When it comes to something I really like (a good book, or tv series, for example), I carefully pace my consumption of it, much like a good wine, so as to make it last for as long as I can take it. So when I saw the pilot of Firefly nearly three years ago in Seattle, I knew that I would take my sweet time watching this one, especially since Fox (very tragically) canceled the show prematurely, before the end of the season. About 6 months after I partook of my first taste of the Western-Sci-Fi, I got my hands on all the episodes and it took me about 2.5 years to finish off the other 14 episodes.

The show created quite a stir, amassing an underground cult following that helped spearhead the movie production after Fox axed the show. Clearly, the crew had a blast filming the show, and they bonded. This passion came through the screen, this passion the glue taking hold of the audience and I was myself infected by it. But aside from the energy of the show, there were three other elements that I positively loved.

One was how it tweaked with the question of time. While the show had a clear futuristic component with funky spaceships and laser guns (minus the aliens), Joss Whedon brought us, the viewers, smack into the present, into a state of immediacy by melding the future with familiar scenes form the past. By keeping temporal planes in plain view and in play with each other, he collapsed temporal frames and also showed that novelty arises more from the interplay of the new within the framework of the old, instead of breaks in time.

If Joss Whedon collapsed time by keeping various temporalties in plain view, he was also able to play with the themes of freedom and constraint particularly well. The story takes place on a ship, bearing the name of Serenity, and like most ships, whether it is flies through space, or sails on water, they are usually run hierarchically with a captain in charge. And Serenity was no different, with Malcolm Reynolds steering the metaphorical helm (he could not fly the ship), commandeering away with near full authority. But even within such rigidity, Whedon convyed that this was a space of freedom, in which every person was living freely, according to their temperament, predicament, and abilities. United by some unstated and sometimes unclear mission (perhaps just to survive independently in a galaxy run by the “alliance” so that they were at least politically free and did not have to do things like pay taxes), their lives as outlaws were rich and free even while constrained by hierarchy and being confined within a ship. And for me, since I lived in the same sort of situation, ship, captain (no reevers though), I can relate. For some reason, I never felt more free all the while I was beholden to an extremely strict schedule, a captain, and 80 feet of ferro-cement and I have never seen this paradox of constraint and freedom captured so well as Firefly.

Finally, many of the stories not only left you sitting at the edge of your seat in anticipation of some twist (and they were usually quite clever), but as interesting was the moral subtext. The question of what was “right” was never clear cut (especially since there was a fair bit of violence in the show) but was presented with more subtlety and complexity than some simple formula. Ethical choices were thus not deontological but contextual, and I appreciated it.

Probably my favorite episode, in part because it captures delectably the three elements I just described, was The Message . At the end, I actually cried a little. But since I watched it for the first while commuting, I thought I was just tired and susceptible to Hollywood manipulation into a weepy reaction (riding the the NJ transit late a night after a chaotic and long day in the Big Apple will leave just about anyone vulnerable like that) but I saw the episode again last night and even with no tiring train ride as an excuse, I was left pretty sad.

So if you are a sucker at all for Joss Whedon, Westerns, soap operas like character dramas, or science-fiction and you have not watched Serenity, take the next three years to watch 14 episodes. It is well worth your sweet, attentive time.

So, this email was posted on an english grad list at the University of Chicago. Now that is some serious dissertating!

*******

From: XXX
To:
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 11:19:54 -0500
Subject: [Annc-enggrad] Little Kittens Need Homes
Dear all,

An odd thing happened this summer: a cat we don’t know had a litter
of kittens in our bedroom closet. We discovered them when they were
about 5 weeks old. (This should indicate the kind of focus finishing
your dissertation can bring: 5 kittens not 5 feet away & I had no
idea….)

They are now about 10 weeks old and ready for new homes. There are 3
that don’t have homes as I write this. They have not had shots, but
seem very healthy and robust. Let me know if you want one! I have
attached a photograph, jpeg style.

Funny, one may say hilarious and not so funny, one may say downright disturbing

I am pretty exhausted. Immediately following my return from .nl, I managed to stay up through the “lag” and the next day starting at 7 a.m., I continued with my month long formatting sprint and today I delivered the goods. I had some nightmarish moments. For example, yesterday I discovered that nearly every last footnote subscript was formatted with some quacked-out “www-221111” format, making them too small. When I discovered this, my heart stopped but, I along with some help, converted them to some normal style and all is good again.

Today, when I printed my dissertation on the uber-expensive, U of C watermarked, paper, the ink dared to flaked off. And I was printing it on the best of our departments’ printers. We switched printers and alas, the printing resumed as normal. I am so relieved this is almost over. I say almost because I will hear back in one week if they accept or if I need to tweak something (or turn in a whole other copy, which at 2 volumes and 2 copies, won’t be pleasant).

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of my day writing the acknowledgments. I am actually quite fond of these “outpouring of thanks” and am known to read them before anything else with every single book I have. I just love to see the different ways in which people pay their gratitude and respect to others. It is also the only section we academics can openly admit to our deep boundedness to others in the production of knowledge. I am afraid I did not thank everyone I wanted to and some of my descriptions are actually a little terse. There is a lot more I could have said but it will have to wait for another time or in person. And really thanks to everyone who helped me get through this.

You can read the first 30 pages of the dissertation which includes title, copyright notice, table of contents, figures, acknowledgments, abstract, and prologue. Soon I will have a sample chapter up and for those who want the whole document, email me. I will post the whole thing soon but actually want to change the formatting. For example, I could not, for the life of me, get quoted source code to fit within the margins with courier font 10, which was the smallest size they would accet. But I will change the margins for the online version and have courier for all the technical material.

I learned some interesting information through this whole formatting ordeal. For example, you can embargo dissertation at UMI for up to two years. Perhaps this is because you think that your dissertation is part of the axis of evil, or just too sucky for public view, or perhaps you don’t want others to take your ideas?? I am not sure but I have placed no embargo although I may not include one section of my dissertation online when I post it. It is just too ranty and feels a bit like a conversation with self.

But for now, all I can do is melt on the couch, relieved this last sprint is ovah!

I made it back from What the Hack but it will be a few days before I will post anything here. I have some largish document due in 2.5 days that is taking all my attention, forcing me to ignore jetlag that would normally leave me lounging at the lake during the day and passing out at 8 PM.

But here is one of my favorite pictures taken by Colin Daniels from South Africa who has a real nice collection of photos from the con.

So, I have not had so much time to write about What the Hack but the short version is: hot, muggy, and awesome. But if you want to hear more, I have been hanging a lot with Gweeds and he has a nice “diary” entry about our filming escapades

I am not surprised that Seth Schoen is asking us to rethink rationality. And he has done so, beautifully:

Second, and more importantly, this mythical version of rationality denies that anyone has an inner life that matters or that is worthy of respect. It suggests that the inner life, and especially emotions, should always be subordinated to external goals, to decisions related purely to physical survival value. So in this account, whether something will kill you is a valid rational consideration, but whether you are afraid of it is not a valid rational consideration.

Today I could be found buried deep in my department toiling with part of a dissertation, furiously trying to get some sort of acceptable template going on MS Word, so that I can give a test copy to the dissertation office by tomorrow. Right now, Open Office is just not cutting it for me, which is a shame because it has improved leaps and bounds in the last few years. But it needs a few more steps to go and in the mean time, I will go campus to work on “El Miscrosoft Palabra.”

As I was leaving campus, there were two firemen walking away from one of the buildings where there had been some fire drill or scare or something needing of the Chicago department personnel. Walking away from the building, one of them, with a huge magnetic grin on his face, told his partner “I feel smarter just from being in there for 10 minutes…”

He passed his grin onto me and probably many others, just about immediately. It was of course a fun way to mildly make fun at all the geeky onlookers and the general reputation of this monastery of geekitude. I smiled even more because today I just marveled about my total inability and stupidity to do something like format a document. I have been fearing this moment for, oh, like 8 years, because I just don’t get it, especially when it comes to more complex formatting stuff and when I am faced with formatting some small and trifling, but essential detail that MUST happen, I feel like I have been thrown in some fantastically large whirlpool, where, if I make it out on the other side alive (not even likely) there are, killer mutant, bees waiting to devour me. I know it may sound like I am exaggerating but in fact, I am not. Just days ago, thinking about formatting made be break out in ways that have not happened since mid-puberty and also get a cold.

Thankfully there are very smart and helpful and kind folks at the U of C, like David Forero who is like a technological god-send to the anthro department and the social sciences. Though his technical skills reach far beyond something measly like formatting a document, he offered his base technical magic to me and got me out of some desperate quandaries today.

I guess this long post is just to thank him: thanks David for keeping me out of the whirlpool today. I hope I stay there.

I failed, miserably, with my picture test (the picture is of a turtle, skying high for A disc) and am too lazy to figure it right now. But do take some time to check out what is one of the most ironically delicious pictures of the fight againts EU patents

If you had known me around six years ago I was a fanatic. To be more precise, an Ultimate Frisbee fanatic. I basically made sure that my life revolved around the discian calendar. It was a fun though physically demanding life: practice twice a week, weekend long tournaments, travel, and money spent on travel. Even though never a great player, I loved it to the core.

For various reasons that stretched from health, to school, lack of funds, to research, I stopped. And entirely stopped and cold turkey. Ultimate Frisbee in my mind and heart became a relic of my past, something like a beloved lover who had passed away suddenly. I held great fondness for it, but it was just a thing of the past and I picked up other sports and pass times.

But while here in PR I met some ultimate players at the beach and found out that there is a biweekly game, which of course piqued my interest, in a serious way. There was something just enticing and alluring about the thought of playing my beloved sport once again and no less somewhere that I had never played.

But honestly I knew that any return right now to a sport that is extremely demanding of your cardiovascular system would be nothing short of PAINFUL. To say that I am “out of shape” is to acknowledge that there is some physical shape, when in fact, finishing my dissertation and winter in Chicago before that, pretty much nullified any sort of “decent shape.” One of the first things I started to do when I got back here was walk/run but I was doing more of the walking and less of the running. So the prospect of showing face and body at an ultimate game when I could barely run, was a little intimidating.

After running into two of the players on separate occasions yesterday, I thought “what the heck?!” the Ultimate Frisbee Gods were, for sure, giving me a sign. They were saying “Go, even if running will feel like Chinese torture.” I went tonight and sure enough Chinese torture it was but nonetheless it was a blast. A torturous blast. My heart felt like imploding and exploding yet it was ok. The players here are very fun and quite good. They don’t like to play with the most common offensive position the stack, which makes for a slightly more clogged field, but the athleticism of the players makes up for it. And they are a fun bunch too which is always an extra ++.

So if you come to Puerto Rico and play ultimate do play, the game is great! They play Mon and Wed from 7:30/8:00 at Parque Central. They allow cleats so bring them and bring LOTS of H20. It is HOT.