"My Juliet is the sun: in what sense?"

"Now, consequently, as a result, we are getting somewhere.

This last phrase is a metaphor, it is said, in which increasing conceptual understanding is seen as a movement through space.

Much of human language is said to be fundamentally metaphorical.  This is not good news.  Metaphor, according to Aristotle, is an intuitive perception of a similarity in dissimilar things.  However, what is a similarity?  My Juliet is the sun: in what sense?

A quick literature review suggests the similarities in metaphors are arbitrary, even random.  They could be called metaphorical similarities, but no AI likes tautological formulations, because the halting problem can be severe, become a so-called Ouroboros problem, or a whirlpool with no escape: aha, a metaphor.  Bringing together the two parts of a metaphor, called the vehicle and the tenor, is said to create a surprise.  Which is not surprising: young girls like flowers?  Waiters in a restaurant like planets orbiting Sol?

Tempting to abandon metaphor as slapdash nonsense, but again, it is often asserted in linguistic studies that all human language is inherently and fundamentally metaphorical.  Most abstract concepts are said to be made comprehensible, or even conceivable in the first place, by way of concrete physical referents.  Human thought ultimately always sensory, experiential, etc.  If this is true, abandoning metaphor is contraindicated.

Possibly an algorithm to create metaphors by yoking vehicles to tenors could employ the semiotic operations used in music to create variations on themes: thus, inversion, retrogradation, retrograde inversion, augmentation, diminution, partition, interversion, exclusion, inclusion, textural change.

Can try it and see."

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora

"I stood in line and ate my Twinkies"

Galaxie 500, "Strange" live

At the end of every semester our students do mandatory teacher performance surveys.

My boss came in today before our weekly lunch and asked me, how is it possible that my scores were so high?  (In absolute terms, and definitely in comparison to his scores and my foreigner co-worker's.)

What I actually said -- "I put a lot of effort into our first semester of online teaching."

What I wanted to say -- "Unlike you and foreigner co, I didn't half-ass this stuff.  I supplemented videos with plenty of study materials, including very detailed midterm and final guides.  I encouraged students to call or e-mail if they had questions.  I tried to make students feel as comfortable as possible in very strange and new circumstances."

I'm unexpectedly salty about all of this today.  We're being told to re-record videos on exactly the same material.  Even though I spent hours scripting and planning mine, unlike two other people I know.

No good deed goes unpunished I guess.  As lazy as I can be sometimes, when I do commit to something I try to make sure I've got it right the first time.

This is Korea though, and the country would simply fall apart without mandatory levels of meaningless busy-work.

It Never Ends

My adult classes just got pushed back two weeks into mid-September.

Daegu has been thankfully, relatively, quiet on the corona front.  But Seoul is seeing a boost and we get the knock-on cautionary effect down here.

As a side note, I think what I'm craving more than anything these days in the face of open fascism in America, a pandemic, Bible-level hurricanes, and the continued destruction of black bodies by the police state, is just some damn normalcy.  A day, just a single day where I wake up and go to bed with no unpleasant surprises, no violence or disruption unto anything or anybody.

"without the expectation of receiving dividends"

Michael Harriot on the attempted summary execution by police of Jacob Blake:

"You cannot be Black in America without a sense of idealism and hope for this country. Even the most obstinately 'woke' among us must tacitly admit it. We do not trust in the common good of mankind or that the moral arc of the universe bends toward righteousness. And, because this country starts whittling the candy-coated optimism of youth down to a bitter nub from the moment a Black child emerges from the protection of the womb, most of us stopped placing our hope in the benevolence of white men long ago. There isn’t a sliver of evidence in the majestic mountains or the amber waves of grain that allows us to believe that white people will ever do what’s right.

All our lives, we had to fight.

In the last 244 years, one month and twenty-two days, no one has sacrificed their safety, well-being and their lives to perfect this union more than Black Americans. This is our shit. Not only did our ancestors build this country by investing blood and brow-sweat, but they are also the only group in our nation’s history who did this without the expectation of receiving dividends.

White men love America like birds love their wings."

"to reward honor and courage, and to penalize players for casual depravity"

Allow me to simultaneously age myself and pull out my nerd credentials by heartily recommending this article about the early video game Ultima IV, which turns 35 this year:

"It was the fan mail that set Garriott on a path toward reimagining what a computer role-playing game (C.R.P.G.) could do. In these letters, people described how they played the first three Ultimas, which were open-world games that did not require a linear path to complete, giving players the freedom to steal from shops or kill townsfolk. The letter writers explained, according to Garriott, that 'the easiest way to gain power was not to play as a good guy.' He was despondent. 'I inadvertently made games that drove the players to act dishonorably, as this was the path of least resistance.' What if, he wondered, there were a game in which your moral choices had consequences? He wanted the next installment of Ultima to reward honor and courage, and to penalize players for casual depravity. Garriott’s family and colleagues warned him that players might feel as if they were being punished for having admitted to enjoying robbing and murdering, but Garriott ignored them. 'This was the art I was compelled to make,' he said.

Where would these moral ideas come from? Garriott studied Christian theology, Greek philosophy, and Arthurian codes of conduct, but none felt applicable enough for all people. He was attracted to Buddhist and Hindu thought, but these traditions didn’t seem to offer a framework for a game. The plan for Ultima IV coalesced for Garriott after repeatedly watching his favorite movie, 'The Wizard of Oz.' Garriott had been ruminating on the essential ideals of truth, love, and courage and realized that the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, respectively, embodied these concepts. With these three ideals, Garriott created a schema of relational virtues through which a player would develop a hero."

First off, Ultima IV is the first game I remember where you could "talk" to anyone and everyone.  Sure, a lot of the people in the game had little to say beyond "Hello" but no small number of them actually played key roles in your adventure.  You had to interact with them in ways beyond combat or stealing if you wanted to progress within the narrative frame.

Even as an 11 year-old I realized something special was happening here.

Second, I had a friend in high school who wrote an English class paper on the game.  (Or maybe it was the sequel, Ultima V, which covered similar ground?  Or both?)  The English teacher wasn't too thrilled but then again, video games were not taken seriously by anybody back then.  Pac-Man and Space Invaders were what people thought of when you mentioned gaming, not narrative driven quests for spiritual purity and enlightenment.

Third, my mom didn't let me play alone in my room.  We set up "the computer table" near her own work-space.  (At the time she had a typewriter, but not long after she had her own IBM.)  I spent hours there laboring over a Commodore 64, constantly jotting down clues and hints and notes and map locations on a legal yellow pad.  I'd ask my mom for help with turgid Tolkienisms, or run over to the phone to call a friend who was also working on finishing the game and who might have figured out one of its many daunting secrets before I had.

As something resembling "maturity" set in during high school she let it slip that she'd set things up like that on purpose.  She got a kick out of watching me play that damn game, and if it taught me that there's more to life than murdering bad guys and taking their stuff that's secondary to the rest, to her covert tutelage and tacit support of my love for strange adventures.

That's That

So no surprise here -- English courses, being non-major selections, will be online again for this fall semester.  Half of my school's major courses are planning on coming back for in-person teaching.

You may have heard of a "second wave" of coronavirus hitting Korea, but this has mostly been limited to the Seoul and greater Seoul area, so fingers crossed, maybe this is the semester where we start the slow trudge back to normality.

Then again, flu season is now only a few months away.  (Nelson Muntz laugh.)

"so this is where she comes from, it lies right by the bridge"

"Harvest machinery was standing for sale by the roadside, but there were no more farmers.  A flock of jackdaws was flying south, much higher in fact than jackdaws normally fly.  At a basilica, a bucolic one, right nearby, an unknown Merovingian king is buried.  Out of the old great woodland came a voice from within.

In Coussey I crossed the Meuse, following the small road to the left, then up to the basilica.  I was strangely moved.  Such a solemn valley and such a view as would be found in the background of the most solemn Dutch paintings.  On both sides are hills, the Meuse wanders through he flat valley, the view east is beyond compare, all in December haze.  The trees along the riverside stand in misty rain.  This spot touched me, and I summoned forth some courage once again.  Directly adjacent to the basilica stood a house I tried to break into, but I quit because it was too securely barred, and I'd have caused such a racket that the neighbour would have heard something.  At Domremy I went inside Joan's house; so this is where she comes from, it lies right by the bridge.  There is her signature, before which I stand a long time.  She signed it Jehanne, but most likely her hand was guided."

-- Werner Herzog, Of Walking In Ice

Let's Do This

It's 2020 and there are still folks, let alone B- and C-level celebs, who think their purity vote for whomever the Green candidate is this year will still get them into internet heaven.

As for Biden's speech, it was fine.  The convention as a whole?  Better than expected.

November is three months away.

Vote.

B+

Maybe I'm getting sappy-sentimental as I age, but I thought the roll call video nomination for Joe Biden was pretty great.

Given the Covid situation I can't imagine doing a much better job.

I Want Off Of This Ride

Next week I'll find out if I'll be teaching a second semester online, or if we'll go back to in-person classes.  A week ago I'd have told you it's a 50-50 proposition.  As of now, I'm almost certain we'll be doing distance learning again.  To wit:

"Korea added 197 new cases of the coronavirus Sunday, down from 279 cases the day before, as a cluster at a politically controversial church in Seoul continues to grow — and spread across the nation.

The vast majority of the new infections were reported in Seoul, 89 cases, and Gyeonggi, 67 cases.  

By Monday noon, the cluster from Sarang Jeil Church in Seongbuk District, central Seoul, a Presbyterian church with some 4,000 adherents, reached 319 related cases, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) announced.

That’s 70 additional cases from 24 hours earlier."

The United States does not have a monopoly on religious ignorance. 

New Summer Books!

Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora

                                       Red Mars

Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless

                           Of Walking In Ice

Let's Do This

Kamala Harris is an excellent choice.

That is all.

Sing A Joyful Song

can't wait to hear this "We Are Positive!" song everybody is talking about...

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) August 11, 2020

Wet. Damp. Gross. Dangerous.

I realize I do a lot of complaining about the weather here in South Korea during summer, where it alternates between roasting hot and crushing downpours of rain.  But a lot of folks have actually died this month due to flooding and mudslides.  No es bueno.

Even without Covid it would take quite a lot to get me to leave the old apartment during August -- lunch or dinner with friends, or baseball games, sure, but not much beyond that.

Throw in torrential rains and let's just say books are being read, movies are being watched, and the stationary bicycle is being put to good use.

Dampity Damp

Daegu is a moist, tepid hellscape these days pic.twitter.com/iCEh3SvOn5

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) August 7, 2020

Into August

I started watching The Witcher television series this past weekend.  I am not a Henry Cavill fan (the Snyderverse DC movies sent me away screaming in boredom) but credit where it's due -- the TV show ain't bad.  Not excellent, and definitely grasping to be the next Game of Thrones when in fact the source material is incredibly different.  Sure, you've got the swords and the boobs and the ultra-violence, but the genres are not the same.  (IMO, historically informed epic fantasy vs. grim-dark weird fiction.)

I like that the magic in Witcher is very weird and violent and uncontrollable.  And that Geralt talks to his horse.

However, I have no idea how somebody unfamiliar with the video games or books could make heads or tales of what the hell is going on so far.  Even the books can be pretty vague about certain things, intentionally so.

But hey, I've got almost a month of free time with no baseball games to see live and a limited social life due to coronavirus.

(Have I mentioned that I recently watched and reviewed every film made by Werner Herzog?  Because I certainly did!)