Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Home At Last
Finally arrived in lovely Budapest this past Saturday. The weather is great, work seems like it will be just fine, and our tiny apartment is at least livable. What more can I ask for, except perhaps for all my household goods to arrive so I can relax and get back into writing?
Saturday, July 23, 2011
DC Swamp
Usually when I depart Arizona for Washington DC during these home leave vacations it is a relief. This time Washington weather is worse than Arizona! Today it was well over a hundred degrees out, but with something like 90% humidity. Insane!
I met an old friend today and we talked about my writing, which was nice. He's always enjoyed helping me with my books.
We've met so many people over the years that my wife has every single day scheduled with various meetings with friends. It's funny how exhausting these 'vacations' always turn out to be. It will be a relief to finally get to Budapest next Friday.
I met an old friend today and we talked about my writing, which was nice. He's always enjoyed helping me with my books.
We've met so many people over the years that my wife has every single day scheduled with various meetings with friends. It's funny how exhausting these 'vacations' always turn out to be. It will be a relief to finally get to Budapest next Friday.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Portland
My long summer with almost no internet continues. We are in Portland, Oregon for a week staying with some old friends, and it has been relaxing and fun. I've gone to a couple of parks to play football and baseball with the boys (my two sons and the son of our friends). We toured around Portland and walked through the downtown, including taking in an antique car show. We went down to the river so the boys could swim. My wife particularly liked the Japanese Garden and rose garden at the top of the hill.
![]()
My favorite so far was last night, when our friends took us to the Tony Starlight club to see the owner perform. He was quite amazing -- a really talented musician and mimic. He can sing like so many other famous people that it's astonishing. He ranged from Sinatra and Neil Diamond to Stealers Wheel, Gerry Rafferty, Blondie, and Stevie Nicks! If you are in Portland ever, I recommend you try to find a night when he is performing (it's fairly rare, as he usually just has other acts booked for his club).
![]()
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Quick Note
A quick note to apologize that I have not been able to visit or comment on blog posts. My uncle's internet is down, so I have only been able to get on for short periods to check email while stopping at Starbucks or Barnes & Noble. I miss the blogosphere, and I feel like I am missing so many great posts out there.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tornado
After a crazy trip, my family is tired but alive in Phoenix, Arizona. On a perfect journey it was already going to take around 21 hours. We had to first fly from Baku to London. When we arrived we found we had only twenty minutes to make the flight to Chicago. Turns out our gate was a LONG way from the place we needed to be, so we had to run. It was super-frustrating to hit another security check-through, as they really slowed us down past the point where we thought we had to have missed our flight. Luckily we barely made it.
![]()
Then Chicago. Just as the time for our departure to Phoenix was creeping around, a tornado alert sounded and they ushered everyone down to a lower level to wait it out. After more than an hour we heard rumors that a plane had been damaged. The news that I can find today says that about 360 flights were cancelled. Luckily for us they didn't cancel our flight, but it lifted off about four hours late, making me worry that the rental car company wouldn't hold our reservation.
We arrived in Phoenix at around 2 AM, and though I barely made it to the rental company under the 3 hour limit, they didn't have any cars in the size I had ordered. Again luck was with us as they had one SUV left that they let us have. So, we got to my Uncle's house at around 3:30 AM and slept like the dead.
In more interesting news. Nathan Bransford chose a posting that I did in his forum (it was my previous blog post, but I liked some of the thoughts in it, so I posted it at NB) to put on his front page. It was kind of exciting, though part of me wished I'd had a warning so I could have polished it a bit more. I tend to just type my posts out in about 15 minutes and go with them, while for Nathan I would have parsed every word and phrase until they shone. As it was, some people misinterpreted some of the things I said, and since I had to fly away, I didn't get to defend myself much.
I thought perhaps a couple people from Nathan's huge audience might come over to my blog, but the statistics show that I had fewer hits than normal. Oh well!
Then Chicago. Just as the time for our departure to Phoenix was creeping around, a tornado alert sounded and they ushered everyone down to a lower level to wait it out. After more than an hour we heard rumors that a plane had been damaged. The news that I can find today says that about 360 flights were cancelled. Luckily for us they didn't cancel our flight, but it lifted off about four hours late, making me worry that the rental car company wouldn't hold our reservation.
We arrived in Phoenix at around 2 AM, and though I barely made it to the rental company under the 3 hour limit, they didn't have any cars in the size I had ordered. Again luck was with us as they had one SUV left that they let us have. So, we got to my Uncle's house at around 3:30 AM and slept like the dead.
In more interesting news. Nathan Bransford chose a posting that I did in his forum (it was my previous blog post, but I liked some of the thoughts in it, so I posted it at NB) to put on his front page. It was kind of exciting, though part of me wished I'd had a warning so I could have polished it a bit more. I tend to just type my posts out in about 15 minutes and go with them, while for Nathan I would have parsed every word and phrase until they shone. As it was, some people misinterpreted some of the things I said, and since I had to fly away, I didn't get to defend myself much.
I thought perhaps a couple people from Nathan's huge audience might come over to my blog, but the statistics show that I had fewer hits than normal. Oh well!
Monday, June 20, 2011
On Memory...and Books
Think of the person you know who has the best memory. Can they quote from hundreds of books? Do they wow you with what can only be their photographic memory? It may be hard for modern people to fully comprehend, but the great memories of today can hardly compare to those of ancient times.
As the book I am reading now states (the following quote and all other quotes here are taken from The Discoverers by Daniel Boorsten) -- "Before the printed book, Memory ruled daily life..." Memory, both from individuals and communities, was the common means of passing knowledge on through the generations. People in those far off times had to intentionally cultivate an incredible memory in order to memorize amounts of information that would astound modern people.
"The elder Seneca (c. 55 B.C.-A.D. 37), a famous teacher of rhetoric, was said to be able to repeat long passages of speeches he had heard only once many years before. He would impress his students by asking each member of a class of two hundred to recite lines of poetry, and then he would recite all the lines they had quoted--in reverse order, from last to first."
Before the days of printing, "a highly developed Memory was needed by the entertainer, the poet, the singer, the physician, the lawyer, and the priest." We all know about the great ancient epics, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which were passed down orally for many centuries.
Even when the first writings became more common, Memory remained the primary means in use by lawyers and judges or anyone wishing to quote from the scrolls or manuscripts of the times. With no page numbers or other markings, it was too inconvenient to attempt to locate the necessary parts of text, often rolled up in scrolls dozens or even hundreds of feet long.
After the printing press was developed, books evolved into "an aid, and sometimes a substitute, for Memory." It was Socrates, two millennia earlier, who had first "lamented the effects of writing itself on Memory..." The more accurate and widespread the book became, the less important became the cultivation of a good memory.
The great anachronism of our age is Islam, which still sees as ideal for any Muslim child the full memorization of the Koran. A lesser one is the incredible use of memory of the elite chess grandmasters, who must memorize hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of positions, tactics, strategies, and lines of openings, middle games, and endgames.
The reason I decided to write this was because the (far more detailed) story from The Discoverers reminded me of some thoughts I had been having regarding the effects on memory of the internet age. If the rise of books had been a death knell for developing memory as a tool, how much worse is the internet, which in effect serves as a substitute memory for the world? Regardless of issues of accuracy, almost all data is now placed onto the internet. Google and similar search engines become the key to accessing this modern day Memory.
And what effect on memory will come of the decline of leisure reading? Reading, which long served to teach and broaden the minds of educated people, is clearly on the decline amongst (primarily) young males, at least when it comes to spending long hours and days poring over long books for leisure purposes. Now kids turn to email, blogs, text messages, and tweets as primary substitutes for the hours once spent reading. Are we going to reach a point where the average person feels they no longer need to have much 'data' stored within their minds, since they can access it at will on the internet? Will high quality writing and the desire to enjoy such writing decline as people become used to the shorthand of modern communications? When 'lol' and 'rofl' take over for actual knowledge of good English, what does it say of our future?
It is hard to say exactly how much impact the internet will have on the area of memory, but my belief is that the coming of the internet age will eventually have nearly as great an effect on memory as the invention of the printing press.
As the book I am reading now states (the following quote and all other quotes here are taken from The Discoverers by Daniel Boorsten) -- "Before the printed book, Memory ruled daily life..." Memory, both from individuals and communities, was the common means of passing knowledge on through the generations. People in those far off times had to intentionally cultivate an incredible memory in order to memorize amounts of information that would astound modern people.
"The elder Seneca (c. 55 B.C.-A.D. 37), a famous teacher of rhetoric, was said to be able to repeat long passages of speeches he had heard only once many years before. He would impress his students by asking each member of a class of two hundred to recite lines of poetry, and then he would recite all the lines they had quoted--in reverse order, from last to first."
Before the days of printing, "a highly developed Memory was needed by the entertainer, the poet, the singer, the physician, the lawyer, and the priest." We all know about the great ancient epics, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which were passed down orally for many centuries.
Even when the first writings became more common, Memory remained the primary means in use by lawyers and judges or anyone wishing to quote from the scrolls or manuscripts of the times. With no page numbers or other markings, it was too inconvenient to attempt to locate the necessary parts of text, often rolled up in scrolls dozens or even hundreds of feet long.
After the printing press was developed, books evolved into "an aid, and sometimes a substitute, for Memory." It was Socrates, two millennia earlier, who had first "lamented the effects of writing itself on Memory..." The more accurate and widespread the book became, the less important became the cultivation of a good memory.
The great anachronism of our age is Islam, which still sees as ideal for any Muslim child the full memorization of the Koran. A lesser one is the incredible use of memory of the elite chess grandmasters, who must memorize hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of positions, tactics, strategies, and lines of openings, middle games, and endgames.
The reason I decided to write this was because the (far more detailed) story from The Discoverers reminded me of some thoughts I had been having regarding the effects on memory of the internet age. If the rise of books had been a death knell for developing memory as a tool, how much worse is the internet, which in effect serves as a substitute memory for the world? Regardless of issues of accuracy, almost all data is now placed onto the internet. Google and similar search engines become the key to accessing this modern day Memory.
And what effect on memory will come of the decline of leisure reading? Reading, which long served to teach and broaden the minds of educated people, is clearly on the decline amongst (primarily) young males, at least when it comes to spending long hours and days poring over long books for leisure purposes. Now kids turn to email, blogs, text messages, and tweets as primary substitutes for the hours once spent reading. Are we going to reach a point where the average person feels they no longer need to have much 'data' stored within their minds, since they can access it at will on the internet? Will high quality writing and the desire to enjoy such writing decline as people become used to the shorthand of modern communications? When 'lol' and 'rofl' take over for actual knowledge of good English, what does it say of our future?
It is hard to say exactly how much impact the internet will have on the area of memory, but my belief is that the coming of the internet age will eventually have nearly as great an effect on memory as the invention of the printing press.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Tagged...
I've seen this tagging game all over the place, so I knew it was just a matter of time before I got hit. The super-nice Victoria Caswell hit me up with this one, and I can't refuse her anything, so here goes...
Do you think you're hot?
I suppose I will be when I reach Arizona next week. Honestly, who can be comfortable answering a question like this? I think I am not bad, but I'm no Johnny Depp or anyone else my wife thinks is 'hot'. I don't think my wife has ever called me hot, though since she is from Russia, I don't think they use that word.
Upload a picture of wallpaper you are using at the moment.
I can't do this, sorry. I don't have my computer since it got packed away by the moving company. I'm typing on a computer with no wallpaper. How about a picture of my cockateil that we have to give away on Monday? Bye Gosha! **Sad**
![]()
Do you think you're hot?
I suppose I will be when I reach Arizona next week. Honestly, who can be comfortable answering a question like this? I think I am not bad, but I'm no Johnny Depp or anyone else my wife thinks is 'hot'. I don't think my wife has ever called me hot, though since she is from Russia, I don't think they use that word.
Upload a picture of wallpaper you are using at the moment.
I can't do this, sorry. I don't have my computer since it got packed away by the moving company. I'm typing on a computer with no wallpaper. How about a picture of my cockateil that we have to give away on Monday? Bye Gosha! **Sad**
When was the last time you ate chicken?
Is this an appropriate question after talking about my bird? I eat chicken quite a lot since I stopped eating so much red meat. Having said that, the move is throwing everything out of whack, so I haven't had chicken since my going away party last Friday at work.
The songs you listened to recently?
I don't have my beloved iTunes, so I am not getting to listen to much of anything. All I have left is a cd in my car, and it has:
Soundgarden - Searching With My Good Eye Closed, 4th of July, Boot Camp
White Zombie - Thunder Kiss '65
Filter - You Walk Away, American Cliche
Tool - Eulogy
and a few other really cool songs
What were you thinking as you were doing this?
Well, because of the last question, I've had White Zombie rocking in my head.
Do you have nicknames?
Sorry, no. My wife calls me 'Teddie', which I would hate if it was anyone else, but since she has such an adorable accent, it doesn't sound so bad coming from her. My kids call me Dad.
Tag five bloggers:
I think everyone's been tagged already. Aren't I the last one?
Bru Grace
Whose listed as number one?
Everyone knows Simon, right? Shame on you if you don't. He's one of the funniest and best writers I know, and he helped me a lot with crits on my first novel. I'd have tapped Matt Rush here also, except Victoria tagged him already.
Leave a lovey dovey message for number 2.
Oooo, I wish I knew how to flirt. Hart the Tart is great at it! Music is really sexy, and Jessica is splendid in that regard (not to mention her writing - she has a new book out!)
How did you get to know number 3?
The Naked Tart is a real character and also very helpful. She read my entire first book and gave me very nice feedback on it, for which I will always be grateful. She even pretended to like it!
How about number 4?
Hmm, I forget when I first 'met' L.G. (you see the problem of using initials for your name? I can't put a proper period there!). She's been a regular commenter and does really interesting posts. I hope any of you who haven't tried her blog will do so now!
Say something about number 5
I stumbled across Bru when I saw her interview of another blogger I follow. She did such a wonderful interview with me later. She's so kind and brave, too, as she battles near-blindness and other issues which she has bravely recounted to us. I wish so many good things for her.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
