choice could a hero be forced into?³

I’m still circling around the idea of romance, which may be something that I could do?

So, we have a hero⁴ who needs to make a choice. Maybe there’s something to say about like deciding between the person you love and the work you need to do? Alright, how can we frame it in a way that hasn’t been done to death a million times?

Or, just as much in the choice, how do we do what we want to do with our full self, ignoring all the self doubt and negative self talk?

A hero has a choice. How explicit do I need to make that? I think that at this point I really need to focus on the writing, which means I need to stop writing about writing and start actually writing.⁵

Actually, wait, let’s think about the normal questions we have. Do I want to have first or third person? I don’t really know. I think that we should write it and see what happens.

Ok so about five hundred words of writing later, I find that I got too far from the prompt. I more or less wrote a retrospective, ten years later. I think that I focused too much on the retrospective, rather than the actual set of choices. Maybe I could do something looking forwards instead?

Ooh, I actually really like the FFF I wrote. Let’s see if there’s anything I can do to spice it up for take three, but if not, I am actually going to be ok with it. I assume that I’ll see something that I want to change, but you never know until you try.

Ooh, wow, the revision is way stronger, I think. I more or less replaced every word, which is kind of funny when you think about it. The scene played out more or less the same, though, which is interesting. I do still feel like I rushed the ending, which is more and more something I realize I struggle with. The ending of a story always seems to come too quickly, and I don’t quite know how to wrap it⁶ up satisfyingly.

musing partially written, ready to be finished and posted tomorrow↩
musing to be made at a later date, once I’ve consumed the content (I’ve read that people are against the phrase content consumption, and I don’t disagree with them, but I find that it does accurately describe the way that I feel (might be worth figuring out how I think and why I think about the things I do)) about the media I engage with↩
the fact that I want it to end in tragedy probably says something about where I am right now, but that’s the nature of life↩
I read a dictionary once that defined heroine exclusively as the female accompaniment to the hero, which was shockingly formative. As a result, I treat hero as a gender neutral term↩
terrifying, I’m not going to lie↩
honestly, any narrative↩
look at me rhyming↩

4thewords Review

Draft 2

I’ve talked a fair amount in these musings about the new site I’m using for writing. As I’ve mentioned on more than a few occasions, I often have trouble motivating myself to write.¹ You may have also noticed recently that I’ve more or less been able to put out a post basically every day. There’s a few reasons for that.

I’ve been writing every morning with a friend, for one. I found an internal reason to write daily, for another. Both of those, however, are why I am able to write a blog post every day, not how. Today, I’d really like to spend some time discussing how I’ve been able to write so much more.

Since apparently mid august, I’ve been using a website called 4thewords.² I guess that knowing I’ve been using it since August doesn’t exactly lend credence to the idea that it helps me write. However, it is working now.

4thewords is a few things bundled into one. It is a fairly lightweight word processor³. There’s a fairly active and incredibly positive forum. And, its real selling point, 4thewords is also an RPG.⁴

That is, you play as a character exploring through the world, completing quests and getting rewards. Like many RPG⁵, 4thewords also lets you decorate your character, both with stat boosting and completely cosmetic items. In what I think is a really brilliant choice, they have completely separated the two. That is, you can choose to equip the best equipment for statistics without compromising on your artistic vision.

At this point, you might be wondering how they manage to combine a word processor with an RPG. Most quests are completed by fighting monsters. Monsters are fought by writing words against a time limit. Unlike in a lot of RPG, there is generally no way for the monsters to strike back.

Most of the monsters require a certain number of words written within a given number of minutes. They tend not to require a pace faster than ten words per minute, which is nice when doing something slower than free writing. Even when I’m at my most type a few words and delete, I still average more than ten words typed a minute. There are a few monsters which are called endurance monsters. Rather than requiring a certain number of words, it requires a constant clip. I generally dislike them, because I’m more motivated by “here’s the number of words you have left” than “this is the amount of time you have left.”

However, fighting does not an RPG make. Another important aspect of an RPG is items. Most RPG have both decorative and functional items. 4thewords is no different.

Unlike more RPG, however, the form and function are completely separated. You can choose to equip whatever items give you the stats you want along with whatever items give you the appearance you want. Both sets of items are purchased in the in game stores for mostly in game available items, which you can get by fighting monsters and finishing quests.

Functional items feel a little strange in a game like this. It seems odd that a game where the only combat is writing words within a timeline would have items that affect the gameplay. And, thankfully, there are only three stats: attack, defense, and luck.

Attack follows a formula, where the higher your attack, the fewer words it takes to take down a monster. It doesn’t change the stated numbers, but two words might count for three. Defense increases the amount of time that you have to fight a monster. Unlike attack, it does change the number of seconds that you have to write. A second still lasts exactly⁶

Finally, there is luck, which nominally affects the drops that a monster gives. There’s some variance to what monsters can drop, though there is usually a floor and a ceiling, and the two numbers are not always different.

First and foremost, I like the fact that there are a series of small goals that I can set to automatically start. Writing 500 words is often a reasonable amount for me at once. Especially if I’m writing quickly, I can generally get through one in about ten minutes. Small monsters, with around 100 words to complete, give an almost constant source of dopamine.

After writing two paragraphs, I tend to take a break for a second or so, because my mind needs a little bit of time to process what I said. Four paragraphs is almost always at least 100 words, which means that after I write them, I get another monster.

The time also helps. Without deadlines, I find that I procrastinate almost indefinitely. Every so often, I’ll look and see that there’s only two minutes left to write 100 words, or twenty minutes left to write 1000. When that happens, I put my nose to the metphorical grindstone and start working as hard as I can to get the words out.

Those two facts do a lot to help motivate me to write. However, there are also a lot of small little features on the site that make it more friendly for me. The overall design is fairly unobtrusive, which means that I’m not horribly distracted while I write. However, the overall design is also very bright, which makes it fun, and I get pretty pictures to cheer me up.

Also, the site is explicit that their goal is helping users to meet their own writing goals. Unlike some sites, which track incredibly hard to make sure that no one is doing anything that could even begin to think of cheating. Even though there are some community aspects to the game, it’s almost exclusively single player. Because of that, the developers are very clear that you should use the site however works best for you.

For some people, that means copy pasting a few hundred words of lorem ipsum after they’ve done some editing or chores. Personally, I tend not to copy paste, though I’ve started thinking of situations where I feel better about it.⁷ There are also almost no negative consequences in the game. Losing a monster doesn’t affect you in any way except for a single tally somewhere fairly hidden in the game.⁸ I find that negative consequences can make me want to avoid a situation, and so the absence makes it nice.

And, finally, the game is in active development! I don’t mean that in the way of “the site is full of bugs and major gameplay changes happen daily”, but in the “the developers clearly care about they’re doing, and they add lots of new and exciting seasonal events.” Right now, we’re in the middle of the winter wonderland, which has a few time limited monsters and some special snow themed quests. Just before that, however, was a really exciting quest series for NaNoWriMo!

Anyways, if this inspires you to try the application⁹ at all, please reach out.

Draft 1

I know that I’ve talked a fair amount in my daily reflections about the site that I’ve started using. Since I don’t know if I’ve explicitly named the site, I use 4thewords, which is a site that tries to gamify writing. The central concept of the game is that you choose to fight monsters, which come with a set number of words and time to defeat them. By and large, this is not terribly difficult. Most of the monsters require around 10 words per minute in order to defeat them.

Of course, like all good RPG¹¹, there are stat boosting items. In the case of 4thewords, there are three stats: attack, defense, and luck. I’ve listed them in that order in large part because that’s the order that they’re relevant to me. Attack means that each word you write has a greater effect on the monster you’re fighting¹². The site gives vague approximations, but the fan site gives the explicit formula.

The words it takes to kill a monster are its default words times one hundred divided by one hundred plus your attack. So, one hundred attack means that it takes half the words to defeat a monster that it claims it should. The part of me that remembers math tells me that n divided by n plus x shrinks very slowly. I think they call it exponential decay. That makes sense, because in order to halve the words again, you would need three hundred attack, and then seven hundred, and so on.

Defense, unsurprisingly, does a similar thing. Defense increases the amount of time that you have to fight the monster. Although it will still say the same amount of time when its waiting in the queue,¹³ when the monster fight starts, the timer will show a greater amount of time. I prefer that to seconds not ticking down at the same rate, if only because I like to be able to use the timer as an egg timer of sorts.¹⁴ There’s a similar equation somewhere, though I have not looked it up.¹⁵

Finally, we have luck. As this is an RPG, monsters drop loot when they die. Luck affects the amount of loot that is dropped, though last time I checked, it was less clear exactly what the mechanism is for that. Unlike with attack and defense, there is an optimal value for luck.¹⁶

Now, I’ve been saying monster in the generic term. There are a lot of unique, hand drawn monsters.¹⁷ One question that you might have is which monster to kill.

I’m actually realizing that I’m falling way too far into the weeds. Let’s restart, this time focusing more on the fact that I want this to be a review.

I don’t know if that’s quite the right statement, but it’s more or less true↩︎
I hate that there aren’t any spaces in the title, but I really haven’t seen it written with a space anywhere↩︎
as someone who writes almost exclusively uncompiled LaTeX (and soon Markdown), that’s much more of a pro athan anything else↩︎
role playing game (not to be confused with TTRPG, where the R stands for roll (not really but I wish))↩︎
I never know how to pluralize initialisms, because games starts with G.↩︎
i assume, I don’t know if they’ve made it exact, but the ticks feel like around a second↩︎
mostly in situations where I hand write a letter to a friend, or writing out a derivation. I still feel a little icky about it, but whatever happens happens, I suppose↩︎
even that can be removed with an item that becomes very easy to gather by the mid to late game↩︎
I’m trying to stop saying app unless it’s for mobile, since that was once the difference↩︎
could have mused on that, I suppose↩︎
role playing games↩︎
though, thankfully, not anywhere else that it actually tracks wordcount↩︎
you’re allowed to prequeue ten monsters, though that number may increase↩︎
let me tell you, I’ll write until the pasta finishes boiling gets a shocking amount of words finished↩︎
unsurprisingly, if you know anything about me, the only think that I care about is damage output, because it means that I can get through monsters fast. All that defense gives me is an excuse to procrastinate↩︎
I cannot remember whether going over that just stops counting or whether it starts harming, but I do actually think that it’s the latter.↩︎
I am almost positive it says that the fan site says new monsters are hand drawn. The aesthetic on each monster does absolutely show a sense of care, and the fact that none of them are animated makes it feel even more likely↩︎

On Why Versus How

Draft 5

Why and how feel like such close questions. And yet, there is an unseen gulf of meaning between the two. Far too often, we stop the mind from looking upward by focusing it downward.

Why asks the reason, the cause, the philosophical reason that something is. How, by contrast, asks the mechanism, the physical description of what is. That is, why is to metaphysics what how is to physics.¹

Children are always gazing upward, considering the nature of the world.² Children ask why the world is the way it is, not how it is. When we tell them that the world is the way it is because of history, that reduces all of creation to a series of forced events. We lose agency in this world.

Why is the sky blue? Rayleigh scattering is true, but it is how the sky is blue. Rayleigh scattering explains that some light is diffracted differently.³ If physics is all that makes the sky blue, then there must not be anything more than physics, is what our minds are lead to believe. By answering questions of why with how language, we fall into the trap of scientism.

More than that, though, we fall into an issue endemic to computer science. Computer scientists are famous for creating solutions to problems without considering the secondary effects, or the reasons the problems may exist. The most famous example that I can think of is a Stanford student who found that when you challenge a parking ticket, most jurisdictions will just drop the charge, because it isn’t worth the hassle to fight it. So, the student wrote an app to automatically contest all parking tickets.

Deep down, the question being asked was how do parking tickets work, not why do they exist. I think that we can all agree it is generally better to not park in disabled spaces⁴ or in front of fire hydrants. This why and how can also lead to an intellectual stagnation.

Let’s take the example of the research that my group does. We look for the origins of life in star forming regions. From now on, each statement will have an implicit how question attached to it.

We use telescopes such as ALMA and NOEMA to measure the radio frequencies emitted from star forming regions and tie them to specific molecular transitions.

We have catalogs of molecular line information, which we can assign to the spectra coming from space.

We can shine known wavelengths of light on known molecules and detect whether or not the molecule absorbs at that wavelength.

We can see a change in voltage, which is directly correlated to the change in light.

Notice how even here, we’ve fallen almost completely away from the actual research goal of searching for the origins of life in star forming regions. All of the how questions are absolutely essential, because without answers, we would not be able to measure transitions or assign them. However, imagine if instead we start asking why.

We can see a change in voltage, which is directly correlated to the change in light. (Why?) The software we use is designed to function with an instrument that has a variable resistor. It measures changes in photons as changes in temperature as changes in resistance. V=IR, so that can make a change in I or V if you hold the other constant. (Why?) It’s a detector very similar to the ones that astronomers use? (Why?) Calibrating based on temperature is easier?⁵

We can shine known wavelengths of light on known molecules and detect whether or not the molecule absorbs at that wavelength. (Why?) We want to know what frequencies the molecule absorbs light at. (Why?) When we know what frequencies the molecule absorbs light at, we can assign its spectra using a limited number of rotational constants. (Why?) Rotational transitions are low energy, which means that a lot of the cold regions of space still have active populations in multiple rotational states, which allows us to quantify temperature and density. (Why?) Knowing what space is like helps us to model it, and can help us learn where we come from. (Hey look we got to the question of origins)

We can purchase molecules and collect their rotational spectra. I feel like this one follows the same train of thought.

We have catalogs of molecular line information, which we can assign to the spectra coming from space. This one follows the same starting from “rotational transitions are low energy”.

So, one thing that I notice is that how questions lead me deeper into the subject, reducing the scope of the question, while why questions bring me higher. There is absolutely a space for both, and I think that both are needed. The ideal is to have feel firmly anchored on the ground and a head floating in the clouds, after all.⁶

It is important to look deeper at the question. Physics as a field is built on the concept of reductionism. For all that it has limits, as every other method of discovery does, it is an incredibly powerful tool when applied correctly.

However, the same is true for why. Without motivating the work we do, there is no way to connect it to others. Since all that we do is for the greater glory of G-d, and we are called to bring all creation to Him, we need everything we do to be in connection to the rest of the world, especially the rest of humanity.⁷

Draft 4

I often find myself considering language. There are a lot of reasons for it, as I come to realize more and more with each passing year. One of the more common issues that I find myself considering is the shade of difference between similar words. Two of these words are “why” and “how”.⁹

Why is focused on the reason behind an act, and how focuses on the process behind it. This distinction, for all that it took me far too long to find, rather than simply looking it up, is a somewhat subtle one. Often, we treat the words as interchangeable.

For example, think of that most basic scientific question: “why is the sky blue?”

Most often, we answer this with mechanistic answers. The sky is blue, we explain, because of rayleigh scattering¹⁰, or because air is blue¹¹, or any of a number of other answers. That is, we tell children how the sky is blue.

I think that it’s a subtle thing. By answering questions where someone looks for a reason with a mechanism, we start to point to mechanisms as reasons themselves. That is, the world we create when why questions are answered with how lacks transcendence.¹² When we see the world as nothing but a machine, moving thoughtlessly along, we feel as though actions cease to matter. After all, if the why is the how, then free will makes no sense.

We can look and see the issue from the opposite perspective. If we answer a how question with a why answer, we fall down to fundamentalism.

We celebrate Hanukkah because Hashem preserved the Jewish people before, and He will continue to do so in the future.

I don’t know if that quite works. It feels almost like a non sequitor, and I realize now that there are ways to frame the question that start from a science question, rather than a religious point.

How does a computer program work? We write computer programs to make life easier. We can, hmm no.

By adding the work at the end of the sentence, you cannot really substitute a why.

Computers make life easier because they can do a lot of math really quickly. As it turns out, problems which are easy for people to solve tend to involve concepts, while questions that are easy for computers to solve tend to involve caluclations.

That doesn’t answer the question. I think that this is showing me my own bias. I have a far easier time accepting that a process explains a reason than that a reason explains a process. Then again, I find myself incredibly uncomfortable with fundamentalism as a concept. What do I mean by fundamentalism?

That’s a fantastic question. Fundamentalism is answering how questions with a why. When finding the way that something works, we can always delve deeper.

If we answer “how do molecules form” with “because it is favorable for them to do so”¹⁴, we shift the question from mechanisms to reasons. Actually, as I think about it, the framing of an answer is often the difference between why and how. Why do molecules bond? It’s energetically favorable. How do they bond? Two atoms draw close enough that they release energy by drawing closer.

I don’t think that’s the point I’m trying to make, though. Let’s try one last time, focusing entirely on the whole “using a how to answer a why kills belief in greater workings and makes the world as though automata.”

Draft 3

One question that children stereotypically ask is “why?”.¹⁵ One question that children ask far less often¹⁶ is how. To be honest, I think that the lack of distinction in children’s questions is the start of every issue that we have in communication.¹⁷

Think about explaining grass as green, either because it reflects green light, or because it has chlorophyll. Each of those answers would satisfy the question of either why or how grass is green. And yet, to me, at least, these two sets of responses feel different. If they don’t to you, this musing is only downhill from here. Be forewarned.

In basic terms, I generally feel like how is looking within, while why looks without. Or, how asks the mechanism by which something operates. Why assumes that there’s a broader meaning to it.

If so, it does lend credence to the idea that why questions are questions of faith, while¹⁸ how questions are questions of science. This definition, of course, relies on science being defined as a mechanistic search for the way that the universe functions, while faith is concerned with understanding the reasons which make the universe.¹⁹

Something that I keep needing to remind myself is that there needs to be a takeaway from whatever I write. Given that I don’t know what the point of this musing. I guess we can ask the two questions of this musing?

I am writing this musing because I have a vague sense of dis-ease²⁰ about the difference between the words, their meaning, and their use. The two words need to be different, if only because they are different words.

I don’t think that there’s a deeper meaning to this musing, at least yet. So, let’s assume that the why has been covered.

I’m writing this musing by making different drafts of the musing. I’m writing this musing by trying to think about what I think the differences are. I’m writing this musing by figuring out what I think the words mean in connection to other words.

Any other ways that I’m writing this musing? I honestly think that may be it. That’s how I’m writing it.

So I guess the way that I responded to the questions confirms my thoughts about how they differ. Why does seem to point to meaning, and how seems to point to methods. Great.

Let’s move past that though. That last sentence in the how feels striking to me. Words have meaning almost exclusively in how they relate to other words.

When we answer a why question with a how answer, or a how question with a why answer, we do a disservice to others. Or, instead, let’s take the other view. Most of the people that I know do not care so much about the precise usage of language. Instead of saying that the rest of the world is wrong, let us see if I cannot find a way that I can shift my own views of language.

After all, as Randall Munroe once pointed out, language and communication requires two people. What is different about the language that others use where this does not feel like an issue? Only now, twenty five hundred words later, do I feel like it is a good time to look up and see if there’s anything that others would think

Oh gosh someone pointed out that why and how come have the same usage, though how come is less formal. If we put it into my framework, how come is also a mechanistic explanation? I think? Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about it. Oh good, the rest of the internet generally agrees with me that the difference is between process and reason.

I feel really dissatisfied with this end of musing, however. Why? Because I kind of feel like I’ve gotten nowhere after all these words. How? I have failed to answer the question, which is difference in usage.

I probably have time for one more draft. Let’s do everything in our power to focus exclusively on why I think it’s a problem that we answer process questions with reason answers or vice versa. I’m sure that there’s a reason if I stop to think about it.

Draft 2.5: metawriting to figure out how I feel

I have talked about this a number of times. In short, I muse because I find it helpful to my life and growth as a person.

I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly thought about this. This question can be answered in so many ways, with varying levels of granularity.

I muse by posting my thoughts on the blog. I muse by coming up with an idea, writing about it, revising it²¹, and then posting it. I muse by typing words on a digital page. I muse by having thoughts and expressing them.

Because it’s filled with chlorophyll, which is green. That’s also still a mechanism.

Because it doesn’t absorb green light. Because it’s filled with chlorophyll, which is green.

Somehow, despite the fact that both of those answers are the same, it still feels vastly different to me. I don’t actually know if there’s anything more that I can say about that. Let’s try, though.

Draft 2

I’ve been thinking recently about the difference between why and how. The two words have to be different²³, but I’ve been struggling to figure out in what way.²⁴

How feels like something descriptive. That is, I figure out how to end a sentence, because I already know that I’m going to end a sentence. Why, on the other hand, feels prescriptive. If I am figuring out why to end a sentence, it is because I don’t know what its purpose is.

Maybe that’s the way to figure out the difference between how and why: write a few sentences that could use either word and see the way that the meaning changes.²⁵

I’m going to restart this musing, and I will try my best to use either word only intentionally.

Draft 1

While writing my reflection on the readings, I mentioned faith like a child. As I drove to religious ed, I thought about faith like a child, and I thought about faith and science. One half formed memory I have²⁶ was that the difference between faith and science is which questions they seek to answer. Science seeks to answer how, while religion seeks to answer why.

Of course, I then immediately thought about the question that a young child asks. Children do not²⁷ ask how. They ask why. When a child asks why the sky is blue, however, we tend to give how answers.

That bothered me, for a reason that I’m going to try to work through here in this musing.

Ok, so the most obvious bother is that if the difference between why and how is science and faith, and the two live in different domains, then it’s wrong to answer a why with a how. Now that I’ve expressed the concern, I can set it aside.²⁸

I’ll trust that the sentence above describes my concern. At least one of those claims is untrue, so let’s list them.²⁹

Are there other claims? I don’t really think so.³⁰ There may be, however, so I’ll be willing to add to the list if I need to.

Alright, let’s try to answer the claims one at a time, and see if we can’t find the one that isn’t ringing in tune.

There is a difference between science and faith. No, that’s absolutely true. For all that I’ve talked about how science and mysticism are intrinsically linked, the method of discovering knowledge is inherently different. Science is different than math is different than faith.

By that, I mean that science gains knowledge³¹ by measuring and reproducing measurements. Mathematics generates knowledge by testing hypotheses using logic. Faith generates knowledge by divine revelation.

Oh! A claim in there is that why and how are fundamentally different questions. There we go, that’s the sticking point that I have right now.

So let’s see what the difference is between the two. How describes process, while why ascribes meaning? That feels kind of resonant.

That is, how is a descriptive thing, while why is a prescriptive. Ok, that does also work with the difference between faith and science, so let’s run with that take. Now then, what’s wrong with answering why questions with how or vice versa?

Ok, let’s remove the explicit case of the children’s question. Let’s look at the election.

We have a president because we set up a system wherein we elect someone to run the country. That is a why answer to a why question. Oh, yeah, no, that’s definitely the issue.

When a kid asks why the sky is blue, we treat it as though they’re asking how the sky is blue. The sky is blue because air is blue.³² But, why is the sky blue? That’s a much more difficult question to answer. Honestly, there isn’t an answer that I know of for why the sky is blue, other than the fact that the universe was created in such a way to cause the sky to be blue.

When a child asks why we have to go to school, on the other hand, we do give them a prescriptive answer. We have to go to school because it’s good to learn, or something.³³

Ok, so I guess my issue is really just with the answer to why the sky is blue. That is, however the only children’s question about science that I can think of.

If not, does that show me the issue? Is there a way to frame scientific questions that are why based, rather than how based?

I guess those are shades of different meaning, for all that I cannot really point to anything specific about it. However, what is the difference between a child’s response to each of those?

If we assume that a child is an automaton, the child will ask why in response to everything else.

Because the sun emits light across a whole wavelength, maximizing at the green. Why?

Ok that’s also not great. That also does cover the actual why answer, which is slowly leading me to the actual issue I have. Despite the fact that I have different senses of the meaning, my impulse is to answer the why questions more or less interchangeably.

I think I might have fallen too far into the weeds. Let’s pull back and re evaluate.

philosophers and physicists please don’t hate mail me↩︎
in my imagination, at least↩︎
I think↩︎
assuming that we are not disabled↩︎
I assume, and this is where my knowledge falls apart↩︎
I hope that’s a common saying and not one that I stole from I think Discworld? I know that it’s somewhere in the Tiffany Aching series, but I cannot quite remember where↩︎
there we go, it took all day (literally, I’ve spent more than 12 hours working on this musing off and on), but I finally got a why for the post↩︎
wow that’s wild to think about↩︎
as you might expect from the title of the musing today↩︎
true, kind of↩︎
also kind of true↩︎
hmmm this might be the day for the rant, for all that I feel like it’s probably not the musing for it↩︎
I’m not sure whether I went to the most recent Jewish holiday because my family just watched An American Pickle, because the holiday just passed, because my Jewish identity is something I’m forced to reckon with almost daily, or almost any other reason↩︎
even though this is itself somewhat of a mechanistic answer↩︎
I don’t know if the . should be there, but I’m going to leave it, because it’s a statement↩︎
if stereotypes are to believed↩︎
ok that’s a little strong, but I’ve been working on this post for a lot of words and still have no clue what I’m trying to say, so I’m going to go with it↩︎
while is a word that I’m going to be using far too much for the rest of this musing, sorry↩︎
not using why or how except very intentionally is so very hard for me. I’m being very brave.↩︎
ill ease? disease? huh is that where disease comes from? That makes sense↩︎
optionally↩︎
hypothetical. Right now I’m very comfortable↩︎
because otherwise we wouldn’t have both↩︎
why and how both came up in my mind when I tried to figure out how to end the sentence (though not there, which is a clue)↩︎
I just wrote that sentence with a how unthinkingly, and that might be a part of the issue. I’m too thoughtless about the way I use my language.↩︎
which I think I first encountered in a children’s book series about someone who’s a clone of a dead girl raised by the initial girl’s parents (have asked my resident librarian what book that could be -Update: Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix (also wow she wrote a lot of books, many of which were formative to me. As the resident librarian put it “She has written so many objectively twisted but deeply compelling plots”)). Wild how my memory links. Also, now that I’m down the rabbit hole, wow early 2000s child lit was filled with a lot of wild dystopian literature. Then again, I also read Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, which though not children’s lit (I think) or from the early 2000s, was still messed up. Ok back to the real musing (but new idea just dropped). Also I need to reread and then write about the Patternist series, because there’s so much in there that’s immediately relevant to modern political discourse.↩︎
stereotypically, at least↩︎
because clearly something in that statement is wrong, so I should figure out what↩︎
I’m treating this first draft as something slightly more formalized than free association, but only slightly↩︎
one thing I’m realizing is that the raw tex file that I write contains its own information that gets removed when I convert to HTML. Most of the time, I’m on team line break after each sentence (since a professor taught me how much easier it made editing and seeing edits), which LaTeX ignores (I don’t know if the many conversions I use will break if I try to have special formatting for the word, so I’m going to pretend that the normal orthography (which may or may not be the proper term, depending on how important the positioning of letters is to the meaning of the word) is acceptable). However, every so often I find that I have two sentences that feel like a single thought, and so get to use a single line. Also most footnotes tend to be a single line, which makes me think that I really do use line breaks to signal thought shifts. Wild↩︎
as a discipline, nominally↩︎
among other issues. Generally, though, it’s something about rayleigh scattering, which may or may not be something I’ve vaguely forgotten about.↩︎
the law tells us, or whatnot. There are plenty of other reasons we could give for why kids have to go to school↩︎
because it doesn’t absorb green light↩︎
or scatters, I suppose↩︎
though that’s why chlorophyll is green, I suppose↩︎

On Being Seen

Draft 1

I find that it’s always interesting to learn how others see me. I’d like to think that my own self image of myself hasn’t changed over the years, for all that I know that it has. Without delving too deeply into those, it’s been a long and fun journey to really feel like myself in my own skin, which is something I’m glad for.

But, this musing isn’t about how I see myself. It’s about how others see me. I recently realized, after a few conversations, that the way I am perceived is far different than it once was.

Through high school, I think that I was seen mostly as a member of my family. That’s fair, and that hasn’t really changed.¹ However, that was mostly among people who were, if not friends, then at least one link from a friend or family member. When people saw me not as a member of my family, I know that one of the most common thoughts was that I looked like a football player.²

Even through college, those were both common statements a common statement. More than that, though, I know that I was often viewed as someone who enjoyed violent sports.³ The other day, though, I was at a rugby field with some graduate school friends, I made a comment about how I was considering trying rugby.⁴ The friends I was with both expressed surprise, which made sense to me, at first.

After all, I have never once expressed interest in rugby before, as far as they knew.⁵

However, that was not where the confusion lay. My friends both expressed shock that I would be interested in a physical⁶ sport.⁷

That made me curious. I realized that many of the people I’ve met since starting graduate school express surprise when I tell them that people used to think of me as physically intimidating. I’m only now⁸ realizing that this might have been less an expression of how friendly I am, and more a reflection of a change in the way that I’m generally viewed.

The next day, a friend was apparently talking about me to someone who didn’t know me. My friend described me with many of the common descriptors.⁹ Someone who knew both my friend and the new person commented that I have a nice smile.

I don’t disagree with the idea that I have a nice smile.¹⁰ However, I know that in high school, I was very uncomfortable with my smile. I would do everything in my power to avoid smiling in photos. It does make it a little awkward to show photos of high school me to friends now, though.

Returning to the point, I’m realizing that the way I am perceived frequently differs from the way that people in my life say that they perceive me. I’m sure that there’s some introspection I can do about that, and may in the future.¹¹

literally the other day a person approached me on the street and went “are you a (insert last name (not that any of you reading this blog couldn’t immediately figure out my last name) here)?”, which was wild, given that I’m, as far as I know, the only member of my family to have spent more than a week in the city↩
to be fair, I was a football player from middle school through the end of high school, and it was absolutely the sport I felt the most connection to, for all that it’s absolutely not the sport I was objectively best at↩
every time that I use that phrase I feel like it’s the wrong one.↩
or something similar, I don’t exactly remember↩
little do they know that one of my favorite babysitters (not the famous movie star) growing up was a rugby player↩
is that the right word? I don’t think so.↩
I think that I’m averaging about a footnote per sentence, which says a lot about what I’m thinking in this post↩
literally as I write this blog post↩
much as I wish that it was one, that did not include “incredibly attractive”. It did, however, include that I dove, like board games, am getting a graduate degree, and do music. It’s a pretty fair summary↩
and not just because it’s rude to disagree with people. I do actually like my smile↩
not tonight, though, because I’m tired↩
I suppose there’s an implicit thing that I’m dancing around↩

Dungeons and Dragons Again

Draft 1

As I mentioned in my last musing about dnd, I made a character whose goal is rolling more dice more often. I don’t know if I actually optimized it, especially because a number of friends pointed out that spell slots are functionally infinite, especially in the kinds of combat that I’m likely to see. Next session I get to fifth level, which doubles the number of attacks I can use, potentially doubling the number of dice I roll a turn. That’s pretty nice.

This session, however, was also a great time. We began with a quick little combat, where we saw some demons¹ and began to fight. I missed on my first attack, which was sad, so used an action surge to swing again.

That set me up to be flanked, which did almost all of my remaining hit points². However, I managed to kill one monster on my next turn, and got another with an attack of opportunity. At that point, it was more or less cleanup.

After we defeated the monsters, we were led into a room with puzzles. The puzzles were all fun, and done more or less completely out of character. It’s always fun to have to actually think, rather than simply saying “my character thinks”.

When we managed to solve the riddles, we were given the ability to teleport to waypoints, which feels like it could be a fun mechanic. We were offered the choice to return to the city we had come from, or to teleport further west. Our group chose to go to the West.³

Once there, we discovered a town of tieflings that were being plagued by spirits. The story, as we dug into it, seemed to be that there was a chief who committed abominations⁴, and something something punishment. One of the consequences was that their harvests would rot.⁵ We are currently split, staking out the properties overnight to see what happens.⁶

I think? I’m honestly not entirely sure what their exact bestiary entry was, in part because I am trying to meta game less often↩
the blood sacrifice is a feat that I need to play around with to find the most optimal usage I think↩
we were explicitly told that we have to all agree to go in order to transport.↩
killing turtles and whales↩
like in the Disney film Moana↩
spoiler, we level up but not much else↩
by my friend!!!↩

Reflections on Today’s Gospel

Draft 2

I love this set of readings, because each of them speaks to me in a way that I don’t normally feel from the readings. Intellectually, I know that every word in the Bible is beautiful, and each verse leads me closer to Truth. Emotionally, though, I don’t always connect.

I’d like to start with the Psalm.¹ The Psalm today really encapsulates the entirety of the readings. It is the Magnificat, the Canticle of Mary. That is, it is Mary’s response to seeing her cousin Elizabeth while both are carrying their child.

How does this sum up the readings? First, the Magnificat comes when John the Baptist leaps in his mother’s womb. The Gospel today is John’s ministry and preparation for the coming of the Christ.

Finally, it is a song of joy and thanks to the Lord. The Magnificat is a message of joy and hope to the downtrodden and despised. The first reading, from the Prophet, also focuses on this.

The second reading is really just filled with a load of fantastic single lines. I could spend pages discussing more or less every phrase in the reading, but I’ll focus on one in particular.

St. Paul exhorts us to test everything, retaining what is good.² In a conversation with friends yesterday, I was once again reminded that this approach is not the way that everyone is formed in their faith. In a different conversation, someone explained to me that questions can come from a place of judgement or of curiosity. I think that these two conversations point to the same idea: we either seek to find the truth or confirm what we know.

In raising a child, I cannot understand why you would want them to trust unquestioningly. I am reminded of a verse, where we are told that we are to have faith like children. Every child I’ve ever known has wondered endlessly. When they ask why something is true, they then wonder why the response is true. Of course, there is an element of trust there. A child believes what you tell her.

And so, we are reminded that we must have a faith like that. I have hope that the Pharisees in the Gospel were questioning John on those lines. If someone today preached that they had a new way of forgiving sins, I would be incredibly skeptical. How much moreso would it have been for the faithful of the first century.

It is a common statement by Catholics that the Church is either the Truth and Holiness, or the most vile blasphemy possible. We see reminders of that in the Gospel. John is baptizing in the name of the one who is to come, the one who can forgive all sins. It becomes a fulfillment of the Prophets first reading.

Christ’s ministry was one of healing the ill and uplifting the poor. Throughout the history of the Church, it has spread most by the downtrodden. Even today, many of the conversion or reversion stories I hear come from someone who was in a terrible place.

The Prophet reminds us that we are all called to this ministry. The Lord anointed him, sending His Spirit to rest on Isaiah. We receive that same Spirit in baptism, and we are sealed in it during confirmation.

Draft 1

This week’s readings, in a shocking turn of events, are not a struggle for me. Do not get me wrong. I do not sit easily with these readings, completely unaffected. My struggle with these readings is simply in how poorly I live them out.

The first reading comes from the Prophet.⁴ It opens with a really powerful verse,⁵ where we are told a few important facts.

In brief, the Lord anoints us and sends His Spirit on us. When we are given the Spirit, we are given a mission. In the case of the Prophet, the mission is to lift up the downtrodden, and a few specific examples are given.⁶

Of course, we as baptized are anointed and given the Spirit. We too have a mission. As Christ reminds us, everything that Isaiah said was his mission in this verse is also a mission we share. We are to comfort the grieving, set free the prisoners, and strive for justice and liberty.

The second verse is where it shifts outside of the conventional modern Christian framework, though. We are told that Isaiah was sent to proclaim a year of Jubilee. Jubilee is a concept that has completely disappeared from the modern consciousness, for all that it is⁷ an absolutely essential component of a healthy society. In a year of Jubilee, all debts are forgiven.

Now, there are some obvious reasons that we do not have this concept anymore. First, we legally treat corporations as though they are people, and that has bled into the way we discuss things. Copyright⁸ laws are described as letting corporations own the rights to their work, rather than artists. There is no real reason that a corporation should have its debt forgiven, for much the same reason that there is no reason that a corporation or country having debt is inherently a problem.

The reason that debt is a problem to fall into is that we all know that there is a maximum amount of time that we will work. At some point, we will stop producing, and there will be no new income to pay off our debts. Corporations⁹, by contrast, can continue to cycle out workers indefinitely, and so there is no inherent timeline wherein they stop producing income.

Other than the fact that we treat corporations as people, though, the only reasons I’ve seen for not instituting Jubilee are based in the goal of raising corporations above people or in the goal of keeping oppressed down. If we forgive debt, the most common narrative goes, then the companies which issued the debt will be in trouble. Or, as comes up so frequently in discussions about student loans, if we forgive debt, then that just encourages people to take out more loans and live above their means.

In part, that is because of the system we have created, where student debt in particular is nearly impossible to discharge. Even if we did not have a Year of Jubilee, and instead just stopped debts from reaching a point that they are impossible to pay off, then we would see a radical shift in the structure of modern economies. Sorry, didn’t mean to go on a rant here, returning to the readings.

The second reading reminded me of a conversation that I had with friends yesterday. We were discussing, among other things, our own relationships to the faiths that our parents had raised us with. One stark difference between us was that I was raised with the belief that, not only was it ok to question what we are taught, it is actively good. It’s always nice when the Bible supports the take that you have.

St. Paul writes that we should test everything, retaining what is good.¹⁰ I do believe that statement would do wonders in helping the world as we know it. However, it is a difficult statement to practice.

How do we know what is good? Even outside of the concept of forming a conscience, there is the issue of large scale differences. What is good for an individual may be bad for society, or the reverse.¹¹ How should we balance the conflicting needs of a group to have its members in good condition and each member to live to his or her fullest? I’m not really sure, and that’s just an immediate issue that comes to mind with the question.

However, the existence of edge cases does not preclude heuristics.¹² That is,¹³ the fact that there are times that a general principle does not apply does not mean that it doesn’t work in general. If I say, for instance, that children are short, “all” is absolutely implicit in that statement. Even if we find a child who is tall¹⁴, that does not mean that most children do not remain short.

And so, there are obviously cases where we can look at things and see that they are harmful. Modern psychology agrees that believing that you are unable to improve yourself harms you. Going into the spiritual, believing that to question your faith is to not believe it will lead you either to an unfulfilled life, where you cannot say what you truly believe, or a life where you lose your faith as you question it. Any other examples I can think of are too emotionally charged, and so I’ll leave them as an exercise to the reader.

Right, the second reading reminds us that we are to confront the beliefs that we have, making sure that they lead ourselves and the world to the Lord, our G-d.

I normally skip the Psalm, but I love the Canticle¹⁵ of Mary, which were the verses.¹⁶

And finally, we make our way to the Gospel. I think that this was the first year that I realized that John was doing his preaching while Jesus lived his own private life. As much as I know and truly believe that Christ was born around 30 years before he died, the lack of anything between his childhood and public ministry sometimes makes me forget that they must have happened. While John was preaching his message of repentance, Christ was working in his earthly father’s shop.¹⁷

There’s absolutely something worth meditating on there. First, there’s the statement that Christ makes, which is that whatever we do to the least of people, that we have done to him. I can imagine someone going to baptism in the Jordan, and then seeing Christ in his home. Somehow, they cannot see that the Lord is incarnate in front of them.

More than that, though, it is a reminder that everything has its season. If Christ had begun his public ministry in the Temple when his parents found him as a child, we would not have had the St. John the Baptist. That would have meant that a number of prophecies went unfulfilled.

And, of course, it is here that we see the Pharisees doing as St. Paul commands. They hear that a man is baptizing and preaching repentance. Unsure what that means, they go to question him. John replies honestly.

He is not Elijah, nor the Prophet, nor the Christ. He is simply the voice in the desert¹⁸ telling us to prepare the way.

Ok, this musing got a little out of hand, I think that I should revise it. First, though, there’s bound to be a way to tie the first reading to the Gospel. I can’t think of one, though, so I guess I’ll just have to hope that inspiration strikes while I write the next draft.

shocking, I know, given that I never write about the Psalm↩︎
1 Thes 5: 21↩︎
unsurprisingly, I guess↩︎
Given that in the Gospel today, John calls him Isaiah the prophet (note lower case), I wonder whether I’m supposed to not call him the Prophet either. Not worth my time to look up right now, but it is something that I’m curious about, so should look up at some point (I just know that I’m distractable enough right now that I would go down at least two rabbit holes before returning to the musing↩︎
Is 61:1↩︎
yes, I recognize that they all apply to the people of Israel, but words can have multiple meanings, and I’m allowed to take the meaning that I want from a reading (as long as it lies within the acceptable interpretations, and as long as I don’t lead anyone to error in doing so. Not acknowledging one of the interpretations of the reading doesn’t fit there, I don’t think)↩︎
in my opinion, at least↩︎
I promise we’re not getting into one of my internal rants about copyright, for all that I do feel like the Church’s implied teaching is contrary to the understanding that most people I know have.↩︎
I’m going to switch to calling a country a corporation, because it is in many regards↩︎
1 Thes 5: 21↩︎
I’m here taking the case of things which are explicitly beneficial for any individual who does them, but harmful for society, and the reverse. Things which help some people and harm others are in the forming conscience↩︎
I think that I need to get that message emblazoned somewhere in large letters. I guess it’s a little too formal for a lot of discussion, but it’s certainly something I need to remember more.↩︎
ah, the good old id est (literally Latin for that is, often abbreviated i.e.), also known as “I did a bad job explaining but I like the way the words taste, so I’m going to keep them but try again for something comprehensible”↩︎
also what is tall?↩︎
I love the word canticle so much, because it means basically what you’d expect it to mean: something that’s kind of like a song but not really↩︎
I don’t think that verse is the right word, but I don’t know if I’ve ever learned a different one↩︎
I assume, given that he’s called a carpenter and that most people would have been working in the family business in those days I think↩︎
the change in punctuation still bothers me, but I haven’t cared enough to look up why, so I guess it doesn’t actually bother me that much↩︎

On Ratings

Draft 2

What’s the point of rating anything? Ok, that’s a little broad, let’s try that again.¹

A friend asked me to think about five star ratings for books, especially on the pseudo public platforms which aggregate ratings. As I thought about that question, I came to a number of potential responses.

First, I think that five is too many options. Really, I think that you only need two, maybe three if you want to be mean. The two would be enjoyed or did not enjoy, and the third could be for did not finish if you wanted to separate books you read all the way through. I would be very happy with just the two ratings, though.

So, what do I do when I’m given five stars? There’s an impulse to only use one and five star ratings² However, that feels lacking. If I’m painting in black and white, I shouldn’t just ignore the shades of grey³ just because they’re new and scary.

So, let’s consider how I could use five stars. One star could be the third bin that I had before, books that I could not finish because they were so poorly written. Thankfully, very few books that I’ve encountered fall into this category, if only because most people who put books out in a public enough form that I find them have a competent grasp on the English language.⁴

Five stars would have to be the absolute favorite books ever written. The kind of books that you can’t stop talking about when you read them, to the point that your friends feel obligated to either end the friendship or read the book themselves.

Even though I like shades of grey, I’ve always admired paintings that work in shades of black.⁵ And so, I can find a use for two stars: books that I didn’t finish because I didn’t enjoy them. These would be books that I’m certain others would enjoy, I just wasn’t one of them when I encountered it.⁶

Four stars would be books that I really liked, but that I haven’t made into a facet of my personality. And, of course, that leaves three stars to hold the rest of the books, the majority of what I read.⁷

But, this is a single dimensional view of the process. For all that⁸ I do think that most books I read fit that scale, it does have some gray areas. Between a book with an astounding concept and fair⁹ execution and a book that brings nothing new to the genre but does what it sets out to perfectly, which deserves a higher score? As I once dove,¹⁰ I then find a use for the fractional stars.¹¹

In diving, two criteria determine your score: how well you did the dive and how hard the dive was. The difficulty of the dive modifies how much the points for your dive are worth. Doing that, I could have a few modifiers and apply them to my base score, putting books in the correct bin as needed.

Of course, this single bin approach to diving works because we can generally agree what the optimal dive looks like.¹² Books, however, serve a variety of purposes, and what makes a book successful in one domain is often what precludes its success in another. Most modern sites are aware of this fact, and allow for tagging of books so that people can remember that one book is a cozy pastoral fantasy¹³ and another is a fast paced exploration of morality.¹⁴

Then, of course, the rubric breaks down. I now, on some level, need to have separate rubrics for each tag and combination of tags. This all ignores the fact¹⁵ that modern sites aggregate the data. Here we come to a new issue.

I, like most people, am aware on some level that my time on this earth is finite. I do not have the time to read every book that comes out in a given month, let alone every book that comes out every month. And so, I rely on the aggregation of other readers in deciding what to read, at least on some level.¹⁶ This comes with a conundrum.

When I rate something with four stars, it falls below a book that I rate with five stars. And so, all the different criteria end up collapsing into that same rating system I introduced at the start of the musing: good¹⁷ or bad¹⁸. I’ve heard it described as five stars means you were ok with it, and everything below five is how much you disliked it, which isn’t that far off from the way that ratings end up playing out.

Draft 1

Yesterday a friend asked me about my feelings on five star scales. As I thought about it a little more, though, I realized that I have a lot of feelings about rating systems in general. Today seems like as good of a place as any to discuss how I feel about them.

Rating systems, especially as they exist now, suffer from the tragedy of the commons.²⁰ Most rating systems are not used for individuals, but for public ranking. That’s an issue, for a lot of reasons.

If I have five stars to rate every book I read, for instance, there are a few ways that I could do it. Assuming that 0 stars is not an option, of course, I only have five categories to place absolutely everything I read. There are few easy books to place.

First, there are the books that I read over and over, finding something different in them each time. The sort of books that we love because they feel able to grow with us just as much as we grow. They, obviously, would get five stars.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are a lot of things that I’ve read that I could not get more than a few pages into²² because there was absolutely no sense of grammar, tense, or spelling. An argument could be made that ratings should be reserved for books I’ve finished, and not for everything I’ve tried to read. Of course, if I have a rating system, I want it to be a record that I can use in the future. Since that’s true, I want to show everything that I’ve attempted to read.

So, that’s one star and five stars taken care of. What about books that I couldn’t get through, just because I didn’t enjoy them? It feels very unfair to put them at the same place as books that I couldn’t read because they were illegible²³, which implies that I should put it at two stars.

Looking at the other direction, there are a lot of books that I enjoyed, but would not plan to reread because I don’t think that there’s anything more that I want to gather from the book.²⁴ Or, there are books that I plan to reread, not because I find that they are thought provoking or help me grow, but because they’re comfortable. Similar to a nice bowl of Kraft brand mac and cheese, sometimes you aren’t looking for the best, simply the most familiar.

And that leaves one star for everything else I read. Three stars would mean that I finished the book, and either didn’t enjoy it, or don’t plan to reread. Honestly, most books that I read should fall here, if we think that stars should be averaged. Then again, if I consider that I know what I like to read, it would make sense that the books I read would generally be above the baseline.

Of course, this creates an immediate tension. Five stars works best if there’s even distribution between categories. For instance, if I put all books that I did not finish as one star, I then have four stars to granulate my feelings, rather than simply three. Others might immediately point out that fractional stars exist.

Honestly, I find that fractional stars start to become worse than useless for me very quickly. Once I get above general feelings of no, sure, yes, and absolutely²⁵, I don’t think it’s fair to grade books on a single axis. How do I compare a book that has fantastic ideas but less than stellar execution with a book that is not as thought provoking but does what it attempts perfectly? As a diver, there’s the voice in my head that says you add modifiers.

For those who don’t know, points in diving come from two, arguably separable places. First, there’s the score that the judges give. The sum of the three middle judges’ scores²⁶ is the first point in scoring. In that regard, it is optimal to make sure that any dive you do is done to the absolute highest score possible.

However, there is a secondary consideration. Each dive is assigned a degree of difficulty. That value is multiplied by the first score to produce the final score for a dive. In that regard, it is optimal to attempt the most difficult dive possible, because it has the highest modifier.

Of course, since diving is a sport judged by humans, there are elements of bias. Dives that land on hands, for instance, tend to be scored more favorably than dives which end on feet. More than that, though, a lot of judges are more forgiving of small errors in more difficult dive, whether because it’s difficult to see every part of a more complex dive or because it just seems more impressive.

Before each meet, a diver therefore needs to consider how best to balance doing a dive well and doing a difficult dive. Returning to the book, it could make sense to make modifiers. Of course, since we’re still²⁷ only on the single person use case for ratings. I don’t need to have hard numbers, especially if I read books fairly often. Having vague ideas of the modifiers I want to apply is probably good enough.

Now, the astute might notice that diving does collapse those two scores into one at the end. I could, in theory, do the same. However, I do not always want to read the same thing. I tend to have around ten books in my currently reading shelf. If we look at them, I can categorize them as²⁸

It isn’t fair to compare a beach read to a literature book, especially because the very things that make one good in its own genre are³¹ what would make it bad in the other genre or what disqualifies it. Now, of course, nearly every book sorting site has ways of adding categories to the books you read. If I then just rank each book with its modifiers and tags, I can sort the tagged books when I want to recommend or reread something. And, to some extent, that could work.

However, there are more than two factors that I want to consider. As much as it kind of feels wrong to say³², the politics that the author espouses in a book are relevant to how much I enjoy them. A book that has an interesting premise, is well written, but concludes with statements like how slavery is fundamentally a good thing, is not something that I want to recommend, if only because I don’t want anyone in my life to think that I think slavery is fundamentally good.³³

So, we get to the point that reducing everything to a single number becomes somewhat meaningless. However, as I alluded to earlier, the danger with ratings is that they do not exist in a void. When I rate something, the ratings generally become somewhat public. Now, there’s a new level of consideration that I have to use.

On the one hand, I want to give accurate and useful ratings for my own purposes. On the other, I also want the authors I like to succeed. I know that a lot of people actively sort to find the highest ranked books within a genre. Truth be told, I cannot say that I am too different.

Of course, this does lead to a bit of a chicken and egg issue. The fact that only high rated books get read means that people are more likely to give anything they like five stars, which means that the quality of anything with less than five stars starts to drop dramatically. On one site I read often, grammar that is nearly impossible to understand is still given a three star by some commenters.³⁴ As this cycle continues, each feeds more and more into the other, making it so that the rating system would really be best served by a simple positive or negative. I remember seeing that Netflix had switched to that, and I think they found it was more effective for what they wanted.

So, right now I’ve only discussed books and rating them on a five point scale.³⁵ I think that most of the lessons that I want to hit on are more or less the same. Time to revise this and see if we can’t make the writing sparkle a little more. Might be worth framing the whole thing as “start from yes no, then grow into five stars, then grow into multi dimension that collapses, then go to tags, then back”, because there’s fun in dramatic irony.

I’ve realized that opening with an overly casual tone helps me to write better. Or, at least, it feels better to me. I wonder if readers feel the same way↩︎
I’m not even getting into fractional stars right now, because I hate them as a concept. If you want ten points, have the scale go to ten. The only reason I’ll give diving a pass on this is that the cards they use are set up in a really pretty pattern to make a number or the number and a half work well. I still think that it would be worthwhile to do integers, but I’ll respect their choice to have smaller numbers↩︎
one of these days I’ll figure out when I was anglicized (almost anglicised wow) into thinking that gray was spelled with an e↩︎
or can hire someone who does↩︎
yes I know that definitionally there is a single shade of black. However, as a person with limited vocabulary, I fully acknowledge that there is a spectrum of color that I would call black even if I can distinguish the hues from each other. I’ve seen some beautiful art that plays with that a a concept↩︎
the idea that what I enjoy is variable will come back later↩︎
realistically, since I know what I like, I have far more fours than threes↩︎
you’re welcome. (if you know what this is a reference to, that message is for you. otherwise feel free to ignore↩︎
I love that fair counts as failing in a lot of places. It’s like words mean nothing. Oh, wait, that’s the theme of the musing today. Never mind↩︎
I just wrote this sentence and I’m already struggling to parse it. Readers that I know exist, is the same true for you?↩︎
much as I am loathe to↩︎
infinite flips and spins executed perfectly↩︎
readers, you know what I’m talking about↩︎
don’t immediately have a book to place to this, but I’m sure that there’s at least a few that I’ve read. Oh, I suppose that the one Discworld book where Vimes gets possessed by the Summoning Dark would be that. Or Mort, or any of the Death Books. Wow look at that↩︎
I keep wanting to use of course, which makes sense, because I’ve thought about this a lot and already written a draft today. If my thoughts aren’t obvious to me right now, that’s an issue↩︎
honestly, these days most of what I read comes from a single recommendation, so I guess this maybe works for me the abstract reader, not me the physical body. Oh, also a lot of books I just pick up in the library because they look interesting (in their titles, since they’re by and large textbooks or academic texts that aren’t in CS, the covers aren’t pretty), which also doesn’t have aggregation information other than implicitly, since the library chose to stock it↩︎
five stars↩︎
one star↩︎
it’s wild that I’m at the point that a chord sheet (I think that’s what they’re called) is enough for me to play a song I know↩︎
ok so I fully recognize that the tragedy of the commons is a completely ahistorical idea, given that commons were famously well maintained by everyone. However, it’s a phrase that works well enough right now↩︎
not that I think any of my readers couldn’t do this on their own, just that it feels like it could be useful for me to do this for myself↩︎
if even that↩︎
is that the right word? kind of feels like it shouldn’t since I have a lot of internal ideas about legibility being a handwriting thing. A quick search tells me it’s understandable, so I guess it works. Weird↩︎
initially I said either, but I can’t think of another reason that I wouldn’t reread a book. Maybe my imagination is just lacking these days↩︎
honestly, the fact that I have a four point scale for life and that these are the four points does say a lot about me↩︎
so in 5 judge situations, they drop the high and low score each time. Since judges aren’t themselves being judged, it doesn’t matter whose score gets dropped in cases where multiple judges give the same score (actually, as I think about it, there was a statistic on some of the report sheets I’ve seen from meets with rankings of judges based on how often their scores were taken. I wonder if someone’s ever explored that). In three judge meets, all scores get taken. I think that you’re not supposed to have even numbers of judges, for the obvious reason↩︎
a little over a thousand words in. This musing will absolutely need a second draft↩︎
using the current shelf plus things I know that I’m planning to start in the next few days↩︎
i.e. books that have merit but are not written to be beach reads↩︎
i.e. books that don’t ask thoughts from me or that I can read while distracted.↩︎
is↩︎
ooh, I should explore why at some point↩︎
I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that, but here we are↩︎
who fully acknowledge that they have trouble parsing the sentences↩︎
and a little bit of diving, but that’s its own different thing↩︎

Flash Fiction Friday

Draft 1

It’s another Friday,¹ which means it’s time for another installment in Flash Fiction Friday Fthinking.² The prompt this week is “A promise to break”. The prompt givers implied that it was a promise which would be broken, but that is not where my mind went.

I’m immediately reminded of a line in Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame, which I don’t remember perfectly, and so will not attempt to quote. The gist of the line, though, is about compelling someone to continue, rather than stop. I’m not totally sure how that reminded me of the prompt, except that I read it as a promise to break something.

Breaking is an inherently dynamic action, which makes it good for me, a person who struggles to have plots, especially in flash fiction. So, if we assume that there’s a promise which involves breaking, what does that require?

On some level, it requires two entities. I suppose that one can, in theory, make a promise to oneself, but that feels not like the story I want to tell here.

I’m debating between realism, fantasy, and sci fi. If scifi, there’s the option of like “when the barrier falls do X”, which is similar for fantasy. Actually, the FFF I’ve written since coming back from hiatus have all been shades of realism. Let’s lean into the fantastic, just for a day.

Given that it’s now very late out, I find that I want to write a sonnet to respond to the prompt, because I don’t really have the energy³ to do a story, the rest of this blog, and muse. As I walked home, though, I ran into an issue. When I think of fantasy poetry, I think of ballads and ballad form, which is in triple meter. I am currently in a sonnet phase, which requires iambic pentameter. Still, there’s nothing saying I can’t just go for it. Will report back when finished.

So, it wasn’t the best sonnet that I’ve ever written, but it certainly wasn’t the worst either. All in all, I think that I’m actually pretty happy with it. I managed to tell a narrative, and that’s really what’s important.

Now, readers of the blog might wonder what kept me from writing all day. In order, there was a department party, a secret santa⁴ reveal, a thesis defense and accompanying celebrations, and then two parties. Each lasted just a little bit longer⁵ than I was expecting, but I don’t regret the time at all. Time with people is never time wasted.

more like Fri-yay, am I right?↩
I’m sure that I could have come up with a better word, but it’s still early and I’m developing a burgeoning caffeine addiction↩
or, quite frankly, the time left in the day↩
officially snowflake, but we’ll ignore that↩
or, in the case of the second party, quite a bit longer↩
because I did it in public both times, the second of which was at the second party, where everyone gathered around and sang silent night↩
there has to be a better way to say that, but I cannot think of it right now, I’m sorry↩

Book Review of Fundamentals of the Faith

Draft 1

I’ve officially accomplished one of my goals for the month, and I’ve finished a book from my currently reading shelf. The book is Fundamentals of the Faith by Peter Kreeft. It’s a just under three hundred page book of apologetics about the Catholic Faith.

Now, there are many ways that I approach these book reviews.¹ One piece that I feel like is a fairly common aspect of them is my explaining how I came to the book. This book, at least, has a fairly interesting story, which makes it one I want to share right now.

Since coming to graduate school, I’ve had the chance to meet a lot of fantastic people. Last year, I helped teach religious education, and chatted a fair amount with one of the teachers for another age group. This past year, she had discerned joining a religious order, and offered me a book of essays. Of course, when someone who radiates holiness² offers you a book, it seems only prudent to read it.

So, of course, I waited almost six months before starting the book. From the first page, though, I was hooked on it. Kreeft strikes the difficult balance between incisive wit and deep broad truth.

As much as I’d meant for this musing to be a long reflection on the book, it’s late enough right now that I would really rather be asleep. A few brief thoughts before that happens:

As a faithful Catholic, he did, of course, profess extra ecclesiam nulla salus. As a faithful Catholic, he did, of course, also point out that what we consider the Church and what the Almighty considers the Church are not always perfectly aligned. In discussing that, he also brought up the parable of the man who keeps hiring more workers to his vineyard.

My entire life, that parable has placed cradle Catholics³ in the position of those hired first. Kreeft inverts that. We, as Catholics, do legitimately have an easier path to salvation⁴ by virtue of knowing exactly what the Lord wants us to do and how He wants to be worshipped. It was striking to consider that, in many regards, I do have an easier time finding Truth than those outside of the faith.

The other most striking aspect of the book was its claim to absolute truth. As a scientist, one of the most fundamental aspects of the field is that no knowledge is certain. Everything is either theory⁵ or law⁶. Nothing is inherently true, and to do science correctly requires, on some level, a willingness to find that everyone else has always been wrong.

In the midst of a culture that is incredibly relativist right now, the fact that Kreeft was so willing to say that not only is the Church true, but it is the Truth, was really striking to me. Also, he continually brought up the fact that the most central teaching of the Church is not being kind to our neighbors or loving G-d, or anything else like that. The most central tenant of our faith is that Jesus Christ, True G-d and True man, was incarnate and died for our sins.⁷

That was something that I’ve found myself coming back to as I consider the book. For most of the modern history of the Church, it was reasonable to assume that everyone was familiar with the explicit teachings of the faith, and so we could discuss the secondary considerations. In a time before relativism, it was valuable to explain how Christianity is like other faiths, who have their own piece of the truth. Nowadays, as the normal belief is that belief systems are more alike than different, the opposite tack is needed.

Anyways, all this to say, I really enjoyed the book, and I feel like I should read more explicitly Catholic creative nonfiction in the next year.

I think. I’m not going to actually fact check that claim right now, though.↩
as she did when last I saw her↩
like me↩
as he claims, at least. I think that there’s something to be said about to whom much is given, much is expected, but that’s a discussion for when I’m more awake↩
hypothesis that has yet to be disproven by data↩
model that works↩
I mean that’s already at least four or five things, but you get what I mean↩
as evidenced by my writing a musing on it↩

Musings

I'm just copying my father

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On Family Recipes

Draft 3: December 23

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Draft 1: December 22

Flash Fiction Friday

Draft 1

4thewords Review

Draft 2

Draft 1

On Why Versus How

Draft 5

Draft 4

Draft 3

Draft 2.5: metawriting to figure out how I feel

Draft 2

Draft 1

On Being Seen

Draft 1

Dungeons and Dragons Again

Draft 1

Reflections on Today’s Gospel

Draft 2

Draft 1

On Ratings

Draft 2

Draft 1

Flash Fiction Friday

Draft 1

Book Review of Fundamentals of the Faith

Draft 1