Allegory

I want to write a book, or maybe a movie. The plot would begin with a student, sitting dominantly in the center of his class, sitting back, asking incisive questions, challenging a professor, staying after to discuss theory with the latter as though an equal in some scientific brotherhood. This student would be the apotheosis of success, realizing the intellectual American dream. The film would survey his success and sample his accolades, as an emperor casts his eyes to the corners of his empire. Then, the audience would witness the footings of the student's world begin to crumble. Through no apparent fault of his own, he is beset by failure after failure. No exaggeration would be spared, and no blame layed on the protagonist. His leg would be broken falling on ice. A professor would inexplicably reject his reasonings and leave him with a "D". His law schools would reject him, one by one. His girlfriend would leave him for a frat boy, and one of his friends would die in a car accident. All those around would stare in wonder at the collapse, comforting him platonically and offering helpful cliches. Classmates would meet him in the vaulted halls of his august Ivy League university, and wonder upon hearing his news, "How could they turn you down?" He replies, "I don't know; I was 18th in my class, had great references and my father is an alumn." "If you can't get in, who can?"

Despite the mishaps around him, he would not overreact. He would react, yes - a scene or two of shock, slight anger, and a sense of waiting for the axe to fall would pervade the second half. Then, he would have an epiphany. Whether it's in a stained-glass-windowed church or talking to a homeless man on the street, it wouldn't matter. He would realize the meaninglessness of his dreams, and decide to dedicate his life and considerable talents, to serving. He would understand that he was no equal of his professors and bosses, and be willing to start from the bottom. His life has been stripped of everything he ever had, he tells his grandfather, and what he was left with was meaning and purpose.

Just as audiences began to taste the saccharine of a sappy ending, the unexpected happens. And no, I don't mean that he reunites with his girlfriend, gets into Georgetown Law, and saves a drowning dog. No, he would begin to get more thin envelopes - one from Americorps, one from CARE International, one from City Year, one from Feed The Children. They don't have room for another staff member, not even a volunteer. His life has been stripped of everything he ever had, he tells his grandfather, including meaning and purpose.

And no-one - not the grandfather, not the prof he challenged, not his doughty roommate - no-one has an explanation.

The movie does not end so much as it just stops.

Going Away

This blog is gonna get worse before it gets better. I'm heading off to D.C. for the National Model Arab League, where I'll be chairing the Palestinian Affairs committee. So no blogging until Monday or later. That's only slightly worse than I've been doing of late in terms of blogging, so I'm sure y'all will barely notice.

Now available!

The Peace Corps has revamped its website, including making the material that I wrote more available. Check out the stories of Mervyn and Joyce Alphonso (I researched and wrote) and Angie Fujiyoka, which was written by my fellow interns, and I helped edit and stuff.

My Kinda Night

Had an excellent, regretless evening doing things *I* enjoy doing. Started at Agape's game night with a tight game of "Settlers of Catan" in which I eeked out a victory over Amy and Lindsay. After that ended, a bunch of us waffled for 20 minutes trying to decide what to do. Nobody's apartment was available, so finally I suggested we just go outside. Someone else extended that to walking, and so I (being the Bostonian) led Meagan, Chris, Kate, Seth, Mark and Sarah on a walk that went longer than any of us bargained for. We started at NU, went through the nicer part of the South End, across Copley Square, through the Back Bay, over Beacon Hill, through the new West End (stopped for pizza), down to North Station, where we caught the last Orange Line train back to campus. Spent little money, got lots of exercise, and had lots of conversation. That's my kind of night.

20 Bucks

A middle-schooler agreed to kill himself for 20 bucks. Don't ask me what he planned to do with the 20 bucks in heaven. In hell, I think they still have those old-fashioned cigarette vending machines, so 20 bucks would come in handy. (OK, bad joke). Anyway, like most 12-year-olds, this one was a failure, and he was caught by the IDF before he blew up. They used a remote-control robot to take the explosive belt off of the kid (how cool is that?!) and held him for questioning.

Update

I figured I should update my blog.

Closed Door

I will not be attending graduate school next year. I got the last two decisions - Brown and NYU, both of whom turned me down.

I'm not bitter, but I'm a little scared. Currently, I have five weeks before school ends to decide what to do next, and I'm really not sure where God will lead me, but I have no recourse but to trust that He will.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Sucks to B Me

Boston University regrets to inform me that I was not accepted to their graduate program. That was my safety application. Ouch.

People Who Live In Glass Houses...

Should not throw stones. Among other things.

Should not change without a towel.
Should not burn too many candles.
Should not bother investing in a burglar alarm system.
Should not slam the door.
Should not install magnifying glasses as skylights.
Should not let their pipes freeze.
Should not place birdfeeders on their roof.
Should not run the car in the garage.
Should not leave their valuables unattended.
Should not stay indoors during a meteor shower.
Should not try to tack up a photo of their grandkids.
Should not install a brass door knocker.

A High Note

I'm ending my preparation for tomorrow's Calc test on a high note: I got a homework problem right, and I only had to look at the answer in the back of the book once. A mighty success!

I thought I was taking Calc and Lin Alg (which seems like a collection of fun math puzzles by comparison to Calc) to prepare for grad school. As grad school looks like it might not happen (50% of precincts reporting), the sense of meaningless of math (which I don't need to graduate from NU) and of school in general is tough to combat. But God showed me just now - after a day that ranks among the very worst in my life - that the real reason was for me to build character. Actually, that's a bit inaccurate. It's to tear down my character. I'm accustomed to success, and you don't realize when you are successful and happy that your happiness is dependent on your success. The book of Job talks about a man who had to reevaluate whether his faith in God was based in God's character or in his own material wellbeing. My experience echoes that in some regards - God is humbling me and stripping me of things I cling to for support and comfort - success (both on a long term and a math-homework scale), plans, hopes. I've seen a lot less of those recently, right when the world is supposed to be unfolding before me.

Unlike Job, my reaction hasn't been to say, "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord". It's more along the lines of getting wicked pissy, railing against my profs, being even more high-strung than normal, looking for escape mechanisms (SimCity4...I love that game), and becoming depressed. I could use a lot of things - self-control, perspective, responsibility, humility. The only thing I think I'll get any time soon is a few hours sleep before this killer test. Blech.

Evacuation Day

On the night of March 4th, 1776, General George Washington had his troops smuggle cannon onto Dorchester Heights, in modern Southie. The British attempted an assault, but were stopped by Boston weather much like today's. On March 17th, they abandoned the city to the colonials. To this day, Boston (and only Boston) celebrates Evacuation Day with a day off for schools and city workers, among others. It also happens to fall on St. Patricks Day, but the holiday is for the Evacuation (which the Irish aren't disinclined to cheer for).

So wear your green garb, grab a friend, and lift a Sam Adams to the end of occupation!

Not M.I.T.

I will not be attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They stayed true to nerdly form and informed me of my disselection by email, which will be followed by the traditional half-page letter. The remaining contestants on "Survivor: The Grad Schools" are Brown, New York University, and Boston University.

My Mom is getting worried. I'm getting apathetic.

Yellow Journalism

I have a policy of not linking to sycophantic, ideologically blinded, truth-deficient morons. But there are exceptions. This beautiful piece of journalism was penned by the illustrious James Carroll for the Globe. Hat tip to Momma Hill, who pointed this article out to me.

As you know, I disagreed with the war in Iraq. However, there are plenty of good reasons to denounce it, without resort to untruthfulness.

As Momma Hill (yeah, I gave her the nickname) says, Carroll is out to lunch. He writes,

"The situation hardly needs rehearsing. In Iraq, many thousands are dead, including 564 Americans. Civil war threatens. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is choked by drug-running warlords. Islamic jihadists have been empowered. The nuclear profiteering of Pakistan has been exposed but not necessarily stopped. Al Qaeda's elusiveness has reinforced its mythic malevolence."

Not a great situation, but certainly no worse than before 9/11! If anything, the Bushes have failed to change the World Order. A whole lot of scholarship came out in the early 1990's, books like "The End of History", which predicted that the end of the Cold War would mean a totally new era for the world. "The End of History" is now regarded as a joke, and all that hope and expectation has been replaced with a realization on scholars' part that the world isn't quite as different as they thought.

"Disorder spreads from Washington to Israel to Haiti to Spain."

Um, Bill Clinton was the one who messed around in Israel and Haiti.

"the Pentagon's unprecedented military dominance, the costs of which stifle the US economy, is shown to be essentially impotent"

Further fabrications. The military accounts for 10 or 15 percent of the government budget, or 3.5% of GDP. Social security is about the same size (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/tables.html) and growing much, much faster.

And you are absolutely right that the Bushes initiated neither conflict. Dubya did initiate the recent war in Iraq, but there's no doubt that the entire world wanted Saddam out of Kuwait, and Bush 41 acted well within the global attitude in responding (with others) to Saddam's aggression.

The Kerry Doctrine

My Dad emailed me an NYTimes article on the luminous Senator John F. Kerry this morning. It is illuminating... er, confusing...er, read it.

In laying out the Kerry Doctrine — that in voting on a use-of-force resolution that is not a use-of-force resolution, the opposite of the correct answer is also the correct answer — Kerry was venturing off into the realm of Post-Cartesian Multivariate Co-Directionality that would mark so many of his major foreign policy statements... The Iraq problem returned in 1998, and Kerry proved again that there is no world crisis so grave it can't be addressed with a fusillade of subordinate clauses. Teams of highly trained spelunkers have descended into the darkness of the floor speech he gave on Oct. 10, 1998, searching for meaning, though none have returned alive.

It's good to know working Americans have a voice in Washington.

Grrr

In my first class this morning, I spent an hour at the blackboard, solving a problem in front of the class, answering questions, and trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. It was interesting, sure, but it's exhausting (at 8am) and I didn't get notes on any of it. In my second class, we should have reviewed for Wednesday's test. Instead, we blazed through the formula for changing variables and its lengthy proof. This way, he can squeeze it onto the test even though we haven't done a single problem with it, except the special case of polar & cylindrical coordinates. Terry "the Locomotive" Gaffney is the only prof I've ever had who can write faster on the board than I can write in my notes, and it makes for a nightmare of a class!

Guns. Lots of Guns

Last of the quizzes. Mebbe I should make this a tradition: "Saturday Night Quizzes". Hmm.

My #1 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, Which Firearm are you?, is Alliant Techsystems OICW

Guffaw

Which Legendary Actress are you?

Guffaw.

On a more serious note, I scored just 6 out of 20 on the Economist's city quiz.

SalimKalabim Black Moore Agility 6 | Strength 10 | Stamina 9 Battle Rating 25 Origins SalimKalabim was purchased at a local Pet Store Can your fishy beat SalimKalabim ?

With Friends Like These

Went to see the deciding BU-BC hockey game in the first round of the Hockey East tournament. Eighth-seed BU (out of nine teams; only my poor old NU didn't make the grade) upset highly favored BC in a 4-2 blowout. I watched the game with some interesting friends...

Ali Baba: "I am a pimp".
Betsy: "I think we enjoy watching violence because we were created to war against the enemy."
Parker: "BU Hockey may not suck, but it will always suck to BU"
Dubya: "I am white trash."

Grandchildren

It was bound to happen sometime. Just so happens it was at the Honors Banquet, where a lot of other NU students and I received awards, yours truly to the tune of $800. I was introducing my academic self to the other bored people at our table, and mentioned that if accepted to grad school, I'd be in for 5 years. The following ensued:

Mom: What? You never told me it was 5 years! When was somebody going to tell me that it was 5 years?
Me: Oh, sorry.
Mom: I want grandchildren, not Ph.D.'s!
Dad: Oh, he's not that old.
Mom: And Pete, how old were you when we got married?
Dad: 23.
Mom: Hmph. I want grandchildren.

Not that painful, but I hope the chorus doesn't get louder.

Courage: Pass It On

Props to Bryce Florie. He's a real man, and he's the kind of guy you want to see succeed wherever he plays, currently with the Marlins if he can make the cut. He was a middle reliever for the Sox in 2000 when a New York Yankee smashed a line drive into Florie's cheekbone.

The ball struck Florie's head with such force that it shot toward third base, and the fielder's throw was made in time to retire Thompson at first. The scorer credited Florie with an assist.

If steroids and Gotham are the dark side of baseball, Florie is the light side, and InstantReplay is rooting for him to make it back to the bigs full-time this year.

NPR

My father was on the local NPR broadcast yesterday. You can hear it online (it's about 5 minutes long), and talks about health-conscious urban development in Boston. Professor Furth is working on a project that I did a lot of research in the fall (I don't know how much my work and contacts were an inspiration to him or if he'd already been planning this): getting bike-friendly access in Boston in the wake of the Big Dig. Take a quick listen - it's fun!

In Other News...

OK, I need to go to bed, but IreneQ's post on Malaysian politics is a real eyeopener. She writes, "Whatever you Americans want to say about Bush, at least he never claimed that those who don't vote for him would be sentenced to eternal damnation."

And she quotes, "PAS (the opposition Islamic party) has maintained that voters who back the party will have a passage to heaven while those who reject it will go to hell, its spiritual adviser Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat said. "The heaven and hell issue is nothing new. It is already stated in the Quran that those who rally behind Islam are also those who want to live under divine laws laid down by Allah"." How's that for hard-to-believe campaign promises?

However, these Islamists can be observant at times (at least, if you take them out of context). For instance Mr. Mat also said, "women are trouble". I couldn't agree more.

Packing for Heaven

I was given a map, and instructed to hike from base camp to the summit, where I would find the rest of my team waiting for me. Besides the map I had very little, and I set about preparing myself for the journey. A compass was a necessity, as not all the trails were marked, according to a note on the map. The inclemence of the weather prompted me to head down to REI and pick up a few more staples: lightweight poncho, non-cotton socks, and a wide-brim hat (which looks really cool, I must admit). To top it off, I threw a fleece vest and my double-layer parka in my bag; nothing New England has to offer could beat me now. The scale was not noted on the map, I recalled (by now the map is in the bottom of my bag, and I'd rather not fish for it to verify), so really didn't know how long to expect. It couldn't be more than a day though, so I didn't need sleeping gear, but I might well need to eat a full meal on the trail. I raided the kitchen while my Mom was out: trail mix, dried fruit, crackers, a can of tuna, granola bars, two water bottles and a banana (for potassium on the drive over). Now, I'm not superstitious about most things (baseball and theatre are exceptions, and I do that just for fun), but I like to do things right. It's not that I've ever needed my jackknife on a hike, but I sure don't need it other times. Besides, it kills two birds with one stone. I get to "Be Prepared" like any good ex-scout, and I get to tap into the sentimentality of the outdoors: my friend Adam and I traded leather jackknife cases when he moved away 10 years ago. My knife is always handy in its case on my belt, and it's a comfort to know it's there. I wish I had a similar way to keep track of maps - I'm still working on that. Lastly, boots are key; I wouldn't dream of hiking in anything but my Filene's Basemant Timberland's with the unmatching laces. When I walked around England and Wales this summer, I think that was in fact the only pair of shoes I brought, and I wore them every day in Rwanda too. Now my packing is complete, if only I could find that stupid map! I always forget where I put things... anyway, I can hike without a map, right? After all, I'm well equipped.

Let this not be you, rather embody Philippians 3:12-14.

It's a Bird Eat Bird World

This is priceless:

Birdwatchers from all over Britain who gathered in Grimsby to catch sight of a rare American robin were horrified to see her eaten by a passing sparrowhawk. They were still setting up their cameras when the predator swooped down from a row of drab factories and warehouses on an industrial estate. The young bird, from the southern US, "didn't really live to enjoy her moment of fame," a twitcher told the Guardian. The robin's vivid red breast made her an obvious candidate for a lunch date. "It was a terrible moment," Graham Appleton, of the British Trust for Ornithology, which had spread news of the bird's arrival, told the newspaper.

Times Incites Brouhaha Among Loyal Readers

The liberals who are accustomed to getting their daily dose of left-wing politicultural pap from the New York Times found a bug in their oatmeal this morning. I don't know if there's actually a storm in a teacup about this, but I suspect a lot of folks in Gotham swore into their coffee this morning upon reading David Brooks' opinion piece fisking psychobabble and saccharine spirituality. I, of course, thoroughly enjoyed it, and it's the Times' ability to allow only the best of conservative writing through that makes them such a serendipitous read on occassion.

In [the heaven constructed by author Mitch Albom], God and his glory are not the center of attention. It's all about you. Here, sins are not washed away. Instead, hurt is washed away. The language of good and evil is replaced by the language of trauma and recovery. There is no vice and virtue, no moral framework to locate the individual within the cosmic infinity of the universe. Instead there are just the right emotions — Do you feel good about yourself? — buttressed by an endless string of vague bromides about how special each person is, and how much we are all mystically connected in the flowing river of life... Reading "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" is a sad experience because it conjures up a mass of people who, like its hero, feel lonely and unimportant. But instead of offering them the rich moral framework of organized religion or rigorous philosophy, instead of reminding them of the tough-minded exemplars of the Bible and history, books like Albom's throw the seekers remorselessly back upon themselves.

It makes me want to read a good book, if anyone is still writing those.

Poet, Inmate

The NY Times has a fascinating piece about a death-row murderer who writes poetry. He committed an atrocious crime 26 years ago, and has been waiting through appeal after appeal to be executed. Meanwhile, he has made himself a highly-regarded poet. "I'd have to say that anyone who has done 10 really glorious poems, and he's approaching that number, is a serious member of the inner sanctum," said Stuart Friebert, a former editor of Field.

Booker's poetry reprinted in the article didn't strike deep chords for me, but it is fascinating to see the intellectualist worldview break down. That worldview holds that evil is really ignorance, and that knowledge will enlighten one. Booker's case breaks this down; he has the anger and vitrolity of a street fighter, but the vocabulary and expressiveness of an English professor. His own tongue-in-cheek explanations belie an understanding on his part that his work cannot redeem or save him:

At times he can be unnervingly self-aware. "I may be paranoid," he said. "That would take somebody else to diagnose, but if I am, it has served me well in here"... "When I got here," he said, "I wasn't going to let my mind just ferment. I started thinking that maybe everything I'd read hadn't done me any good, and I almost convinced myself that what I'd read had got me into prison, that it was too informative about life, that it answered too many questions for a young guy. You know, translations of Baudelaire, William Burroughs. You're not supposed to be reading `Naked Lunch' at age 11, `Doors of Perception,' by Huxley. That had me in the kitchen cabinets trying to get off on nutmeg... When I got to death row, I couldn't blame it on society. I knew I'd put myself in prison. But if this was the end of my life, I wasn't going to sit in a cell and watch TV or crane my neck trying to look out the window at the other wing of the prison."

Just Say No To Chops

The number of graduate schools who have rejected me is poised to overtake the number of girls! Columbia became the second school to send me a thin envelope with a respectfully worded rejection of my application to study for a Ph.D. in Economics there. Most of them are due to be sent out by the 15th; it's actually quite encouraging that four are still out there, since it means I'm still in the running (or that they are slow and lazy).

Back From Spring Break

I was outside in warm weather, walking down a pleasant road, the hand of a beautiful Ethiopian girl interlocked with mine. We waved at friends, and chatted. The warmth of her hand, the warmth of the sun, and the warmth of my heart all blended in a springtime harmony.

And then my alarm clock went off. I reached sleepily for the "snooze" button to stop the offending and eminently unwarm siren. I couldn't remember where I was. All week I had woken up on a sofabed in a sunlit room in Florida. Now it was dark and cold and it was 6:25a.m. I couldn't remember where I was, but I wanted to go back to my Ethiopian princess. I lay down and decided to doze until the alarm went off again, by which time I should have remembered where I was.

I did, and I got out of bed. I limped around the house trying to get ready for 14 hours worth of class, work, and meetings. When fed, washed and clothed (in the opposite order), I trotted painfully downstairs on sore limbs from a week of workout and a demanding frisbee game last night. I grabbed my bike, geared up, and then wrestled the frozen door open to get out into the wet, melting snow. After getting my butt soaked by fenderless-bike-splatter, I arrived 10 minutes late for prayer. No one was here. Again. I prayed and thought alone for 20 minutes, then walked off to class. My linear algebra exam was a killer. How do you multiply a 2x2 matrix with a vector in R3??? How do you find the transpose of a 2x3 matrix??? I knew the stuff we were being tested on, but not the tools I needed to do transposes and vector-matrix multiplication. Grrrr. Everyone looked haggard and pissed and not warm at all when we traipsed out at 9:00.

Remind me again why I wake up in the morning?

What is the difference between a duck?

I'm going off to Florida tomorrow to chill with Seth and his grandparents. Good times and good weather ahead! Look out for ducks flying north, pilot! Hopefully catch a Sox game or two at Fort Myers. By the way, the answer to the title riddle is: One leg is the same.

(c.f.: Duck-bar jokes; Frank Answers)
(Further note: "Protolanphism" does not exist)