Chris Dwan

Tag: thoughtful

  • Grudging fan-ship

    After watching the “Demon Hand” episode of the new Terminator TV series, I am grudgingly going to admit that I’m a total fanboy. Bring unto me the next episode.

    It started off with the fact that Summer Glau rules. She’s the odd, quiet girl who knows kung fu. She’s River Tam and she’s the Terminatrix. As with Starbuck in Galactica, that’s enough to have me paying $2 a pop to download it, though not enough to order cable … the “devil’s highway” does not have an exit at my apartment.

    This episode though … it got me right between the eyes. The vindication of seeing the truth after decades of being called a liar. Revenge, a perfect right cross to the nose, after decades of waiting. The simple fact that realizing the truth of the world in all its awful glory is enough to reverse the roles of crazy and sane. The themes of “mother will always love you.”

    But finally the idea that the ultimate punishment inflicted on the human prisoners in the machine regime is to be shown machines making art beyond human art. To be brought to the realization that humans … in the very depths of our humanity … have been replaced. That the machines feel passion beyond our passion, as much as their speed and strength are beyond our strength. Perhaps that they commune with God more directly than we do.

    As long as that special and unique spark of humanity was sacred, they could keep fighting. Once they realized that a truly superior being had evolved … what else was there to do, and why?

  • Everybody else is doing it …

    If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don’t speak often, please post a comment with a memory of you and me. It can be anything you want–good or bad. When you’re finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or moritified) about what people remember about you.

  • More thoughtfulness

    A ramble about my day

  • Cold rain

    The first brutally cold, hard rain of Fall is upon us. I’m sitting in a coffee shop in central square in Boston, hoping that it stops sometime before I’m supposed to walk over to my meeting in about two hours. It makes me feel funny, watching the drenching. Watching the people scurry. Wondering if I should pack up my laptop before getting a coffee refill, only to un-pack it again. It makes me deeply, deeply happy to think of all the airborne ragweed particles getting knocked out of the air and washed down the drain. Die, bitches. Die.

    In other news, Jon Stewart had Kurt Vonnegut on his show last night:

    (roughly)

    Vonnegut: I want to say something in defense of the president. He is not the dumbest man at the White House. The Secretary of Defense is the dumbest man in the White House. He is so dumb he thought he could take over a country of 25 million people, Muslims, and their oil, with 200,000 American soldiers who didn’t even know how to say “Hello” in Arabic… And we’re supposed to be giving them democracy. Well, democracy means that after a hundred years you have to give up your slaves. And after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And during the early period all kinds of genocide and ethnic cleansing are quite all right. So that’s what we’ve got over there.

    Stewart: It’s sad to see you lose your edge.

  • Why

    Why?

  • Gardening

    Got my garden in today. Realistically, this means that it’s going to be a rough year for everything except the radishes. According to conventional wisdom, it’s *way* too early to be putting in lettuce in Minnesota, and only a little too early for the rest of it. Radishes are tough, love frosts, and will happily grow anyplace sunny with good drainage that’s less sandy than an outright beach. The brutal calculus of the impending move to Rhode Island forces my hand. If I want any sort of a crop out of plants that require 60 days before harvest, I have to start now.

    Also a bunch of yard work in support of the first impression of potential buyers of the house. It’s remarkable how much of an improvement we can make just by raking and dumping a truckload of cedar mulch on the beds. We went from being a little behind the curve to looking well manicured and ready to rock with a half day of fun in the sun and a little sweat over the edging tool. For price performance on yard tune-ups, you really can’t beat edging. Even a totally overgrown and patchy lawn with really razor crisp edges looks well cared for and downright british.

    Yard work and gardening brings back some of my very earliest memories. I remember planting onions in parallel rows with my mother, her showing my the proper spacing by measuring if out with my small hand-widths. Some of these memories are in the third person, clearly built after the fact from pictures and stories I’ve been told…but some of them I believe to be actual recollections.

    Of course, now it’s my little garden, my very own yard. My parents are angling toward retirement, and I’m the one wondering how it is that I’ve gotten so busy with a career that I have to not grow tomatoes this year. I would just abandon them to some new owner of this soil who probably won’t care. If I’m lucky, prospective buyers won’t regard the garden as an unsightly bare patch, devoid of grass. At best, it’ll be a selling point that there is lots of space to park cars during the state fair.

    I feel a good rant about the fundamental transience of all human activity coming on, so I should probably go. Besides, It’s time to pack more of my life into boxes.

    Still need a job. 🙂

  • Metaphor

    I’ve decided that most of the great teachers were *not* speaking in metaphor. Take the buddhist admonition that “Attachment is the source of suffering.” This may have some higher level meanings about spirituality, but at the moment it seems pretty accurate when related to the process of moving my household. The more crap I want to pick up and move intact and organized from here to Rhode Island, the more suffering I will experience. If I had nothing, I could leave tomorrow and it would be painless.

    I also don’t think that Jesus had any sneaky meanings with the whole “love one another” thing, or that there are any complex caveats of original intent WRT the bill of rights. Sometimes things really are that simple.

    Can’t move until tomorrow, because it’s time to go to a birthday party for a friend. German restaurant with strolling accordion players. Last year I consumed the “meter of sausage.” I have the certificate to prove it. Since then, I’ve become vegetarian. I hope the salads are tasty.

    After that, off to Boston to try to find a job. Anybody want to hire me? I program computers, climb rocks, brew beer, and I try to be a nice guy to boot. Better yet, anyone want to take me on as a PhD student? I’ll be the best student *ever*. I promise. Meet me at the BioClusters workshop at Bio IT World on Tuesday.

  • Art

    It seems to me that art has two fundamental components:

    – A level of technical skill required to create the artifact or artistic experience
    – Communication or evocation of some aspect of the human experience, for the observer.

    The superstructure of analysis and self reference built by the community of academic artists is useful mostly in the fact that we are able to better understand the creation and experience of art, and to better understand ourselves as a result. In answer to the perennial question: No, it’s not art just because you say it’s art.