Rose Red and Snow White

Once upon a time there lived a widow with her two daughters.

One daughter was named Snow White and the other was Rose Red.

One night, in the coldest part of winter, there was a knock on the family's door. It was a bear. "Let me in. It is cold out and your home looks warm," the bear said.

The widow and her daughters let the bear come in and lay by the fire. Night after night, the bear returned.

Finally spring came and the bear stopped coming every night. He said he had treasure to protect since the than had softened the ground.

The widow and her daughters said a sad farewell to the bear. Now that the weather was warmer, Rose Red and Snow White spent hours roaming the countryside.

One day, Snow White and Rose Red found a small man with a long beard. His beard was stuck beneath a tree which he had just chopped down. "My beard! My beard!" he called out. "Someone help me!" "Here, this should do the trick," Snow White said. She pulled a pair of scissors out of her day basket and snipped the end of the man's beard, freeing (him) from the tree.

"Oh, my beard! My beard!" the small man cried. "You evil girls, look what you have done to my beautiful beard!" He scooped up a bag full of jingling and jangling treasure and ran off.

The second time the girls met the small, mean man, they found him caught in his own fishing line. After failing to untangle the hook from his beard, Snow White once again got out her scissors and snipped the beard.

"Oh, my beard! My beard!" the small man cried. "You evil girls, look what you have done to my beautiful beard!" He scooped up a bag full of jingling and jangling treasure and ran off.

The third time the girls met the small, mean man, he was being carried off by an eagle. Snow White and Rose Red each grabbed one of the man's legs and pulled him the the eagle's talons.

The man's coat was ripped and torn from the eagle. "You evil girls, look what you have done to my beautiful coat!" He scooped up a bag full of jingling and jangling treasure and ran off.

The fourth time the girls met the little man, his boot was stuck in the rocks of a steep hill. The girls tugged and pulled and finally freed the man from the rocks by pulling his foot out of his boot.

Just then, the bear from the winter ran down the hill and hit the small man in the head with his paw.

The small man fell down dead and, free of the small man's curse, the bear turned in a prince.

The prince invited Snow White, Rose Red, and their mother to live with him at his castle. They lived together happily ever after.

Political and Philosophical Questions

Some interesting questions that have really been changing the way I think about politics lately:

Are poor people to blame for their monetary situation?
Are rich people to blame for their monetary situation?
If different reactions, why?

Is it the government's job to bail out large companies?
Is it the government's job to bail out individuals?
If different reactions, why?

What counts as a bailout? (Social Security? Medicaid? Pro-business regulations and subsidies?)

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? "A healthy society involves the use of no coercive force."

(For following examples, "freedoms" or "rights" are assumed to stop where another person's begins.)
Coercive force applied to freedom of speech is acceptable/unacceptable. When one vs the other? (For instance, is it one person's job to PAY for another person to have the ability to speak freely).
Coercive force applied to freedom of movement is acceptable/unacceptable. When one vs the other? (For instance, is it one person's job to PAY for another person to have the ability to move freely).
Coercive force applied to freedom of property (the right to claim ownership of something) is acceptable/unacceptable. When one vs the other? (For instance, is it ok to take money? What about land or a house? A car? Who has the right to take money/land/a car?).

Who has the right to use coercive force? (In most places, the reality is that it is more or less the monopoly of the government.)

What is a government? (should be vs actually is)
Who is part of a government? (should be vs actually is)
Who controls a government? (should control vs actually controls)

Ok, so I have some replies to these things, but I don't want to just post them here. I want some people to actually think about these questions. It'd be AWESOME if someone typed up their thoughts, but so long as some people read this and kind of think about their ideas, that's good.

Something I know I care about is having a consistent approach to the world. I try not to overdo it - I think trying too hard to be conscientiously consistent can lead to indecisiveness of a ridiculous extent. But I think these questions made me think about things from a slightly different perspective, and reevaluate how consistent my beliefs actually were.

Looking forward to some interesting discussions with whoever reads this!

Rapunzel

I've been drawing cartoons for the small children at work. And they've been taking them home, and I haven't thought to take any photos of the drawings before they're vanished into the ether of small-child-dom. Here's one done in the same style, but using marker instead of crayon. I did it during breakfast! It was lots of fun.

At the end, the prince isn't dead, just blind and being cried on by Rapunzel. Rapunzel's tears cure his blindness and they live happily ever after. I was lazy and didn't draw a seventh "happily ever after" panel.

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 8, Day 9, and Day 10 part 1

DAY 8:
    Pieder's eighteenth birthday was less than a week away. He was ruminating on whether he could convince the Witch to attend the small celebration at his parents' cottage when an unusual sound reached his ears. He was on an offshoot of the main road through this part of the East Woods, heading back to the Witch's home after his monthly weekend stay at his parents' home. Footsteps (for the was the sound he had heard) were rare on this path. Pieder was the only person who frequented this small side trail, though wild creatures used it as well which kept it passable.
    Pieder had spent hours with the Witch learning person combat, but the best approach to dealing with robbers and other unsavory types was avoidance. Pieder crept off the path as quietly as he was able and hid behind a broad tree trunk. He used a spell, one of many he had learned in his apprenticeship to the Witch, which created dozens on magically conjured insects as eyes and ears, fogging the air with what appeared to be perfectly natural gnats, flies, and moths. Using his temporarily expanded senses, Pieder saw a human leading a bizarre creature that was as much magic as it was flesh. Though Pieder had never seen one before in the remote fastness of the Wood, he had seen pictures in the many books owned by the Witch and had been told of their use, creation, and care by his mistress.
    It was called a Glub and was favored by lone travelers throughout Iskandar. Glubs could navigate on their own from properly ensorcelled maps, could serve as shelter during the night, could travel long distances with no nourishment besides water and sunlight, could carry quite a bit and pull a lot more, could be ridden on roads and led through narrow paths, were ferocious in defending their owner without being overly zealous as guards. They looked rather like oversized beetles with the wings removed and clear wing covers. Instead of wings, they had a reclined seat where the rider could sit and observe the world, possibly while sleeping or reading. The wing covers could be lifted, which narrowed the whole body and allowed for travel through dense forest. The wing covers could also be flattened, which permitted the whole Glub to float rather like a raft. It would not last in rapids or the open ocean, but for crossing a ford made otherwise impassable by recent heavy rain it was perfect.

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 6 part 2, Day 7

    "You can read my mind?" Pieder gasped, barely audibly, and almost dropped the old woman into the hot pool of water before she was even undressed.
    "Careful!" she exclaimed. Then she loosened Pieder's grip on her and took off her night robe with no trace of inhibition or modesty. Pieder knew he ought to blush, but couldn't muster enough emotion to do so.
    "Go, prepare breakfast," the Witch ordered. "And you can read my mind as much as I can read yours. Loud and externally directed thoughts -- the sorts of things you would use words to say or noises to express -- can be heard by both of us as though they were in our own heads. Shoo! I can instruct you from anywhere within this house without trouble."
    Pieder obeyed.
    Days flew by, and as the anxiety potion wore off Pieder found himself capable of living with the Witch without fear of his own accord. Both the Witch and Pieder grew so used to living on the periphery of each others thoughts that as the communication potion faded they agreed to try a spell to bind their minds together for a longer time. The Witch spent weeks constructing potions and steams, salves and bizarre machines. By the time she was prepared to carry out her spell, she and Pieder had been without any direct communication besides writing for more than a week. Writing was very difficult for the Witch to do unassisted, and while she had various magical contraptions to aid her, her favored way of writing was to dictate her words to Pieder. It was almost a year after Pieder had first arrived to live with the Witch, and he had grown fond of his mistress in a strange way, fearing her and loving her both to some extent, but mostly just fascinated utterly by her magic and her wisdom.

DAY 7
    Iris watched the Magician as he worked the crowd. She hated these people as much as she loved these parties. Some of the younger guests were interesting, and a few were almost her friends. As much friends as an entertainer and an audience member could be. The Magician insisted that the barriers to friendship that Iris saw were all in her head. But every time Iris watch him work a room, oozing from one patron to the next, it reinforced her suspicion that all relationships formed as part of her job were ultimately fake.
    The party was lavishly decorated. Flowers adorned the tables, set in vases of crystal and living wood cleverly intertwined by the best artificers Iskandar had to offer. Two walls, granite perhaps, were covered by thin sheets of water, fountains cleverly made by fanning water out from the system of veins pumping warm (or cool, depending on the season) water through the mansion. At the foot of the fountain was a trough which collected the water once more. Iridescent lights flickered behind the water, the granite covered in potions and pastes created by apothecaries from far and wide. The Magician had organized and maintained much of the magic on display. That meant that Iris knew more than she would like about many elements of the decoration. The fountains that arched water across wide swaths of the ballroom were Iris' to care for. While they glittered in the light of thousands of carefully ensorcelled fireflies and floating globes of many tinted witch light, their beauty constantly reminded Iris that she was here to do a job and not to enjoy herself.
    Unbeknownst to her, many in the crowd felt similarly. They were there to make an appearance, to cement a business relationship, to impress a superior. As a ritzy social affair it was work of one kind or another for most of the attendees. But Iris was fifteen and the Magician, her uncle, mentor, and employer, had never thought to inform her of the nature of the engagements they spent much of their lives facilitating.
    In addition to caring for the scenery, from the fireflies to the fountains to the flowers, Iris was being paid to work the crowd. She was a paid guest, a party goer who set the mood and identified the guests who were not enjoying themselves. She then found a way to include the discordant notes in the melody (the unhappy guests in the lighthearted party) more completely in the appropriate mood. 
    At fifteen, Iris had gotten her full height but retained a nymphish lack of curves. Through she fit into gowns designed with an adult's height in mind, gowns made for her had to be altered after their creation in order to fit her flat chest and slender hips without bunching.
    Since most clothing, especially the more expensive types, were grown, the were not supposed to have seams except as decorative embellishments. Seams were a sign of low class more stark than an unoriginal design. Iris was learning how to reshape her clothes before they were grown, but her current outfit had had to be taken in by a seamstress. She had been skilled, using the seams for art as much as functionality. But even if others were impressed by the clever craftsmanship of her clothing (and many guests at the event had been) Iris felt self conscious.
    Her outfit was a jumpsuit belted tightly about the waist. It had loose legs and sleeves so full that they could almost be wings. The neck was loose about the throat, gathering in layers above Iris' meager breasts. The closure to the jumpsuit was done with tiny golden buttons, and it wound from the left side of her neck, diagonally across her back to her right hip, then spiraled around her right thigh and ended just above her knee. The whole piece was sheer and white with tiny pearls formed within the weave and weft of the fabric. Beneath the jumpsuit, Iris wore a leotard of deep, iridescent blue cut almost severely and with long tight fitting sleeves.

4,604 words out of 50,000 total

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 6

    The change in scents almost kept him from falling asleep, but eventually he drifted off into a deep dreamless slumber. While Pieder slept, the Witch crept through the house with a glass vial and something small and squishy inside of it. She wiped a spot behind Pieder's left ear with alcohol, then carefully poured the soft, squishy substance onto the freshly cleaned piece of skin. The squishy thing writhed and wriggled, then settled and grew flabbier and flabbier as its fluids flowed into Pieder's blood. It was a sort of leech, tiny and with the single purpose of placing the Witch's potions into Pieder's body. By the time Pieder awoke, it would have fallen off and be nothing more than a desiccated flake of soon to be dust by his head. Gross perhaps, but harmless and not the sort of thing that would induce panic in any but the most paranoid. Anyone who came even half willingly to live with the Witch could hardly be called paranoid.
   
    Pieder awoke with sunlight streaming into his eyes from a skylight placed slightly to the east of directly overhead. He blinked several times, desperately wanting to roll over and hide in his surprisingly comfy cot, but impelled by some inexplicable force to rise and dress. He made his way through the house uncertainly, feeling the slightest bit grimy in comparison to the startlingly clean surfaces surrounding him.
    "Hello," a warm alto voice greeted him when he stood cautiously at the door to what he was bizarrely certain was the Witch's sleeping chamber.
    "Hello?" Pieder tried to say, but only managed to whisper faintly.
    "I'm not actually speaking," the voice said, it's tone a smile.
    Pieder stood frozen, his eyes glassed over in terror.
    "Yes, I am the Witch of the Wood. And this is a small taste of the magic you will encounter during your stay with me. Now walk through the door and help me out of my bed, boy."
    Pieder felt a tug on his arm and gentle push against the small of his back. He stumbled forward, then found his feet carrying him through the doorway and into the tall yet oddly cozy room with the Witch's grand bed against one wall. A desk sat against the opposite wall with a wooden chair that looked grown rather than carved. Between them was the doorway in which he stood and a doorway opposite him which led to a shadowy chamber smelling strongly of soap and fresh hot water.
    "You have questions," the voice (the Witch, Pieder supposed) stated. "Ask them. And help me get to my morning bath."
    Pieder was bubbling with questions, but fear kept them at bay. Except, suddenly his fear felt more distant and the questions crept to the forefront of his mind. This made him more anxious than anything else.
    "What have you done to me?" he asked somewhat petulantly.
    "Made you my apprentice," the Witch answered cryptically. "Put your hands under my arms and lift." The Witch reached out to him with her stubbed fingers and a grimace of faint pain. Perhaps her joints ached, or she simply disliked waking.
    Pieder obeyed her despite his many misgivings. He was not certain if he was under a spell to obey or if he was actually helping her of his own accord. He wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to trust his instincts again. He felt betrayed by his parents, by his body, by his mind, by this terrifying creature that he was now helping out of bed and into a bathing chamber that sank into the lower part of the shell house.
    "Ah, that is quite a mouthful," the Witch sighed. "Yes, of course you can trust yourself. And no one has betrayed you. Your emotions are being toyed with a bit right now, it is true, and I cannot help it directly. Last night I cast a spell of sorts; gave you a potion that would soothe your fears and a different potion that would allow us to communicate more effectively than gestures. Both will wear off eventually. Your ability to feel fear and anxiety fully will return within the next day or so. The other I do not know a time frame on, as I have never used it before and it is a potion of my own creation so no one else has used it either."

3,612 words out of 50,000 total

Book Club: Big Sleep

Phillip Marlowe

Carmen Sternwood -- pulls wings off flies

Vivian - Mrs. Regan -- calculating, smart

Objectivity, distance as detective model

Maid, cleaning up rich people's lives, tidy morally? maybe not… observer being complicit in the crime… what is his motivation to do this job? doesn't enjoy it much, not getting highly compensated. is marlowe good or bad? Ambivalent?

Vivian cares a lot about… something? Carmen is "naked" always, maybe? Isn't suited for the world she lives in.

Brody and Eddie Mars we've met once each… each is a themed color,

"Doghouse Riley": a reference to something? made up name. "dog house" as in "jail" and "riley" as in "irish", "justice/cops". Repetition. Reassuring himself, defying other people's labels.

Carmen as in the opera. Tragic figure. Wholly objectified. Insane. Unpredictable. Body and emotions, but no brain.

Vivian as in… ? Defined by her missing husband. "Mrs. Regan." Intentional? Manipulative. Brains, veiled emotions. Mannish? Emulating men?

Agnes… silver claws. Blonde, relies on Brody entirely, animal-like in viciousness and loyalty. Not big in brains. Almost Brody's pet. Outraged and offended.

Women are very flat. Women=sexuality=shallow? None of them are old, only one them is actively helpful and she only exists for one page (28).

After the break is a synopsis of what we've read so far. If you're interested in reading or... something, then don't read it! Spoilers and all that.

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 3, part 2

    There was a stone path through the flowers and herbs and vegetables growing in profusion near the road. The path led to a  strange cottage that appeared to be a greatly oversized snail shell half buried in the ground. There was a roughly circular hole for the door, sealed by a thick leather curtain. Holes shimmered along the top of each whorl, quartz windows reflecting sunlight filtered through the tall trees of the forest.
    The Witch led Pieder along the path and into her strange home. He spent the day following her about and learning the tasks he must do. Most were familiar things, like washing the dishes and sweeping the floor. But getting the water consisted of lifting a lever, since the water ran through veins all over the house and could be poured into sinks and buckets in several rooms. One chamber, for the rooms were too open and strangely shaped for Pieder to think of them as boring everyday rooms,  seemed to be an indoor outhouse, which struck Pieder as intensely disgusting. Oddly, it had almost no odor despite being a place of filth. Another seemed to be reserved for cooking. The strangely snail-like house had a root cellar of sorts, indoor plumbing, and a minimal amount of electricity to run various contraptions about the house. One of the chief contraptions thus run seemed to both provide a way from rapidly drying clothes and heating the whole dwelling.
    There was a chamber, almost a hallway between the outhouse chamber and the front room chamber, that had a cot set to one side and a small dresser with two drawers carefully cleaned and empty. It appeared to be his bedchamber. He placed his small bag on the cot and glanced at the Witch, who was paused for him. She gestured for him to place the items in his bad into the dresser. He removed a single change of clothes, a toothbrush, and a book of fairy stories his parents had given him for his tenth birthday. He also had mittens, a jacket, a pair of longjohns, and a wool hat. All of this he was wearing at the moment over and under the rest of his clothing, and he was sweating heavily. He removed everything except his shirt, pants, and longjohns and carefully folded it away in what he assumed must now be his dresser. He had never had his own dresser before. It was strangely pleasant.
    The first night he spent in the Witch's abode was terrifying. Her home smelled faintly of lavender, probably propagated by the various sachets and sprays of lavender that hung about the house. Peider's home, or rather his parents' and sisters' home now that he no longer lived there, smelled of woodsmoke and various cooked foods and drying vegetables.

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 3, part 1

    Pieder's tossing and turning slowly stilled, and after almost half an hour the string slipped back out of his nose. It lay quiescent on his chest, just a string and nothing more. Laurinda shivered, horrified and scared. The old woman took a scrap of cloth from a pocket and used it to lift the string. As soon as the cloth touched it, an eerie melody began to fill the silent cottage. The old woman nodded and turned to the couple with a faint smile on her hideous face.
    She placed the string and cloth back into one of her pockets, then pantomimed money dropping from one hand into the other. The parents glanced at each other uncertainly.
    "You want payment?" Douglas asked.
    The old woman nodded.
    "We don't have much money," Douglas said.
    The old woman waved a hand dismissively.
    "You want something else?"
    The old woman nodded. She pointed a stubbed finger at the boy.
    "Yes we want you to heal him," Douglas said, perplexed. He had thought this was clear already from the way the old woman has been checking the boy over.
    The old woman frowned and pantomimed money once more, then pointed to the boy.
    "You want... Pieder as payment?" Laurinda gasped.

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 2, part 2

    The old woman nodded once more, then gently set the string down onto the sleeping boy. It writhed to an uncanny life, and Laurinda screeched in horror. The witch put up a silencing hand, and Douglas caught Laurinda in his arms before she could rush to her son's side. "Hush, you'll wake the girls," he mumured.
    "Mama? What's wrong?" a small voice asked, still filled with sleep.
    Lucy, seven years old and still half asleep, knelt beside the bannister of the cottage's loft. She held the hand of four year old Rosalind tightly enough that Rosalind whined and tried to pull away.
    "Everything's fine, girls," Douglas said firmly.
    "Mama?" Lucy repeated uncertainly.
    "Yes, everything's fine. Go back to bed. It's late," Laurinda murmured, entranced by the writhing string making it's way towards her beloved boy's nostrils. She gasped and flinched when the string wormed its way up his nose and slipped out of view into Pieder's insides. Lucy and Rosalind stared unabashedly and the old woman in their home, but obeyed their parents and went back to lay in bed. They whispered together, Lucy shushing Rosalind and providing the comfort that her parents were too terrified to offer.
1,700 words out of 50,000 total.

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 1 and Day 2

    Pieder lived in a forest with his mother, Laurinda, and his father, Douglas, and his two younger sisters, Lucy and Rosalind. His father's father's father had first built the small stone house that they inhabited, and his grandfather had expanded it with logs. Pieder's father had spent every spring since his first child was born replacing the logs with stone fit together just so, so as to prevent wind from slipping through any cracks. Pieder was really the second child in the family, but his older brother Frederick had died of the pox when Pieder was five and Frederick was eight. It had been a devastating blow to Pieder's parents, and they had never been the same since. Pieder dimly recalled when the house was a warm and welcoming place, but his younger sisters had no such recollections and occasionally Pieder felt sorry for them. He would have spent more time feeling sorry for them, but he spent most of his life incredibly busy. There was bark to strip off of the logs his father cut, and fur to clean and the house to be swept and tools to be mended. All the small chores of the house besides knitting and spinning and weaving and churning butter were delegated to Pieder. He didn't mind too much, except that he longed to have some time to spend wandering the secret paths of the forest and encountering witches and wizards and gnomes and the like. Fairy stories told by Laurinda had taken a fierce hold upon the boy, and nothing Douglas said could shake Pieder's certainty that some secret magic lay just beneath the surface of his entire life.
    Pieder grew fairly peacfully to be eleven years old, with a seven and four year old sister to plague him any time they were free and he was working (which happened far too often for Pieder's taste). But shortly after his birthday, on the eve of Midsummer's Day, he fell ill with a terrible fever. His mother made poultices and remedies that generations of woodsfolk had learned. Some were to reduce the awful aches and pains that raced from joint to joint. Some were to bring down the fever itself. And some were to keep evil away and attract friendly spirits to protect and heal the young boy.
    Nothing worked. The second night he became delirious. On the morning of the third day, Pieder's mother begged Douglas to seek out the Witch of the Wood, a superstition with unusual staying power amongst the local folk. Pieder's father, certain of failure and without an ounce of hope, reluctantly agreed. He did this act not out of love for his son, whom he was certain was destined for death within hours, but for love of his wife who would never rest unless no effort had been spared to save her beloved child. With the death of Frederick, the house had been filled with anger, regret, and recrimination. Pieder's father was determined that Pieder's death would not come so close to destroying his family.

Halloween Costume

Not quite all put together yet. It has several different pieces and layers to it. This is sort of the core, though. Can you guess who I am? :)

EDIT: Adding wings and some netting in my hair looks like this!

EDIT II: And now I have a video of it on YouTube. Wheeee!

More landscape paintings for my painting class, more recent

So my professor said that some of my pictures weren't recent enough, and that I need about 5 more paintings that were finished after 1920. So I'm putting them here? Yes.

Ursula Vernon: Tribal Wombat, 2003

Paul Hotvedt: Gardening, 2010

Georgia O'Keeffe: Untitled (Red and Yellow Cliffs), 1940

Nikki Smith: Untitled, 2008

Don Dixon: Star Colony, 1988

Landscape paintings from the past 150 yrs, for my painting class

Alfred Sisley: Bridge at Hampton Court; 1874

P. S. Kroyer: Summer day on Skagens Beach; 1884

John Singer Sargent: The Rialto, Venice; 1911

John Singer Sargent: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose; 1886

Georges Seurat: A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884

Edvard Munch: Yellow Trunk, 1912

Pablo Picasso: Landscape with dead tree, 1919

Andrew Wyeth: Christina's World, 1948

Rene Magritte: Popular Panorama, 1926

Banksy: 2009

Richard Estes: Paris Street

Thoughts on Duty and Self Interest

There's a set of issues that C and I gripe about consistently, and have similar (but not the same) views on. A set of these gripings relates to morality -- everything from its lack of importance in public elementary and secondary education to its deep ties in many people's minds to religion.

C and I disagree on lots of remarkably important details - things like how to define "duty" and "responsibility" and "rights". These things all relate to morality -- why to be a moral person, how to make "right" decisions, and what to strive for in making "right" decisions.

But we agree on the bigger, more complicated issues such as the education and religion problems -- in the case of education, C and I think morality should be taught and examined and thought through in a school setting. In the case of religion, C and I agree that not only is it incorrect to tie morality and religion together from a practical point of view, but it is detrimental (at least for us) to both spiritual growth and moral analysis to tie the two together.

I think "duty" is best thought of as a choice. Which I suppose isn't the standard definition at all. (Looking it up now...

Duty is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action[citation needed] and it is not a matter of passive feeling or mere recognition. When someone recognizes a duty, that person commits himself/herself to the cause involved without considering the self-interested courses of actions that may have been relevant previously. This is not to suggest that living a life of duty precludes one of the best sorts of lives but duty does involve some sacrifice of immediate self-interest.
Cicero is an early philosopher who acknowledged this possibility. He discusses duty in his work “On Duty." He suggests that duties can come from four different sources:
a result of being human

It is a result of one's particular place in life (your family, your country, your job)

It is a result of one's character

One's own moral expectations for oneself can generate duties

From the root idea of obligation to serve or give something in return, involved in the conception of duty, have sprung various derivative uses of the word; thus it is used of the services performed by a minister of a church, by a soldier, or by any employee or servant.

Many schools of thought have debated the idea of duty. While many assert mankind's duty on their own terms, some philosophers have absolutely rejected a sense of duty.

Ok, so that's interesting. I'm going to pull out the "immediate self interest" part and rephrase that to "immediate gratification" so that fullfilling a duty usually implies some sort of delayed gratification, or perhaps it might be better to think of it as fullfilling a different sort of desire than those that typically come to mind when someone thinks of the type of things that "gratify" a person. Instead of the "baser" emotions (and I don't mean this in a perjorative sense) such as hunger and thirst and sex drive and possibly greed and jealousy, maybe a "duty" can gratify the "higher" emotions (and I don't mean this in the sense that they're better, just that maybe they're more complicated somehow) such as honor, personal self worth, and pride in one's actions.

In the wikipedia article (that's what I quoted, btw) there is mention of "recognizing" a duty. I think this is important to underline. I take "recognition" to mean, in this sense, something that has been come to after serious thought and analysis. After taking into consideration as many important factors as an individual can, they can "recognize" a duty. It might depend some on the individual what those factors are; for me they include personal gain, social gain, and sustainablity in action to promote long term and not just short term benefits.

So, to summarize, an optimal sort of "duty" is something that has been thought through carefully, and then consciously committed to. So marriage is a good example of the sort of approach I think people should take to duties in general.

Collection of Relationship-y Links

Mostly for my own future reference, but in case anyone else is interested in some awesome relationship advice, here's article links!

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-you-know-its-time-to-get-married/

http://www.cracked.com/article_19230_the-5-least-romantic-keys-to-happy-relationship.html

http://marriage.about.com/od/engagement/ss/tenquestions.htm

http://www.greenleafcounseling.org/index.php?view=article&catid=20%3Ahelpful-articles&id=76%3Apremarital-questions&option=com_content&Itemid=76

That's good for now.

Is "The Lion King" a retelling of "Hamlet"? part 4

So, I did major (and some minor) characters. Quick summary (for my sake, mostly): The King, The Prince, The Queen, The Love Interest, The Uncle, The Advisor, The Best Friends. K.

Number two was "major events of the story", and number three was minor events or events that happen outside the story. Ok, I had these separate, but I'm going to go ahead and do my (more) detailed plot analysis all at once instead of in two parts.

a) The Prince is born and raised.
    TLK
b) The Uncle kills The King.
    TLK
c) The Prince runs away/goes insane and The Uncle marries The Queen.
    TLK
d) The Prince sees the ghost of The King.
    TLK and H
e) The Prince waffles about what to do.
     TLK and H
f) The Prince orders a play mimicking the action prior to the events of the story to get a reaction out of The Uncle.
    H
g) The Prince kills The Advisor accidentally.
    H
h) The Prince is exiled.
    H
i) The Love Interest goes mad with grief over the death of The Advisor (her father) and commits suicide.
    H
j) The Prince returns.
    H
k) The Prince learns of The Love Interest's death and attacks Laertes, proclaiming his love for the dead Love Interest. (Laertes is The Love Interest's brother and son of The Advisor).
    H
l) The Uncle orchestrates a duel between Laertes and The Prince. During the duel, The Queen drinks from a poisoned cup and dies.
    H
m) Laertes cuts The Prince with a poisoned sword tip, mortally wounding The Prince. Laertes is also cut with the poisoned blade and dies.
    H
n) The Prince kills The Uncle.
    TLK and H
o) The Prince dies.
    H
p) The Prince and the Love Interest live happily ever after, ruling wisely and well over a restored kingdom.
    TLK

Of a-o, only 3 of the 16 events occur during the action of both works. Three more occur during the action of TLK and before the action of H. So that's approximately six of sixteen important plot points that occur in both works. There's a pivotal character in H (Laertes) who does not have an equivalent in TLK. So far, they look remarkably different.

Maybe a good next step will be to find other works with King/Uncle/Queen/Prince dynamic going on, since that seems to be the strongest similarity.

Is "The Lion King" a retelling of "Hamlet"? part 3

Let's break this down again. Basic summaries/plots? Different in several crucial ways. But let's look at 1) important characters; 2) major events of the story; 3) minor events or events that happen outside of the main story.

1)
  a) The King. Mufasa and Hamlet, Sr. Both are wise rulers of a peaceful country. (I can go through and cite this I suppose, but for right now I won't) Both appear as ghosts to their son, The Prince. Mufasa lives during the action of TLK. Hamlet, Sr. lives prior to the action of H. Interestingly, Mufasa is the presumed father of Nalla, The Love Interest. Both Mufasa and Hamlet, Sr. die.
  b) The Prince. Simba and Hamlet. Both are the child and heir of The King. Simba is driven "insane" by grief, giving up his responsibilities as rightful heir to Pride Rock and escaping to the jungle across the desert. Hamlet is driven "insane" by something (possibly grief, possibly rage, possibly as a ruse), wandering about the castle and making his mother, The Queen, and the current king, The Uncle, and Ophelia, the Love Interest, very anxious. Hamlet dies, Simba does not.
  c) The Uncle. Scar and Claudius. Both are the brother of The King and The Uncle of The Prince. I assume that both "marry" The Queen (in the case of TLK it is a bit unclear, but that is how lion prides usually work). Both kill The King. Both deny this action and place the blame elsewhere. Both Scar and Claudius die.
  d) The Queen. Sarabi and Gertrude. Both are the wife of The King and then The Uncle, both are the mother of The Prince. Sarabi is a grudging "wife" and Gertrude is a willing (or at least supportive) one. But both "marry" the murderer of their former husband. Gertrude dies, Sarabi does not.
  e) The Love Interest. Nalla and Ophelia. Nalla is probably The Prince's half sister. Ophelia is probably no relation to The Prince. Nalla is The Prince's best friend in childhood and brings him out of his "insane" grief to eventually return to enact revenge on The Uncle. Ophelia commits suicide after prolonged mistreatment by The Prince. Ophelia dies, Nalla does not.
  f) The Advisor. Zazu and Pollonius. Pollonius is the father of The Love Interest. Pollonius dies, Zazu does not.
  g) The Best Friends. Timon and Pumbaa, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Timon and Pumbaa have nothing to do with the action at and around Pride Rock. They are given no importance in the heirarchy there. Also, The Prince relies on them heavily and trusts them a great deal. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have a bit of clout at court, are charged with a task directly by The Uncle, and seem to have little to none of The Prince's trust. Timon and Pumbaa live, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die.

CONCLUSION: Three fairly close matches, though one is an "off-screen" character in H while an "on-screen" character in TLK. That's about half of the story (The Prince's life with The King) that happens in TLK that does NOT happen during the action of H. To me, that is already a stretch for a retelling. But it's far from conclusive, so let's keep looking.

The death tally is telling. Of the 8 characters the I drew parallels between, all 8 of them die in H and only 2 of them die in TLK. The deaths are a crucial part of H, giving a weight and gravity to the play that it would otherwise lack. It would be a very different work with fewer deaths. H can be read as a telling of the downfall of Denmark's (The Kingdom's) monarchy through the deaths and evils cascading from fratricide. The Kingdom in TLK suffers a temporary downfall during the rule of The Uncle but is restored to its former glory by the return of The Prince. The Prince in TLK is a savior, not an instrument of death and destruction.

H is not so much about justice as it is about revenge. TLK is not so much about revenge as it is about justice: each character gets what they deserve.

Ok, I got into themes a little there. I'll stop for now (time to get to German class) but I'll continue if I feel like there's anything more to say. Tell me your thoughts!

Is "The Lion King" a retelling of "Hamlet"? part 2

I've got retelling pretty settled. Steve brought up an interesting point about whether a movie can ever be a retelling of something in a different medium. Basically, for the sake of my argument here, it definitely can be.

So, I'm going to do a super quick comparison of "Hamlet" and "The Lion King" just like I did for my other three examples. Then I'll go into more detail.

    Disney's "The Lion King" (via IMDb) "Tricked into thinking he killed his father, a guilt ridden lion cub flees into exile and abandons his identity as the future King."
    Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (via Wikipedia) " The play, set in the Kingdom of Denmark recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius for murdering the old King Hamlet (Claudius's brother and Prince Hamlet's father) and then succeeding to the throne and marrying Gertrude (the King Hamlet's widow and mother of Prince Hamlet)."

NB: "The Lion King" will be abbreviated "TLK" and "Hamlet" will be abbreviated "H".

Ok, right off I'm thinking not really similar at all.Some obvious differences:
1) TLK says the "prince" figure thinks he killed his father, the "king" character. Not something that ever happens in H.
2) Setting is different, but that's not really a big deal.
3) TLK only spends a small portion of it's plot on the "revenge" portion of the story; really, that's ALL of H.
4) The "prince" character in H doesn't really spend any time fleeing, except maybe the part where his "uncle" sends him away and then the "prince" comes right back. But you could see that as a parallel, maybe?
5) Not much is made of the "queen's" marriage to the "uncle" in TLK. It's kind of central to H's plot and the "prince's" predicament in H.

Next up: not sure. Some ideas about anything that strikes you as a similarity? As a difference?

Is "The Lion King" (Disney) a retelling of "Hamlet" (Shakespeare)? part 1.

I'm going to go ahead and ruin the suspense: no.

Now for a "proof" of sorts. This is totally a rough draft, and I'm going to be figuring it out as I go. So take "No" as my hypothesis and see where I end up!

1) What is a "retelling" in literary-speak? I'll go to google:define for an answer.... "Tell (a story) again or differently." More specifically "(Retelling) A detailed oral or written recitation of a text, including setting, major and minor events, characters, and plot." And another interpretation of the word "retell": "(retelling) restating, after reading, what happened in a story, or the main ideas in a nonfiction text. Retellings are often used to measure a student’s level of text comprehension and interpretation."

Ok. We've narrowed this down a bit. I'm going to use the more specific definitions I found, picking out some key words to focus on: setting, major and minor events, characters, and plot. Plot seems especially important in this one, so I'm going to assume that a summary of an origianal text and a summary of the text's retelling should be similar or identical.

Let's poke at this with a few minimally contentious examples.

a) The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Anderson vs Disney)
    Hans Christian Anderson (via Wikipedia's initial summary) "... about a young mermaid willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a mermaid to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince."
    Disney (via IMDb) "A mermaid princess makes a faustian bargain with an unscrupulous seahag in order to meet a human prince on land."
CONCLUSION: Ok, so the religious/soul bit changed, and the ending is different (in the fairytale she turns to foam but gets a soul, in the Disney version she gives up her family and gets the prince). But overall, lots in common. A decent retelling.

b) Beauty and the Beast (French folktale vs Disney)
    French folktale: Really, the Disney version is remarkably similar. Important elements: Exchange of one hostage (the father) for another (Belle); after enduring long imprisonment, Belle begs to leave, is given a time frame in which to return, fails to do so, discovers that in her absence the Beast is near death, rushes back to him, and turns him back into a human through a profession of her love.
    Disney (via IMDb) "Belle, whose father is imprisoned by the Beast, offers herself instead and discovers her captor to be an enchanted prince."
CONCLUSION: Lots of added characters (Gaston, the servants in the castle), but really these are incredibly similar. Definitely a retelling.

c) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (book vs movie)
    Does this one really need to be gone over? Suffice to say that the Boy Who Lived is sent to a wizarding school, meets his two best friends, his headmaster/mentor, his nemesis.... you know. The whole nine yards. All the same in both.
CONCLUSION: Only a retelling in that the mediums are different and the movie is severely condensed in comparison to the book.

I'm stopping here and waiting for a little feedback.

Painting Class, Fall Semester

Also, I got a new piercing! It's the bottom one on the rim of my ear... like. The cartilage part.

But here's some sketches from my sketch book.

More card stuff

I've been pegging away at cards, but some programming/organizational issues got me distracted from like... actually MAKING cards. So I'm getting back to that.

In case anyone was wondering.

Education Plans

'11-'12, at JCCC.
Fall 2011: Calc I, Art, English (Intro to Lit Theory), German I
Spring 2012: Calc II, English (old Brit lit?), German II, Physics I?
Summer 2012: Whatever I can take! Physics II, German III, Linear Algebra...?

'12-'13, at... KU? Hopefully. NOT in the school of engineering.
Fall 2012: Physics II or Linear Algebra (whichever I didn't already take), Chem I, English (new Brit lit?), German IV
Spring 2013: English (Shakespeare), Intro Comp Sci, Chem II, Statics and Dynamics
Summer 2013: Econ I, AutoCAD

PROBLEM: I need 9 humanities credits somewhere in here! Or. maybe? I don't know. I already have some credits in something, but I don't know how many/which ones will count.

'13-'14, at KU? In a School of Engineering, definitely.
Fall 2013: this is all planned out for transfer students at KU into Enviro Eng. 17 credits.
Spring 2014: also all planned out for transfer student at KU. 17 credits.
Summer 2014: two or three free classes. English? Maybe 9 credits.

'14-'15, same as previous year.
Fall 2014: all planned out already for transfer students into KU's Enviro Eng dept. One elective, maybe English? Unless they need to be in engineering. 17 credits.
Spring 2015: All planned out. Two electives, maybe both English? Unless they need to be in engineering. 18 credits.
Summer 2015: I'd like to be DONE, but maybe a few more credits to fill out English?

Without summer 2015, I'd have 30 English credits IF the electives aren't req'd to be engineering. If they are, then I'd need summer 2015. Of course, I'm a little squished when it comes to timing... I doubt all of the classes I need are offered over the summer. So. Not sure what to do there.

So that's my attempt to double major in English and Enviro Engineering! Whee!

EDIT: Approx credit per semester of above outline; approx cost per semester


'11-'12. JCCC.
Fall 2011: 16 credits; $3,024
Spring 2012: 18 credits; $3,402
Summer 2012: 6 credits? 9?; $1,134 or $1,701

'12-'13. KU.
Fall 2012: 18 credits; ($279*18)+($45*0)+($858/2) = $5,451
Spring 2013: 16 credits; ($279*16)+($45*3)+($858/2) = $5,028
Summer 2013: 6 credits? 9?; $???

'13-'14, KU, School of Engineering.
Fall 2013: 17 credits; ($279*17)+($45*17)+($858/2) = $5,937
Spring 2014: 17 credits; ($279*17)+($45*17)+($858/2) = $5,937
Summer 2014: Maybe 9 credits; $???

'14-'15, same as previous year.
Fall 2014: 17 credits; ($279*17)+($45*14)+($858/2) = $5,802
Spring 2015: 18 credits; ($279*18)+($45*12)+($858/2) = $5,991
Summer 2015: less than 9 credits; $???

Total cost: 3024+3402+1701+5451+5028+5937+5937+5802+5991= $42,273+(3 summers)
Total output: Environmental Engineering degree, English degree, 4 semesters of German

Quick fake review of "Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More than Ever"

So. Talking/discussing this book (well, the introduction) with C. Here's some of the comments that came out of it:

There's a difference between "rights" and "privileges", which I guess is important - but much more important to me is the difference between what a healthy, positive society does/enacts/spends money and effort on versus what it chooses to leave alone or up to individuals. But there's an even more interesting distinction, which keeps becoming more and more apparent to me as I talk things over with C. It's this: laws declaring "must not!" versus laws declaring "must!" Another way to look at this, that I really like but haven't finished thinking through yet, is a passive law (one that requires little to no action to enact) versus an active law. An example would be a law against murder (a "must not" or "passive" law) versus a law commanding citizens to pay taxes (a "must!" or "active" law).

The Bill of Rights has an interesting mix of "active" and "passive" language in it. Or maybe I'll stick with the "must" and "must not" phrasing of C. Examples: Freedom of speech, religion, unreasonable search and seizure, right to bear arms (which I don't like, but it's an example nonetheless) are all Must Not rights/freedoms. Right to a job, to earn enough for food/clothing/recreation, of all farmers to raise crops and sell them at a price allowing for a pleasant living, for every business to operate in an environment free of unfair competition and domination from monopolies, of every family to a decent home, to adequate medical care and to achieve and enjoy good health, to adequate protection in old age from nasty events, to a good education are all Musts. (The "musts" all come from FDR's second bill of rights).

I support "must" laws in many cases, but not as rights! They are privileges granted by a sane and healthy society to encourage future sanity and health of its members. "Must nots" I also support, also not really as rights though. I think they are foundations of a strong society and if people want to live in a pleasant environment they are required. But that doesn't make them rights, it just makes them incredibly sensible and pragmatic.

Is eating food a "right" of being alive? No, people starve all the time. But it's unpleasant, and leads to death, and is generally to be avoided at all costs. So a good family (or on a larger scale, a society) provides its members with access to food.

More about the doubly knocked off cards

ABILITIES ON CREATURE/CHARACTER CARDS
Flying (can only be blocked by other flying creatures and characters)
Mounted (can only be blocked by other mounted or flying creatures and characters)
Sly (hexproof)
Survivor (must be killed twice)
Trained (bonus when equipped)
Betrayal (control opponent's creatures and characters for x turns)
Aquatic/Aerial/Terrestrial

ENCHANTMENTS, SORCERIES, INSTANTS
WORDS (enchantments):
As High As Honor
Ours is the Fury
We Do Not Sow
Hear Me Roar
Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken
Winter is Coming
Fire and Blood
Family, Duty, Honor
Growing Strong

OTHER ENCHANTMENTS
Water
Sky
Land
Flight
Mount
Sly
Survivor
Training

INSTANTS
Betrayal
Backstab
Slaughter
Leap
Smuggle
Golden Crown

SORCERIES
Chasing Cats (look at target player's hand)
Raise Dead (target creature or character from graveyard enters the battlefield under your control and gains haste and +3/+1. this creature or character returns to owner's graveyard at end of turn.)
Birth Shadows (not exactly sure what this one does yet, but it seems like a perfect sorcery)

Thoughts in the comments please. :)

Card that is more my art and less stolen pictures

Doubly knocked off cards

So I like Magic, and I like Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones being the first book and the title of the TV show). I tried out the GoT card game, and it just wasn't doing it for me. So, I decided to try my hand at making my own cards.

It turned out to be surprisingly complicated. This was probably caused by my dissatisfaction with the free online card generators I found (all two of them - maybe I just didn't look hard enough?). I ended up creating what is essentially my own free card generator, though it's local to my computer and not free online. C helped by doing some nifty javascript and helped me out with the bits of css and html that confused me. I did some of the graphics myself, but mostly I just stole pictures using google image search. I figure this is for personal use anyway, right? The whole IDEA is expanding on someone else's intellectual property anyway (George R R Martin's, I suppose). So what's a few more stolen items? ;)

For an idea of the results, check out these hott pics!

 

So. About those symbols - definitely not standard mtg colors, right? (I'm hoping it's obvious, at least). The idea is that there's attributes associated with each color, and really the name of the "color" is the type of attribute. In order from the "Basic Card" they are: physical Force (red), Wealth (orange), Honor (green), political Power (blue), Magic (purple). The capitalized letters are the letters I use as my shorthand for each symbol. For the "tap" symbol I used "T" as my shorthand, and for a number, the numerical symbol is my shorthand. A card ends up looking like this in the code before it's generated:

{

title : 'Arya Stark', cost : "2FF", image : "aryastark.jpg", type : "Character", subType : "Stark", 

abilities : getCostString('1HT') + ": place an execution counter on target creature or character." + "
" + getCostString('1FT') + ": kill all creatures and characters with execution counters on them.",

flavor : "\"Fear cuts deeper than swords.\" Braavosi Water Dance Mantra",

stats : [2,3],
}

I think it's nice and easy to edit.

If anyone has thoughts on cards they'd like to see, go ahead and let me know! I'm thinking the game format would be basically EDH/Commander except I won't have 100 card singleton decks. So more like a 40 card draft deck, at least for starters.

All of the "Character" type cards are basically the same thing as a "Legendary Creature". So far I haven't made any other type of card, but they're probably going to be something like "Title: Baratheon Bannerman, Type: Creature, Sub-type: Baratheon" and "Title: Crowned Stag, Type: Creature, Sub-Type: Baratheon".

Thoughts? Leave them in the comments!

Heron wearing roller skates

Part of the intro screen for the game I'm drawing for Chris.

More Pictures!

Most recently (for fun, for me):

And a couple of examples of things for Chris's game: