Lest you think these words are vented into the void, let me assure you that my site is on its way to fame and notoriety, having been linked from the mother of all weblogs: negative273.com.
How began my humble blog's journey to such a high place, blessed among blogs to be thus linked?
It began with Chris Hill's weblog, upon which I stumbled after reading Chris's "away" message.
but that will be the subject of a subsequent post. The link from Chris's message took me to my first blog, and that blog led to another blog, and so on. My appetite for blogs became unbounded.
"Away" messages are the next best thing to not being there
And then michael suggested that my rambings might be welcome in their blog space. I am not worthy; I am not worthy.
And now, my humble site is "all growed up" and linked by the bug (oops, I meant "big") guys. I don't know what to say. I only hope that I bring honor, glory, and no banner ads to negative273.com.
When my children enter any kind of a "who goes first" kind of argument, we always turn to randomness and a rousing round of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" to adjudicate the dispute. We used to flip a coin, but my oldest child, Jessica, didn't believe it was fair. So I turned to a mechanism in which I could be almost totally absent, and they duke it out for themselves.
For some reason, which only became clear to me this evening, I have been thinking exessively---perhaps obsessively---about Rock, Paper, Scissors over the past few days.
I plan a plethora of posts on this subject, but I'll start with the reference I obtained from Mike Henrichs's "away" message in which Bart Simpson reveals his winning logic:
Bart: Good ole rock. Nuthin beats rock.
It seems obvious, doesn't it? Rock can certainly grind scissors into oblivion (so Rock wins); Rock against rock is a tie (nuthin so far beats good ole Rock); but then there's the problematic "Paper".
For some reason, our ancestors held that Paper beats Rock, but why is this so?
- Paper covers Rock OK, but it seems to me this situation won't last all that long. The slightest breeze will topple Paper's edge over Rock, and where does that leave us?
- Paper is light, and can therefore dodge and weave its way out of Rock's path of destruction and mayhem, so says
this site (check it out; it is really funny).
I find myself siding with Bart on this issue, and claim that Rock should be declared supreme, with all prior contests reevaluated. Working as I do for the ETS I realize the expense of rescoring all the Rock, Paper, Scissors contests, but what price do we place on justice?
I plan some more seroius and geeky posts on this subject next, but I'll tease you with my epiphany of this evening: Rock, Paper, Scissors would make a great CS 102 lab.
Harold Robbins, Ted Geisel (a/k/a Dr. Seuss), L. Ron Hubbard --- what do these three authors have in common? Although each of them is ostensibly dead, they continue to publish prodigiously.
How do they manage to do this?
Maybe there is more to Dianetics and Scientology than meet the eye.
One site for L. Ron Hubbard says:
For all the name L. Ron Hubbard represents as the founder of Dianetics and Scientology, let us never lose sight of the man as an author - specifically, among the world’s most enduring and widely read authors of popular fiction, with international sales approaching forty million and a body of work spanning fifty years
It's the enduring part that is most impressive. Professors are subject to the imperative: Publish or Perish. And here we have three authors who have perished but continue to publish just the same.
One method for achieving perpetuity of the pen appears to involve leaving behind a grieving but greedy spouse, who could personally oversee the publication of the author's works, some of which were never meant to see the light of day.
For example, Dr. Seuss appears to have died in 1991 with a list of publications whose cardinality could easily earn him a position at most universities. And yet, to assure her husband's position in the Celestial University, Audrey Geisel has insisted on publishing works such as Daisy-Head Maizy (published in 1995) and The Cat in The Hat Songbook (published in 1993), all with her husband's sillent assent. Such love and devotion is rare indeed.
In L. Ron Hubbard's case, death appears only to have steeled his resolve to publish. He was pronounced deceased in 1986, and yet continues to publish both fiction (as recently as 1994) and, of course, works on Dianetics and Scientology. One such work is the subject of a court case in the U.K. I wonder if Hubbard's defense concerning the work rests on the fact that he was unaware of the work's publication, owing to the fact that he was dead at the time?
Robbins, Geisel, Hubbard---these authors deserve our admirations (and this professor's envy) at their ability to transcend the limitations of their earthly bodies and publish beyond the grave.
I would include interview material with these noted authors, but each appeared to be unavailable for comment.
Did I mention I am an academic? Did I indicate I would try to hide that? Well I will shortly, but meanwhile you (whoever "you" are) might find this amusing.
One thing we academics take almost daily is judgement by our peers, colleagues, students, editors, funders, dept chairs, deans---it never ends and it is an eternal fount of joy and redemption.
One venue for judgement is the "course evaluation" form that is filled out by students at the end of each semester. Now we take these comments seriously.
How seriously, you ask?
Two years ago, my CS 101 students wrote "Nice Sweaters" appended with a happy face. Because I am color-coordination-impaired (a condition that will gain official recognition someday) and because I loathe shopping (even more than my wife does), one student took pity on me when I related this comment to him and agreed to go shopping with me, and I bought some new clothes. If that's not taking course evaluation comments serously, then maybe they should do away with the evaluations.
I just took possession of my CS 431 evaluations, and below are exceprts that I found worthy of publication, at least in Minutia Press. My comments are bracketed.
- Subtle geek hunor ... funny stuff [who said compilers are boring?]
- David Warner and Chris Hill rock [Chris does play in a band; I'm not sure about David.]
- Never read it [when asked about the textbook -- is this imperative?]
- Fun with compilers [when asked to describe the course]
- If you like logical things you would like this course
- You have never stuttetered [sic] [when asked what was liked most about this course and professor]
- I cannot recommend this course too highly [ok, that is from a previous semester, but I really like the ambiguity]
Most of the comments were very kind. Modesty prohibits posting those, but I was glad to see absolutely no complaints about my sweaters.
Though responses to my web log have not been forthcoming, I anticipate the question of the origins of the name of this blog. Although I will try my best to hide this fact henceforth, I am an academic; or, at least I find myself currently in academic position in the guise of a Professor of Computer Science (and Engineering it seems). We academicians are supposed to publish or perish, but there is incontrovertible evidence that even those who do publish manage to perish eventually. There are some exceptions, and I intend to post about those who perish and still manage to publish---a neat feat if you can do it.
Long ago, when I had more free time (that is to say, before I became a professor), I read books. In my seminal post, I gave the hint concerning Eco's book Foucault's Pendulum. Therein one finds mention of two academic presses. One press is for interesting articles of scholarly merit. The other press is for authors who have trouble publishing their work. You guessed it, the name of the lesser press is "Minutia Press". For a fee, any author can publish in Minutia Press. The resulting journals and books, which do not sell, are then sold back to the author so the author can avoid the embarassment of having his or her works junked by the publisher.
I pick this name more as a joke on myself than as any kind of evaluation of blogging in general. Having watched various parties blog with success (and I intend to link them at the top of this page once I figure out how to do that), I find there are several genres of bloggers:
- Those who pour out their hearts as they thrive and suffer through the ways of our world
- Those who pour out the lesser organs---pancreas, liver, whatever needs purging---as they mostly suffer through the ways of our world
- Those who offer amusing and inciteful commentary on the ways of our world
What form this humble blog shall take I do not know, but some linear combination of the above would not be out of the question.
If you're looking for something profound from me, you'll have to wait until I adjust to this new technology. As a dyed-in-the-font LaTeX person, I am recovering from the simple, 10-step process of preparing publications to this new and nifty weblog process. In upcoming posts, I'll reveal the thought behind the name of my site, namely "Minutia Press" but if you want an early hint, go pick up a copy of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum ; you better wear a truss as the book is heavy in more than one sense of the word.
Little did I know that Eco also wrote a treatise on the "microcomputer" which can be found here .