Geek Speak

Professions have jargon. Abbreviations and lingo seem necessary - we get too tied up in lengthy and technical phrases otherwise. It'd be impossible to get any work done if we spent all of our time enunciating the proper or plainspeak names for the concepts we spend so much of our time discussing.

Of course, that same lingo describes to the outside world what you do by association...

HTML, JSP, ASP, kernel, O/S, MB, priority queue, virtual machine, polymorphism, asynchronous transfer mechanism, Steiner Trees, NP-complete, Runtime analysis... you're clearly talking tech.

Tortfeasor, Res Ipsa Loquitur, Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc, Malum In Se, Replevin, Adjudication, Mens Rea, Prima Facie, Quid Pro Quo, In Forma Pauperis, summary judgment, vicarious liability, then you're talking law.

GDP, MPC, I, X, M, externality, PPF, indifference curve, present discounted value, marginal cost, Ceteris Paribus, oligopolistic competition, competitive advantage, inelasticity, utility function... econ.

It distinguishes the profession. It's one of many traits. It leaves some onlookers in awe - it leaves others in disgust. It sets you apart in a good way - it's a campaign ribbon that speaks to the world and to your peers where you've been in a professional sense. It sets you apart in a bad way - only geeks talk like this. Sometimes, people ride the coattails of jargon, pretending erudition through mimicked command of outwardly mysterious and indecipherable terminology.

And sometimes it confuses you. Let's just say that JSP and ASP appear to mean different things in law school than they do in the CS department. And that 'pi' and 'delta' are functionally overloaded in law school for anyone who has a background in math or science. This confuses me frequently...

The internal division is harder to maintain than I might have once thought.

Edgy Perspective

Looking down the blade of a two-edged sword.

That's what it means to have a blessing, or a curse. Everyone has blessings of a sort, but every blessing, no matter what kind, seems to have some effect on your psyche. It definitely colors the way you look at the world. The way you see things. The joys you take, the needs you have... all these things make up who you are in a very real way, I think. Your wishes - the things you want, but don't or can't have - are as much a part of your constituency as anything you do indeed have. It's not always about the simple idea of greed, either... your dreams, your longings, the things you reach for but can't attain - those strivings, futile or not, move you through many days in your life. I suppose that, depending on who you are, you could disagree with me; that's all good. That's your life, perhaps - but I can only speak for what's been the case for me, and for a lot of people I've known and met, be they content with their lives or not.

One of the most well-known platitudes is this: "Ignorance is bliss." Even ignorant people have heard that one before... and the very saying seems to carry with it a certain absurdity. It shouldn't be true, but it is. By comparison, the search for knowledge is supposed to leave you fulfilled, but the learned are often accosted by another cliche: "The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know."

But put aside those generalizations for the moment. I'm willing to bet that if you took a more immediate, concrete, well-defined thread running through your life, you'll see it for the mixed blessing that it is... that for better or worse, it colors who you are and moves your thoughts every day. Sometimes it's only there for a few moments at a time, the light of consideration glinting off that particular tile in your mosaic depending on how the sun's shining that particular day. And sometimes, the spotlight of your consciousness comes to rest on that one tile at an annoying angle, reflecting a searing, piercing lance of brilliance straight into your dominant thoughts, making you wish you could just turn your head and look away.

Too abstract? Too ambiguously philosophical? Too inarticulately incoherent? If you think so, I don't blame you... I've just finished a long day of reading and I'm posting at past 1am. So I'll illustrate with but one example from my life... perhaps it'll make more sense with a specific example.

"Mean people suck." Not exactly profound... it's plastered on bumper stickers all over the place. But as a child, I was the runt in my classroom. Always the smallest, always the strangest. The least loved, and in so many ways. You know the little kid who always got picked on? Called names? Chosen last when the captains picked their teams in P.E.? That was me. A common enough story... it's amazing how many of us there are, considering that there's only supposed to be one in any classroom full of kids, but there you go. I was kind of an unlikeable person, though - thinking back on it, I know I wouldn't have liked myself much either, so it's not like I could have blamed them. Between them being kids, and me being me, it seemed the only outcome possible.

That was nothing compared to college, though. You'd think that this sort of thing got better with age, but as it turns out, all the stuff that I really resented as a kid - that was just part and parcel of the hell that is American Childhood. Particularly, it seems, if you happen to be Asian American, male, and shorter than a pygmy hedgehog. But in college, I learned about real malice, and genuine spite. I learned about people who weren't physical bullies so much as emotional ones - the wounded, inadequate-feeling souls who can only staunch the ichor dripping from their own wounds by opening up more gaping ones in the people around them. I had always been something of a cynic, but people like these finally gave that cynicism a target of merit.

So it left me a rather bitter person. I've met a few people who just can't fathom the meanness that I'm talking about. Some people have *never* had people be mean to them on quite the same level - they may read today's post, figure that I must be exaggerating everything, and dismiss this as the ramblings of just another bitter person. That's ok - I don't blame them. If they've never known what I'm talking about, so much the better - life can be lived without understanding it.

But it's not just about being bitter - just being bitter means being broken, like a pack mule. Like any good little defiant, raging misfit, I decided for myself that meanness of this kind was simply an evil thing, and that I'd move against it by living my life in a different way. I could tell that some people were just mean, because they were cursed with certain problems and that this is how they dealt with it. What was scary, though, was the fact that many of their problems weren't so far removed from mine, or the people I called my friends. So the way I ended up seeing it, is that it's all about how you deal with them.

I did put my foot down, at least where I was concerned. I did act on a determination not to be just another self-interested bastard. I learned to teach classes, I helped found a martial arts club, and I put in a conscious effort to be a helpful and thoughtful person in general. Especially in the beginning, it was just a charade. I didn't feel any of it in any genuine way - it was just me giving voice to my distaste for wantonly mean people. Not wanting to become one of them, I made an effort to act in the opposite way - not out of heart, but out of principle. It was just the way I saw things. Gradually, I let that become a greater part of being who I am - or at least, who I think I am. And now I can honestly say that it *feels* like a part of my heart now, and not just a set of motions I go through on ideological grounds.

But what's the difference, then? The difference remains in the perspective. Put me in a roomful of 'nice' people (especially when I'm in a good mood - and believe it or not, that happens. You probably wouldn't know it from my posts, though) and on the surface, we'll all seem the same. Put one mean person in there, though, and you can see the difference in perspective. Some people would just be annoyed by this person. Others would be hurt. I would be royally pissed off, gnashing and cursing and just begging that the cosmos would see fit to hand that person a painful and violent death. The difference is all in the history that mean people and I have had with each other. A history that, quite possibly, I have yet to fully come to terms with.

But it's not just an attitude. It's not just a holding, a feeling, or even a conviction. It's something upon which I act; not in the sense that I go around plotting the downfall of mean people, no. But rather, in the fact that I'm very, very conscious of the way that I act towards people and the things I've chosen to do with my life. It's never more than a few layers down in my thoughts. It's that coloration that's a part of what really makes the things that I do, unique to me. In a sense, it really does define in part who I am.

It's not quite a curse or a blessing. It's a curse in that it has made me a pretty fundamentally unhappy person, since these unpleasant musings are always running in the background, often keeping me from fully appreciating all the other good things I've got in my life. It's a blessing in that it makes me consciously avoid become a generally selfish person wholly heedless to the needs of others, as I've seen happen to more than a few other people, either through malicious intention or just a simple and very forgivable lack of awareness. I had a tendency to be very selfish when I was much younger; I might well have turned out much more badly if not for a mixed blessing like this.

Hopefully you'll have a more happy example than that for yourself. But take, for a moment, a sense or a feeling you've had all your life, about who you've been, and see how that's guided who you are and what you do. Why you understand certain viewpoints and perspectives unique to you which you believe no one else can really understand.

The truth is, it's more than likely that, for any given thread you pick, there *is* someone out there who'll see it the same way you do, who'll understand what you mean. The part that makes it feel lonely, is that sometimes it seems like the people who you most want to understand it are the ones who'll never quite get it. And it's only because they haven't been through what you have, whether it happens to be a blessing, a curse, or both. It's why they are who they are - and why, for better or worse, they will never be you.

Flicker of Simplicity

Most of my waking hours these days are filled with books. Lots of books, tomes packed with legal cases and bits of odd hair-splitting analysis. I've always spent a lot of time around books... back as an undergrad, I found that I was one of the few people who ever actually did the reading for all of my classes. Granted, I didn't know any better at the time.

It seems I've spent enough of my time engaged in the cerebral such that there are all sorts of little things I've forgotten along the way. They're small, maybe even akin to a child's simple joys... but it both delights and disturbs me sometimes at how new all of it can seem to me at times... I musn't forget to be human while I'm at my studies.

I ran across a field of grass back to my room tonight, just after the sun went down. I cut through the lawn because I was running downhill, in a hurry, the books on my shelf beckoning menacingly. The sweet smell of grass washed over me, as though it were for the first time, and for a good ten seconds or so, it was all I could think about. Light and sweet, thin and pure, a smell almost as good as the bouquet of flowers I keep in my room, but not as pungent. It didn't smell like fresh-mown grass, either... not sickly sweet or overpowering... this smelled healthy, cool, and alive. I could almost drink it, and no, it didn't 'taste' like wheatgrass...

Maybe it's because I've been eating lousy food for about a month and a half now, but if I could somehow distill the scent of that field into something one could drink, I swear it could be like Olympian nectar.

Gratitude
Since most blogs work in reverse chronological order, the order of my posts is going to look a little strange. Nonetheless, if you're a friend of mine and you happen to read this, know that this one's for you in particular. My posts are unfortunately and probably going to be characterized by the tendency to be pensive at best, and by the display of varying degree's of P.O.'d-ness much of the rest of the time.

That'll be a shock to some of you who, for one reason or another, haven't yet had the occasion to see me either angry or upset. I know there are at least a few of you out there who've only seen me happy. It's really quite simple; you are the reason for it. If I've always seemed happy around you, it's because you've made me happy, and that's not something I ever take for granted. It's not what's usual for me, not what's normal for me. I could be about a third of the way through my life already, and to my great regret, most of those times seem to not have been good ones, either tainted with longing or roiling with outrage, and probably mostly for the fact that my mind tends always to be unsatisfied with my personal state of affairs. Certainly I've tried to place the blame for it, as futile as it might be - invariably I'm led to believe that it's both my fault and not my fault. A simple, almost worthlessly ambiguous response for a question that's sometimes difficult even to phrase or understand, much less answer.

I'm almost resigned to the thought that life's never going to be very happy. Certainly, the average number of joyful hours in the average day amounts to something significantly less than one. Most days go by with nary a minute of real joy, despite any and all efforts. Some people make it a goal in life to be happy. Finding that to have been hopeless, I settle for attempting to fight the good fight instead.

So any time that you remember spending a hour or two in my company, sharing in good conversation and humor, or basking in camaraderie, remember that on that occasion, you truly made my day. Literally hundreds of times better than any old average day. Those are the moments I live for. They don't ever happen without you.

Drunken hall talk

Two guys were just talking about a weekend barbeque in the hallway. They seemed more than a little out of it, with their talk laden with Spoonerisms. One of the better zingers:

"What kind of brarbeque do you have?"

"We've got a grass gill."

"Are you going to put skrewers on the grass gill?"

This might be fun... I'll try it for at least a while. I've avoided keeping one of these mostly in the belief that, not only do I not have much to say, I don't have much time to be saying it, either.

But as acts of bravery go, I guess that being out here, along with everyone else who has knowingly or unknowingly introduced this blogging thing to me, doesn't constitute anything that should give rise to apprehension. The fact that I wonder about it at all probably has more to do with being shy than anything else.

There'll probably be a lot of misinformed ramblings here, on things like justice, martial ethics, flower arranging, and tea. Things I have an appreciation for, but haven't gone to much trouble learning anything about :)

Oh, perfect example. I ended that last sentence with a preposition, which gives me something to ramble about! ("Oops, I did it again.")

So, of course, we're all told by our grade school/elementary school teachers that the act of ending a sentence with a preposition is tantamount to the commission of a Grammatical Sin. To which most of us, if given liberty to speak our mind at that age (depending on how repressed your childhood experience happened to be) would answer with something along the lines of, "As if!" Well, perhaps we're not all so wrong in the wish to defy the draconian traditions of Standard Written English. At least in this case ;)

Shakespeare wrote in english. But it's not the sort of english we use anymore, not just in the sense of vernacular speech, but also in the rules of of S.W.E.. That's an obvious thing to note - I think we've all probably noticed that, whether or not you personally happen to like Shakespeare. If you spoke or wrote Shakespeare-style today, you'd get one of several possible reactions, but I'm guessing they'd probably fall between the range of "how romantic!" to "how insufferably geeky." Language evolves, and sometimes regresses. Duh, right?

Which brings me to this article in the Cal Alumni Magazine... I really enjoyed reading it when I came across it last year. It's an interview with John McWhorter, who's an associate professor of linguistics at Berkeley. (last I checked.) One of the specific things he talks about in this article is the conflict between the common practice of ending sentences with prepositions and the (in my view) gratingly sophistic rule against it. It's nice to know that not only are there many people who'd agree with this opinion, there are people who have a good, plausible, rational explanation as to why this rule is as arbitrary as many of us may have thought all along. There's a certain utilitarian advocacy in his writing, as you'd expect, but hey, it's an interview, not a treatise.

I guess that I just personally have it in for some rules of grammar... but perhaps this is because they're closely associated with what I consider to be a traumatic childhood event. (Okay, so it was too trivial to be truly traumatic, but it's my blog and I can use melodramatic hyperbole anytime I want, right?) It was my first day in first grade, it's the first time I'd ever opened my grammar workbook... and on a whim I decide to start doing my fill-in-the-blank exercises in black crayon. At the end of the day, I got a reproving note from the teacher (who admittedly, was just doing her job in a way any normal person might expect) telling me that I should not fill out my workbooks in crayon.

I was stung. I was crushed. (Yes, I had a very fragile ego back then. It persists in being brittle to this day.) It was just black crayon! It wasn't intended to be an act of subversive rebellion or anything! Hmph. A little whimsy, a little creativity, with no intent to harm anyone, and *SMACK*. "No, little boy. You can't do that."

And with that, I journeyed into eight of the most miserable years of my life. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm maudlin. Sue me, and I'll sue you right back =P)

Ironic, then, that I now find myself in law school of all places.