One of the first things I got as a teacher that I thought was a perk was the fashioning and the delivery of a podium to my room. It took seven days for the Engineering department at my school (I call them that because the word maintenance just doesn't seem to cut it for these guys ^_^) to make the podium and about half a day to deliver it. When I received it, I welcomed it warmly; now I didn't have to lug around the textbook while I presented the lesson. I noticed one afternoon that the paint has started to rub off on its lower left corner. I realized that's where I rested my forearm while talking to my students. There you go, instant character!
I was thinking about that and how when at the Teachers' Lounge there was a discussion on student-centered learning. In the olden days, so the conversation goes, the teacher was the font of wisdom. If you wanted to learn it, you asked the teacher or the teacher gave it to you. If the teacher didn't know it, you didn't learn it. He or she had the book, the grades, the knowledge, and the students were there to receive. Now, with the advance of technology, it is the students who have the knowledge in the form of a massive, searchable font of data called the Internet. In some cases the student actually learns effectively from this source. It then has become the teacher's job to supervise this flow of knowledge and to make sure that the students are learning. Now, if you didn't know something, you looked it up--you didn't ask your teacher first.
I remember at first being a little let down by this train of thought. No longer were teachers the respected learning sources they were in the past. But as I walked Kmart today in search of a squeegee for my chalkboard, I realized that it doesn't have to be all bad news. First of all, if the teacher didn't know something, it would be easy for him or her to look it up, too! And what's more, we teachers would be more motivated to do so, improving the flow of communication between the teachers and students. More importantly, I realized that I didn't become a teacher so that I could act as a "font of wisdom". My job is not really about informing students... it's about making students realize the impact of their learning on their lives, and encouraging them to use what they've learned to make their lives better. That's actually more difficult. Most importantly, it dovetails nicely with what I've learned during the assessment and accountability conference. In this shifted paradigm, the teacher's task of assessing his or her students in making sure that learning is occurring is even more important! And since students cannot anymore be expected to have learned the same things in the same way, multiple perspectives assessment becomes more of a priority.
Teaching is the hardest thing I've ever had to do, yet every time I think about it, I feel that this was the positive change in the world I was meant to accomplish. And hopefully, next week, I can do it all with a cleaner chalkboard.
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Led Zeppelin, "Over the Hills and Far Away". First heard as a ringtone on a now-defunct phone owned by a friend.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Stainless: 2. Stainless
This serves as the introduction to this series of posts, which I should have posted before I posted "Perspective" yesterday. Perhaps my thoughts on this post were less well-formed than the ones from my first post. Not a problem; this is something that can be edited in post-production.
Before I go into today's topic, I would like to expound a little bit on the notion that Filipino commuters trade 2D maps of their commutes for easier-to-remember linear sequences of landmarks. This is interesting because to some extent, they lose track of and forget the 2D map (or indeed never learn it in the first place). The shortcut "maps" they have in their head only make sense for as long as there are jeepneys, buses, and tricycles on Manila's thoroughfares. But guess which people are required to know the 2D maps? The conductors and drivers of the public utility vehicles. If you commanded a tricycle driver, "Sanggumay Street", or to a jeepney driver, "Sa Tomas Morato lang", those commands would not make sense if either driver had no idea where those places were.
So in effect, there is a sort of "cartographic priesthood" made up of the public utility vehicle drivers and owners that know all the roads, and the "cartographic laity", the rest of us who have only memorized landmarks. This, in turn, is interesting, because it helps explain why jeepney drivers have so much clout when it comes to making the /pamasahe/ or the jeepney fare closely follow trends in the price of gas. Think about it. If jeeps have to pay more for gas without raising the fares, some will go out of business. There will be fewer jeeps, and fewer people will be able to go around, simply because they don't have the whole map, just the landmarks, and the jeepneys do.
Many things in the Philippines, it seems, are made of stainless steel--jeepneys, tricycles, furniture, so on and so forth. As soon as I had that idea in my head, I decided that this series of posts should be named "Stainless". But of course, naming something Stainless requires the word "stainless" to do double duty--it must describe something literal or mundane about a set of concepts, and, by some clever (or otherwise) turn of phrase or reinterpretation, it must also describe something deeper about the same set of concepts. That reinterpretation dawned on me while I was riding a jeepney from Lawton to St. Luke's Medical Center, and the jeepney crossed Pasig River on a bridge made to look like stainless steel. (Perhaps it was really stainless steel, but that is not likely; more likely it was painted that color to shimmer in the hot sun.)
It was the juxtaposition of something clean and glimmering and something so notoriously dirty and noxious that clicked in my head. I've never seen an upstanding Filipino person who did not endeavor to clean up, to make something presentable, be it the facade of their house, the floor, their own appearance. So why is it that, when you walk busy streets and wait for jeepneys and buses at busy intersections, you come upon so much trash and dingy walls, walls plastered with political ads and simple block text ads that promise to help you "lipat bahay" (moving house) or the services of a "tubero" (plumber) if you call or text some number? Why is the air so dirty that the sky is gray or brown rather than blue? How could a nation of clean people (here I only mean to make a generalization to achieve contrast) let monstrosities like Smokey Mountain and Pasig River happen?
I hit upon the answer when I realized that I have been removed from this place for so long that I am not seeing Metro Manila with Filipino eyes anymore; I am seeing them with American (Guamanian?) eyes. I thought back to when I had a full Filipino mindset, when I was a lot younger. The place seemed... cleaner. When I was assigned to draw in school, and it was time to color in the sky, I reached for the blue crayon. I visited my aunts' house near Bamboo Organ Church, and while it was dingy and dirty--in other words, the way it is now--I didn't seem to mind. (If there was anyting I minded when I was a child, it was the smell. Since the sense of smell creates the strongest memories, I am somewhat surprised that I don't smell it whenever I visit nowadays.)
Of course, it could be that this memory of a cleaner Manila is the result of any one of a number of more mundane causes: perhaps being a child I was simply not equipped to pay attention to the dirt around me; perhaps my mother and the housekeepers we hired did such a good job of keeping my house clean that I came to assume that everywhere else is just as clean; and perhaps--and this view is what I think most people, Filipinos or otherwise, hold--perhaps it really was cleaner back then. (This last is a manifestation of the frame of mind that the past is better than the present.)
But perhaps the disconnect is caused by a special feature of Filipino perspective: Filipinos maybe--just maybe--look past the very dirt they combat. When they see Luneta, they visualize a Luneta they want to visit, free of candy wrappers on the ground, the monuments newly-painted and not stained with years of soot and car smoke, the air fresh, clean, and breathable. What's more, this visualization may in fact be borne of that same Filipino desire to be clean that moves them to sweep with brooms and scrub floors with coconut shell halves. In short, their perspective is that of a "stainless" Manila.
In this way it seems like the complete reverse of what I learned was the Japanese perspective. When Japanese people look at a place, they /expect/ it to be the ideal way it is supposed to be, and are usually disappointed when the reality does not match the ideal. Filipinos look at the mirror from the other side--they see the reality and visualize the ideal, and when possible, try to make the two match. (Of course, the Japanese "disappointment" can and does move them to do the same thing, match the reality to the ideal. It is an example of two opposite causes having the same effect.)
Now this "stainless" view is fine and perhaps even positive in the individual case, but in the group-political case it may have negative effects. Filipino politics has a timbre that rivals any Filipino soap opera; it seems so difficult to build a consensus on any sort of policy, as most any political move is construed to benefit the author or sponsor in some way. A "stainless" perspective makes environmental mistakes like Pasig River possible, because in a slow-moving bureaucracy, why fix something that doesn't /look/ broken (or in this case, dirty)?
This is why I like the explanation of the "stainless" perspective--it explains the seeming disconnect between the Filipino propensity to be clean and the larger ongoing problem with cleanliness in Manila. It relates to this series of posts because I can see this last visit to the Philippines as an opportunity to relearn this "stainless" perspective and to apply its positive lessons to my life.
This thought process was borne in me by my rejection of the "the past is better than the present" mindset. I'm mainly a "the future is better than the present" person, and this offers the hope that if Filipinos recognize that they have this "stainless" perspective, they can overcome the political barriers that keep them from becoming a more environmentally conscious country, a country that actually is stainless.
Thoughts?
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Iyaz feat. Charice Pempengco, "Pyramid".
Before I go into today's topic, I would like to expound a little bit on the notion that Filipino commuters trade 2D maps of their commutes for easier-to-remember linear sequences of landmarks. This is interesting because to some extent, they lose track of and forget the 2D map (or indeed never learn it in the first place). The shortcut "maps" they have in their head only make sense for as long as there are jeepneys, buses, and tricycles on Manila's thoroughfares. But guess which people are required to know the 2D maps? The conductors and drivers of the public utility vehicles. If you commanded a tricycle driver, "Sanggumay Street", or to a jeepney driver, "Sa Tomas Morato lang", those commands would not make sense if either driver had no idea where those places were.
So in effect, there is a sort of "cartographic priesthood" made up of the public utility vehicle drivers and owners that know all the roads, and the "cartographic laity", the rest of us who have only memorized landmarks. This, in turn, is interesting, because it helps explain why jeepney drivers have so much clout when it comes to making the /pamasahe/ or the jeepney fare closely follow trends in the price of gas. Think about it. If jeeps have to pay more for gas without raising the fares, some will go out of business. There will be fewer jeeps, and fewer people will be able to go around, simply because they don't have the whole map, just the landmarks, and the jeepneys do.
Many things in the Philippines, it seems, are made of stainless steel--jeepneys, tricycles, furniture, so on and so forth. As soon as I had that idea in my head, I decided that this series of posts should be named "Stainless". But of course, naming something Stainless requires the word "stainless" to do double duty--it must describe something literal or mundane about a set of concepts, and, by some clever (or otherwise) turn of phrase or reinterpretation, it must also describe something deeper about the same set of concepts. That reinterpretation dawned on me while I was riding a jeepney from Lawton to St. Luke's Medical Center, and the jeepney crossed Pasig River on a bridge made to look like stainless steel. (Perhaps it was really stainless steel, but that is not likely; more likely it was painted that color to shimmer in the hot sun.)
It was the juxtaposition of something clean and glimmering and something so notoriously dirty and noxious that clicked in my head. I've never seen an upstanding Filipino person who did not endeavor to clean up, to make something presentable, be it the facade of their house, the floor, their own appearance. So why is it that, when you walk busy streets and wait for jeepneys and buses at busy intersections, you come upon so much trash and dingy walls, walls plastered with political ads and simple block text ads that promise to help you "lipat bahay" (moving house) or the services of a "tubero" (plumber) if you call or text some number? Why is the air so dirty that the sky is gray or brown rather than blue? How could a nation of clean people (here I only mean to make a generalization to achieve contrast) let monstrosities like Smokey Mountain and Pasig River happen?
I hit upon the answer when I realized that I have been removed from this place for so long that I am not seeing Metro Manila with Filipino eyes anymore; I am seeing them with American (Guamanian?) eyes. I thought back to when I had a full Filipino mindset, when I was a lot younger. The place seemed... cleaner. When I was assigned to draw in school, and it was time to color in the sky, I reached for the blue crayon. I visited my aunts' house near Bamboo Organ Church, and while it was dingy and dirty--in other words, the way it is now--I didn't seem to mind. (If there was anyting I minded when I was a child, it was the smell. Since the sense of smell creates the strongest memories, I am somewhat surprised that I don't smell it whenever I visit nowadays.)
Of course, it could be that this memory of a cleaner Manila is the result of any one of a number of more mundane causes: perhaps being a child I was simply not equipped to pay attention to the dirt around me; perhaps my mother and the housekeepers we hired did such a good job of keeping my house clean that I came to assume that everywhere else is just as clean; and perhaps--and this view is what I think most people, Filipinos or otherwise, hold--perhaps it really was cleaner back then. (This last is a manifestation of the frame of mind that the past is better than the present.)
But perhaps the disconnect is caused by a special feature of Filipino perspective: Filipinos maybe--just maybe--look past the very dirt they combat. When they see Luneta, they visualize a Luneta they want to visit, free of candy wrappers on the ground, the monuments newly-painted and not stained with years of soot and car smoke, the air fresh, clean, and breathable. What's more, this visualization may in fact be borne of that same Filipino desire to be clean that moves them to sweep with brooms and scrub floors with coconut shell halves. In short, their perspective is that of a "stainless" Manila.
In this way it seems like the complete reverse of what I learned was the Japanese perspective. When Japanese people look at a place, they /expect/ it to be the ideal way it is supposed to be, and are usually disappointed when the reality does not match the ideal. Filipinos look at the mirror from the other side--they see the reality and visualize the ideal, and when possible, try to make the two match. (Of course, the Japanese "disappointment" can and does move them to do the same thing, match the reality to the ideal. It is an example of two opposite causes having the same effect.)
Now this "stainless" view is fine and perhaps even positive in the individual case, but in the group-political case it may have negative effects. Filipino politics has a timbre that rivals any Filipino soap opera; it seems so difficult to build a consensus on any sort of policy, as most any political move is construed to benefit the author or sponsor in some way. A "stainless" perspective makes environmental mistakes like Pasig River possible, because in a slow-moving bureaucracy, why fix something that doesn't /look/ broken (or in this case, dirty)?
This is why I like the explanation of the "stainless" perspective--it explains the seeming disconnect between the Filipino propensity to be clean and the larger ongoing problem with cleanliness in Manila. It relates to this series of posts because I can see this last visit to the Philippines as an opportunity to relearn this "stainless" perspective and to apply its positive lessons to my life.
This thought process was borne in me by my rejection of the "the past is better than the present" mindset. I'm mainly a "the future is better than the present" person, and this offers the hope that if Filipinos recognize that they have this "stainless" perspective, they can overcome the political barriers that keep them from becoming a more environmentally conscious country, a country that actually is stainless.
Thoughts?
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Iyaz feat. Charice Pempengco, "Pyramid".
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Stainless: 1. Perspective
This is something that's surely occurred to me before, in my previous trips to the Philippines, but I'm only noticing this now. It has something to do with perspective. It's like this. Guam, in sheer size and area, is much smaller than the Philippines--I think it is smaller then even just Luzon, the northern island--but in some way it doesn't feel smaller. I look around in Guam and I always see green and blue--the plants and the sky. I am always cognizant of the space not just in my vicinity at the moment, but of other vicinities. When I drive to work and go on the Route 16 overpass, I see Micronesia Mall from far away, and the ocean and the hotels beyond that. When I go to Kmart, I see not just Kmart but the jungles around Kmart and the cliffline upon which Chalan Pasaheru, Route 10A, was built. When I go to the beach in Tumon, not only do I see the hotels lining the beach view, but also Tanguisson and Two Lovers' Point, from miles away.
The same is not the case in Manila. You take the jeepney to Lawton, and all you see are the other sweaty faces riding with you on that jeepney. Try to peer outside the jeepney's open windows, and what you'll see are the facades of houses, businesses, and the people inhabiting the street right at that moment. You walk the street to RFC, and all you see is the street. Unless you're right at Real Street, you won't see that Jollibee or McDonald's that you know is just a minute's walk away, and even if you did, chances are you're looking at the large signs these businesses had to erect in order to compete with all the other signs all around them. In other words, you can't see Espana from Lawton, and you can't see E. Rodriguez from Espana.
Now, am I saying that this is a bad thing? On one hand, I do fear that the military buildup that is being planned for Guam may have the effect of "closing in" our vistas so that our perspectives cease to be open. Already I observe that once those four towers at Oka are built, they will be an inescapable sight for miles around, even as you're going towards the intersection between Routes 1 and 10A on that final stretch of road near Kmart. Now guess what you will see when you are standing at the Hospital parking lot, near the towers. That's right, the towers. Just the towers. Even since before the towers were built, you couldn't see the ocean from the GMH parking lot anyway, even if you tried, but now, with the towers in the way, you wouldn't even consider the possibility.
But perhaps this "closed-ness" that makes the very messy but functional public transport system in Metro Manila possible. Because the only landmarks available to them are the ones in their immediate vicinity, Filipino commuters soon learn to recognize them even within the confines of a jeepney where you have to hang down your head to see out the window. Perhaps they do not see their daily commute as a two-dimensional map, but rather as a linear ordering of landmarks that they consult as they ride the tricycles, jeepneys, and buses in their route. Because their vistas are closed, every intersection comes to look different. I think back to the time I dropped off a friend in Liguan Terrace. I dropped her off all right, but it took me 30 minutes of driving around to realize how to get back out to Marine Corps Drive. Why? The houses all looked the same at night, and the only landmarks I could find were faraway ones, in this case the tall trees that grow from some of the houses. Since the trees were far away, they look similar even when viewed from entirely different intersections.
I decided that an amorphous, market-driven public transport system would not take off in Guam, simply because of our lack of immediate (as opposed to large and faraway) landmarks. I'm pretty sure you've heard of Bear Rock, but what about Pacific Plaza? Would you be confident in getting dropped off at Pacific Plaza if you knew that there was another place called Pacific Place? (There is, by the way.) What about Baltej Pavilion? Sounds familiar, right? But where is it, and how could I use this information to get where I want to go?
This is when I realized that the tension between open vistas and closed vistas is a tension between the picturesque and the efficient. In fact, I did not set out to write this post the way you are reading it; I was supposed to say something about how Filipinos compensate for this lack of perspective with open minds. But that seems rather New-Agey and quite like that bit about the white woman Margaret Mead telling the Pacific Islanders from the outlying islands what they are really like in her book when really, in the opinion of the islanders, she really doesn't know what she's talking about.
So I am glad I instead talked about public transportation, as this is a topic that engages both my political and mathematical proclivities. For many reasons, Guam will greatly benefit from a public transport system. But how will it be accomplished? Perhaps this talk about getting the commuter thinking about his or her route as a series of landmarks in closed vistas might help quite a bit.
Thoughts?
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Hayley Williams, B.O.B., and Eminem, "Airplanes".
The same is not the case in Manila. You take the jeepney to Lawton, and all you see are the other sweaty faces riding with you on that jeepney. Try to peer outside the jeepney's open windows, and what you'll see are the facades of houses, businesses, and the people inhabiting the street right at that moment. You walk the street to RFC, and all you see is the street. Unless you're right at Real Street, you won't see that Jollibee or McDonald's that you know is just a minute's walk away, and even if you did, chances are you're looking at the large signs these businesses had to erect in order to compete with all the other signs all around them. In other words, you can't see Espana from Lawton, and you can't see E. Rodriguez from Espana.
Now, am I saying that this is a bad thing? On one hand, I do fear that the military buildup that is being planned for Guam may have the effect of "closing in" our vistas so that our perspectives cease to be open. Already I observe that once those four towers at Oka are built, they will be an inescapable sight for miles around, even as you're going towards the intersection between Routes 1 and 10A on that final stretch of road near Kmart. Now guess what you will see when you are standing at the Hospital parking lot, near the towers. That's right, the towers. Just the towers. Even since before the towers were built, you couldn't see the ocean from the GMH parking lot anyway, even if you tried, but now, with the towers in the way, you wouldn't even consider the possibility.
But perhaps this "closed-ness" that makes the very messy but functional public transport system in Metro Manila possible. Because the only landmarks available to them are the ones in their immediate vicinity, Filipino commuters soon learn to recognize them even within the confines of a jeepney where you have to hang down your head to see out the window. Perhaps they do not see their daily commute as a two-dimensional map, but rather as a linear ordering of landmarks that they consult as they ride the tricycles, jeepneys, and buses in their route. Because their vistas are closed, every intersection comes to look different. I think back to the time I dropped off a friend in Liguan Terrace. I dropped her off all right, but it took me 30 minutes of driving around to realize how to get back out to Marine Corps Drive. Why? The houses all looked the same at night, and the only landmarks I could find were faraway ones, in this case the tall trees that grow from some of the houses. Since the trees were far away, they look similar even when viewed from entirely different intersections.
I decided that an amorphous, market-driven public transport system would not take off in Guam, simply because of our lack of immediate (as opposed to large and faraway) landmarks. I'm pretty sure you've heard of Bear Rock, but what about Pacific Plaza? Would you be confident in getting dropped off at Pacific Plaza if you knew that there was another place called Pacific Place? (There is, by the way.) What about Baltej Pavilion? Sounds familiar, right? But where is it, and how could I use this information to get where I want to go?
This is when I realized that the tension between open vistas and closed vistas is a tension between the picturesque and the efficient. In fact, I did not set out to write this post the way you are reading it; I was supposed to say something about how Filipinos compensate for this lack of perspective with open minds. But that seems rather New-Agey and quite like that bit about the white woman Margaret Mead telling the Pacific Islanders from the outlying islands what they are really like in her book when really, in the opinion of the islanders, she really doesn't know what she's talking about.
So I am glad I instead talked about public transportation, as this is a topic that engages both my political and mathematical proclivities. For many reasons, Guam will greatly benefit from a public transport system. But how will it be accomplished? Perhaps this talk about getting the commuter thinking about his or her route as a series of landmarks in closed vistas might help quite a bit.
Thoughts?
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Hayley Williams, B.O.B., and Eminem, "Airplanes".
Friday, April 23, 2010
Motivation
Today I woke up at seven thirty in the morning. This is a good thing. In fact, I would like to wake up much earlier. But since I was not accustomed to waking up at that hour, guess what? I ended up going right back to sleep. Now it's past one in the afternoon, and I have returned to my web journal after a long absence to ask: What would be a good morning ritual to kick start a day?
In the past few months I have been attending a ballroom dancing class at the studio my sister also attends. It started out for the benefit of my mother, who complained that she rarely gets a partner. So I joined, and was surprised at how efficient this activity was in getting me to break a sweat. Which, I guess, was the point; ballroom dancing is supposed to look easy.
Recently, as the date of the company's annual concert neared, I became given to saying out loud, "Let's get this down good, guys, so we can take this to the concert!" This usually gets a laugh, mostly nervous, from the other participants, who are mostly parents of the students at the company. It is clear that they would rather not perform for the concert, and would rather just watch it. My mother chimes in during our dinner conversations thus: she thinks that the company director wouldn't put ballroom students in the concert programme unless they were of a certain quality, i.e., they were good enough.
All well and good, of course. The steps given to us by the instructor, I admit, look very simple and easy, not well-suited to be performed for a concert. If they were any more complex, we wouldn't have time to learn it in an hour. And it probably takes about three weeks to a month of serious dedication to master a dance-number-length routine, even if it were only made up of simple steps.
But to me, the thought of taking it to the concert is a useful legal fiction. One, I already noted how it makes other people laugh. Sometimes it will appear to me that ballroom practice is getting too serious; my utterance just shakes it off just a little. And another, more important reason is that even though I don't seriously expect to perform for the program, my thinking that I would be included causes me to show off a little bit more, in effect, to make it look more effortless than it actually is. This helps squeeze both sweat and attitude from me, and in the end I know I must have danced much better.
And anyway, if I can't perform for the concert, I always have my graduation party. ^_^
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Santana, "Samba Pa Ti".
In the past few months I have been attending a ballroom dancing class at the studio my sister also attends. It started out for the benefit of my mother, who complained that she rarely gets a partner. So I joined, and was surprised at how efficient this activity was in getting me to break a sweat. Which, I guess, was the point; ballroom dancing is supposed to look easy.
Recently, as the date of the company's annual concert neared, I became given to saying out loud, "Let's get this down good, guys, so we can take this to the concert!" This usually gets a laugh, mostly nervous, from the other participants, who are mostly parents of the students at the company. It is clear that they would rather not perform for the concert, and would rather just watch it. My mother chimes in during our dinner conversations thus: she thinks that the company director wouldn't put ballroom students in the concert programme unless they were of a certain quality, i.e., they were good enough.
All well and good, of course. The steps given to us by the instructor, I admit, look very simple and easy, not well-suited to be performed for a concert. If they were any more complex, we wouldn't have time to learn it in an hour. And it probably takes about three weeks to a month of serious dedication to master a dance-number-length routine, even if it were only made up of simple steps.
But to me, the thought of taking it to the concert is a useful legal fiction. One, I already noted how it makes other people laugh. Sometimes it will appear to me that ballroom practice is getting too serious; my utterance just shakes it off just a little. And another, more important reason is that even though I don't seriously expect to perform for the program, my thinking that I would be included causes me to show off a little bit more, in effect, to make it look more effortless than it actually is. This helps squeeze both sweat and attitude from me, and in the end I know I must have danced much better.
And anyway, if I can't perform for the concert, I always have my graduation party. ^_^
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Santana, "Samba Pa Ti".
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Leaving this world
Perhaps sometime last week I read William Saletan's article on occupying virtual worlds. The article summarized the story of a Korean couple--heavy Internet users--who met online, got together, and had a sickly baby. The couple continued to play online games at Internet cafes, leaving the baby alone at home for most of the day most days. They even had another virtual baby online--one that was not sickly and was everything the couple wanted. One day, they came home to find their real baby dead.
Saletan argues that while the couple may have been culpable for the death of their real child, the increasing power of the virtual worlds we create cannot be underestimated. Every time we check these virtual worlds get better and better, and all the time it gets easier and easier to be drawn into them and to wish to stay in them. And this effect is not limited to MMORPGs and other video games; he says, "Every time you answer the phone in traffic, squander your work day on YouTube, text a colleague during dinner, or turn on your TV to escape your kids, you're leaving this world."
The plain truth of this assertion was apparent to me when I first heard it, but then last Saturday, after my tutoring appointment, I decided to stick around for a while before driving to my next destination. I fired up the web browser on my mobile phone and started to read articles (funnily enough the majority of my time was spent on Slate). When I ran out of articles to read, I decided to begin my drive. At first, I wondered why I felt so drained--I felt as if I traveled hundreds of miles to get where I was. Then I realized, in a way, I kind of did.
Song in my head: Matisyahu, "One Day".
Saletan argues that while the couple may have been culpable for the death of their real child, the increasing power of the virtual worlds we create cannot be underestimated. Every time we check these virtual worlds get better and better, and all the time it gets easier and easier to be drawn into them and to wish to stay in them. And this effect is not limited to MMORPGs and other video games; he says, "Every time you answer the phone in traffic, squander your work day on YouTube, text a colleague during dinner, or turn on your TV to escape your kids, you're leaving this world."
The plain truth of this assertion was apparent to me when I first heard it, but then last Saturday, after my tutoring appointment, I decided to stick around for a while before driving to my next destination. I fired up the web browser on my mobile phone and started to read articles (funnily enough the majority of my time was spent on Slate). When I ran out of articles to read, I decided to begin my drive. At first, I wondered why I felt so drained--I felt as if I traveled hundreds of miles to get where I was. Then I realized, in a way, I kind of did.
Song in my head: Matisyahu, "One Day".
Monday, February 8, 2010
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Proofreading a legend
Today I bought the Classic NES Series version of Legend of Zelda, and I am welcoming the almost impossible challenge. If you needed any proof that gamers in the 80s are more skilled than we are today, just insert this cartridge into your Game Boy Advance.
I did notice something, though, that was different. If you refrain from pressing the Start button at the title screen, the game proceeds to tell you about the "Legend of Zelda". It's a short legend whose gist is as follows: the prince of darkness steals the Triforce of Power; Princess Zelda, hoping to keep him from getting the other Triforce (of Wisdom), shatters it into 8 pieces, and is herself captured; and Link, the controllable character, must reassemble the Triforce and defeat the prince to save the princess. Sounds easy, right?
Well, when I first saw this game played (on an NES emulator), the text went like this:
When I fired up my Classic NES Series GBA cart and looked at the same text, this is what I saw:
Here are images of the Original Legend, and afterwards the Classic (Revised) Legend.
Different! Obviously, there were obvious flaws in the original text--the name of the prince of darkness has changed from "Gannon" (a spelling that never caught on) to "Ganon", the grammar was much improved, and the idiosyncratic quote marks were removed.
However, upon some reflection, I decided that the "revision" was not perfect. The most radical change in the new revision is the loss of urgency of the message. The original message says to "Go find" the 8 units, Link, to save her, but the revision just says that we "must find" the pieces. Also, I think the revision changed things that really didn't need changing. For example, it adds the detail that it was Ganon's minions who kidnapped Princess Zelda. This may or may not have been the intent of the original version (perhaps Ganon did it himself).
So, I decided what anyone with some proofreading experience and a couple of minutes of time would do: I created my own proofreads of the Legend. They are shown below.
The above was my first attempt. In this I tried to veer not too far off from the wording of the original legend, for example, keeping the words "units" and "divided" the same. I also sought to retain (and maybe even amp up a bit) the urgency by saying "Link! Find the 8 units" in this version.
This second proofread, instead of trying to keep the words of the original, tried to keep the spoken cadence, or rhythm, of the original. The pauses occur more naturally on this one, but I had to sacrifice absolute correctness to keep it in the 24-character line limit. For example, I had to say "breaking it in/8 pieces" instead of "into/8 pieces" which would have been more correct. I also commit the act that led me to denigrate the Classic rewording--I attributed the capturing (here Zelda was "taken") to Ganon's "forces". However, where my first attempt had lots of "holes"--unnecessarily large spaces in order to justify the text, the second attempt was more pleasantly dense.
What do you think? Could you do better? Hermeneutics on a short video game text--hey, so what? How else would you have spent your half an hour? ^_^ The rules are: 1) Don't change the story! 2) You have 10 24-character lines to work with (a total of 240 characters, or roughly one and a half SMS text messages), 3) it should look good with all caps. Submit your answers as comments.
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Augustana, "Sweet and Low".
I did notice something, though, that was different. If you refrain from pressing the Start button at the title screen, the game proceeds to tell you about the "Legend of Zelda". It's a short legend whose gist is as follows: the prince of darkness steals the Triforce of Power; Princess Zelda, hoping to keep him from getting the other Triforce (of Wisdom), shatters it into 8 pieces, and is herself captured; and Link, the controllable character, must reassemble the Triforce and defeat the prince to save the princess. Sounds easy, right?
Well, when I first saw this game played (on an NES emulator), the text went like this:
MANY YEARS AGO PRINCE
DARKNESS " GANNON" STOLE
ONE OF THE TRIFORCE WITH
POWER. PRINCESS ZELDA
HAD ONE OF THE TRIFORCE
WITH WISDOM. SHE DIVIDED
IT INTO" 8"UNITS TO HIDE
IT FROM " GANNON" BEFORE
SHE WAS CAPTURED.
GO FIND THE" 8"UNITS
" LINK" TO SAVE HER.
When I fired up my Classic NES Series GBA cart and looked at the same text, this is what I saw:
LONG AGO, GANON, PRINCE
OF DARKNESS, STOLE THE
TRIFORCE OF POWER.
PRINCESS ZELDA OF HYRULE
BROKE THE TRIFORCE OF
WISDOM INTO EIGHT PIECES
AND HID THEM FROM GANON
BEFORE SHE WAS KIDNAPPED
BY GANON'S MINIONS.
LINK, YOU MUST FIND THE
PIECES AND SAVE ZELDA.
Here are images of the Original Legend, and afterwards the Classic (Revised) Legend.
Different! Obviously, there were obvious flaws in the original text--the name of the prince of darkness has changed from "Gannon" (a spelling that never caught on) to "Ganon", the grammar was much improved, and the idiosyncratic quote marks were removed.
However, upon some reflection, I decided that the "revision" was not perfect. The most radical change in the new revision is the loss of urgency of the message. The original message says to "Go find" the 8 units, Link, to save her, but the revision just says that we "must find" the pieces. Also, I think the revision changed things that really didn't need changing. For example, it adds the detail that it was Ganon's minions who kidnapped Princess Zelda. This may or may not have been the intent of the original version (perhaps Ganon did it himself).
So, I decided what anyone with some proofreading experience and a couple of minutes of time would do: I created my own proofreads of the Legend. They are shown below.
LONG AGO, THE PRINCE OF
DARKNESS, GANON, STOLE
THE TRIFORCE OF POWER.
PRINCESS ZELDA DIVIDED
THE TRIFORCE OF WISDOM
INTO 8 UNITS TO HIDE IT
FROM GANON, BEFORE SHE
WAS CAPTURED.
LINK! FIND THE 8 UNITS
TO SAVE PRINCESS ZELDA
The above was my first attempt. In this I tried to veer not too far off from the wording of the original legend, for example, keeping the words "units" and "divided" the same. I also sought to retain (and maybe even amp up a bit) the urgency by saying "Link! Find the 8 units" in this version.
MANY YEARS AGO GANON THE
PRINCE OF DARKNESS STOLE
THE TRIFORCE OF POWER.
PRINCESS ZELDA HAD THE
TRIFORCE OF WISDOM. SHE
HID IT BY BREAKING IT IN
8 PIECES, BUT SHE WAS
TAKEN BY GANON'S FORCES.
FIND THE PIECES, LINK,
AND SAVE ZELDA.
This second proofread, instead of trying to keep the words of the original, tried to keep the spoken cadence, or rhythm, of the original. The pauses occur more naturally on this one, but I had to sacrifice absolute correctness to keep it in the 24-character line limit. For example, I had to say "breaking it in/8 pieces" instead of "into/8 pieces" which would have been more correct. I also commit the act that led me to denigrate the Classic rewording--I attributed the capturing (here Zelda was "taken") to Ganon's "forces". However, where my first attempt had lots of "holes"--unnecessarily large spaces in order to justify the text, the second attempt was more pleasantly dense.
What do you think? Could you do better? Hermeneutics on a short video game text--hey, so what? How else would you have spent your half an hour? ^_^ The rules are: 1) Don't change the story! 2) You have 10 24-character lines to work with (a total of 240 characters, or roughly one and a half SMS text messages), 3) it should look good with all caps. Submit your answers as comments.
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Augustana, "Sweet and Low".
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
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