Time Heals All Wounds.. And Then Kills the Patient

Fingers flicker over the numbers, ink bleeds from the incision left by the pen, as the math problem is slowly opened to dessicate, the knots untied. She kept thinking about what he said, wondering what he meant, how much he had said. Surface meanings, sign of the integral. Language, folds of meaning, multiple layers in every word choice we make, words to speak, to conceal, to manipulate, to stage. We may take the derivative, only take the surface meaning, L'Hopital can get us there, usually.. That never was how we talked though, dancing among fine china, free to half-acknowledge things we arn't ready to say in the plain, free to ask, "If I were to say XXX, what would you think?".. And then, the QED.. The pen rolls over the paper, absorbing a trace of the still drying ink as her footsteps slowly fade.

My laptop lives again -- Dell's replacement AC adapter arrived this morning. I am looking forward to having the two spares I ordered though.. I can leave one plugged in at work, the other at home, and this one can be my travel adapter. I think the continual folding/unfolding involved in travel is probably what eventually wears them down. Ahh, my NeurosII is also almost here. It originated in Illinois, was in Columbus yesterday, and they tried to deliver it today (but couldn't find my office). I had it redirected to my home. It's time to ship the old recorder to its new home. I guess Columbus is one of those towns where it's convenient to use them as a hub -- despite being a moderately big city, land is cheap, transportation is easy, and there are plenty of ways to get in and out of the city. There are some smaller cities I notice, through my FedEx/UPS shipments, that are also frequent storage/hub places, Stanton PA, I believe, is the nearest. I wonder if the cities offer any incentives to companies to locate there for that purpose.. harmful competition? Hmm.

Yesterday, at lunch, I again had Srees (unless I have somewhere else I want to eat, it's kind of a default for me), and while sitting on the cut, tossing out rice to attract birds, I got a squirrel as well. It came close enough to me that it was well within my armspan, and I got to watch it for about 10 minutes before it ate enough and wandered off. It was quite a treat -- I often get birds that are like that, but Squirrels are more humanlike.

It seems that three of my close friends are going through tough things in life, I like to listen, and offer suggestions, but it would be immensely satisfying to take a rolled-up newspaper and swat the people who are hurting them. Maybe this should be a general conflict-resolution method -- rolled-up newspapers are hard enough that they're satisfying to hit with, yet not so hard that they cause much damage. Personally, it's rare that I get angry at people because I instantly seem to understand where everyone is coming from, and try to be fair, or at least understanding, to them all (which, of course, won't stop me from telling them things they need to hear or pursuing my own interests), but I know this isn't the case for everyone, and barring the world adopting my style of 'enlightenment', or a similar enough thing, rolled-up newspapers may be the solution to world peace.. No? Ehh.. worth a shot.

Some friends of mine and I are casually tossing around the idea of opening a 24-hour kosher coffeeshop with food in the area. Getting funds might be tricky, but we think we know of a good location, and have some ideas that could make it pretty cool. It's worth chewing on the idea. The problem is, only one of us (not me!) really could devote full effort to it, as the rest of us have our eyes on grad school. We might be able to scrap together funds from a bank loan, relatives, and such, although said negotiations probably wouldn't be fun. Something to think about...

Apparently, I'm going to be without water for sometime tonight, as the city is doing maintenance on some underground pipes on my street. It should be ok, and I'm glad to finally know why they're digging 9 foot deep holes in the roads around there. In other dull news, the CS department sent a mail out to everyone, saying that that department is running out of office space, and things will become even more crammed. A snippet:

We have a space shortage, and I wanted to let everybody know what is going on. For several years now we have been struggling to work with the space that we can get. This is not just an RI phenomenon. We work with SCS and the other units in SCS to obtain and allocate space. I have been talking to the other units and to the dean about this. Everybody is hurting. For the coming fall term, we're going to have to make some adjustments a little more severe than what we have experienced before

Oh, my mom apparently has decided to go into business. I think she's going to be selling crafts. I registered her a domain, and at least initially, if not long-term, she'll be hosted on my virtual server. Her domain is in the kind of twilight of being registered but not fully propogated right now. That aspect of DNS, the slow flow of the caches, has always interested me... Anyhow, as I know that I have opinions, and she does not, or has opinions that are in many ways opposite mine, I'm not going to link to her site to avoid hurting her business if people too casually can find the link between us :)

And now, for the news.. Yasser Arafat is in hot water -- he appointed a cousin to be his new security chief, and was met with uproar for giving family favours. Lest we frown too heavily on this, the biggest protesters are right-wing militants who are angry that he is willing, to an extent, to deal with the Israelis. The PA is not anywhere near where it should be to take control of the land the Israeli government is pulling back from. Taking it philosophically, could it ever be more than a family favour, to do this kind of thing? One advantage is that he probably knows his cousin rather well, and the cost of betrayal within a family is larger than that outside. In a primitive society, nepotism kind of makes sense, in this light. The problem is, national land doesn't work well with the kind of society that the Palestinians have right now, and they have the unenviable task of moving from landless despotism in fancy clothes to a proper government in extremely short time, while pacifying the more regressive militias and warlords who stand to lose almost all their power in the transition. Let's contrast thte two approaches the Israelis and the Americans are taking in their quagmire -- the Americans hand-selected (mostly) a new parliament, constructing Iraq's government from almost ground-up. Iraq's government is fake, it's not exactly Iraqi-made, and if it survives something akin to medical organ rejection, it'll be nice. The Israelis, as I understand, are more hands-off -- the Palestinians are to set up their own government, and the success or failure of that is their business. I wonder which is better of the two approaches.. both create different kinds of malcontents, with different targets.

Apparently, John Kerry might be sued in religious court on charges of heresy. It'd be kind of funny, if it didn't hurt our ability to get rid of BushJr.

Bobby Fischer is found.. and is in hot water for using falsified passports and similar. It's sad that the wondering of many a chess fan, what happened to Bobby Fischer, is answered in this way...

A smile, finger traces the outline of a flower, thinks of pouring the paste on the shards, the broken sculpture that would be a hummingbird. The colours between the lines are subtle..

Morning	Tue Jul 20 10:51:03 2004
Commune on 37th Street
Topics: Israel
Fingers flicker over the numbers, ink bleeds from the incision left by the pen, as the math problem is slowly opened to dessicate, the knots untied. She kept thinking about what he said, wondering what he meant, how much he had said. Surface meanings, sign of the integral. Language, folds of meaning, multiple layers in every word choice we make, words to speak, to conceal, to manipulate, to stage. We may take the derivative, only take the surface meaning, L'Hopital can get us there, usually.. That never was how we talked though, dancing among fine china, free to half-acknowledge things we arn't ready to say in the plain, free to ask, "If I were to say XXX, what would you think?".. And then, the QED.. The pen rolls over the paper, absorbing a trace of the still drying ink as her footsteps slowly fade. My laptop lives again -- Dell's replacement AC adapter arrived this morning. I am looking forward to having the two spares I ordered though.. I can leave one plugged in at work, the other at home, and this one can be my travel adapter. I think the continual folding/unfolding involved in travel is probably what eventually wears them down. Ahh, my NeurosII is also almost here. It originated in Illinois, was in Columbus yesterday, and they tried to deliver it today (but couldn't find my office). I had it redirected to my home. It's time to ship the old recorder to its new home. I guess Columbus is one of those towns where it's convenient to use them as a hub -- despite being a moderately big city, land is cheap, transportation is easy, and there are plenty of ways to get in and out of the city. There are some smaller cities I notice, through my FedEx/UPS shipments, that are also frequent storage/hub places, Stanton PA, I believe, is the nearest. I wonder if the cities offer any incentives to companies to locate there for that purpose.. harmful competition? Hmm. Yesterday, at lunch, I again had Srees (unless I have somewhere else I want to eat, it's kind of a default for me), and while sitting on the cut, tossing out rice to attract birds, I got a squirrel as well. It came close enough to me that it was well within my armspan, and I got to watch it for about 10 minutes before it ate enough and wandered off. It was quite a treat -- I often get birds that are like that, but Squirrels are more humanlike. It seems that three of my close friends are going through tough things in life, I like to listen, and offer suggestions, but it would be immensely satisfying to take a rolled-up newspaper and swat the people who are hurting them. Maybe this should be a general conflict-resolution method -- rolled-up newspapers are hard enough that they're satisfying to hit with, yet not so hard that they cause much damage. Personally, it's rare that I get angry at people because I instantly seem to understand where everyone is coming from, and try to be fair, or at least understanding, to them all (which, of course, won't stop me from telling them things they need to hear or pursuing my own interests), but I know this isn't the case for everyone, and barring the world adopting my style of 'enlightenment', or a similar enough thing, rolled-up newspapers may be the solution to world peace.. No? Ehh.. worth a shot. Some friends of mine and I are casually tossing around the idea of opening a 24-hour kosher coffeeshop with food in the area. Getting funds might be tricky, but we think we know of a good location, and have some ideas that could make it pretty cool. It's worth chewing on the idea. The problem is, only one of us (not me!) really could devote full effort to it, as the rest of us have our eyes on grad school. We might be able to scrap together funds from a bank loan, relatives, and such, although said negotiations probably wouldn't be fun. Something to think about... Apparently, I'm going to be without water for sometime tonight, as the city is doing maintenance on some underground pipes on my street. It should be ok, and I'm glad to finally know why they're digging 9 foot deep holes in the roads around there. In other dull news, the CS department sent a mail out to everyone, saying that that department is running out of office space, and things will become even more crammed. A snippet: We have a space shortage, and I wanted to let everybody know what is going on. For several years now we have been struggling to work with the space that we can get. This is not just an RI phenomenon. We work with SCS and the other units in SCS to obtain and allocate space. I have been talking to the other units and to the dean about this. Everybody is hurting. For the coming fall term, we're going to have to make some adjustments a little more severe than what we have experienced before NSH, the building in which RI resides, is already cramped. Just another reason I'm glad I got out of there when I did. Oh, my mom apparently has decided to go into business. I think she's going to be selling crafts. I registered her a domain, and at least initially, if not long-term, she'll be hosted on my virtual server. Her domain is in the kind of twilight of being registered but not fully propogated right now. That aspect of DNS, the slow flow of the caches, has always interested me... Anyhow, as I know that I have opinions, and she does not, or has opinions that are in many ways opposite mine, I'm not going to link to her site to avoid hurting her business if people too casually can find the link between us :) And now, for the news.. Yasser Arafat is in hot water -- he appointed a cousin to be his new security chief, and was met with uproar for giving family favours. Lest we frown too heavily on this, the biggest protesters are right-wing militants who are angry that he is willing, to an extent, to deal with the Israelis. The PA is not anywhere near where it should be to take control of the land the Israeli government is pulling back from. Taking it philosophically, could it ever be more than a family favour, to do this kind of thing? One advantage is that he probably knows his cousin rather well, and the cost of betrayal within a family is larger than that outside. In a primitive society, nepotism kind of makes sense, in this light. The problem is, national land doesn't work well with the kind of society that the Palestinians have right now, and they have the unenviable task of moving from landless despotism in fancy clothes to a proper government in extremely short time, while pacifying the more regressive militias and warlords who stand to lose almost all their power in the transition. Let's contrast thte two approaches the Israelis and the Americans are taking in their quagmire -- the Americans hand-selected (mostly) a new parliament, constructing Iraq's government from almost ground-up. Iraq's government is fake, it's not exactly Iraqi-made, and if it survives something akin to medical organ rejection, it'll be nice. The Israelis, as I understand, are more hands-off -- the Palestinians are to set up their own government, and the success or failure of that is their business. I wonder which is better of the two approaches.. both create different kinds of malcontents, with different targets. Apparently, John Kerry might be sued in religious court on charges of heresy. It'd be kind of funny, if it didn't hurt our ability to get rid of BushJr. Bobby Fischer is found.. and is in hot water for using falsified passports and similar. It's sad that the wondering of many a chess fan, what happened to Bobby Fischer, is answered in this way... A smile, finger traces the outline of a flower, thinks of pouring the paste on the shards, the broken sculpture that would be a hummingbird. The colours between the lines are subtle..