Skyler Crossman's blog

Helen & the king

Helen,
if you but say the a word,
your face shall launch
the ships of Greece and Troy.
Or did you know that?
Would it be the right word,
or the wrong one?

Two princes kneel before you.
Prince of spades, prince of clubs.
Either could you crown, but what
if neither were your king of hearts?

And would you crown them both,
And know that both were black,
And let them assume command,
And fight your Trojan war?
------------------------------------------------
Spades, house of .falsehood.
Diamonds, house of wealth.
Clubs, house of war and blood.

All the fairy tales say that love
hides in the other house of red.
And that the house of clubs loves you,
and you'll marry him if diamonds is dead.

The stories all agree,
the man from spades is third in line,
but clubs has surely sent him straight to Hades,
and left the corpse alone in dust supine.

So surely romance is held
in the hands of some rich soul.
But what is he, 'sides a heart of gold?
He can't pull plow, or hide eyes with wool.

The liar knows the words,
to tell you how he feels.
The thug can work for any lord,
if he knows it's for your meals.

Useless but loveful is something I fear,
so when the twins of sin catch up to him,
I'll be at the back of the theater,
and cheer.

beneath the deeps

The placid surface
of the ocean
hides the power deep below,
and seems unending
while remaining
always changing
'neath the surface
deep below

Up above,
those tiny waves
so visible.
Deeper now,
currents are more powerful.
they don't seem to change either,
but the water's always different,
similar, dissimilar, really neither.

Deeper though,
beneath the deeps.
Nothing moves now,
what's still mostly alive just creeps.
Everything's stable, but how?
Safety comes from stillness,
still the single native here weeps.

(Still working on this one. Sometimes with poetry stuff I think of as an accident to be fixed but can't figure out how to get rid of it turns out to be necessary somehow. Not that this explains the bad lineup of the words in the first stanza, but I think it might. Either that, or I''m a really lazy poet.)

Unborn Words

This poem came to me in two different parts, that don't seem to have much to do with each other, but I can't somehow do them separately. I see the disjoint, belive me.

Words, lying, unused
in the bucket of my brain.
Thoughts, unuttered, fading,
denied forever short-lived reality.
Ideas, worthless, known
only to me, and then fleetingly.
Points, witty purposes,
for which they can't now be used.

I feel if only they were said,
the good they might accomplish!
The people that might wed!
But somehow, I console them.
They may not have served their purpose,
but at least they knew they had one.
Maybe my purpose was to say these words.
To make those things accomplished,
those people fall in love.
Maybe now I'm purposeless, but maybe not.
Because I still speak the same pretty doves,
the rippling words and sentences beautiful.
So maybe there's another purpose.
I'll try to find it, try hard as I can.
I'm terrified to think I have to find my own.

pluto, or not to plu? (or something witier of that nature)

two years ago, Pluto got demoted from planet to not a planet. this was deathly important to the free world, and was fiercely debated, wtih desprate verbal battles being fought. lives hinged upon this! or so every astrologist on or off planet (actualy, many of them may have actualy been from Pluto. this would explain a lot) thought. the rest of us seemed to find it as important as the invention of the paper clip. sure, it's important. we just don't know why, and don't care about it. most people weren't even interested in why they cared about it.

now, they are changing the name of the planet-(iod.) http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080611/sc_space/plutonowcalledaplutoid
this is funny. I don't know many who can actually find Pluto, and no one who actually do it for more than the shear mental exercise. I wonder how many people will remember the new name? also, can I have a refund for first grade?not all of it, just a little bit. just for the part where they told me, again and again, tested three times on it, was that there were nine planets. now there are eight. but I actually have a first grade test where I answered eight, apparently not having read the material, and got marked off for it. granted, it doesn't amount to much after all these years, but I still think I deserve some compensation. the teacher got it wrong. all that controversy? yeah, I could have solved that stuff! I knew the answer all of those scientists were looking for the entire time. I could have told them when I was six. one smart six year old. I have not forgotten this.

Lojban

I speak English, which I believe is the most illogical language possible. spelling is arbitrary, meanings have been sometimes inverted, acronyms count as words. My observation is that English was constructed by the monkeys with typewriters. (the ones who are so famous for the Shakespearian plays.) humans found the rejected manuscripts, and used that for English.
Now I find that there is a "lojical" language. but the utterly cool part is this: Lojban was a language constructed from the ground up, on purpose, exactly what high school Latin students believe the Latin-teachers did, except this one is built to make sense!

Development of the language began in 1987 by The Logical Language Group (LLG), who intended to realize Loglan's purposes as well as further complement the language by making it more usable, and freely available (as indicated by its official full English name "Lojban: a realization of Loglan"). After a long initial period of debating and testing, the baseline was completed in 1998 with the publication of The Complete Lojban Language.

The name "Lojban" is a combination of loj and ban, which are short forms of logji (logic) and bangu (language), respectively. Due to its name, Lojban is sometimes misunderstood to be within some exclusive domains such as formal logic or computer programming; however, it is usable for daily conversation. While it is meant to be capable of handling highly logical concepts, it is also highly flexible. To whatever degree the speaker wishes, it can resemble its natural, programming, or other constructed counterparts, and it can be poetic, ambiguous, precise, or neutral.

The principal sources of its basic vocabulary were the six (at the time) most widely-spoken languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi, Russian, and Spanish, chosen to reduce the unfamiliarity or strangeness of the root words to people of diverse linguistic backgrounds. Some Lojbanists acknowledge that the language has drawn on other constructed languages' components, a notable instance of which is Láadan's set of indicators. Also Toki Pona and Esperanto have mutuality with Lojban to some extent. ~~~wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

I want to learn it. but it gets better!

Following the publication of The Complete Lojban Language, it was expected that "the documented lexicon would be baselined, and the combination of lexicon and reference grammar would be frozen for a minimum of 5 years while language usage grew". As scheduled, this period, which has officially been called the "freeze", expired in 2002. The speakers of Lojban are now free to construct new words and idioms, and decide where the language is heading.

The wikipedia project from heaven/hell! (depending on whether you're the type of person who likes editing on wikipedia) The ability to make up words! to make up concepts! The guys from The Meaning of Liff would get a kick out of this. there is, of course, one possible downside to this though.

Lojban

~~~XKCD

would you like to learn Lojban? why, why not? would you like to create your own languige? what would that languige sound like?

Open source

Firefox_wicca

"Remember, the bible is closed source."~~~XKCD

the copyright vs open source debate rages on in large sections of the internet, both in logical skirmishes, great wars of rhetoric, and the backstabbing rollrickers, but while I agree that I like getting credit for my work, the awsomeness of some stuff I've seen just wows me. Most Webcomics are free to veiw, even download, and there are still people who make a living at it. Every page of Megatokyo (Fred Gallagher) is available for free on his website, and the URL to the website is provided in the introduction to every paperback edition I've seen. And yet, he does it for a living, seemingly off of teeshirt sales. So do many artists like him even though they are practically encouraging people to just take the stuff and look at the art for free.
Today, I looked up one of my favourite songs, trying to find the lyrics. I found it all right. the official band site had four buttons. Store, Contact, Myspace,... and Downloads? I clicked out of curiosity, wondering, expecting some backgrounds. They had five of their best songs up there, ready to download. I didn't mostly because I already have the CD, but it impressed the heck out of me. I don't know the motivation, but man, swell guys, huh? I don't have either the ear, voice, or musical tallent to compose a song, but I wonder if I would do that? To take a unique thing that I had done, and turn it loose in the world for everyone to see for nothing? I do something like that with my Wikia edits, but thats just minor, paragraph length critiques of someone elses work. And wow, if I had some people discussing something I had done the way the wikia people do (including myself) I might want to just delete it. But it would already be out there, wouldn't it? The confusion that results whenever RPG world (Ian Jones-Quartey) gets edited after a post is so out of proportion that it's funny. But the Firefox phenomenon shows that it can work, that  the inaccuracy of Wikia is a discrepancy, not the norm. Or maybe it is a problem, but if  Wikia keeps making the mistakes that Firefox makes, I doubt there will be much dispute over it for long.

if you had created a work of some kind, lets say that it took six months of work every day, would you make it open source or closed?
would you trust open source material, such as Firefox and Wikia?

decay by degrees

"as it developed in England, the jury consisted of "twelve men good and true." although 12 is still the usual number, a lesser number, often six, now fills jury boxes in several states.Today, in all the states,  women, as well as men, serve on juries."
American Government
what startles me about this is not that women weren't allowed to serve on juries originally. call me jaded, but that comes as no shock. The thing that makes me wonder, and lead to the title of this post, is that out of the five qualifiers for a jury, two have been struck down, and one is a conjunction. a sixty% fatality record is not something to brag about.
the first to go was presumable the necessity of twelve. since it mentions this being a state thing, we must assume that this would have been broken at least by the time all fifty states were admitted. the last bunch (continental anyway) was in 1912. women could serve on juries starting at 1920. thus, the "Men" part is out.
it looks like the interval is eight years! they must all be gone long ago! something missing? you bet it is! the U.S. was started in 1787. that's when the the clock began, rather than the first time something happened. so it was over one hundred years, say, 120-140 as the margin of error, then two within ten years, give that a range of 6-10. thus, the next two should begin to fall in 2030 at the earliest, and they should both be gone by 2060 at the latest. the last  one would be ignored somewhere around the year 2200.
If I ever gain control of a Time Machine, I want to zoom forward to the year 2201, where the juries are composed of "any number other than twelve women who are bad or lieing." what a pleasant country it will be!

Washington

I went to Washington D.C., and kept a journal. unfortunately, I grabbed the journal the first day, but forgot it the second, didn't have a pencil the day after, and gave up on the fourth. so this is the first days journal, while I was still full of naivete and optimism.

"It's 4 in the morning. on the one hand, as soon as I figure out who planned getting up this early, I'm going to ossing kill them. but for the moment, that isn't the priority. (because it's likely that it's Phil, and I don't like the thought of spending some jail time) but largely/mostly/maybe because I'm so hopped up on tension, or something that it looks awesome. the eye of the storm kinda thing. the moon was streaming through the clouds, so bright that I though dawn approached. the lights flickering on and off up then down the stairs as people moved. so when I;m convicted of patricide, I will be grateful. sleep deprivation is of course illegal for prisoners.

I'm gong to try something. iin the margins of my notes I'm going to write the name of the song I hear. I may not remember to do this all the time, but when I do I will. that's all I ever do of course. do what I can, can what I do, what can I do, I can do WHAT!?! (my response to learning how early we'd be waking.) as you can see, I'm taking the toll for the absurdity of the hour, so I'll stop writing, so that my denigration into floppy hats and tea party's and mac computers is not documented. back to enjoying the moonrise.
[the cape]

430. I'm siting in the dark, flying, ground going steadily invisible, and I see the string of lights on polls as some blue (fluorescent?) some yellow, (incandescent?) almost perfectly alternating. almost. I wanted to yell to the others to get in line. then of course, there were the ones that were  just dark.
[simple things]

440. the song we're listening to has a saxophone intro. dad asked, "wouldn't it be cool if you could do that?"  "I do what I can with the meager skills I have." I said it laconically, but in a way I meant it. a large section of my life is spent pleasing others. I'm going to try to learn to play.

We just crossed into NY, and the bill boards were right on the line. hows that for first impressions? I think that violates the spirit of the VT anti-billboard law, if not the letter. I believe I've formerly made reference to solitary miscreants armed with characteristically harmless butter spreading utensils.
[I still haven't found what I'm looking for]

506. the moon casts shadows. I never noticed that before.

517. when I die, I want an on-line grave. make an E-mail address with my name, date of birth, date of death, at a free E-mail site. then mail me stuff. new quotes, new events, music. stuff. that's all I want. no grave. that, and a comedian at the wake. and of course a speaker.
[both sides of the story]

542. "all vehicles subject to a random search." airport sign.
oh, the sweet, sweet laughter.
[the cape]

1151. the capital. I should feel awe and such, but it looks like an upturned ice cream cone.

the national museum of the American indian. was the architect drunk? and the air ans space museum has modern art. the old Smithsonian is of historical interest for being... history? you can't deny it had that. not its own, and I think they moved it though.
[the horse with no name]

1345. I see all these beautiful things in Washington. my two companions are aghast at my disinterest in the banality of it. they see great marble structures and Wonders deserving of the capital letter, yet while they see luxury, I regard it as opulence. yes, there is a difference. opulence is luxury upon luxury, uneeded. why/ what does the Washington monument DO??? and yet,so much material us used for them, and the government is in DEBT! (and yes, I know this bit is reminiscent of both Penny Robertson and Valentine Wiggin's Demosthenes. I'm not sure why. could be sudden surging sympathy with the former.)

1435. My. Feet. Hurt! there is physical pain! I'm sorry, I'm irritable and in pain! with tomorrow giving all appearances of being more of the same. I'm also considering that my companions will read this, so I am also doing a meta-blogging infinity mirror thing, a la Bean's second journal.

tomorrow we're going to see the Vietnam war memorial.
........
several this to say about that.
1. the big problem in the middle east seems to be people with to good a memory for grievances.
2. How can I be emotionally moved by a list of names I don't know?
3. who was consoled by this? "I'm sorry, your son/husband died. he's his name on a piece of rock." that wouldn't cut it for me. give me more than a name please.

1647. at the hotel at last! my mind works much better when it doesn't have to constantly rally the rest of me.

Footnote: the rest of the time went better. the monuments really moved my when I saw them up close. the food wasn't that bad. the Washington brainwashing corps tell me so. @_@

True love

The other day, someone asked me if I believed in true love. It was in response to my criticism of a book about a couple, where 42% of the sentences used in dialogue had the word love, affection, kiss, or beautiful in them. (I did them math, 42.) The guy who loaned it to me asked why I thought it was too lovey-dovey. Besides the fact that I retain a bit of my pre-adolescent cootie fear, (I'm clinging to it in hopes that I can ride out adolescence without girls in a necessary capacity) I don't think there is 'true love'. When asked why, I replied with one of my favorite Einstein quotes. "God is not malicious."

Because God is such an ambiguous guy, (I know of 14 religions, and they all disagree on the precise description. like some kind of billion year old Adam Young) let me explain why I know he is not malicious. Lets define malicious as someone who enjoys pain in others. If God was stupid and malicious, then we would all be dead by now. If God were smart and malicious, we would be in much more trouble than we are. Also, many scriptures attributed to him encourage hope, and bring comfort. If a smart God wanted people scared and running, he would do better than to give people comfort at the heart of his followers. So God is not malicious, and is therefore either indifferent or kind to humanity. As he has interfered with us many times, I tend to think he is not indifferent. So we must assume that God would prefer individual humans to be happy, or at least content.

Now, lets look at the world as if true love existed. One woman, lets say, will be a perfect match for one man. Everyone has his or her own match. When you meet that person, you fall in love. Now, what happens to me if my perfect match is in Thailand? Both of us are likely to be unhappy, being denied our perfect matches. Perhaps God set it up so that all matches are nearby each other, so a meeting is likely? In which case, there are moves. Most families move around. How close do they have to be? How do you keep the families from moving, or make sure that the two will met each other? How do you make sure that neither family has any prejudice against the other, a la Romeo and Juliet? To make this system work would mean massive interference from God on a daily level. At that point, there is no way that individual free will could exist on any meaningful level. The idea of a perfect guaranteed match would be nice, but I prefer free will.

Also, how do you ensure that they don't make do with substitutes? 50% of Americans marriages end in divorce. So fifty% of people presumably got it wrong. I prefer to think that God has a better than chance hit rate. Frankly, I expect God to have a perfect score.

Commitment

"How do you explain love at first sight?" my friend demanded. "Well," I replied, "the term I would use for it is lucky infatuation." this put him in rather high dudgeon. "But in this picture you're painting of the world, God is a failure." "Nope" I said, "I don't think he fails at it. I think he doesn't try at all.” this made him think, and from the expression on his face, this was very uncomfortable for him. "While you're at it." I said, taking pity on him in his struggle and interrupting, if only to heavy the burden, "what about in cultures that are polygamous?" he did not take to the added task very well, and emulated a computer admirably, shutting down all trains of thought mid-rail. Having believed myself victorious, I began to turn away, but he had other ideas. "So, why do people fall in love from your point of view?" he was hoping to stump me with this, as I had ruled out all the right answers myself, but I didn't mind cheating. "Not a clue." I said. "Asking me what about love is very akin to asking a computer about water. It doesn't know quite what to make of the idea at first, and reacts with the fear of the unknown. Then it guesses, and theorizes about water, thinking about the idea. It reaches conclusions based in logic, like, "humans need water, and so I must too! But since I don't try to consume it, it must happen when I'm asleep!" it begins to hope for the experience, to wonder about it. This begins to speed up. It researches it, but nothing tells it what it wants to know. All the data seems incomplete. "But what is hydrogen! And what does the oxygen do? Why the number difference? Why always the same order? Never 2OH! Then it finally asks a filled bucket about it, but the bucket, being inanimate like the computer, can't help the computer get in the water, and wouldn't if it could, because it doesn't want a computer in it anyway. And then a bunch of buckets begin to spread stories about the computer, or at least it looks like that, but the computer can't tell, because the bucket and the computer, being completely different things, don't speak the same language. Finally, it decides that the topic of water must be useless, since it has been functioning slower since it thought of the topic. It dropped the matter" "but why didn't it ask some friends who where in water then?" cried my friend. "It did." I said. "But it just couldn’t get good answers out of them.

obsesion cubed

     I got a rubiks cube for my birthday. I like the idea of it. I like the concept of an I.Q. test that doesn't depend on literacy, or mathematics. And I like the idea of simple/complex. That’s part of the lure of classic video games for me, a simple structure, with endless complexity in that little concept. There are no rules to rubiks cube, just win conditions. Get all the sides to line up. Don’t break it. I assumed, the smart guy I am, I'd finish it before nightfall.

     Two days later, I finally got one side done. Keep in mind that rubiks cube is not cumulative. If I want to do two sides, I'll have to get rid of the one side, and reform it later. This is kinda scary; because I'm not at all certain I CAN reform it. It's like gambling in a way. Can I get better, or will I lose what I have? Except instead of luck, this game relies all on intelligence. And that for me is way scary, because until now, I have always counted on my brain to handle anything I wanted it to. I wasn't crazy, I knew there were things I couldn't do. But my easy As in school, combined with my skill at such games as chess, made me believe that my mind was invincible. My head was always a nice place to stay whenever everything in the real world got to crazy. Nobody ever managed to beat me in my head. But this cube might just be a challenge. I cannot ignore it, that feels like backing down. I can't wait to long I might not be able to beat it. But even admitting the possibility that my brain has limits is hard, feels like treason. Worse than that really, because I don't know much about my country in the abstract sense.

Here is what I have learned, for any other rubiks strugglers.

1.                                    The center square on each side never moves.

2.                                    The corners will tell you what the pattern of the colors will be when complete.

3.                                    There is a set pattern.

4.                                    All sides must be solving nearly at the same time. Once you finish a side, you have much less movement.

5.                                    THINK. Do a bit in your head. I had seven whit pieces done, and couldn't find out how to fit the other two in. I was whirling them in circles. I thought I would have to disform the seven, when I figured it out, and did it. (I know that's vague, but my mind is not well understood. I think of it like a nuclear bomb. Powerful, protective, but I couldn't build one.) The point is, think it out, and don’t just try. You don't win at chess by trial and error.