Merry X'mas!

By the way, ever wondered how on earth 'Christ' is abbreviated to 'X'?

Well, I myself used to think that 'X' kind of looks like a cross, doesn't it? And Christ was nailed on a cross...

That's nice and well, but 'X' here is actually the Greek letter 'chi'. 'Christ' in Greek is Χριστός (Christos). So, 'chi' in X'mas is actually Christ's initial.

On another note, a church I used to attend actually had Χρ inscribed on the pulpit. Another had IHS (iota-eta-sigma). I didn't realise that they are actually Christograms until quite recently. Some Christian I am.

Well, you learn something new everyday. Merry Christmas! 

Buff(er)

Chrysalis [ 09. Amnion ]

[See entire]

It was all darkness.

But it wasn't unsettling. Sometimes, blinding brightness can keep us in the dark -- like when the stars can't be seen for the sun -- similarly, darkness sometimes illuminates.

In the far off, I thought I heard  gentle sounds of water burbling, like when you are underwater. Maybe I was. But I knew I wasn't, because somehow, I wasn't suffocating. Also, there was no water around, or, I couldn't feel it. It was like waving about in empty space. Yet somehow the darkness itself had resistance, giving that wrap-around, warm feeling. Velvety darkness.

I tried to move about, but there was no up or down, no left or right. I was a suspended point in space.

I remembered one time I had sneaked in late at night to a nearby pool. I didn't swim; I just waded through the water to the middle and flailed about so that I floated on my back. I stared at the sky, at the black cloud curtains behind which the moon and the stars had shied away. 

It felt great to be suspended by the water below. When I try to look at the sky while standing up, I feel so overwhelmed  and along comes the spell of dizziness that makes me feel like toppling over. If I lie on my back and look up, I would feel vulnerable, as if the vastness of the sky itself will come crushing down and hammer me to the ground at any moment. Floating on water, I was able to take in the greatness of sky: sans the dizziness, sans the vulnerableness. To contain that infinite stretch into the finite frame of my mind.

It is reassuring to feel water resistance. In the dark, there were none of those fascinating dynamic brilliance of the silvery liquid the water has turned into during a sunny day. There were no ripples of light moving lazily along the bottom of the pool, like a huge net made up of strands of light has been cast, like a graceful, giant, transparent jellyfish. Yet you can feel it: the smooth friction as it slides along your skin and slips away between your fingers, the chill as it evaporates and leaves your body carrying your body heat away, the heaviness when you shove it around, the buoyancy on your back, the urge to dance.

That was the feeling of this liquid darkness surrounding me. 

If this were a dream, maybe I should wake up; if this were illusion, maybe I should seek the reality; if this were death, maybe I should be reborn. It's just,

What if I got those all wrong? That this is actually awake; that this is reality; that this is life?
I felt like Zhuangzi's butterfly, flapping about between two realms, not even sure whether I should be flapping, or even whether I was a butterfly to begin with. 

Acid-Base Exchange

Greetings

Points of View

Note: I recommend reading the previous post first. It's alright if you don't follow the story, you can ignore the plot and glean the literary ideas discussed instead.

How often you see the second-person point of view in a narrative? Very seldom. Almost every narrative puts you in the seat of either a first-person or a third-person observer. This is understandable -- if you have read some of second-person narrated works, you get this peculiar feeling, which is very different from those evoked by the other two points of view. My former English teacher assured me that we would not get a second-person narrative in our unseen prose -- it is an indication that the literary effect is quite special and takes up much discussion by itself.

Let's recapitulate the other points of view first.

First, it's important to point out the existence of the narrator, the voice that tells the story. This sounds trivial and obvious, but sometimes the narrator and the character may get very difficult to distinguish.

In first-person narrative, the reader is inside the main character's head. We see, hear, taste, smell, feel -- through the character's senses. His thoughts and feelings are accessible to us. The narrator and the character can be said as one and the same person. You can see some ramifications of a person inside another: you may not agree with what the character is thinking; given what the character sees, you may understand more what's happening. The example of the latter is Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which Huck is a naïve narrator; he is still a child. The mature reader would understand more than Huck does. This disparity in knowledge creates dramatic irony -- in which one of the effects is that we feel for Huck because of his innocent ways of thinking.

On the other hand, if you are inside somebody's head, you can understand him or her better. The author may choose to reveal the logic, the train of thoughts that leads to certain consequences, which are, more likely than not, disastrous ones. But the reader sympathises and laments along with the character because he is the character himself -- the writer's persona and the reader's persona are melded together, if you will. Such is the power of the word 'I': the reader is invited to take a seat, to snug himself in someone else's shoes (sometimes without realising), to enjoy the ride.

In third-person narrative, the main character is referred to as 'he' or 'she'. This creates some distance between the reader and the character. The narrator may be a character himself, which means there are limits to what he can see and hear, which in turn limits the reader's perceptions of the main character. The narrator may also be omniscient, having a bird's-eye view, free to look inside a person's heart or mind. You can see that there are certain advantages and disadvantages over the first-person narrative. Distance may sound problematic but some authors can use this to their advantages. Surely there are some characters who do not need to be sympathised; and you can see that a first-person point of view may disclose too much information to the reader. In certain genres like horror, mystery, detective, third-person point of view may be more suitable to employ, to maintain that aura of tension and secrecy. Of course, by no means this is a rule written on stones. An example of an exception would be having an unreliable first-person narrator. This means that the narrator may divulge wrong information or not tell the whole truth; he is unreliable. Let's say there is murder later in the story; how about if our narrator is actually the murderer, but this is only apparent near the end? Our normal expectations of a protagonist (hero versus antihero) will not be fulfilled. Done correctly, this has quite an impact on the reader.  

Distance may also be useful for other purposes. More distance usually translates to more objectivity on the part of the reader. If the reader is inside the character's head, he is more easily swayed by the character's thoughts and feelings and tend to resonate with the latter; as most authors most likely will design such a character: evoking pity, sympathy, resonance -- now he is already biased and tends to side with the character. Third-person omniscient narration is usually devoid of emotions and thoughts, aside from those of the author's persona. It tends to be more objective. For this reason historical accounts are in third-person.

An epic usually tells of heroic feats performed by the character. It is necessary to put some distance in order to put the character on the pedestal to admire, in order to hide certain aspects that may crumble the heroicity. Some writers actually make use of this aspect: that if the reader is put deep down in the recesses of the heart and the mind of the character, the character's fragile humanity is exposed -- again, this creates intimacy, connection, sympathy, between a human and another. For this reason fairytales are narrated in third-person. Fairytales must remain distant since they are not real; the only connection is the omniscient Being who somehow witnessed the story in another dimension and narrates it to us so that we can learn the truths inside, the moral of the story.

Finally, the second-person narrative. There are at least two styles of a second-person narrative, each to achieve different effects.

The first invokes a lot of common stereotypes so that the reader feels familiar, so that, like in the first-person narration, the reader can relate to the character and is comfortable in the character's skin. This is useful when you are writing something that applies to anyone, or you are implying that it does. If you use first-person, the experiences, thoughts and feelings of the character are localised to the character himself. If you use third-person, it feels too distant, and the connection is lost. Second-person would be best to convey this: the narrator thrusts the mould, which does, or can, fit anyone. A good example would be this description of the afterlife:
 

You walk into the country where the light is slanted and soft. Brown leaves dance on the ground as raindrops fall on them. The northern lights blaze in the sky. You have come so far north that it is always night. You walk on water, feeling the pulse of waves beneath your feet. You walk on bare stones, on ice glowing blue in the starlight. There are others now ahead of you, around you, drawn from other longitudes.
-- Bruce Holland Rogers, I'm Not Saying It Happens Like This,

The Sun Magazine, Feb. 2009, Issue 398

In this case, because no one knows what it feels like in afterlife, this experience can fit anyone. So, again: experiences that are either familiar (fit anyone) or totally unknown (can fit anyone).

The second is the opposite: the character is an atypical person who has a unique way of thinking about and seeing the world. The previous post, of course, belongs to the second. Alphonse is not your average person and his opinions are quite radical. The reader, 'you', is supposed to feel uncomfortable because 'you' doesn't fit into Alphonse's mould. This is unlike the first-person narrative which, in most cases, fits the reader snugly into the character's shoes. But, you also feel for Alphonse's emotional rant, understand that he is a being distinguishable from yourself, having different thoughts and feelings, yet on par with yourself, with the same fragile humanity and whatnot. You can see that the second style here requires delicate balance between the character's idiosyncrasies and familiar stereotypes.

It is important to note that in both second-person narrative styles, it's like you are following a set of instructions from the narrator. It's like a role-playing game. You are to do this and that, which sounds almost like the imperatives. You are constantly reminded that you are 'you', a different entity from the character himself. Contrast this with the first-person narrative where, if the author is good, you may resonate a bit too well with the character and may get a bit carried away and become the character himself (happens to me sometimes). The second-person maintains closeness between the character and you -- since you are to do what the character is doing, see what he is seeing, think what he is thinking, feel what he is feeling -- but at the same time maintains that separateness of entities. One but two, a paradox that adds to literary complexities, as you can imagine it does.

It's also worth noting that second-person narration, which is all about forcing a mould on the reader ending up in identity paradox, is most fitting fir the previous post because Alphonse himself is having an identity crisis, if you notice. Also note that in the last few lines the narrator is slowly taking Alphonse's mould off the reader, addressing the reader directly, "Who are you?" You who have been fitted with Alphonse's mould for the last few paragraphs, who are you?
This is actually the effect I intended to have on the reader: that identity is a curious thing and you better hold it closely while you still can. It invites the reader to rethink about his own identity, just like Alphonse is questioning his own identity.
Now, knowing all this context I have so painstakingly built, re-read the previous post and answer it properly if you haven't:
Who are you?

Chrysalis [ 08. It's Still Raining Inside ]

[See entire]

You are Alphonse. 

You are sitting at the piano stool, fingers still standing rigid on the piano keys, tingling from swift and complicated manoeuvres. The smell of rain is in the air, but the rain itself is letting up.

You have just finished playing a song, which promptly slips out of your mind, already forgotten. You don't know what possessed you -- a while ago you were sitting by the window staring and listening to the rain, the next you plunged into a kind of trance. But you do remember an emotional outburst. The body remembers; and it's as if the melancholy is echoing still, resonating in the air, in the strings, buzzing about your ears like the insect's singing on a summer's day, in the strings of your own heart. A twang of pain deep in the chest.

Like angina pectoris, the heart is lacking oxygen. Your heart is lacking something.

You try to think about other things to distract yourself. Let's see. You find it peculiar that sometimes it feels like there are different entities inside you. The you playing piano just now, who was it? The you talking to your parents not often enough, the you giving up your seat to an old lady this morning, the you thinking those suicidal thoughts, the you crying too often when you flip the newspapers, the you in the eyes of others, the you (you think) in the eyes of others, the you still buried deep in the iceberg under the sea level, the façade of you, the awkward you in front of the person you like, the scheming you, the simple-minded you, the you who loves to crack jokes: these are all you.

You know that there is something called author's persona. This means that the writer projects himself on paper. This projection, however close to the author himself, deliberate or otherwise, is a separate entity from the author. The persona is, in other words, a 'façade'. The opinion on the paper is not the author's opinion, but the persona's. The 'I' on the paper is not the author, but the persona. This is why you get that strange feeling sometimes: the moment you put down "I" then it stops being yourself, it's another person, though it is infused with your person. Like a part of yourself is pulled out like a dough, estranged, alienated, transformed to something else. That is a persona.

On the other hand, a persona is also a 'shadow' because at the same time, the persona takes after the author himself: his opinions, his thoughts, his emotions, his idiosyncrasies. From the pool of all the different you's, you choose. You recall that Yeats once said that "[t]he creations of a great writer are little more than moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk on the earth." You think: how true.

Carrying the monologue further, you ask yourself, so there must be something like reader's persona? But of course. Again, a front -- you may not agree with the author's opinion (or his persona's for that matter), but at least you can understand, you can see it from that perspective, you are willing to make space, some allowance. This is your front as a reader, your persona. 
A market is the meeting of buyers and sellers but a book is the meeting of the author's and the reader's respective personae. In this respect human beings are dastardly beings, unable to take it up properly vis-à-vis, you think? The thing is, humanity is so fragile a thing that you need to build the hardy outer shell, lest it is weathered out and breaks down.

But you digress. So what does it mean? That 'you' comprises many different you's, with possibly more unawakened?

You are tired of thinking all this. You are closing your eyes. As the rain is fading away, your consciousness is also whittled little by little, fading.

A pitch black tunnel.

--

You are Alphonse.

Are you?

No?

Then who are you? 

Chrysalis [ 07. The Rain Dazes ]

[See entire]

I must have fallen asleep. While rubbing my eyes sleepily, I noticed the rain was letting up a bit, even though it was still there, the constant pitter-patter rhythm like a lullaby persuading me to go back to slumber.
But my mind was already awake, though not fully -- you know, like a trance, dazed, between reality and imagination, the state which you can tip over to either side.
I love rain because it's like curtains. Curtains separate. Sometimes you need your privacy.
I also love that smell of dampness of earth that precedes a downpour. Those organic gases, released from the soil because the atmospheric pressure is lower. To me it's like a promise, a certain sign that a bucket is about to tumble, up there in the heavens. People usually forget this, that something begins; you always remember when it ends, the rainbow appears. When do we all start? When the sperm meets the ovum? When you start emitting brainwave? A beginning is so hard to define.
I also love writing. You know how writing, or a painting, or any piece of art for that matter, has this timeless quality? Time freezes, you can read or view or feel or hear that particular part over and over again. The essence has been captured. The description in a paragraph, the scenery in a painting, the arrangement of sounds in a song, the scene of war on a frieze, the shapes in a sculpture. That frame, or several of them, has been fixed, becoming something that withstands Time itself.
But writing doesn't limit oneself to the freezing of Time, but also the stretching and compressing of it. In Ulysses, James Joyce stretched one day to 265,000 words. I remember my first time seeing the book -- I thought it was an encyclopaedia or something; no, it's a novel. Compression of time is even simpler: "A child was born, grew up until ripe old age, died". In fact, a writer has more mastery over Time than other artists do; a time travel at the flick of the wand: "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive".
This manipulation of Time is intoxicating. Perhaps in a few hours the rain would have stopped, but you can go back a few paragraphs, and it was still raining. Every time you come back on this page to this little universe, it is still raining. And it won't ever stop. It's like you've made a rip in the space-time continuum, taking a glimpse of eternity. Isn't it maddening? Isn't it like getting drunk?
A cool breeze gently passed and it calmed me somehow. I sighed. It must have been my daze talking.
I thought I can hear faint sounds of piano -- I think I'm tipping over to dreamland -- no one normally plays at this hour.
Back to sleep.

Milton, Free Expression and A Bibiliophile

As a bibliophile, I was delighted to find this passage in Milton's Areopagitica:

...For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up for purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolution of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.
-- John Milton, Areopagitica

Areopagitica is subtitled "A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England". It is easy to see that the context here is that Milton wanted to loosen censorship in England, lest some "vials... of living intellect" went unnoticed. In my opinion, I would go as far as saying that not only those who destroy or censure a good book are "killers of reason", but also those who don't read are.
Regarding Milton himself, let's just say that I want to join Woodsworth in saying: "Milton! Thou should'st be living at this hour:"

Chrysalis [ 06. The Sound of Rain ]

[See entire]

The Piano

The grand piano stood out prominently. Against the background noise of pouring rain, it is silent. Like how silence can be deafening, being still can convey much.
The piano can be compared to an old man, who has grown old gracefully, retaining the knowledge of the experienced, exuding charisma of seniority, of the one who knows the way of the world.
A piano, nonetheless, is a tool not a person. A piano, like any instrument, is a mirror to the soul. It absorbs emotions and thoughts from the fingertips, transcribing it into hammering of the strings, which translates it to a language we call music.
Music is a language. From rhythm, from tempo, from arrangement of melody, from discordant and harmonious chords -- that's the whole phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatism -- a language.
Countless people have played it. It shared their joys and griefs, and every emotion in between and beyond. In the story of Narcissus, the Lake cries because it can no longer see its beauty reflected in Narcissus' eyes. The piano is the same: it feeds on the language it was transmitting to hear its own beautiful sounds.
Now here come its Narcissus, sitting by the window, watching the deluge forlornly, but now was making his way towards it, fingertips ready to dance, a Creation is about to begin. Let there be light. It is said that when Haydn's oratorio Die Schöpfung (The Creation) is performed, when Chaos ends and the first movement is about to begin, when the orchestra burst into fortissimo on 'Licht', so great it was that the audience can see light flashing. Something like that, creating something out of nothing.
As soon as its Narcissus started to play, a lightning bolt struck. It has begun.

Shakespeare: All World's A Stage

So let's see, let's see. To tell this story we need appropriate
actors, plot, prop, script -- Ah! What kind?
I'd pick a musical. Not the tragic, nor the comedy. One too morbid, the other too insouciant.
I'd rather
be stabbed at the back, only to burst out singing about the agony.
The beginning is a little hard.
A moment of silence please -
How about the epic: grand story about royal lineage, the beings before the being
the beings that are background of being, culmination being the being?
No.
It should be in medias res -- in the middle of something --
so that the audience is plunged straight to the middle of something, where the real beginning was over and long gone.
Since, isn't it that way we are plunged into being, cast into the light of existence,
the beginning remains something distant, that should not be pried open, lest the evils leak out and Hope is found never at the bottom all along.
After that, the mundane seven ages of Man; oh, the chorus of sighs!
Let's skip the infant and the school-boy;
Jump to the lover, for love is a source of sorrow, and love is a lot to sing about.
Very simple -- plot is usually about love or the lack of it. Done!
Then comes the soldier and the justice. The ages of paradox.
Look at Justitia and her blindfold.¹
The impartial, yet unaimed swing of a sword; the balanced, but unsighted scales.
It is really no wonder that Man,
torn apart between contradictions of his own making,
shifts to the sixth stage, the pantaloon.
Conflict escalated, climax reached, then running out of steam.
Ready to be catapulted back to the beginning that was not really there?
The seventh stage, the oblivion - wait
(Could we please invoke deus ex machina?)

¹Miller, William. Eye for an Eye, page 1 (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Chrysalis [ 05. It's Raining Contradictions ]

[See entire]

Alphonse
Usually on rainy days like this I prefer to take advantage of the coolness and sleep. Grab a blanket, go into foetal position, and go into the darkness of slumber. Like a cocoon. Waking up, I would have sprouted wings to fly in the freshness of the new day.
Today, however, I felt like going to the common room where the piano is. I didn't plan to play it; to me, the rain sounds like an orchestra in itself, a harmonious cacophony. That is an oxymoron, but it is not to me. Somehow I can accept that order can arise from chaos. That something can arise from nothing.
So there was I, sitting by the large window, listening to the pitter-patter melody, daydreaming. If no two drops of rain are alike then no two sounds are alike. The strumming of a guitar, the hammer hitting the piano string, the plucking of the harp, the vibration of the violin string: say, all are playing A, that is frequency of 440 Hertz, do they sound the same? Obviously not. That is because they don't produce a singular peak at 440, but each is a sum of several frequencies, peaking at 440. So timbre is like the uniqueness of a sound. Like a name. Splash sound, trickling sound, pouring sound, gurgling sound.
Jake can make the tremolo sound using the piano (which I cannot produce). His nimble finger would fall in quick succession one after another. The notes then become overlapped over one another; coming out as a trill. It sounds like a gentle rain. Warm in certain way. Cool in another way.
I remember my teacher who taught about oxymoron and paradox. "Contradictory but not contradictory -- oxymoron and paradox are paradoxes in themselves." His saying of this stuck. Oxymoron is an exhibitionist. It blatantly display its contrasting words. Paradox is shy. It hides its contradiction under layers of words. Perhaps it is 'sly'; well, it is only one-letter difference. In any case, those contrasting words or ideas are not really contradictory, because they belong to different contexts. Imagine that they belong to different planes -- we can find a common plane where they can co-exist, where they are co-planar.
But I digress. Contradictory. Aren't we all?
We are full of contradictions. Some are obscene like oxymorons, or morons, that will do also; some are discreet like paradoxes.

Chrysalis [ 04. It's Raining Outside -- and Inside ]

[See entire]

Alphonse is a ghost.
He appears and disappears as he likes. Come to think about it, I've never seen him in the university grounds. Sometimes it's as if he's transparent. There, but not there.
Sometimes I would not see him for a few weeks. "Where did you go?" I would ask, but in response he would mumble something inaudible. Transparent words. I never press the issue, but somehow I could sense the change in him after such disappearances. He is more talkative. But the kind of talkative that is sadder; like a cover, a distraction from the cause of the sadness itself. This repeated quite frequently.
Repetition.
I don't like the sound of it; its meaning, either. Rinse, lather, repeat. Like you are stuck in a vicious cycle, a never-ending loop, a snake eating its own tail, a downward spiral into oblivion.
This happened to me quite a few times: sometimes you consider a word, repeat it several times, say it aloud, spell it out on a paper, dissecting the syllables. Suddenly the word loses its meaning; suddenly the word becomes foreign; suddenly it is disjointed from the rest of the knowledge inside the head.
Isn't it ironic? Maybe you intend to repeat the word endlessly, its variations, visiting every possible meaning, considering every nuance, like Edgar and his bastardy soliloquy. But in the end the meaning is exhausted, the meaning is thrown into nothingness -- after that, nihil ex nihilo fit, nothing comes out of nothing, my fair Cordelia, so speak it again, again, again, spiralling to the selfsame nought.
Like a droplet of rain, coming down, coming up, stuck in the eternal cycle. "But, Jake," Alphonse would say, in a manner that always tries to neutralise my dour philosophy, "Every droplet of water is different, just like every snowflake is."
"As a big drop of rainwater condenses from the cloud, it plunges down. When air resistance is so great due to downward acceleration, the drop bursts into numerous droplets. The explosion of this water bomb goes to every which way. Jake, the water may be stuck into an eternal cycle. But it's not grumbling. Once in a while it goes parachuting. It must be feeling really happy."
I chuckled. As usual, I'm no match for Alphonse.
As I'm looking out of the window, it started to rain lightly. A runner ran past, droplets off his back, like a choreographed slow motion; like a dancer, gracefully, solemnly.
A boy and an old lady on a bench. A fountain nearby. The lady put down her newspaper and took off her glasses; something must have been caught in her eyes. The boy had his cheeks on his knees, shivering? The downpour was getting heavier. But the pair on the bench stayed, perhaps, it was not very clear, my vision obscured by layers of rainwater curtains.
I closed my windows.

Physics Limericks

Space
Seven steps each ten million to one
Describe the whole space dimension
The Atom, Cell’s girth
Our bodies, the Earth
Sun’s System, our Galaxy – done!

Time
The Creator, seen as Army Sergeant Major, barks out his order for the week.
First thing on Monday morning, Bang!, Light
Sun and Earth, form up, Friday night
At a minute to twelve
Eve spin, Adam delve
In the last millisecond, You, right?

Speed
A child cycles ‘round the schoolyard
Which lies on the Earth turning hard
The Earth rounds the Sun
As Sol does “the ton”
And our Galaxy flies – Gee! I’m tired

– Tim Rowett, Three Limericks – On Space, Time and Speed

Note:
Space
10⁻¹⁴ m : Atomic nucleus
10⁻⁷ m : Cellular nucleus
10⁰ m : Human body
10⁷ m : Earth's diameter
10¹⁴ m : outer Solar System
10²¹ m : Galaxy's diameter
10²⁸ m : Universe, and a bit more
Time
A week is 7 days,
Each day 2 billion years
A minute is 2 million years
A millisecond is 23 years
Speed
7 mph : A child cyclist
700 mph : Earth's rotation speed
70,000 mph : Earth's revolution speed
700,000 mph : Galaxy's turning speed
1,400,000 mph : Galaxy's speed through debris of Big Bang

I think it's really amazing that if you downscale the age of the Universe to one week, then we humans would only occupy the last minute of it (and of course Earth itself only formed on "Friday night").
Such displays of logarithmic leaps never cease to amaze. And of course, if we are talking about space dimension, the classic documentary Powers of Ten (directed by Ray and Charles Eames) comes to mind. Even though it was produced back in 1977, it is still a wonderful sight to behold. This is so famous that one of The Simpsons' episodes featured a parody of it. Sadly, it has already been removed from YouTube because of copyright issue.

Again, we are reminded of the very long scale of space, time and speed; and our tiny, insignificant place in it.

"Facts"

Connections

Since words are containers of meaning, it is not difficult to imagine that some containers are bigger than others and some containers are small enough to fit inside others. That's right, in other words, some words are subsets of others. This hierarchy is usually referred to as hypernymy/hyponymy. For example; maroon, vermillion, crimson, scarlet, magenta are hyponyms of 'red'. Conversely, 'red' is a hypernym to them. Moving up the hierarchy, 'red' is a hyponym of 'colour'. Note that hypernym/hyponym doesn't mean anything if a word is not viewed relative to another.
Now, imagine this colossal tree of word hierarchy, its branches numerous, branching to finer branches still down and below. I always wonder, what is at the top of this tree? In other words, the ultimate hypernym, the word that include every possible meaning?
The answer is probably different for every person, but to me almost everything can be summarised as 'connections' and 'information':
Language is a means of transmitting information, connecting a person with another.
Science is the study of the laws governing observed systems. Information gathering; connecting hypotheses and observations.
( Basically all -ologies are all about 'information' or more appropriately, knowledge, since the etymology itself suggests logos [λόγος] )
Philosophy is literally 'love of wisdom', which means it is about, again, 'information'. It goes without saying that epistemology, which is a subset of philosophy, is also all about 'information' or knowledge.
Love is all about relationships, people say. Love itself is already a massive hypernym, considering its vast meaning. But then, 'connections' is still a bigger one.
Metaphors are all about drawing parallels; making connections. More about that here.
If you think about it, it is only natural for everything to be distilled into knowledge and relationships. Our brains themselves are networks of information, linked in numerous permutations. Our memory is triggered by things associated to that particular memory.
The worldwide web itself has garnered the current level of success because it's all about connections and information, acting like a global brain, each of us its neuron. Note all the hyperlinks on this page, enabling you to view related pages with a click.
Update: There is a really nice diagram to see: The Internet. It is also good to depict the aforementioned colossal tree of the word hierarchy.
And now, when the world is more interconnected than ever, it is important to make use of it. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown talked about confronting "the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy" in the recent TEDGlobal2009. Watch it; and be aware of what we can do that was impossible only several years back.

Spirit of the Law

Think about it this way. Language is conveyor of information, but it is, of course, imperfect. You have ambiguities, misinterpretation, definition issues, and so on. For this reason, rules are also imperfectly conveyed. You can try writing down every single restriction and define every word, but this is impractical. The consequence of this imperfection is that people can always find loopholes in the written law, questioning proper definitions of ambiguous words and make use of them to get around the law.
For this reason we differentiate between the letter and the spirit of the law. To follow the law "to the letter" means obeying it according to the literal interpretation; while following the spirit of the law is obeying it according to its intent, which may not be identical with the literal interpretation.
Example? Now that's difficult because formal laws are worded as such that loopholes are very difficult to find. Let's talk about grammars instead.
"You can't begin your sentence with a conjunction."
"But, I don't understand, Sir."
"Mr. Finn, you just begin your sentence with a conjunction. Stand outside."
I remember red markings on my English composition papers highlighting the offending conjunction-initiated sentences. But, of course you know that this rule is broken all the time in all kinds of writing. Why so? This is because conjunctions are supposed to conjunct clauses in a sentence. And then, why is it alright to break this rule? Remember that we are concerned with the spirit of the law. The purpose of grammars is ultimately clarity.
Compare

I remember red markings on my English composition papers highlighting the offending conjunction-initiated sentences but of course you know that this rule is broken all the time in all kinds of writing.

and

I remember red markings on my English composition papers highlighting the offending conjunction-initiated sentences. But, of course you know that this rule is broken all the time in all kinds of writing.

The first sentence is too long and this obfuscates the meaning. It is better to put a period to give the reader a break. The use of conjunction to precede the sentence indicates that the sentence that follows it still continues the idea from the sentence before. A good writer does this: giving the reader bite-sized information and not confusing him/her with long-winded sentences; he prioritises brevity and clarity.
You can see how are letter and spirit of the law different. Otherwise you can see it as the rule of clarity overrides this rule.
If you know a little bit of jazz, you may know that jazz is a genre that doesn't obey the rules. Before jazz came about, there are certain ways melodies sequence and group together. In jazz, however, improvisation is imperative. This means there is no one fixed way to play a piece: a performer is free to interpret and tweak melodies, harmonies and time signatures. The spirit of the law? To produce nice sound; it's that simple.
In forensics, there is a principle called corpus delicti, which is translated as 'body of crime'. A British serial killer, 'Acid Bath' Haigh, infamously mistook this principle. He thought that he could not be convicted with murder without the bodies of the victims, so he dissolved their corpses in acid bath. But of course corpus delicti is not to be taken literally. It refers to evidence that the crime has taken place. Corpus delicti is not even necessarily tangible. Circumstantial evidence is often enough to convict. This is not really about the spirit of the law, but it illustrates how laws should be understood clearly.
Lastly, there is a reason to break rules. In the grammar example, you have to be clear about the big picture. That grammars exist as a guide, and occasionally breaking them for the sake of clarity is alright. In the same way, if you encounter rules that don't make sense, stop and think about what the spirit is; see the big picture.
I recommend reading How to Break All the Rules by Dustin Wax down at Stepcase Lifehack:

There's a scene in Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard that sums up perfectly this approach to the rules. Rabo Karabekian, an artist reknowned for his giant canvases covered with single colors of household latex paint applied with a roller, is talking with his friend Slazinger in his studio:

"Tell me, Rabo," said Slazinger, "if I put on that same paint with the same roller, would the picture still be a Karabekian?"
"Absolutely," I said, "provided you have in reserve what Karabekian has in reserve."
"Like what?" he said.
"Like this," I said. There was dust in a pothole in the floor, and I picked up some of it on the balls of both my thumbs. Working both thumbs simultaneously, I sketched a caricature of Slazinger's face on the canvas in thirty seconds.
"Jesus!" he said. "I had no idea you could draw like that!"
"You're looking at a man who has options," I said.

For the "wild child" who just can't be bothered to learn the rules, because they were meant to be broken anyway and because his or her creative spirit is too strong to be held down by rules, man, there are no options. There is only a string of broken rules and all the misunderstanding, chaos, and incoherence that goes along with them. The master, though, knows that the rules are not only options, but usually the best options. And when they aren't, s/he knows. S/he has in reserve what Karabekian has in reserve: true mastery.

Culture and Language

There is no doubt that culture and language are somehow, but how exactly? Of course the answer isn't going to be very simple. For me, I think it is perhaps as complicated as nature and nurture.
Most will find this familiar: phenotypes, or expressed traits, are usually attributed to genotypes, that is, genetic make-up. So, if you are tall, people might say that you inherit that trait from your tall parents (nature). Or they may say that as a child, you were given excellent nutrition and you are a swimmer (nurture). So far, so good. Nature and nurture appear to be independent forces that both influence particular traits of a person, so the combination of the two somehow causes that particular trait to be expressed, right? Well, not quite. There are several reasons for this. First, the journey from genotype to phenotype is not as straightforward as it appears to be. Genes are transcribed to proteins. The proteins are involved in cascades of biological pathways which can be very complex. For this reason geneticists talks about having certain genes pre-dispose one to have certain disease with certain level of probability, since having those genes does not mean that you definitely will get the disease. Exceptions to this, among others, are diseases caused directly by protein defects, like sickle-cell anaemia. Second, nature and nurture are not mutually exclusive, as people tend to think. Certain genes are expressed in response to environmental signals.
So, language and culture. The detour above is necessary to picture the complexity in more concrete notions.
If you think about it, language can be seen as a subset of culture. But this is getting complicated if you consider that language is the only medium of communication. Consider language as categorising things under different labels, then perhaps you will wonder: perhaps the way people categorise things influence culture in some way? In fact, linguists have something along this line: linguistic relativity, a.k.a. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that language affects cognition. A famous example of this is the large number of words that the Inuit have for snow. It has been suggested that since the Inuit, a subset of the Eskimos, live in the Arctic, somehow they need more terms to describe different kinds of snow that an average English speaker doesn't need. Sadly, this example is not factual, but it gives you some kind of idea on what linguistic relativity means.
Update: Language Log highlighted the a lot of occurrences of this here and here. The latter links to here, here, here and here.
In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party is enforcing a language called Newspeak. As Winston realised, the vocabulary of Newspeak is getting narrower instead of otherwise. This aims to limit. Rebellion against the Party would be ultimately impossible since the words are not enough to convey the idea. By controlling language, the Party controls thoughts. This is the very idea of linguistic relativity.
If you remember, the Greeks have at least 4 different terms for love. I am not going to say that the Greeks have more expertise in the area of love, but it seems that they have thought about it a little deeper. It is really difficult in concluding based on whether there are too many or lack of certain words, as discussed at length here. So give it a little thought yourself.
Speaking about the Greeks, you have probably heard that Greek has numerous number of tenses, a lot more than English. This suggests that their notion of time is very different. Indeed, you will be surprised to know that the time element is secondary in their tenses. The primary consideration is 'kind of action' (aktionsart). Not to say that time is not important to them. They have two distinct terms for time: chronos (quantitative) and kairos (qualitative). And don't get me started on their philosophical embellishments.
On the other hand, Malay/Indonesian and Mandarin languages do not really have proper tenses. On a related note, do you know that English does not have a future tense? No, no, will is a present-tense modal, my friend.
Another big thing that I notice is English pronouns. Why does 'I' has to be capitalised? How come there is only 'you' for both singular and plural second-person pronoun?
(By the way, there used to be a singular second-person pronoun. That would be 'thou'.)
I have a certain crazy hypothesis for these pronoun phenomena, i.e. the West tips more towards individualism than socialism. Well: singular first-person is capitalised; third-person pronouns are distinguished based on genders (note that they aren't in some languages); second-person pronouns no longer need to be differentiated (presumably because outside 'I', it doesn't matter whether whether it is plural or singular). To put some contrast, in Malay/Indonesian language, there are two kinds of 'we'. Consider there are three people in a room: A, B, C. A is talking to B. When referring to himself and C, A would use 'kami'. But when referring to all of them, A would use 'kita'. Both would be translated to 'we' in English. Sticking to my hypothesis, the East values togetherness much more that different collectives need to be differentiated.
Finally, I'm taking example from another language that I'm familiar with: Javanese. This language is really unique because it also has something like English verb irregulars. As you know, irregular English verbs typically have 3 distinct forms: infinitive, past and past participle (eat, ate, eaten). But in Javanese, it is not only the verbs, but almost all words have 3 forms, categorised under different levels of politeness (of course this is a nightmare for any linguist, since you have to learn thrice as many vocabularies -- only the language syntax is the same, thank goodness for that). It is very easy to see what culture the Javanese has, isn't it? Obviously, the Javanese hold societal hierarchy in high esteem, just like the Japanese, which manifests in their extensive usage of honorifics. As if that's not enough, the Javanese also has different words for fruits, their trees and their seeds. There are also another set for animals and their offspring. For example: mango, mango tree, mango seed, right? The Javanese would call them: pelem, mangkono, pelok, respectively. This one is also easy to understand why. Agriculture and raising livestock are vey much part of their livelihood, thus their need to have very specific terms.
Certainly, if you know more than one languages, you would also have noticed that language and culture are indeed intertwined. So don't take idiosyncrasies of a language for granted.
Notice them. Ask why.

Stirling Engine

Stirling engine is a heat engine. In other words, it converts heat to mechanical energy. So you can see in the above that it converts heat from my coffee to rotational motion of the discs.
The principle is very simple. First, let's take a look at the components. There is a shallow cylinder directly above the cup enclosed by two black metal plates at top and bottom. There is a big opaque piston inside the cylinder, connected to the front pedal. At the back of the disc, there is a back pedal, which is connected to a diaphragm, which looks like a membrane.
The cylinder is airtight. As heat is transferred to the bottom plate, the air expands and pushes the piston up. This sudden increase in pressure also forces the diaphragm, which in turn raises the back pedal. Since the disc, back and front pedals are connected rigidly, when back pedal moves up, front pedal moves down, which in turn, push down the piston. Repeat.
The front and back pedals are 90 degrees out of phase so that the up and down movements mimic legs pedalling a bicycle.
So, how is that more interesting than, say, a steam engine, you ask?
The physics mechanism described above works as long as there is a temperature gradient. So it works using ice as well, as you can see below:

I'd say my spending a weekend to work on this is totally worth it.
Cool! Literally.

Correlation

Consciousness and (again) dimensions

Reading this comment, I recall a very good description of pure consciousness that is independent of any platform.

"Look yonder," said my Guide, "in Flatland thou hast lived; of Lineland thou hast received a vision; thou hast soared with me to the heights of Spaceland; now, in order to complete the range of thy experience, I conduct thee downward to the lowest depth of existence, even to the realm of Pointland, the Abyss of No dimensions.
"Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the on-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn his lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now listen."
He ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, as from one of your Spaceland phonographs, from which I caught these words, "Infinite beatitude of existence! It is; and there is nothing else beside It." "What," said I, "does the puny creature mean by 'it'?" "He means himself," said the Sphere: "have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the Third Person? But hush!"
"It fills all Space," continued the little soliloquizing Creature, "and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness, ah, the happiness of Being!"
"Can you not startle the little thing out of its complacency?" said I. "Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher." "That is no easy task," said my Master; "try you."
Hereon, raising by voice to the uttermost, I addressed the Point as follows:
"Silence, silence, contemptible Creature. You call yourself the All in All, but you are the Nothing: your so-called Universe is a mere speck in a Line, and a Line is a mere shadow as compared with —" "Hush, hush, you have said enough," interrupted the Sphere, "now listen, and mark the effect of your harangue on the King of Pointland."
The lustre of the Monarch, who beamed more brightly than ever upon hearing my words, shewed clearly that he retained his complacency; and I had hardly ceased when he took up his strain again. "Ah, the joy, ah, the joy of Thought! What can It not achieve by thinking! Its own Thought coming to Itself, suggestive of its disparagement, thereby to enhance Its happiness! Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in triumph! Ah, the divine creative power of the All in One! Ah, the joy, the joy of Being!"
"You see," said my Teacher, "how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understand them at all, he accepts them as his own — for he cannot conceive of any other except himself — and plumes himself upon the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction."
-- Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott was published back in 1884, so it is available at public domain because the property rights have expired. I mentioned it a few times, here and here, when discussing about dimensions.
This was written because Abbott wanted to introduce the concept of higher dimensions, more than three, but of course we as the denizens of Spaceland (3-D world) find it difficult to imagine. So what he did was to go down one dimension and took the point of view from a being in Flatland (2-D world), a Square. Later in the story, Square is visited by Lord Sphere, a 3-D being from Spaceland. Of course, at first he is skeptical about Sphere and dismissed him as simply a Circle, but in the end he realises that his world is simply a flat plane. To make his point, Sphere actually brings Square to Pointland, which is 2 dimensions less, that is, no dimension. Sphere then asked Square to convince the God of Pointland that the world is not zero dimension. So that's the part in the excerpt above.
And why are higher dimensions important, you ask? Perhaps Abbott already foresaw a future research in Physics. You would have heard all the buzz of superstring theory by now, what is it all about? It is a promising Theory of Everything, but there's a catch: the equations only work out if we have 10 dimensions of space. So we imagine that our world may actually have extra dimensions, albeit tucked inside the fabric of space-time, curling and intertwining upon them themselves. Physicist Brian Greene offers the analogy of the power cables to make sense of these extra dimensions. Cables, from afar, look like they only have one dimension, i.e. length. But if you go down the scale as an ant, you would notice that the cables have thickness; an existing dimension, but often too small to observe. Similarly, our world may have 7 extra dimensions that are too ultra-microscopic to observe. This is why the concept of higher dimensions is very important.
This is also one of the purposes of the Large Hadron Collider: to detect the extra dimensions. When particles collide in certain manners, some of the energy may be ejected to the hidden dimensions. We can measure the energy of the particles before collision and compare it to the energy after. If there is energy loss, we may be able to conclude the existence of the extra dimensions.
I highly recommend watching the TEDTalk by Brian Greene on superstring theory (2005), embedded below:

The Question of Identity

When I researched about The Recursive, I came across Ship of Theseus, thanks to Wikipedia effect, as aptly summarised by xkcd's Randall Munroe here. To be fair, they are not entirely unrelated.
Basically it's like this:

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

— Plutarch, Theseus

The question is, if the ship is recursively fixed until all parts have been replaced, is it still the same ship?
This reminds me of the famous notion about a man stepping into a river. The second time the man steps into the river, the river is not the same river; the man is not the same man. I always thought that this was said by a Chinese philosopher, but apparently it is Heraclitus.
Which brings us to the question: what defines identity?
Perhaps I should reiterate here how Heraclitus' man is not the same man. While the river is obvious for not being the same because of the continuous water flow, it's less obvious for the man. From biological point of view, some of the man's cells have died and have been replaced with new ones. He also has new memories, perhaps new ideas. And so on and so forth. In fact if we modify it a little, it can become close to the Theseus' paradox: if every one of a man's cells are replaced with a new one, is he the same man? Cloning debate.
The Wikipedia article poses a few solutions to the question, and to be honest, some of the solutions make my head spin. But in essence, we usually define what "the same" mean first. Aristotle differentiates between four causes: formal, material, final, efficient. Now the question is how identity is defined. According to design (formal, efficient) and purpose (final)? Yes, it is the same ship. But if the definition of identity includes material cause, then it is not the same ship. Perhaps the Japanese culturally exclude material cause as part of identity, since they can see no paradox in Ship of Theseus, as pointed out by the article.
I will skip "qualitative-numerical differences" and "four-dimensionalism" explanations. You can read them in the article. To me, those explanations are too pedantic to the point of being not useful. I prefer Aristotle's simple solution.
Perhaps by now you will have thought "What has identity of a ship got to do with me?". Then read on:

A: Who are you?
B: Huh? You mean my name?
A: See? Your eyes immediately turned right, using "the conscious side" to answer...I want you to answer what you feel. Who are you?
B: I don't want to say my name.
A: Not your name. I'm not asking the title your parents gave you, to distinguish you from other people. I mean, who, are you? Who?
B: A high school student.
A: Tsk, tsk, tsk. When you remove the status of "high school student", who are you?
B: A 17-year old... girl...
A: Not the labels of age or gender...Those are the labels that surround you yourself. Who?
B: A... human
A: And when all the labels are removed?
B: ... People, are all... labels.
A: If all the labels are removed from people like layers of an onion... Does that mean they disappear in the end? If you take off all the labels that surround your front with... Is there nothing left in the middle? Are you something that was created and molded...by your parents, society, the world?
B: No...
A: Then who are you?
B: I am...
-- Yamamoto Hideo, Homunculus v.4

So indeed, who are you? Remove all those layers of the proverbial onion, who are you at the naked core?
As for the girl's answer, you have to read the manga for yourself.
As for my own answer, I'm afraid that my own core at the middle is nothing much. I have to say that those labels imposed on us or otherwise, are undeniably a part of us, like our own limbs. But of course we are unique. We all have our own idiosyncrasies not found in other people. But that alone doesn't define who we are. It's like we need a foundation for it, like truth that cannot exist outside context. I'm human, I'm a student -- I need those labels otherwise my quirkiness means nothing.
Your answer?

Dualism Paradox

The deeper that sorrow carves onto your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

 -- Khalil Gibran

"If we want have an utopia, we have to have a dystopia first". This thought occurred to me in passing although I didn't pursue it further. To my knowledge, this kind of notion doesn't have a name, so let's call it dualism paradox for convenience.

It is a paradox because the ideas are contradictory; and it is dualism (not Plato's dualism) because, well, it involves binary oppositions. Enough with the difficult words. I think Jason Mraz sings it quite succinctly:

It takes some good to make it hurt
It takes some bad for satisfaction

It takes a night to make it dawn
And it takes a day to make you yawn, brother
And it takes some old to make you young
It takes some cold to know the sun
It takes the one to have the other

And it takes no time to fall in love
But it takes you years to know what love is
And it takes some fears before I trust
It takes those tears to make it rust
It takes the rust to have it polished

Ah la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la life goes full circle
Ah la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la

It takes some silence to make sound
And it takes a loss before you found it
And it takes a road to go nowhere
It takes a toll to show you care
It takes a hole to see a mountain

-- Jason Mraz, Life is Wonderful (abridged)

I think not many people understand this blatant thing: it takes pain to gain; it takes hardship to know happiness; and so forth. This is what I mean by "there is no utopia without dystopia". You have to know what are lacking, what are corrupt, what needs to be rectified, to build a utopia -- dystopia is the means to the utopian end.

Of course, picking from the vast expanse on the meaning of love, tough love is a good example. This is the kind of love that is strict and disciplined, which may not appear as loving, but is ultimately for the good of the person being loved.

It is really no wonder that Pandora found Hope at the bottom of the jar. It takes all those evils to have hope, doesn't it?
Update: In retrospect, antonymic paradox sounds more awesome.

The number system is like human life

"The foundation of mathematics is numbers. If anyone asked me what makes me truly happy, I would say: numbers. Snow and ice and numbers. And do you know why?"
He splits the claws with a nutcracker and pulls out the meat with curved tweezers.
"Because the number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers. The ones that are whole and positive. The numbers of the small child. But human consciousness expands. The child discovers longing, and do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing?"
He adds cream and some drops of orange juice to the soup.
"The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something. And human consciousness expands and grows even more, and the child discovers the in-between spaces. Between stones, between pieces of moss on the stones, between people. And between numbers. And do you know what that leads to? It leads to fractions. Whole numbers plus fractions produce the rational numbers. And human consciousness doesn't stop there. It wants to go beyond reason. It adds an operation as absurd as the extraction of roots. And produces irrational numbers."
He warms French bread in the oven and fills the pepper mill.
"It's a form of madness. Because the irrational numbers are infinite. They can't be written down. They force human consciousness out beyond limits. And by adding irrational numbers to rational numbers, you get real numbers."
I've stepped into the middle of the room to have more space. It's rare that you have a chance to explain yourself to a fellow human being. Usually you have to fight for the floor. And this is important to me.
"It doesn't stop. It never stops. Because now, on the spot, we expand real numbers with the imaginary ones, square roots of negative numbers. These are numbers we can't picture, numbers that normal human consciousness cannot comprehend. And when we add the imaginary numbers to the real numbers, we have the complex number system. The first number system in which it's possible to explain satisfactorily the crystal formation of ice. It's like a vast, open landscape. The horizons. You head towards them and they keep receding. That is Greenland, and that's what I can't be without! That's why i don't want to be locked up."
I wind up standing in front of him.
"Smilla," he says, "Can I kiss you?"
-- Peter Høeg, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, pp. 101-102

After hearing that kind of that beautiful metaphor, I think I want to kiss her also. The excerpt is my favourite among others in the TOK textbook. It's a very good example of an allegory, an extended metaphor.
Why post this now? Because I just finished the book and the movie. The former is highly recommended, the latter not at all.
Despite that, this is the scene from the movie, although it is significantly different from the book:

Chrysalis [ 03. Chrysalis ]

[See entire]


"Jake," he said, eyes fixated on his dancing fingers across the black and white ivory keys. Even I was amazed by how much progress he had made. Innate talent, which I didn't really have. Soon he would surpass me.
"Jake," he repeated. "Do you know how a caterpillar morphs into a butterfly?" His hands stopped moving. He stood up and gave up the seat. My turn to play.
A non sequitur. Of course I know. I studied a fair bit of biochemistry in my course. But as I saw his eyes growing larger with enthusiasm, I knew he wanted to answer it for himself, so I let him.
"Metamorphosis is really a trickery of nature. The term itself is a misnomer because there is really no transformation occurring. The pupa simply has another set of embryonic cells in its body cavity, remaining dormant throughout the larval stages. Inside the chrysalis, everything disintegrates except those embryonic discs. They consume the nutrients surrounding them to develop into a new structure altogether. New organs, new exoskeleton, which are vastly different from larval stages."
"I detest the butterfly." I interrupted. "It is a parasite inside the pupa, waiting to consume it from within." I stared at the ceiling, my fingers on the sombre, black keys.
"I prefer to see it as being born again. The pupa and the would-be butterfly are the same organism, carrying the same genetic code. They are not separate entities. Think about it, the pupa has chance to be reborn again. To change its appearance. To gain the ability to fly."
I felt as if something inside me was disintegrating. Would it develop into something that can flutter its way up to the blue sky as well?
"Alphonse," I stood up. "It's a pretty picture, but as you said, it's still a trickery." I walked away.
"We'd like to think that we have been deceived. But in fact, nature has always been that way from the start. Humans were the ones who decided that the pupa must somehow have transformed into the butterfly when the butterfly struggle to get out its wings to break free from the chrysalis."
Alphonse's words echoed in the common room. I felt it echoing many times in my mind, too.

The Recursive

Repetitive words or ideas are indeed one of a writer's and a philosopher's favourite toys. But why would you want to repeat what you have just said? There are many reasons:

1. To make clear
This is quite obvious. When someone you talk to don't understand, you will repeat your statement. On a related note, in literature there is something we call motifs, which are recurring elements in a literary work that help to develop themes. This is more intangible, since motifs can be anything from prop, setting, words, sentences, ideas, characters, etc. Human minds always look for patterns to make sense of a coherent whole. One of the reasons we can't stand randomness.
(Notably, the Hindus chant their mantras repetitively over and over. Since their purpose is to attain enlightenment, I see it as they savour the meaning of a statement over and over. Every possible meaning, every possible nuances, until every possible essence is considered and eventually the teachings become clear to them. So I put this under this section.)

2. To emphasise
Related to #1 but goes a step further. Rather than making unclear things clear, we are making things already clear clearer. A rather clear example is this very statement and the one before -- clear?

3. To deliver impact
Still related to #1 and #2. My favourite is a line from Churchill's speech:

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.
-- Winston Churchill

Note the emphasis on we and fight. Try to remove the repetition and you will see that the impact is much lesser. By repeating the active voice, Churchill infused sense of belonging and raised the morale of the British in the war against the Germans.

Another example is by Wilfred Owen in Disabled:

Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,
And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He drought of jewelled hills
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
-- Wilfred Owen, Disabled, lines 30-36

Although the syntax is deceptively similar to #6 (later in the post), 'fears of Fear' doesn't indicate the superlative 'fear'. Rather, the repetition enhances the effect of the personification 'Fear'. Let me explain:
When the first letter of a word is capitalised, it is like a name of a person, so we say that the word is personified. Other notable examples would be 'Mother Nature' and 'Death'. Think of those two words carefully -- if you are imaginative maybe you will conjure images of benevolent mother and grim reaper. So you see, personification firstly changes the status of the intangible to the tangible. Fear, nature, death -- those are abstract concepts and are difficult to picture. What personification does is giving them bodies -- embodying them in real objects, bringing them from imaginary to real plane. What's more, they are not just tangible objects, but persons. With personalities, with emotions, with will, with mind; it's a Being. So, personification, when used appropriately (like what Owen did), is a very powerful tool.
Owen refers to the ultimate form of fear in the battlefield. This is perhaps one of the things that people who never experience war, including myself, understand. But if you read Owen, you would somewhat get a glimpse of it: the graphic enormity of war. The soldier in Disabled didn't understand this also, until it was too late. The ultimate Fear, which should be feared for your own good.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
-- Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est, lines 17-24

There is another way of making impact: make a monotony first so that a sudden break from it would be blatant. It is indeed a dualism paradox where something exciting requires something boring first.

4. To indicate recursive property
What do you call your grandfather's father? Great-grandfather? How about moving up a hundred generations? Easy: Great-(101x)grandfather.
What do you call a square of a number? A zenzic. What do you call a square of a square of a square of a number? Zenzizenzizenzic. I'm not pulling your leg -- it's the word which has the most z's in English.
On a similar note, speed is the rate of change of distance, acceleration is the rate of change of speed. So acceleration is the rate of change of rate of change of distance (one of my students was very amused by this). It's a pity the physicists didn't have the sense of humour like the mathematicians to coin a similarly recursive term for acceleration.

Let's take a detour and see about other languages:
5. To express plurality
Certain languages, instead of modifying their nouns, prefer to repeat them to indicate amount of more than one. For example, in the Malay/Indonesian language, the word 'person' would be translated 'orang' while 'people' would be 'orang-orang'. A very regularised modification, unlike a certain language in which the modification follows a rule but not always consistent.

6. To indicate the superlative
This should be quite a known fact to Christians. In the Hebrew language, it is one way to express superlative as such: X of Xs. So for instance 'the wine of wines' means the wine superior to any other wines. This syntax may seem logical when we say 'king of kings' and 'lord of lords' but befuddling when we say 'people of peoples'. This is because nouns like 'king' and 'lord' already imply superlativity in their meanings, so this Hebrew syntax works when such nouns are used but otherwise sounds strange in English.

Now, for the reasons less obvious:
7. To confuse
'Huh? Isn't this contrary to #1?' you ask. Actually to be more exact, it is to prompt people to ponder about things but sometimes if you think too much you get confused. A fine line between philosophical musings and clueless rants indeed.

Since this is an area of philosophy, let's have Plato:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
-- Juvenal

Plato questioned Socrates "who will watch the watchmen?" in The Republic. This is a very common question when we are talking about society structure, morality and laws. This invites us to think: those who ensure adherence to the law -- who will make sure they themselves adhere to the law?

Moving on to epistemology. Look at the following dialogue:

A: Some people don't know what they don't know.
B: But if something is unknown, how can you possibly know it?
A: What I mean is, you know certain things -- those form the body of your knowledge, correct? You should realise that there are gaps missing here and there in your body of knowledge. Those are those that, when you learn of them, you would know that they will fit the gaps.
It is like a game of jigsaw puzzle. When you almost finish it, you don't know what the missing pieces look like, but at least you know their shapes. And when the pieces fit snugly in the gaps, you know that those are the missing pieces.
B: Ah, so you mean that there are people don't even realise that there are gaps in their understanding?
A: Precisely. That's why the quest for knowledge is neverending. The gaps are always there, getting finer and finer, too microscopic to the untrained eyes. But I hope someday our understanding will be complete, not even a sliver of truth excluded.

Makes you think twice, doesn't it? Perhaps another one?

In the above dialogue, B knows that A knows that B knows that A knows...that B already knows what A means.

Confused enough?
There's a poem titled 'thinking I think I think' by Charles Bernstein. Before you click the link, brace yourselves, for the poem is discombobulating as the title is ungrammatical.
Bordering on that delicate tipsy tightrope walk between, how about:

And the biggest self of self is, indeed, self; that sin is, in fact, grounded in this notion of what is it that I want as opposed to somebody else?
-- Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, addressing his extramarital affair on June 24, 2009, as transcribed by Federal News Service. (Source)

And what is that supposed to mean? I'm as clueless as the next guy.
Next, reverse psychology. In one passage I read, a villain is having a monologue: "What can you do to make a person doubt a truth?" He answered himself, "Simply tell the truth."
Essentially, this is reverse psychology. The villain is perceived as someone who is not likely to tell the truth, thus his words are doubted. But this kind of assumption is utilised by the villain.
To complicate matters, there is reverse-reverse psychology, where the hero is as clever as the villain and expects the villain to use reverse psychology. In this case the villain may try to speak as such that he sounds like using reverse psychology, while in fact he is not. He simply lies.
Taking the mind game further -- the pattern should be clear by now -- there is reverse-reverse-reverse psychology and so on, but alas, I'm getting recursive.
8. To entertain
While repetition is a proper rhetoric device, linguists are wary of redundancy. To what extent is a repetition redundant? I'm not answering that question, instead I will mention repetitions that are clearly redundant but funny.
Put up your hands: Who among you are guilty of using redundant 'ATM machine' and 'PIN number' in daily conversations? Oh my, we are all suffering from RAS syndrome. As you can read in the Wikipedia article, RAS syndrome is a mockingly funny, yet most suitable, name for the phenomenon.

9. To make a pun
Homonymic pun is a perfect excuse for repetition; words that don't mean the same thing but look the same or at least similar. So at the heart of it, it's not really repetition per se, since the meanings of the words are different. See comment section for example.

Finally, if you're still not clear on recursiveness, click here.

Tear-stained

That day on a still park
Near a fountain, I was sitting on a bench next to an old lady
Gazing at the statue at the centre of the fountain
Of a woman -- covered at appropriate places -- gazing back at me
The old lady was reading the morning paper
Everything about her was grey
Grey attire, grey paper, grey much like the greyish-blue sky
and the grey clouds, behind which the sun was hiding
I curled, lifting my knees to touch my cheeks, about to doze off
The old lady took out a handkerchief to wipe her tears, the paper still on her lap
A long sniffle.

I needn't to ask her why -- I read it
Another brutality, another atrocity, another crack at the Dam of tears
A baby thrown away down the garbage chute, its orifices teeming with ants
A young suicide bomber blasting off in the middle of town
A girl finally succumbing to death seven hours after her last wish was granted
A rape of a woman; a rape of a nation
Body parts scattered in the Atlantic
It makes the heart of everyone who has it
bleeds

The handkerchief can soak up her tears
-- How about
the blood shed
the innocence snatched
the scar incurred
on the body and the soul --
What can?

A chill drizzle comes
though it feels warm like tears
steadily gaining momentum
I look at the tear-stained paper:
creased and crumpled
drop by drop the paper is getting wet.
I look at the tear-stained face:
weathered by time, creased and crumpled
by sorrow and anguish
drop by drop the face is getting wet.
Even the statue is weeping:
Something flows beneath its eyes
pigeonshit and rainwater mingling
Everything is crying --
the lady, the heaven, the statue
How can I not be?

The Art of Kissing

Do you ever wonder why we kiss? What is it that causes us to pucker and lock lips, exchange saliva (and colonies of bacteria), and intertwine tongues (sometimes).
A little search in the Net reveals a few hypotheses: social conditioning, instinct -- remnant from when mothers feed chewed food to the young, pheromone sensing, etc.
Social conditioning means that the behaviour passes from generation to generation. Considering that there are indigenous tribes not known to have kissing culture, this may be true. But then again, kissing may be too private to talk about or to be observed -- so it is not final that the behaviour is non-existent. Also, some animals, specifically primates, are also known to exhibit osculation (that's the technical term for kissing).
The pheromone sensing is an interesting theory. When we are talking about pheromone in humans, usually we don't mean it literally, since there is no specific hormone in us attracting the opposite sex to mate -- unlike insects, where pheromones mean just that. Some research papers suggest that somehow women can distinguish men with better genes. From the evolution point of view, this of course means that the offspring is more likely to be fit. Now, this obscure sensing may be the sum of the experience -- the man's height, his symmetrical face, his way of talking reflecting good education, his toned muscles -- the sum of it all may be the said metaphorical pheromone, the attraction, physically or otherwise. I believe that intuition can be reasoned out in a similar way. There are numerous little circumstances that you consider subconsciously -- the sum of it all, the conclusion, is what we call intuition. But I digress.
Since we are talking about "sensing the good genes" here, it is worth-noting that kissing involves a great deal of our senses. All our five senses -- visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory -- are hosted on our heads, so isn't it logical that we keep our heads close to each other when decrypting each other's pheromone signalling?
Why the lips, though? Well, if you have ever seen the picture of a sensory homunculus, it is obvious that a lot of sensory nerve endings are located on the lips and the tongue (about 21%). A significant portion is also located, of course, on the fingertips.
Indeed "why the mouth?" is a good question. Consider that a lot of metaphors of copulation are related to eating -- consummation, devour, eat you up. Also consider why cunnilingus and fellatio and a plethora of similar activities are practised.
To answer this question we have to consider symbolic significance of the mouth. The mouth is a passage to let something in; that something will be a part of the self. Considering this, it is not that far-fetched to describe kissing as letting the other party have a taste of ourselves, making a little of ourselves to be a part of somebody else's. This is a little bit different from copulation, since here, both parties are equal in the give-and-take.
So: a kiss is a complex exchange of information. Even enlightenment can be transmitted.
Deep.