If addictions, sins, and distractions numb us to emotional highs and lows, maybe it's normal that as we move away from these things we can feel at times like we are on an emotional roller coaster. The world truly is dark and broken, and if our hearts aren't breaking then we aren't seeing it for what it really is. But it's also freaking awesome, and there should be times (and maybe even seasons) in life where our heads spring off the pillow in the morning because we are so excited to live in this awesome world. The more we see the world as it actually is, without the deadening filter of things like addiction, it should horrify and enchant us.
I think I've spent a lot of my life wanting to be emotionally steady -- never too happy and never too bummed out. But I'm beginning to think that's not the best way to live. Maybe a better goal (or perhaps a more accurate definition of being "emotionally steady") is to try to see the world clearly and strive to make sure my emotions are appropriate to what I see.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Post-Irony
When you look at Katy Perry, or Ke$ha, or any number of pop music stars that have cropped up in the past several years, it can be difficult to know what to make of them. You see their aesthetic and think "surely they aren't serious." But they also don't seem to be ironic. It's not drama, but it's also not tongue-in-cheek.
I think that we are entering a post-irony phase, maybe not in art in general, but at least in pop music. Hipsterdom has reacted against things that "take themselves seriously," and put up irony in their place -- cutoff jeans, nascar shirts, PBR, etc. But irony is not sustainable. We want something to believe in, not just something to mock.
This new crop of pop musicians seem to me to be making music that is genuine and sincere, but intentionally not profound. It is Dionysian (seeking to celebrate) rather than Apollonian (seeking to express).
Also Ke$ha rules btw.
I think that we are entering a post-irony phase, maybe not in art in general, but at least in pop music. Hipsterdom has reacted against things that "take themselves seriously," and put up irony in their place -- cutoff jeans, nascar shirts, PBR, etc. But irony is not sustainable. We want something to believe in, not just something to mock.
This new crop of pop musicians seem to me to be making music that is genuine and sincere, but intentionally not profound. It is Dionysian (seeking to celebrate) rather than Apollonian (seeking to express).
Also Ke$ha rules btw.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Butt-Simple Chinese Word Segmentation
Word segmentation in Chinese is extremely tricky. There's no spaces between words, and words can vary in length from 1-4 characters (proper names can be even longer). I recently was dealing with a Chinese text for which I wanted to create a glossary that would have every word used in the text listed. So I needed a list of each word used in the text.
There's lots of people out there trying to write programs to segment words, and it can be a fairly involved process. (Here's a how-to I found that will give you an idea what it's like: http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/chineseTokens/read-me.html). But since the text I'm dealing with is short and simple, I don't need a perfect word-segmentor, just a mediocre one.
With that in mind I wrote the following script. Basically all it does is take a list of common Chinese words, and search my document for them. If a particular word appears, it will print it out, thus creating a glossary.
WordList.txt is just any list of Chinese words separated by spaces. I used a list of the 3000 most common words. The "chars" mentioned in line 11 is the chinese text you are analyzing, stripped of everything (including punctuation) except actual chinese characters. (See my earlier post, "Character Count" [http://switchbladetongue.blogspot.com/2012/09/character-count.html], if you want to see how to produce "chars").
Right now the script prints out all the multiple-character words, then all the single-character words. It will err on the side of producing false-positives for single-character words, but since I will have to write definitions by hand, it will be easy to get rid of false-positives along the way. To fix false-negatives, I will read through the Chinese text and check any rare words to see if they are already in my glossary. If not I will add them manually. My text is fairly simple, though, and doesn't have a lot of obscure words.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- encoding: utf8 -*-
g = open('WordList.txt')
g_contents = g.read()
g_unicontents = g_contents.decode('utf8')
word_list = []
word_list = g_unicontents.split(' ')
words_in_text = []
one_plus_char = []
one_char = []
for word in word_list:
word = word.encode('utf8')
if word in chars:
words_in_text.append(word)
for word in words_in_text:
if len(word) > 5:
one_plus_char.append(word)
else:
one_char.append(word)
for word in one_plus_char:
print word
for word in one_char:
print word
There's lots of people out there trying to write programs to segment words, and it can be a fairly involved process. (Here's a how-to I found that will give you an idea what it's like: http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/chineseTokens/read-me.html). But since the text I'm dealing with is short and simple, I don't need a perfect word-segmentor, just a mediocre one.
With that in mind I wrote the following script. Basically all it does is take a list of common Chinese words, and search my document for them. If a particular word appears, it will print it out, thus creating a glossary.
WordList.txt is just any list of Chinese words separated by spaces. I used a list of the 3000 most common words. The "chars" mentioned in line 11 is the chinese text you are analyzing, stripped of everything (including punctuation) except actual chinese characters. (See my earlier post, "Character Count" [http://switchbladetongue.blogspot.com/2012/09/character-count.html], if you want to see how to produce "chars").
Right now the script prints out all the multiple-character words, then all the single-character words. It will err on the side of producing false-positives for single-character words, but since I will have to write definitions by hand, it will be easy to get rid of false-positives along the way. To fix false-negatives, I will read through the Chinese text and check any rare words to see if they are already in my glossary. If not I will add them manually. My text is fairly simple, though, and doesn't have a lot of obscure words.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- encoding: utf8 -*-
g = open('WordList.txt')
g_contents = g.read()
g_unicontents = g_contents.decode('utf8')
word_list = []
word_list = g_unicontents.split(' ')
words_in_text = []
one_plus_char = []
one_char = []
for word in word_list:
word = word.encode('utf8')
if word in chars:
words_in_text.append(word)
for word in words_in_text:
if len(word) > 5:
one_plus_char.append(word)
else:
one_char.append(word)
for word in one_plus_char:
print word
for word in one_char:
print word
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Crash
On my way to church this morning, I saw a girl about my age wandering standing on the side of the road, looking dazed. I stopped, rolled down my window, and asked "Hey are you OK?"
She answered "Me and my friend were in car accident and our phones don't work. Can you call 911 for us?"
I parked my car, called 911 and told the girl to take me to the accident. She led me back into the woods while I told the dispatcher where we were. I couldn't see the car from the road, and I don't know what I was expecting, but I was not prepared for what I saw. The pile of metal wrapped around a tree didn't look remotely like a car, though an hour ago it had been a Buick Riviera.
"My friend says she can't get up," the girl told me. Her friend was on the other side of the car, and I was really scared to look. It was miraculous this one girl had survived, and I was sure whoever else was in the car was either killed or badly mangled. I've seen corpses before, and I never want to see another one.
I rounded the car and saw the girl's friend laying on her back. "I can't feel my legs," she whispered.
"She keeps saying that, and she won't get up," the first girl told me. Then, turning to her friend insisted, "You have to get up!"
"No don't get up; don't even move," I told her. "Just chill there on the ground till the paramedics come." I asked the first girl, "Is there anybody trapped in the car right now?"
"No."
"Was there anybody else riding with you two?"
"I don't know."
At this point, A sheriff's car showed up and two officers got out. They first attended to the girl on the ground. She was able to move her toes for them, so I think she probably broke both her legs (they both definitely looked broken), but probably wasn't paralyzed. The first girl had a broken arm. Both girls said they didn't know who was driving, or if there had been other people in the car. This meant the police had to search the forest where the wreck had happened. Soon tons of policemen, firemen, and paramedics showed up. I managed to find one of the original officers and he took down my phone number and told me I could leave.
Going to church afterward was weird. I thought I had a pretty strong stomach for this sort of thing, but I was really effected. I had to play bass for both services, and I had to just not think about it cause I had to concentrate on the music. But I felt really shaky. Like I was nauseous and felt like throwing up.
It was just so dark seeing these girls who almost killed themselves. They were really sketchy about everything too, and it made me think they were lying -- either protecting someone else who ran away from the accident, or that one of them was driving drunk and/or without a license and they wouldn't admit it. And on top of everything else, just seeing how messed up they were -- broken arm, broken legs, cuts all over -- was gut-wrenching. It was one of those moments where you feel like you are looking straight into everything dark about the world.
I went rock-climbing this afternoon and calmed down a bit. If you think about it you can be praying for these girls. For their physical injuries, and for redemption in any area of brokenness in their lives that may have been touched by the accident. Pray that the accident would be an instrument of grace and redemption in their lives.
She answered "Me and my friend were in car accident and our phones don't work. Can you call 911 for us?"
I parked my car, called 911 and told the girl to take me to the accident. She led me back into the woods while I told the dispatcher where we were. I couldn't see the car from the road, and I don't know what I was expecting, but I was not prepared for what I saw. The pile of metal wrapped around a tree didn't look remotely like a car, though an hour ago it had been a Buick Riviera.
"My friend says she can't get up," the girl told me. Her friend was on the other side of the car, and I was really scared to look. It was miraculous this one girl had survived, and I was sure whoever else was in the car was either killed or badly mangled. I've seen corpses before, and I never want to see another one.
I rounded the car and saw the girl's friend laying on her back. "I can't feel my legs," she whispered.
"She keeps saying that, and she won't get up," the first girl told me. Then, turning to her friend insisted, "You have to get up!"
"No don't get up; don't even move," I told her. "Just chill there on the ground till the paramedics come." I asked the first girl, "Is there anybody trapped in the car right now?"
"No."
"Was there anybody else riding with you two?"
"I don't know."
At this point, A sheriff's car showed up and two officers got out. They first attended to the girl on the ground. She was able to move her toes for them, so I think she probably broke both her legs (they both definitely looked broken), but probably wasn't paralyzed. The first girl had a broken arm. Both girls said they didn't know who was driving, or if there had been other people in the car. This meant the police had to search the forest where the wreck had happened. Soon tons of policemen, firemen, and paramedics showed up. I managed to find one of the original officers and he took down my phone number and told me I could leave.
Going to church afterward was weird. I thought I had a pretty strong stomach for this sort of thing, but I was really effected. I had to play bass for both services, and I had to just not think about it cause I had to concentrate on the music. But I felt really shaky. Like I was nauseous and felt like throwing up.
It was just so dark seeing these girls who almost killed themselves. They were really sketchy about everything too, and it made me think they were lying -- either protecting someone else who ran away from the accident, or that one of them was driving drunk and/or without a license and they wouldn't admit it. And on top of everything else, just seeing how messed up they were -- broken arm, broken legs, cuts all over -- was gut-wrenching. It was one of those moments where you feel like you are looking straight into everything dark about the world.
I went rock-climbing this afternoon and calmed down a bit. If you think about it you can be praying for these girls. For their physical injuries, and for redemption in any area of brokenness in their lives that may have been touched by the accident. Pray that the accident would be an instrument of grace and redemption in their lives.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Character Count
Ever wonder how people figure out how many different Chinese characters a book has in it? Like how textbooks can say "use this book and you will learn over 350 characters!" or whatever?
The following is a code I wrote in Python that will take any document containing Chinese text and count the number of different Chinese characters in it. It ignores punctuation, whitespace characters, English, and anything that is not a Chinese character. As written right now, it prints out the vocabulary size and the total length of the document. If you want to see the all the Chinese characters strung together, you can un-comment "print chars" in the 5th line from the bottom.
Right now this is just for my own personal use. Kind of an interesting little script I think.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- encoding: utf8 -*-
import re
import nltk
from nltk.probability import FreqDist
f = open('YOURTEXTHERE.txt')
contents = f.read()
unicontents = contents.decode('utf8')
chinese_only = re.findall(ur'[\u4e00-\u9fff]+', unicontents)
stripped_chinese_only = ''.join(chinese_only)
chars = stripped_chinese_only.encode('utf8')
tokens = nltk.word_tokenize(stripped_chinese_only)
fdist1 = FreqDist(tokens)
#print chars
a = len(fdist1.keys())
b = len(tokens)
print "Vocabulary size:", a, "different characters"
print "Length:", b, "total characters"
The following is a code I wrote in Python that will take any document containing Chinese text and count the number of different Chinese characters in it. It ignores punctuation, whitespace characters, English, and anything that is not a Chinese character. As written right now, it prints out the vocabulary size and the total length of the document. If you want to see the all the Chinese characters strung together, you can un-comment "print chars" in the 5th line from the bottom.
Right now this is just for my own personal use. Kind of an interesting little script I think.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- encoding: utf8 -*-
import re
import nltk
from nltk.probability import FreqDist
f = open('YOURTEXTHERE.txt')
contents = f.read()
unicontents = contents.decode('utf8')
chinese_only = re.findall(ur'[\u4e00-\u9fff]+', unicontents)
stripped_chinese_only = ''.join(chinese_only)
chars = stripped_chinese_only.encode('utf8')
tokens = nltk.word_tokenize(stripped_chinese_only)
fdist1 = FreqDist(tokens)
#print chars
a = len(fdist1.keys())
b = len(tokens)
print "Vocabulary size:", a, "different characters"
print "Length:", b, "total characters"
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Hard Times
Hard times are coming. Will your addiction save you?
When you are dying in a hospital bed, blinded by pain and laying in a pool of your own blood and shit, will you take comfort in the fact that you are a talented musician? When you can't sleep for days because your heart screams at God "Why would you let that happen?", will looking at porn heal your crushed soul? When your marriage shatters, will playing video games help you pick up the pieces? When you are sitting in a darkened room, just you and a razor blade, will being a good athlete stay your hand? When you bury your son, will you wipe away the tears and cling to hope because you know that everyone thinks you tell funny jokes and great stories?
Hard times are coming. How are you preparing your soul for them? What will you do when they get here?
When you are dying in a hospital bed, blinded by pain and laying in a pool of your own blood and shit, will you take comfort in the fact that you are a talented musician? When you can't sleep for days because your heart screams at God "Why would you let that happen?", will looking at porn heal your crushed soul? When your marriage shatters, will playing video games help you pick up the pieces? When you are sitting in a darkened room, just you and a razor blade, will being a good athlete stay your hand? When you bury your son, will you wipe away the tears and cling to hope because you know that everyone thinks you tell funny jokes and great stories?
Hard times are coming. How are you preparing your soul for them? What will you do when they get here?
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Basketball
Women's basketball should be played on a 9 foot basket. Period. Then you could have legitimate jump-shots, players could shoot while being tightly defended, and of course the dunks would be badass. There is no downside.
Don't even try to argue that this is "lowering the bar" or "compromising the game." They already play with a smaller ball than the men's game. This is a simple matter of optimizing the field of play for the players.
Don't even try to argue that this is "lowering the bar" or "compromising the game." They already play with a smaller ball than the men's game. This is a simple matter of optimizing the field of play for the players.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Carmina Burana
So there's a ballet called Carmina Burana by a guy named Carl Orff that tells the story of humanity from creation to apocalypse. It's pretty dark -- I've heard the text is based on the writings of apostate monks from the 13th century who abandoned their faith to live a life of wantonness.
If I was in an instrumental rock band (like Mogwai, Mono, or Explosions in the Sky or something), I would love to do an album and/or a live show that does the same thing, but stays true to the story of humanity the Bible tells. It's a powerful story and it could comfortably be divided into distinct songs -- Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration, for example. Maybe you could even combine it with live painting or at least a trippy video on a projector.
If I was in an instrumental rock band (like Mogwai, Mono, or Explosions in the Sky or something), I would love to do an album and/or a live show that does the same thing, but stays true to the story of humanity the Bible tells. It's a powerful story and it could comfortably be divided into distinct songs -- Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration, for example. Maybe you could even combine it with live painting or at least a trippy video on a projector.
Teachers
Think of the best teacher you ever had in school. Could she successfully teach a class of 200? Or 500? Of course. She might have to figure out how to test/grade that many students, but she could definitely hold their attention and communicate clearly.
Now think of the worst teacher you ever had. Could he successfully teach a class of only 4 students? No. He was incompetent -- didn't matter how few students he had. Schools freak out about student:teacher ratios, but this ratio is not necessarily correlated to how much students actually learn.
Same goes for any kind of leader. A good leader can command an army; a bad leader can't control a boy scout patrol. Organizations (schools, churches, companies, etc.) should divide the people who need to be led by the number of leaders, not divide them into groups and then try to scrounge up people to lead them just for the sake of having convenient groups.
Now think of the worst teacher you ever had. Could he successfully teach a class of only 4 students? No. He was incompetent -- didn't matter how few students he had. Schools freak out about student:teacher ratios, but this ratio is not necessarily correlated to how much students actually learn.
Same goes for any kind of leader. A good leader can command an army; a bad leader can't control a boy scout patrol. Organizations (schools, churches, companies, etc.) should divide the people who need to be led by the number of leaders, not divide them into groups and then try to scrounge up people to lead them just for the sake of having convenient groups.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Celebrities
"When I asked Gawker managing editor Choire Sicha whether it was possible to ignore talentless celebrities, he responded with the remorse of a custodian of cultural decline: 'Everyone can, and should, be ignored. We were warned about this situation we find ourselves in by philosophers, and well before it happened. It's just too bad we weren't warned by celebrities, or we would have listened to them.'"
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/why-the-hipster-must-die
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/why-the-hipster-must-die
Odd Dance
"Punks wear their tattered threads and studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a proud hipster. It's an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it."
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
Lacanian
"The hipster is the child of the postmodern – a mixture of cynicism and rebellion, buried under conformism and apathy – everything taken at face value and rolled into one. In its self-centric dynamic it is obsessed with its own identity, yet it is defined by what it is not (hipsters deny being hipsters). Speaking philosophically hipsterdom raises a glass to the Lacanian lack, and it is good this way, for the hipster is the epitome of the marketing age, the ravaging consumerism and the celebration of desire. They are the product of marketing and also the source of it, they set trends and have trends fed back to them in a loop of fashion, obscure bands and indie clubs."
http://anticapitalists.org/2012/06/08/more-than-just-aesthetics/
http://anticapitalists.org/2012/06/08/more-than-just-aesthetics/
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Teeth
Whenever I was being particularly unpleasant, Mom always used to tell me "you can't treat people like that because one day you will say the wrong thing to the wrong person and they will beat your ass." Well that would be true in any situation except in the Church, where it is possible to live an entire lifetime being so heavily coddled that nobody ever tells you that you are a prick.
Christians are afraid to tell other Christians about major character flaws. We are good at expressing thoughts like "When you said x, it hurt my feelings because of y..." But we stay away from conversations like "Nobody wants to be around you because you have x issue and it drives people away." Christian conflict resolution materials insist that when confronting someone you should always focus on specific behaviors and not mention general patterns. But sometimes sin is general. Surely there are times when we must say not "When you interrupted me it made me feel disrespected" but instead "You do not respect the opinions of others, and until that changes nobody will want to be around you."
Non-Christians tend to be much more direct -- occasionally to the point of cruelty -- about such conversations, which makes for miserable middle/high school experiences. But these experiences often turn out well-adjusted adults. Without going through the brutal social boot camp of normal, unforgiving relationships early in life, many Christians enter their mid-20s completely unaware of major social hang-ups that their non-Christian peers had beat out of them in 9th grade.
Sometimes there really is a "plank in your brother's eye."
Christians are afraid to tell other Christians about major character flaws. We are good at expressing thoughts like "When you said x, it hurt my feelings because of y..." But we stay away from conversations like "Nobody wants to be around you because you have x issue and it drives people away." Christian conflict resolution materials insist that when confronting someone you should always focus on specific behaviors and not mention general patterns. But sometimes sin is general. Surely there are times when we must say not "When you interrupted me it made me feel disrespected" but instead "You do not respect the opinions of others, and until that changes nobody will want to be around you."
Non-Christians tend to be much more direct -- occasionally to the point of cruelty -- about such conversations, which makes for miserable middle/high school experiences. But these experiences often turn out well-adjusted adults. Without going through the brutal social boot camp of normal, unforgiving relationships early in life, many Christians enter their mid-20s completely unaware of major social hang-ups that their non-Christian peers had beat out of them in 9th grade.
Sometimes there really is a "plank in your brother's eye."
Coin
When you flip a coin, it will have either an even or an odd number of rotations. An even number of rotations will result in the side that was originally facing up, an odd number will result in the side that was originally facing down. Charting the possibilities if the original side is heads:
0 rotations = heads
1 rotation = tails
2 rotations = heads
3 rotations = tails
4 rotations = heads
etc.
So it looks to me like in the example above, heads is facing up as often as tails if the number of rotations is even, but more often than tails if the number of rotations is odd. Shouldn't this mean that whatever side starts face up should have a slightly higher chance of landing face up?
0 rotations = heads
1 rotation = tails
2 rotations = heads
3 rotations = tails
4 rotations = heads
etc.
So it looks to me like in the example above, heads is facing up as often as tails if the number of rotations is even, but more often than tails if the number of rotations is odd. Shouldn't this mean that whatever side starts face up should have a slightly higher chance of landing face up?
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Skaters
Skaters who also do other things:
Jason Lee (aka the guy from "My Name Is Earl")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tycWDOByM8c&
Matt Hensley (one of the most influential skaters ever and accordion player for Flogging Molly)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZSjy1AssM8&
Jason Lee (aka the guy from "My Name Is Earl")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tycWDOByM8c&
Matt Hensley (one of the most influential skaters ever and accordion player for Flogging Molly)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZSjy1AssM8&
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Unreliable
Sometimes showing your superiors that you are a little unreliable is the only way to make sure they don't take advantage of you.
AM
"Oldies" music is designed to be listened to on AM radio. When you listen to it on CD, MP3, tape, FM radio, or even vinyl, you may be hearing a purer version of the song, but you aren't necessarily hearing it in the medium the artist intended.
Doctors
Doctors have one of the most respected professions in Western culture, but it seems like many (if not most) doctors I meet are really just trying to take advantage of sick people.
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