Everything2 New Writeups

Mission Bay (place)

2009-11-29T09:33:22Z

Mission Bay is the most commercialised of Auckland's seafront bays. Between the CBD and Kaimanawa Beach/St Heliers, it boasts the remains of an old Mission House complex, (hence the name, obviously) a fountain, a playground, a weekly Arts and Crafts market and Bastion Point which is surrounded by gardens, and contains a memorial to Michael Joseph Savage, one of the most prominent of the country's past leaders, and and commands a great view across the Hauraki Gulf to Rangitoto Island. There are also numerous cafes where you can sit and watch the energetic types run past. There are rollerblades and kayaks for hire locally, so you can marvel or snicker at the hirers, too, depending on their skill level. It's a pleasant place to while away a sunny Sunday morning.

The Sonnets versus Venus and Adonis (essay)

2009-11-29T08:50:19Z

Are the sonnets the key that Shakespeare used to 'unlock his heart'? Is Venus and Adonis really 'utterly aloof' from his own feelings? Are these works really polar opposites?

At first glance, the two comments above, by Wordsworth and Coleridge respectively, appear to come from the school of the blindingly obvious; that establishment which brings us studies that show that insomniacs are generally more tired during the day than those who get a full eight hours sleep. The sonnets are poems of love, we might argue, and Venus and Adonis is a narrative work, – about love, certainly, but springing from the brain, not the heart. These two different genres, we would probably continue, are in themselves completely different and therefore justify completely different approaches: they may even demand them. But the school of the blindingly obvious may not always teach the right lessons, and conventional…

Jonah (poetry)

2009-11-29T07:49:54Z

You are pragmatic:
you understand the nature
of inevitability and don't struggle
against its burdens. And, so,
you let yourself sink
without flailing, out of the daylight
slide down, under, below,
along the glossy gullet
that leads into the roaring
belly of the leviathan.

Others, each responding to the impetus
of their own necessity, are caught
as you are. They shiver,
sweat and wheeze in the noxious air
that fills the rolling cavity.
Their faces, pale, dark, olive, tan,
stretch away from you like strung pearls
dangling into the distance
far beyond
the limits of your vision.

While one or another may curse
aloud as they stumble, unbalanced
by some abrupt lurch or twist,
nobody converses. Eyes slip away,
gliding off importunate glances
like slick weed off scales. They know
as you know, these others:
you are not companions; though
…

seduced by sky (poetry)

2009-11-29T07:45:48Z

We're supposed, I suppose, when we look to the stars
to reflect and to contemplate:
how very far it is, even to Mars,
how the space of ... well, space, is so great.

We're supposed to be awed by the millions of lights,
and to ponder the thousands of years
they've been shining like sails on the dark sea of night
till the universe washed them up here.

We're supposed, I believe, to feel wonder and all
at the sheer size of nothingness there
remembering all our concerns are so small
that the cosmos won't notice, or care.

But, though I'm astounded, astonished and such
at the firework display that I see,
I'm amazed most of all that night loves me so much
he'd put on such a show – just for me.

xmonad (thing)

2009-11-29T06:58:45Z

No writeup on xmonad? What the hell is the matter with you people?

Xmonad is the totally bitching, kick-ass tiling window manager written in Haskell for use with the X11 windowing environment. It is incredibly configurable and allows you to do things like:

Arrange your windows in a Fibonacci spiral
Press mod-P to run dmenu, which lets you run any program with visual autocomplete.
Run xmobar, which you could really do anyway, but if you use the avoidstruts layout, it works very nicely, and xmobar/dzen/whatever will take the output from xmonad's loghook and jam it right into your totally bitching menubar!
Write extensions in Haskell!
Do whatever the hell you want, because Haskell is the best programming language in the history of programming languages!

Did I not sell you on using xmonad yet? Well, here's my xmonad.hs, for your perusal. It has a bunch of…

Never light a bowl with a white lighter (event)

2009-11-29T06:16:19Z

"Dude... Why is it when every time we smoke we see a damn cat?!"
The Cat Theory

This is a superstition of sorts that a long time friend of mine and myself have shared. Even on the trips to remote areas to smoke our favorite plant the cat theory still applies. And I hear you ask, "What exactly is the cat theory?". The Cat Theory is a phenomenon that occurs when one or several stoners decide to get high. After the smoking has started the cat theory has been set into motion. Later that day or night one or all of the people involved will see or interact with a cat at some point.

Now there has been very many arguments thrown forth trying to debunk the cat theory. This has caused me to make a short list of rules that apply to the theory.

1. The sighting of a cat may occur immediately before the smoking has occurred.
2. The sighting of a cat will occur during the remainder of the given day or time.
3. The Cat Theory only applies…

All that you can take with you is that which you give away. (place)

2009-11-29T06:06:48Z

Gg i v e Me your tired & poor,
I will take them with me.
Ll e n d Me your burdens & worries,
For they are of no use to you here.

Rr e m e m b e r the world You leave behind,
difficult though it may be, waking,
Ii Know, Ii have seen Forgetting,
& know what it does to you here.

Dd e a f now, in dew-morning coolness the
faeries are all hiding but the sunlight is everywhere,
Ee v e r y w h e r e Thε Sun, Thε Colours
(elsewhen, there is bending in stead of refraction)

Ll i g h t in yr eyes—on yr hands—
this is not the night yielding to understanding
Tt h i s IS NOT YESTERDAY. (apolog—my eyes)
Tell me, do you see your forgotten moments, …

Bookseller (person)

2009-11-29T05:52:59Z

I buy Demeter for a dollar fifty.
Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1905. Price One Shilling.
"Written [and] acted by [the ladies of Somerville College, Oxford]
at the inauguration of their new buildings in that year," 1904.
Surely the author did not realize a tattered copy would
find its way through a hundred years into my hands, gingerly
not reading it but examining the binding (exposed at the spine-ends)
and the rough page-edges, and fawning over pages 21 through 28,
which were cut too short on the bottom,
and in general not interested in Hades' abduction of Persephone.

I buy the complete remains of Walt Whitman for four fifty.
Though his long lines do little for…

Ski School (thing)

2009-11-29T04:45:04Z

Ski School is one of the worst reviewed movies ever made, although it does undeniably have its loyal fanbase. A 1991 film that could best be summed up as a lower rent derivation from Animal House on a ski slope, the premise is the typical paper-thin plot of a rivalry play between the stuck-up ski instructors of "Section One," lead by snootily effective instructor Reid Janssens, and the wacky beer-guzzling, pussy-chasing party animals of "Section Eight" (wink wink, nudge nudge, get it, section eight, the Army code for insanity-discharge), led by ski instructor Dave Marshak, who apparently rarely actually teaches anyone to ski. The crux of the film is where the various groups of ski instructors must compete in the big ski tournament, which, naturally, Section Eight just must win in order to stay on the slopes.

In order to beat the stuffy bad guys -- and other innocent bystander competitors -- Section Eight pulls wacky shenanigans like…

An unfinished kiss leaves a taste that is hard to get rid of (fiction)

2009-11-29T03:47:41Z

Una mirada
Ojos que matan
De rodillas en tentacion

I was shrooming when I met her. Shrooming really hard. With crazy thoughts racing through my mind, it was hard to focus on anything. I was in her head though - analyzing and understanding her every thought, every glance, every carefully chosen word. Pondering her intentions, sifting through the layers of verbal bullshit to understand who she wanted me to see. Her eyes grazed my face, pausing momentarily on my own. I knew what she was going to say before she said it: "Can I play with your eyelashes?"

Warm smile – long blond hair
Pretty green eyes and skin damned fair
For sure lucky to get with a girl like that
Couldn't pass this chance no matter what...

She's drunk on a Monday night, and I'm trying to score.
"I don't give a fuck…

War As I Knew It (idea)

2009-11-29T03:11:21Z

The midday sun beat down on four young recruits, glinting spectacularly from long, metal objects grasped in their small hands. Perspiration dripped from them, leaving them constantly brushing it from their eyes. Shells from both directions whistled over the fifteen metre gap between opposing forces. The ground around them was stained red.

I stared across no-man's land. From the other side of the barbed wire, a short guy with binoculars glared straight back at me. We both knew this was our final battle of the day. Only now did I remember this was just a game ...or was it?

10/GUI (thing)

2009-11-29T02:50:35Z

10/GUI is an experimental user interface proposed by R. Clayton Miller in 2009. The interface aims to boost usability and increase comfort by combining the best of both worlds of mouse and multitouch-based computer interfaces.

Miller introduced his new interface with a video lecture/demonstration of his technology. The first two minutes of his video simply explain the unpleasantnesses of current mouse-based and multitouch-based interfaces. Miller then moves on to suggest separating the touch interface from the screen and placing it in a similar position as that of a laptop touchpad. This allows the user to easily see the images onscreen around his "pointers" and to move multiple elements and once and use gestures.

CON10UUM

The real revolutionary part of 10/GUI is Miller's new window management system. Unlike pretty much every operating system since Mac OS, which display windows scattered (or arranged, if you prefer) across a desktop area, the…

hedge (thing)

2009-11-28T21:59:09Z

Introduction

One of the words you will hear most on a trading floor is the word hedge. A hedge, quite simply, is some way to reduce or remove the unwanted risk of a position, like hedging a bet. A proverb among trades is that "The only perfect hedge is in a Japanese garden". Although I cannot comment on Japanese horticulture, I can comment on the quality of some hedges, so that is what I will do. I will then explain why a hedge is very important in finance.

Basis risk

If you have a position in one asset, and do a trade in the same asset that perfectly compensates this position, one could say one has a perfect hedge. However, this is commonly just known as having no position. As such, having a hedge position almost by definition implies that the hedge is not perfect; a perfect hedge is not called a hedge, but a flat position. However, when a hedge is not perfect, we introduce basis risk. …

slow fire (event)

2009-11-28T21:49:36Z

Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap.

While shelving books, I keep my pace by the tap at the end of the cover-to-shelf-metal slide. I try not to think about all the people living inside the books, but I've been here so long it's automatic. I know the titles by call-number, most I could recall just by observing the volume at rest from ten meters, and a handful by heft alone. It's been a long day, and the cart is almost empty. Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap. Arobira and Gohabia, the Twin Jewels, restored to non-fiction shelf P, for Potter, both numbered 999.7P. Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap. Shhh, click.

Click? ...soft tap. I look up but the shadow has already gone. White amorphous reflection dances in the exit door's plexiglass—shadow passes the windows. One. Two. Three. At a pretty good pace. A shadow late for dinner, perhaps? Shh…

Batwoman (person)

2009-11-28T19:07:27Z

She began life as one of the few superheroes to appear after the Golden Age of Comix but before the Silver Age got underway. She came about because of the reactionary politics and homophobia of the 1950s—- but when they remade her for the twenty-first century, she became the most prominent lesbian in mainstream comics, actually inheriting DC Comic's namesake title.¹

"That not Batgirl..." thinks hardboiled detective Renee Montoya, when the character makes her second debut. "That's a Batwoman! Hot damn!"

In 1954, Dr. Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, a sensationalistic attack on comic books which made headlines and turned the conservative psychiatrist into the toast of the PTA circuit. Among his many charges: comic books encouraged homosexuality and sadomasochism.

Batman and Robin, in particular, were "a wish dream of two homosexuals living together."…

him will I blot out of my book (event)

2009-11-28T18:46:34Z

It has been so long, the broken color electronic has begun to fade. Cold metal ktan ktan ktan of linkers running, heads down, hastily scribbling and tossing links to the wind, into the unflinching devouring jaws of the readers above, black toothy skulls with indeterminate eyes, birdlike, hunting and snapping. Back away, Octavius gives smirk at them, pulls softleather sleeve to watch: 2352. 8 min will be fine, he decides, they will get past the reset. A few turn off down a sidelink, weaving through nodeshells and into a sprawling factual, ducking behind the references; the others directly inbound. It is a cold night to be noding. In his mind, Octavius hears his mentor laugh: "Dead Links! Linking isn't really all about putting in some square brackets to keep the CEs off you back: it's about sharing good ideas and guiding the readers along some paths that you, the noder, have thought out on…

The Extroverted Feeler in Thailand (idea)

2009-11-28T17:45:03Z

The Extroverted Feeler is a Rotary Exchange student to Trang, Thailand, gone since August 5, 2009. We had a long talk with him on Skype last night, November 27, only the third time we've heard his voice since August 5. He was at his Thai family's Panasonic store. No camera, so we couldn't see him. It was me, the Introverted Thinker and his father.

His birthday is Monday so we sang happy birthday. He would have to skip school to call us then. He is 13 hours ahead with daylight saving, so it was 6 pm here and 9 am there. It is hot there and rains suddenly and clears. He's eating rice three times a day, doesn't get enough vegetables and is tired of rice. He misses the Collinwood potatoes from when we were in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). He is now 177cm, that is, 5'9.7". His dad is 5'10".

At school he is the only non-Thai among 3000 students. He is being told to…

tribadism (idea)

2009-11-28T16:50:31Z

NSFW!
You have been warned.
So don't blame me if you get caught reading this at work.

Tribadism is, in essence, a lesbian sex position. It's also known as scissoring, scissor position, making scissors and other scissor-related terms, because of the way it looks; the legs appear scissor-like. Before the modern use of the word "lesbian", the word "tribad" was sometimes used instead, as a code word of sorts, particularly among English-speaking places where homosexuality was considered immoral and/or illegal. Hence the "-ism" part of the word, much like "lesbianism" (a term I don't really like, because as an -ism, it implies some sort of socio-political movement, or something you'd find in the DSM-IV), is a euphemism for simply saying "female homosexual". The likelihood of finding a lesbian (or dyke, Sapphist,…

The bomb in a milk crate (fiction)

2009-11-28T15:03:14Z

In the dim shadows of sunset, two figures scampered furtively up the narrow, bitumen alley behind their favourite cafeteria. Derrin touched his wrist-watch; its electroluminescent face showed 18:12 for a few seconds, slowing fading back into darkness. Exactly where they were going or what they were doing they didn't know. Statikz was on their brains, and they needed to just go for a stroll in the fresh, night air. A security camera glared tauntingly from its darkened dome, but tonight the boys ignored it. A single, red milk crate sat gloomily against the wall, on an angle where it had been thrown. It was Thursday evening, the Farmers Union guy had been that morning. Derrin stooped as they passed it, without pausing in his stride, and swung it gently as he continued walking. Jeremy took occasional sips from a carton in his hand. The two emerged from the end of the alley, and were suddenly immersed…

Saint George used the wrong tactics (poetry)

2009-11-28T14:33:31Z

Hoping the pay will cover this life
my tip cups filled with love letters
and a grocery list
nothing but need.

While there's ink in my pen
and fire in the tank

This war torn town
will need seasonal gardens.
Roses lining the town square
daisies in the gentlemen's lapels.

School taught me
that everybody loves roses.
That's what I remember
and I only remember events.

Do something romantic
place a rose in my barrel
the thorns framing the trigger.

Slay the dragon with a kiss.

you cannot meet again unless you part (idea)

2009-11-28T13:52:14Z

We were sitting on a bridge, he and I. Well, not exactly on the bridge. More under it. But not on the sidewalk. We'd climbed onto the supports and were sitting perched over the people who jogged and strolled below. One arm of mine was resting on his neck, the other pressed against where I sat, legs dangling down across the walkway. Him with his head against my shoulder, legs locked around a pole in case I moved. He leaned on me, eyes closed, as I watched the world, the swans on the water, the couple on the grass where they played like children. Felt his hair on my neck and the heat of his body against mine.

When the others came there were raised eyebrows, as he refused to move and I refused to ask him to.

Are you two..? Um. Uh. Are you?

And when he left…

Enrique de Malacca (review)

2009-11-28T11:38:56Z

Enrique, the first circumnavigator?

The idea Magellan's slave, Enrique, had rounded the globe has so beguiled many writers and historians it has become in some a fanatical belief the fact it is false is for them not relevant or important or open to debate.

One hypothesis is he was Cebuano so when the fleet reached Cebu he ahead of anyone on earth became the first man to circumnavigate. The other hypothesis is he was Malay, either from Malacca or Sumatra or even the Moluccas, and after May 1, 1521 he somehow was able to hop unto a sailing ship—an event recorded by no man but absolutely imaginable--and reached his hometown at a date unspecified by even the most inventive mind ahead of Victoria, the nao of Magellan's Armada that made it to Seville on Sept. 6, 1522.

The slave's name is "Henrich" in Antonio Pigafetta's account (Page 89, R.A. Skelton English edition of the French Nancy-Libri-Phillipps-Beinecke-Yale codex, click http://books.google.com/books?id=RB4usvtAZrEC&pg=RA1-PT1&dq=M…

Return to the 36 Chambers:The Dirty Version (review)

2009-11-28T09:20:18Z

It is said that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and that is a statement that has a degree of truth depending on how many degrees of cynicism you have in you. I think for those who have a degree of talent, publicity can be a bad thing for those whose merits are eclipsed by their antics. And the Ol' Dirty Bastard's aka Russell Jones', aka a host of other aliases' (even by Wu-Tang standards) first album, "Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version" is a case in point. When the Wu-Tang first begin their operation of spin-off albums, the first to release was Method Man, who was the most visible face of the Wu-Tang, and who despite some occasional flashes of brilliance, was not a hardcore lyricist on the level of other members of the Wu. The second album, from Ol' Dirty, was much along the same lines: Ol' Dirty Bastard was known as an eccentric presence, brought in to liven up tracks with more conventional rappers on them. Would he…

this unlight mantis creeps (event)

2009-11-28T07:06:06Z

A mantis that is as large as the moon does not sway and shiver. It stretches forever through the black silent vacuum as if to grasp the earth in its pincers and drink up its oceans. People on their way to work see the mantis glinting off of their tall buildings as it reaches slowly toward the moon, as if to grasp it in its pincers and eat it. You saw the mantis the other night, coming out of a club and clicking over to a VW and crunching it in half. The birds see the mantis on the telephone lines, swaying and shivering in the wind, as its pincers flash and it munches on an insect. The microscope sees the mantis on the slide, gracefully engulfing its prey. God sees the mantis orbiting the nucleus, screaming and not connected to anything. On my gravestone it says I am sorry that some of you do not know the mantis, but some things are forgotten, and that is just the way things are.

Doing nothing together (idea)

2009-11-28T06:44:38Z

Remember Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh? His most famous line, or certainly one of them, was "Doing nothing together is what friends are for". Have you ever been with someone, and wished nothing more than to simply be with them? Where you didn't want to do anything with them, just be together? Ok, so what's up with that?

Research has shown that in the presence of someone completely trusted, certain changes take place in the body. Respiration and heart-rate dropped dramatically, muscles relaxed, and the senses became dulled. It's almost as if your body shuts down all auxiliary systems, and puts the essentials into a low power state. This state is beneficial to the body both as it promotes repairing, and as it relaxes the mind. If both people were to enter this state simultaneously, the result would of course be highly dangerous. During normal sleep, the human body is still sensitive to the presence of smoke or…