Scholarly Stresses

Oh it's been one of those days to forget. Quickly.

Part of my job entails being the editorial assistant of a journal for Neo-Latin Studies. Doesn't sound exciting, does it? But it gets worse. Here's what I did today - all day, by myself - in my honourable capacity of editorial assistant: I standardized footnotes. Yes. I spent my whole day reviewing papers and correcting this:

'Scholarly Stresses and Strains: the Difficult Dealings of Bonaventura Vulcanius and Henricus Stephanus over their Edition of Arrian's De Expeditione Alexandri Magni Historiarum Libri VIII', in Bonaventura Vulcanius, Works and Networks, Bruges 1538- Leiden 1614. Papers edited and introduced by Hélène Cazes, Brill's studies in Intellectual history, 194 (Leiden - Boston, 2010), 351-359.

into this:

Gilbert Tournoy, ‘Scholarly Stresses and Strains: the Difficult Dealings of Bonaventura Vulcanius and Henricus Stephanus over their Edition of Arrian’s De Expeditione Alexandri Magni Historiarum Libri VIII’, in Hélène Cazes (Ed.), Bonaventura Vulcanius, Works and Networks, Bruges 1538 – Leiden 1614, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual history, 194 (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 351-359.

And, yes sir, this is very important. Seriously. Oh, it doesn't look that different? Note the alignment (justified instead of left), note the quotation marks (rounded instead of straight), note the length of the dash between Leiden and Boston, note the capital letter in Studies. Of course, I am a highly trained professional at this, having taken an exam during my first year at university on this sort of thing (bibliographical style sheet) and proudly boasting several years of experience at the journal in question. My Lord...

Apart from such intellectual haut cuisine my day also figured: doing laundry (goody!), buying stamps (exciting!), doing dishes (happy happy, joy joy!), stubbing my toe against the coffee table (auch!). That's abou it. Hell, I'm so numb that only now (not kidding), I realise how ironic the aforementioned title of my example is...

Scholarly stresses, you got that right!

Two-bit-liner

I read about cyberchondria today.

I'm afraid I am suffering from this disease...

Prometheus

Yesterday my friend N. and I went to see the play Prometheus - Landscape II by Jan Fabre (and Jeroen Olyslaegers), which was errrr... Well, let me tell you about it.

Prometheus is the story of an ancient Greek titan who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. In Fabre's interpretation this resulted in a school exercise in postmodern theatre. Complete with ironic dialogue, paradoxical body language, and people masturbating on stage. Now don't get me wrong. I can handle that. In fact, the image of one person trying to make fire by rubbing a stick between his hands on one side of the stage and another tugging feverishly away at his cock on the other side, was quite a good visual expression of the kind of metaphysical masturbation Prometheus' hybris stands for. But while watching the play, I couldn't shake off the feeling that it all needed too much thinking. Every line, every gesture was a inversion of meaning. Accordingly, the winks to postmodern and deconstructionist philosophy - which teaches us that however we might try we are never really able to put meaning into words, so we might as well say the opposite - were all over the place. I mean, shouting over and over again 'To instruct is to destruct' at the end of the play, looks more like someone showing off his university course in literary theory and cultural studies, than like a playwright who wants to move an audience. And this is my point.

When the play was finished, my friend N was completely confounded. In fact, I think she felt a little sick. You have to give Fabre that: you leave the theatre with a foul feeling in your stomach, questioning everything and anything you know. Yet, not knowing the story of Prometheus, not knowing deconstructionism and postmodern criticism, she had only seen people shouting and doing strange shit. She wasn't moved, she wasn't involved, and she certainly wasn't amused.

So while there might have been a lot at the background of this Prometheus, I wonder: 'Does it really have to be so intellectualistic, so elitist?' To be frank, I had hoped contemporary theatre anno 2011 might have moved on from a philosophical vogue which had its heyday in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Sure that philosophy has taught us that every story is a violent attempt to control reality, but the best thinkers of the school have always stressed that while we essentially cannot tell a story, we can still try. Why not? We all try to make something out of our lives, even if sometimes we feel, in the end, we cannot be sure to succeed.

Had we seen a play at least trying to tell a story, trying to move people, trying to make sense of it all, even if this seems futile, and especially without a director with his head stuck in his own philosophical ass, N. and I might not have needed two or three mojitos before coming back to our senses. Indeed, it might have helped the poor girl sleep last night...

PS: for some impressions, see this Youtube film

The X-tinct files (part 2)

It's not my brain-fart, but Adam Carolla's. Still, it seems remarkable and very true. As I read in this morning's paper that ex-WNBA All-Star Margo Dydek has died at the age of 37, I was suddenly reminded of this 'fact'. With a height of 7-foot-2 (2,18m!) Dydek was said to be the tallest professional female basketball player. Sure 37 is a tragically young age to die, but indeed, think about it. How come you never see a 2 meter tall 80-year old??

The X-tinct files (part 1)

This post, which is to be seen as the start of a series, will be dedicated to allegedly declared extinct species and phenomena. Today, we will turn our attention to shinobi, more commonly known as ninja.

Whereas most of us only "know" ninja from one of the many forms of popular modern media - such as television, books, video games, manga, Western comics and reptiles of the order Testudines characterized by their special bony shell - only few people are aware of the historical facts, gathered from academic and historical sources.

In a nice little book I bought in Japan (Ninja Attack! True tales of Assassins, Samurai and Outlaws), the authors explain the true story behind these fascinating spies - because that is what they basically were. Now rather than summarizing what they have written, I will focus on one particular passage (page 11): 'Ninja don't exist anymore. Or more precisely, they don't exist in the form in which they appear in the pages of this book'. And, let this at least be clear before you all start filling the Amazon basket, that is by no means the black-pajama-donning, quantum-teleporting, mummificated-sword-wearing, pizza-delivering, roof-tiptoeing, shuriken-throwing flying-with-stretched-leg martial artist you might have in mind now.

It is true though: the 'classical' ninja do not exist anymore, but they have made place for a new breed of bad-ass Masters of Stealth. They might even already have crossed your path, especially if you often need to take a train. Because insofar as your untrained eye is capable of catching a glimpse of these new ninja, your only real chance to notice them is right before boarding a crowded train (although their modus operandi is unknown, let alone their Code, some people have conjectured that taking uncrowded trains must be some sort of violation of their principles).

Now, next time you need to catch a train during rush hour, try to perform the following experiment: as soon as the train arrives, most people will naturally clog together in the neighbourhood of the doors. You can't really describe the resulting configurations as actual waiting lines, because of an unavoidable and omnipresent amount of inherent chaos, so let's call them the waiting fractals. Unless of course you are in Japan - the Capital of Queueing. As for the purpose of our experiment this would be a pity, since this is oddly (and paradoxically) enough one of the few places on earth where the new ninja breed has never been observed before. Now, join this V-shaped group of people and make sure that you align yourself along the railway track. Ideally, there should be a 30cm space between your body and the train. Under normal circumstances, the people around you will be waiting for the people getting off the train, and there is an unwritten rule which then tells you when you can get on the train. It is actually rather a general guideline than an official rule, but you are very unlikely to violate social conventions if you stick to a combination of the principle of 'first come, first serve' and the 'zipper system' in traffic.

However, every once in a while, you might notice individuals ignoring all of the above: moving swiftly along the track, passing each and everyone, squeezing their ninja-ass between your body and the train. And this usually happens so quickly that you are most likely to end up wondering whether you just saw a ghost or not.

From now on, remember this: you didn't, you were merely overtaken by a member of the New Mysterious Breed of Shinobi...

One-bit-liner

Scientists have zero sense of humour.

Nought.

Kohlberg's train

Years ago a friend of mine had to do an experiment for her pedagogy paper. (Yes, it was you, K.) She came over to my place one evening and announced she'd put some hypothetical dilemmas to me, to which I should respond truthfully. Being a little bastard at the time (a perhaps even today) I replied: "No problem, but if your paper is about Kohlberg's stages of moral development, I'm afraid I know the correct answer to each one". Her face darkened and she must have said something like "I knew it, you pedantic twat!" Sure, I felt guilty, but in the interest of good science, I thought it best to state that I was not her proper demographic. Besides, I couldn't help it that my professor had been on about the same thing only the day before! Anyway, we ended up having an interesting conversation about it, so no hard feelings. Today, years and years later (I'm thinking it must be at least seven or eight years ago), I was suddenly reminded of Kohlberg and that evening again...

But first for some explaining. It's easy, basically, Kohlberg teaches how people develop a sense for what's right or wrong in stages. First, when you're a small child, you're in the pre-conventional stage, deciding on dilemmas by avoiding punishment or looking for a reward. Then, you start to grow up and arrive at a conventional stage, where you do or don't do something to be a good boy/girl, or conform to some authority (police, etc). Finally, as an adult (or some adults at least), you reach the post-conventional stage and realise that there's a social contract we all have to sign. We live in a society, and you can't expect you're rights to be respected, if you're not willing to agree to respected someone else's. Can you? To do so, we develop rules and give people the power to enforce them, but that's only because we agree upon a contract, not because this power or these rules are absolute.

So today I was sitting quietly on the train from Leuven over Brussels to Ghent when the ticket guy came round. Of course, I dutifully showed him my ticket, complete with a polite 'Here you go'. Fifteen minutes later, the same ticket inspector returned to my carriage for a second round of inspection. When he came to me, I did what most people do. I gave him the 'Been seen'. Usually this is met with a nod, most guys being happy to be able to proceed. This guy, however, put his hands in his waist and proclaimed: 'Sir, I'll be the judge of that. I will have to see your ticket again please'. And then I got angry. 'Fucking train guy', I thought, 'my last rail pass was spent with five uninspected lines. Now you're gonna ask me twice in the span of fifteen minutes? How about having the trains arrive in time?' That sort of stupid thing.

And then it hit me. 'This is just a guy wearing an ugly grey NMBS T-shirt', I thought, 'he has no real authority or power over me!' And in a fit of moral superiority, I happily produced my ticket again and obliged to his wish. But not without thinking 'Here's some level 5, post-conventional Kohlberg for you to shove up your arse'. Phew. Only narrowly avoided a fine there! But wait a minute... Yeah, still a child at heart sometimes.

Random blurbs

In information science and communication theory, randomness or noise is often described as irrelevant, meaningless data. A fairly simple description, but it raises interesting questions. What is meaningless, and what do you mean by irrelevant? Being absolutely no stranger to alcohol and what it can do to the human brain - ranging from making you put your (double) tongue into a completely stranger's mouth to having a groundbreaking insight of cosmic proportions, I feel rather tempted to wave this description away as absolute nonsense. But then again, what is randomness?

I was being confronted with this rather erhm... irrelevant issue a few days ago, during my last lecture for biologists. I had to write down something arbitrarily on the blackboard, but the harder I tried to generate random numbers, the more I realized how non-random my example actually became. And I guess we all have the same reflex with respect to these matters: so-called random number sequences cannot have too many repetitions, and should not include obvious combinations like 1234 or 666, isn't it? But where does that leave you?

I mean, does the following sequence look random to you?

3064464030121369

Probably not, right? Very correct, you might have recognized the conjectured dimension of a module associated with the free commutative Moufang loop with 23 generators. Anyway, my point being that sometimes it is difficult to believe that things are just random. And this applies to real life as well, as we (Fred and myself) once again experienced this weekend: our flight from Prague to Brussels was delayed, and this lead to missing the last train from the airport back to Ghent. By two lousy minutes, I guess delayed trains are never to your advantage. However, we did realize that there was a tiny chance that we could get home, taking a taxi from the airport to the Central train station in Brussels where we might still catch the train coming from the airport. In poker lingo: the backdoor flush draw to the nuts.

And guess what, on our way to the official taxi stand - where you are supposed to queue and wait for a yellow cab - we bumped into a shady driver addressing us with a coincidental "Voulez vous un taxi?". For exactly one nano-second, which is more or less the time it takes an average person to notice that the word 'Eyjafjallajokull' contains a spelling mistake, we felt a bit uneasy. Was this not too fishy? One exchanged look later, a classical "I don't know about you but I am fucking tired and need a bed"-look, we decided to go for it and roll the coaster. Which is not just a funny way of putting it: apart from loops, it really felt like a roller coaster ride. With one hand underneath his seat, "Damned, where's my fucking telephone?", our taxi driver zigzagged us through the city and delivered us to our (almost) final destination in (no) time where we safely boarded our train. There was even enough time left for a snack from a vending machine, and the realization that Brussels central station is where randomly weird people meet on a Sunday evening.

And then again, when are people considered to be weird?

Hyperreal food

My Lord! Lordy, Lordy, Lord! (to use a phrase from Stephen Fry). That does it. I had been planning to write something more substantial later about Baudrillard and his concept of hyperreality, but with today's newspaper in mind, I can't help myself.

Appartenly (according to this article in today's De Standaard) a new social phenomenon has sprung up in Flanders! Friends, colleagues, etcetera are massively imitating the TV show Komen eten. If you'd like to pretend you don't know it (because we all do, even if we all say we don't watch stuff like that), here's the show's premise. Four people (could be five, dunno) go over to each other's house, have a meal, talk pompous shite involving words like cuisson, bisque or cappuccino without knowing what they mean, and then übercritically rate each other's cookery in categories of food, atmosphere, and so on. Each day of the week figures one dinner (hmm, could be five participants after all, logic suggests), and at the end of the week one's declared the winner.

So apparently, people in Flanders are now doing just that. Good heavens. If the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) were still alive, he'd have a field day. Without going into too much detail, Baudrillard claims consumer culture has forced modern man into a dissatisfaction with reality. In fact, reality is not real enough anymore, hence modern kids prefer playing tennis on the Nintendo Wii instead of on a clay court. And so now the same thing has happened with food. Entertaining guests at home and cooking a nice meal for them has been the backbone of social culture for centuries. Now, people are fed up with it and need to imitate a television show of entertaining and cooking to enjoy real-life entertaining and cooking. (Of course, Baudrillard would contend that the only 'real' cooking has become the one on TV).

Frankly, I'm fed up with it. Fed up with kids wanting to be on a TV show that takes them back to the fifties and then proclaiming that discipline is good for you. Fed up with people who want to be Made on MTV, because it's 'a unique opportunity to change their lives' (TV changes our lives, not vice versa anymore). Fed up with people who want to videotape themselves while having sex, because they can't enjoy real sex anymore without being reminded of fake sex (pornography).

Hyperreality sucks walrus-ass, as Adam Carolla would say...

-isms

Funny that Fred should blog about one (actually two) of the world's many -isms yesterday, since today my job has been to make sense of a whole shitload of such -isms. Yes, my morning was spent trying to make sense of kinds of prose style, ranging from Ciceronianism to Anti-Ciceronianism, and crossing over - fasten your seatbelts - archaism, Laconism, mannerism, Euphuism, Gongorism (also culteranism or cultism), Marinism (also concettism or secentism) and conceptism. Phew...

Now all of these are different ways to write. One might be plain and simple, harmonious and neatly balanced, the other laborious, affectated and even downright absurd. Obviously, we all know there's different ways of saying stuff, but I confess that even an academic freak like myself may still stand in awe of all these different -isms.

If you'd like to get a feel for how such a stylistic same shit, different way, might work, there is an interesting little book I can highly recommend: Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style. The book tells the story of a man seeing the same stranger twice in one day, but it tells that short story in 99 different ways. And if you don't like reading that much, there's even an adaptation in a graphic novel of it.

Or, if you'd like to stay closer to the kind of -ism Fred used in his blog, i.e. the philosophical isms, you can check out Wikipedia's list which mentions several hundreds of them.

Of course, in the end thinking about stuff like this might result in one -ism to many, as might happen to me by the end of the day. The -ism I mean, is of course, the mother of all: alcoholism.

Cheers!

(de)Constructivism

According to popular belief, academics are incapable of talking about anything that is not related to (their) work. This is probably one of the reasons why I decided to participate in Fred's idea to start a shared blog, hereby hoping to disprove this assertion.

However, my problem with starting something - be it a blog, a book or a conversation with the person sitting next to me on the train - is that I always end up spending way too much time thinking about the first words. Even these very lines were concocted a few minutes ago, while I was having a shower.
Somehow, this reminds me of my youth. More than once, I got my collection of Caran d'Ache pencils from the cupboard because I felt like drawing something, only to end up staring at an empty page, basically begging my mom for inspiration.
- "Mom, you have to tell me what to draw."
- "Okay, how about a helicopter?"
- "No, that's too difficult."
- "A tiger then?"
- "That is a good idea, but I have no orange crayons."
This exchange of random subjects and lousy excuses usually went on for a few more minutes, until either we converged to the classical solution - a car, to be parked on the fridge - or I got tired and decided to build something with my collection of Lego. Which, of course, often resulted in me repeating my question - mutatis mutandis.


I preferred Lego to crayons though as the act of erasing was a lot easier. And part of the fun. Whereas my own creations often survived a while, most of the demolishing happened once the friends who came over to play were on their way back home. For some strange reason, they never understood that Lego bricks are not meant to be randomly connected or assembled. There is a colour code to be respected: once you start using red bricks for example, you have to stick to this choice until you run out of red ones. And then comes the tricky part: you now have to switch from one colour to another, in the most symmetric way possible.


Once my friend asked me why I'd destroyed the helicopter he had constructed the week before. Well, it could have been a tiger too, I can't remember what my mom had answered to his question. Back then, I didn't know how to explain why I'd did so. This weekend however, I realized there's an easy metaphor.
So L., just in case you bump into this blog, listen carefully: think of my Lego bricks as mathematical axioms, and of your construction as a mathematical theorem. Even though you did prove the theorem, anyone who is but vaguely familiar with basic mathematics will tell you that even logical constructs - or, to translate into abstract words, your Lego designs - are prone to being as aesthetic as possible. You do prefer a clever argument over a lengthy calculation, even though this means you will have to sit down and think for a while - don't you? Well, in retrotort, that is why I broke your stuff into pieces.

Barthes on truth

What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth (Roland Barthes)