I'm moving to tumblr

greenglass2718.tumblr.com is the new site. This is not my last blog post. It's only my last xanga post. I've moved to the greener pastures of tumblr, where all my friends seem to be now. It's a better website, too. My blog will continue as always at its new home, and all my old entries will of course stay up right here. Farewell Xanga!

17 hours of my life

Here's a day in my life:

8:42: Woke up, got dressed

9:00: Theory class

10:00: Plyometrics class (gym)

11:00 Chapel

12:00 Lunch

1-5: Tutoring (got some hw done too)

5-6:15 Practice, make arrangements for rehearsals and gig

6:15-7 Played for private dinner at missions office

7-8: Quintet rehearsal

8-9:45 Practice

9:45-10:30 Study (more algebra hw, plus breaks and intermittent time going place to place)

10:30-11:15 Practice, set up recording, wait for hall

11:15-12:00 Recording session for music festival auditions

12:00 Supper: took Sergio and Matt, pianist and recording engineer, out to eat

1:30 Change, move to south hall to start working 

1:45 Start music theory dictation homework

I plan to do the assignment (due tomorrow morning), study for latin, and yes, study a little bit for math test tmrrw mornng.

rice vs. wheat

When I'm not at home I eat a lot of wheat. This shouldn't surprise my parents; I know I've told them pretty openly. I haven't eaten wheat at home from the age of 8, though. It started as a suspicion of celiac disease in the family, since my mother was really bothered by wheat, and since we never ate out, it was never an issue. I still don't eat wheat at home, just out of tradition and example to my younger siblings. My sister Maria also eats anything outside the house, but like me at least is secretive if consuming wheat at home.

At home the major grain is rice, and it's clear that wheat and rice digest very differently. Rice is highly absorptive of water. If you cook rice, it will be almost saturated with water when done. The rice we eat is even heavier; it's about as sticky and moist as you can make it. We just mix regular white and brown rice in a pressure cooker with plenty of water. The rice bread we make is the same; a slice of it actually feels really heavy. You have to toast it for 10 minutes to completely dry it out. One can eat several ounces of it pretty easily, though.

With so much water in the food, I never used to drink very much all day. I would eat a lot of fruit or vegetables, providing more water. I basically got all the water I needed from the food I ate. I don't have to drink anything at meals if there's no wheat. Wheat, however, is a different story. It feels different to eat. It takes about half as much wheat, it seems, by weight as rice to fill me up. It also soaks up every drop of available moisture so I have to almost start chugging water after eating. Wheat is also slower to digest. I eat a lot more at home in terms of volume and weight, but it actually seems about the same.

Wheat. It's potent.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

Lots of things such the ability to fly or to incinerate objects at will would be pretty amazing to have, but lately I've decided that the ability to speed-read would be the most useful and even most enjoyable. One could be supremely cultured, informed, and educated without having to study. College would be a breeze, with plenty of free time to spend working on research, practicing, or hanging out with people instead of dull studying for classes.

I used to wish for the ability to speak any language I wished, but I think speed reading would be even better, and would still definitely help towards this.

english succumbs to postmodernism

Most people would agree that the systematic study of the English language is pretty much neglected these days. People are satisfied if what they write or say sounds ok. No one takes the time to study grammar in school any more. Even the SAT grammar sections can be done mostly by reading all the choices aloud and choosing the one that sounds the best. A lot of abbreviated or disfigured sentences are coming into use, in which words are left out but implied. Slang words are distorted to be more expressive or maybe to get people's attention. New words are being coined all the time or occasionally imported from Spanish. Nobody worries if a word is in the dictionary any more. People now judge the use of the language by ear, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Most of the time it doesn't result in bad English, and teaching grammar in school doesn't seem to stick anyway. If things do end up changing, then it opens up the possibility of innovation in the language.

One might be concerned that all these exceptions to the rules will make English needlessly complicated to learn as a second language, but it seems like most people acquire the language by listening and memorizing anyway, rather than systematic study. I almost think it's easiest to just memorize every distinguishable sentence one would ever have to use. After learning this way, one might know the entire language and still not be able to identify any general rules. On the surface, this looks like more work, but maybe it naturally fits the human brain the best. All it is, after all, is just a massive amount of low-level thinking, with no analytical reasoning involved. It's artificial to think abstractly in terms of big patterns and rules and then apply the reasoning to create new sentences, but with enough experience, anyone can memorize examples and repeat them back.

Philosophically, this fits well with postmodernism. Supposedly people today trust less in pure scientific reason and think more intuitively. Militant atheism has even had to retreat a little, as supposed proofs of evolution, for example, have clearly failed to convince large parts of the American public. People will be less concerned with what is formally correct, and more with what feels appropriate to say at the moment. Maybe we will eventually have an emotionally driven language that will be highly expressive with a very clear meaning, but unintelligible or utterly ambiguous outside of context. Centuries later, even our texts and blog entries will be indecipherable.

The other thing driving this trend is media saturation. Text is now increasingly likely to be accompanied by images, video, or audio, or else common knowledge in the case of close friends texting. One can get away with less precision in the words themselves and with all the accompanying information the meaning will still be clear.

I shouldn't even be thinking about the SAT by now, but for some reason I feel like talking about it, so here it is: The only really counterintuitive sentences I've seen are subject/object pronoun choices. For example, it sounds better to say 'Caleb is a better cook than me,' but the correct version is 'Caleb is a better cook than I,' because the sentence is really short for 'Caleb is a better cook than I am.' There's one more common example I can think of. When you pick up the phone, almost everyone says 'It's me,' but then you are the subject of the sentence, so you should actually say, "It is I." John 6:20 renders Jesus' words this way when he walks on the water: 'It is I; be not afraid."