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June 15, 2005

unexpected chaos theory

Right now, I'm in the middle of a short course, crash course, or whatever you want to call it. Literally. The middle. The course lasts a week (about 6 hours a day) and I just finished the midterm. A bunch of people that aren't associated with my program or even the department take the course. Don't know why. Probably because they're crazy. I can understand taking it if you need the credit hours or if it's required (like it is for me). But who in their right mind would want to take an entire course that has been compressed into 5 days of hair-raising excitement?

Anyways, yesterday during the morning break, one of these people who, for some reason, have no better way to spend their time this week, asked me how to find the bathroom. I walked with her to the facilities, as I was headed that direction myself, and when we got there, she looked at me and said, "This place doesn't make any sense at all."

In any other place I've ever been, getting from point A to point B would be relatively straightforward, assuming I knew where it was in the first place. But not this place. From the outside, the Frances Searle Building looks like a combination beehive and very small prison. And its layout is so nonsensical that I can't even describe to someone how to get to the bathroom.

The total lack of apparent systematic design in this building is actually a bit deceiving. There aren't any straight hallways and the rooms aren't numbered in standard numerical order (meaning room 1 is not necessary next door to room 2). But there's a system to it and there's only one thing I can think of to which it can be compared:

Chaos Theory is defined as the study of chaotic nonlinear dynamic systems. This building must have been built to demonstrate in a concrete manner the feasibility of Chaos Theory. Close examination of the floor plan of the building shows four distinct quadrants. But one of those quadrants is primarily stairways. Each quadrant is self-contained in the sense that I really don't know if you can get between them without first returning to the center of the building. All of the quadrants look the same. They all have stairwells in the same place. If you're walking through one, and you think you know where you are, you may walk right into an area that appears to be a mirror reflection of the hallway you were looking for. If you're looking for classroom 2-376, you may be in front of 2-375 and still have to walk in circles for another five minutes before you find what you're looking for. It's an unbelievable place. Not in the good way. More in the, 'I can't believe they actually designed this place like this' way.

The long and short of it is that in order to find your way around this maze, I have found it beneficial to start by accepting that no matter how well I think I know where I'm going, I don't. Prior knowledge is of little import here. At least in terms of navigation. After you accept that the building embodies chaos and appears entirely nonsensical, only then can you start to find your way around. Not unlike other things, I must say. Only more abstract concepts like this generally don't apply to geographic situations.

Posted by ben at 3:00 PM | Comments (2)


June 14, 2005

it was only a matter of time

Anyone who has spent five minutes driving around Chicago knows that the CTA bus drivers drive like fucking ass holes. They'll cut you off. They'll stop in front of you, change lanes, swing around while turning, whatever they feel like. Well, they finally . This morning, a bus making a left swung around and side-swiped Christina's car while she was on her way to work/school. No one was hurt, especially not the bus, but the car took some damage. I haven't seen it yet, but from what I hear, the driver's side mirror got taken down and there's some damage to the front-right side of the car including the bumper and maybe a bit of damage to the hood. It's all taken care of and the insurance company really treated her well, thankfully. Still a shitty ordeal.

These bus drivers are absolutely insane. They drive around like their in a Miata, not a fucking gynormous, stinky-ass bus with all these people on it. It seems as though the bus considers cars to be ants -- they'll either move or die and, really, it doesn't affect their next move at all. So I'm annoyed. It's one of those things that is absolutely impossible to change. It's certainly worth bitching about though.

In other news, a town that literally is NEVER in the news made headlines last week. And that town is my home town -- Wilmette. Some guy, who must have had some sort of personality/rage disorder, pulled up outside a restaurant in downtown Wilmette. (Yes, there is a downtown Wilmette. Don't blink or you'll miss it.) So this guy got out of his car with a shotgun and shot and killed a mother (who was also a waitress there) eating there in their outdoor section. The guy then drove away, drove up to the house in Wilmette she was renting, and shot himself with a handgun in her back yard. My main question is how did this guy got not one, but two guns? Other than that, I care not to speculate. It's just a shame. And, man, there's no crime in Wilmette. I'm sure it'll really mess with some folks, as well it should. I'm not ignorant enough to say that the folks that live there have never been exposed to violent crime. It's surprising though when something like that happens right out in the street in an area where shit like that just doesn't happen. Though I must say, it's a bit absurd that this story is still being covered regularly even though no new information has been released. It's been a weird week/weekend. Here's hoping things calm down.

Posted by ben at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)


June 12, 2005

zen and the art of ellipticaling

This post was started last week, but was lost in the shuffle at the end of finals week. Then my brain exploded and I had to put it back together over the weekend so that I could go back to class Monday morning. That and my little sister graduated from high school. I say my "little" sister as if I have more than one, which I don't. The thing is, she's the youngest in the family, so to have her graduate from high school really doesn't leave many major events between now and the time that she doesn't have to pay the "minors fee" for rental cars that so irked me a few weeks back.

Anyways, I was on the elliptical machine the other day in need of something else to do. Spending 30 minutes on that machine has become a regular part of my routine over the past few months. I do it three days each week, which is significantly more than the no-times-a-week rate that I maintained with diligence for a while. So I was on the elliptical machine become increasingly bored with the 'workout' playlist on my iPod. I decided to start playing games with my brain to pass the time. What I did was I started closing my eyes while I was running on the machine. It was quite a bizarre feeling at first. I felt a little light-headed and dizzy, which I think was due to the fact that I lost the frame of reference my brain had been using to keep me from falling off the thing. This was an interesting development. How necessary is vision for balance? Blind folks don't generally up-and fall over for no reason. So I figure balance can be learned. And once balance is learned without vision, would that make the workout easier?

I tried keeping my eyes closed for 10-15 seconds at a time. That's about the longest I could keep them closed without becoming convinced that I was gonna fall. Right after I opened my eyes, I felt like I was in perfect balance and the workout actually felt a bit more natural. I've been increasing the length of time that I keep them closed each time that I'm on the machine. My ultimate goal is to be able to close my eyes while on the machine and not feel like I'm either going to faint or fall off. I'm thinking this might internalize my overall balance. It's all very zen. Like drawing a bow and arrow without actually pulling on it back. Maybe I can run (or elliptical) without concentrating on it or thinking about it. Interesting...

Posted by ben at 9:09 PM | Comments (2)


June 7, 2005

the existence of nothing and water's wetness

A great debate has resurfaced. Is water wet? I had this debate several times during college and a few times since. I'm not sure if there can be a short answer to such a question. The knee-jerk response is clearly "yes". I'm not so sure though.

For water to be wet, it would have to be wet regardless of whether it was touched. This aspect of the issue can't really be addressed, I don't think. Is there any way to tell if something is wet without touching it?

Having recently conducted a highly scientific experiment in the confines of my kitchen, I can say with some certainty that even if you touch water, it isn't wet. Water alone does not move -- it has to be moved. Therefore, to see if water is wet, I filled a glass, let it sit until it was still, then stuck my finger in it. I left my finger in without moving it, which is really key to the whole thing. Now, with my motionless finger in the motionless water, all the variables of motion have been removed. And the water isn't wet. It's just cold.

When I take my finger out of the glass, it definitely feels wet. But that didn't happen until I moved my finger. Therefore, I would have to say that water is not wet, but movement makes it feel that way. On another level, I'd have to say that the feeling of wetness is very much a value judgment that's placed on the water. It has properties that we call wet, but that's not really the water's fault. And everyone has a different tolerance for wetness. This, I think, is why some people love running around in the rain while others need an umbrella if it's foggy outside. So, my short answer would have to agree with Steve's. Water is not wet.

Now, this whole existence of nothing debate is extraordinarily interesting. I have to admit I haven't really given it enough thought to put forth an opinion on the issue. My instinctive reaction is to say that anything that can be defined is something, even if that something is nothing. Look at the whole debate over black holes. Everyone thought that those were big pits of nothingness, but it turns out they're just a whole bunch of gravity all around one little something. So nothing turned out to be something. Can nothing be holding a place for something? If so, wouldn't that make nothing something? Like I said, I'm not sure quite yet, but my gut says that nothing has to be something since it can be defined. But hey, my gut was wrong about water.

Posted by ben at 1:12 PM | Comments (0)


June 6, 2005

there's no week like finals week

For four years, finals weeks were a way of life. Every 9-10 weeks, I manned up and shoveled through a week of inevitable, overly stressful, and overly emphasized final exams. Then I took a year off from school, and I must say, it's really a treat not to have to deal with silly exams every two-and-a-half months. But alas, in what must be described in the "all good things to those who wait" category, I'm back in the finals saddle again.

Very few things stunt personal and academic development quite like finals week. I would be lying through my teeth if I said that I learn anything academic during finals week.

As an undergraduate, I would memorize and memorize for hours. A lot of really bad history teachers made me memorize all sorts of dates that I have since forgotten. The good teachers taught me the historical trends. Those don't have to be memorized -- they have to be understood. I'm still hanging on to those, and I'll be damned if I'm able to forget them.

When I first started grad school, I approached finals the same way I had approached them in the past. I wouldn't say that I knew more than I needed to for the tests that first quarter. But I would say that I over-studied. I was the master of random facts that lacked a general cohesion that's really necessary if anything's going to make any sense. I haven't studied like that since.

Throughout this one and only year of graduate school that I will take in my life, I have been learning the material as it's taught. So final exams are more of a review than a time by which I have to memorize the material. This is why I feel that my personal and academic growth are stunted for this week. I will not learn anything new academically. Nor will I grow personally. What I mean by this is that between now and Friday morning I will figure out roughly 50 different ways to avoid doing the work that needs to be done.

Make no mistake, as our beloved president would say, I will get it done. And I'll get it done well. But between the time I start and the time I get it done, anything goes. And very little of that anything will be academic. Talk to ya soon.

Posted by ben at 10:32 AM | Comments (1)


June 5, 2005

apologies for the lack of regularity

Sorry for the absence. It takes me a while to insert activities into my regular routines. Also, I don't know if any of you use this Movable Type platform, but it's so easy to mess around with. Every time I sign in to write something, I end up playing around with the layout of this web page in the HTML code. It's way fun. I used to wonder how people can stare at computer screens for their entire lives reading things that aren't even letters, but combinations of letters and symbols that are seemingly meaningless. Now, I can totally understand why people would want to spend their lives working with computer code. It's like learning another language, only the results can be seen almost immediately (on a good day). At least that appears to be true on the most basic code-writing stuff. Long story short, it's fun and distracting and tends to keep me away from the "New Entry" page. I'm working on my self-control.

Posted by ben at 8:52 PM | Comments (0)