This World and Me

Once, lived a boy, Who called himself Stu, He ran, played, and cried, As any would too— And such was the life Of the boy named Stu. Stu and his friends, Together at school, Learned and listened—not! They thought they were cool— And such was the life Of the boy named Stu. Alas, but then, On a warm, spring day, Before himself stood, A boy in his way. Mad, overcome, Stu picked up his tool, And jabbed it at him, Got expelled from school— And such was the life Of the boy named Stu . Then, an event! Some horrible news! No more could he run , A cost so undue— And such was the life Of the boy named Stu . New friends he made, But saw old ones too, He played, cried, and swam, No need to be blue— And such was the life Of the boy named Stu. Last, it would not, For it burned a flame, As Stu tried to play, His "friends" called him names. They were just kids, Yes, this, the boy knew, He said he cared not, Though this was untrue— And such was t...

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. —William Arthur Ward, source unknown

Two weeks ago, I posted about intention and its relevance in homicide law. We spend a great deal of time and effort on criminal trials with the goal of ascertaining a person's intentions when they caused the death of another person. In different areas of the law, a certain intention can mitigate the severity of the punishment while other intentions can exacerbate the severity of the punishment. In other areas of the law, intention matters nothing at all. Nevertheless, intention undoubtedly plays an important role in how we go about our lives. We often excuse mistakes if they were made unwittingly – that is, "on accident" – but we are less sympathetic to harmful actions if they were committed with the intention of doing so. There is an aspect of this world, however, where intention is important, but in a different way. That aspect of the world is interpretation. * * * The definition of "interpretation" is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary,  the ac...

[...] For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea. —Edgar Allan Poe, " Annabel Lee ", 1849 (Poe's last poem).

On March 1, Minnesotan musician Adam Young released the second album in  his conceptual film score project . Last month, I posted about this new project. I was ecstatic, as I saw it as the beginning of Young's return to the grassroots style that he started with—the style I fell in love with. In case you don't know him, Young is perhaps most famous for being the creative mastermind behind Owl City, an electronic music project which has slowly morphed from a dreamy, unique vibe to an almost exclusively pop scene. Young is taking a break from the pop music realm to return to that organic, individualized music production of the good ol' days, releasing a 12-track conceptual "film score" every month for the rest of 2016. Each such score will musically narrate Young's interpretation of a famous historical or fictional event. Each album will be available to stream and download for free on his website. February's score was about the 1969 Apollo 11 spaceflight t...

That surreal feeling when all of math you ever learned in school—from when you started counting on your fingers to when you integrated exponential functions—culminated in one final lecture and one beautiful proof. e iπ + 1 = 0