NERRRRRDDDDDD!

"NERRRRRDDDDDD!"

Buzzword University

Learn to be Innovative! Be an Entrepeneur!

Bachelor of Innovation

LOL. I came across this bachelor's degree while reading the campus newspaper. What a bullshit major! An illegitimate child of trendy buzzwords and 'synergized' corporate mysticism. 'Innovation' is even trademarked. LULLERZ.

"UCCS is the first school to offer a bachelor’s degree with a core on innovation. Innovation, the transformation of ideas into impact, is a process that can be taught. It is a process that involves not just creativity (that is invention), but also the skills to work with others to move that idea forward and implement it for business and/or social impact."
- http://innovation.uccs.edu/

There's a reason no such study or school of learning existed. Because it's not any real specific thing. It's just a blanket description for the outcome of any number of possible distinct, varied, and non-communal work derived from other real branches of humanities or science, etc. 

You might as well open up a school for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.

"Webster's Dictionary defines 'excellence' as the quality or condition of being excellent."
- Smokin' Joe Frazier

Frazier's explanation is just as meaningful as the degree is.

Other Ideas

Why stop at Innovation? There are plenty of valuable corporate values that our promising young generation needs to educate themselves about! We could open a revolutionary new system of higher education!

Let's offer these best in class degrees of study!

Bachelor of Arts:

• Thinking Outside the Box

• Bringing Ideas to the Table

• Moving the Organization Forward

• Using Integrated Approach

• Fast Track Growth

Reading

Sunday, March 6th, 2016. 

Ute Valley Park. Colorado Springs, CO.

Being a kid

Having the time and freedom to curl up and read feels so nice. I used to sit upside down on the sofa with the Boxcar Children series when I was eight years old, and read all day on Sundays like this.

Whether it's on a park bench...

or in a nook

... I can't put down a good good book!

Nemesis

Because it rhymes
(with DOOK! DOOK! DOOK!) ...

The BAD BAD BOOK!

The Babadook (2014 Movie)

Charm

You can find a lot of interesting bookmarks inside the books people donate to Goodwill.

Ultrasound photo. Aristotle's Ethics

I commonly find the receipt for the book tucked inside the back cover. I've also seen plane tickets, itineraries, and other documents which reveal the name of the person who donated the book.

After I examine these curios I put them back in the book and leave their discovery for the next reader to chance upon. I think it adds charm to the secondhand experience!

Pale Fire on Index Cards

Done!

Here's the photo album of all eighty note cards: Pale Fire.
Update: Google photos organizes the pictures out of order, so I manually sorted them onto this page

Some remarks about my edition of the poem:

Unnumbered. I feel like Nabokov would have numbered the cards 1 to 80, just to the right of the canto number... but because it wasn't explicitly stated in the description found in the Forward, I didn't number the cards.

Partially dated. I did not date every card, because the date of writing is not available for each card. So where a date was available, I put a date on the card and did not speculate about the dates between. I used Jerry Friedman's timeline on good faith, without checking his references. Notes relevant to the writing of the poem I've highlighted from an excerpt of Friedman's timeline.

A Pale Fire Timeline by Jerry Friedman July 2 At 12:05 AM Zemblan time, Gradus is chosen by a show of cards to assassinate Kinbote (n. 171). Shortly after midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Shade starts “Pale Fire” (FW: 13, n. 1–4). {Meanwhile Kinbote plays chess with an Iranian summer student (n. 1–4).} July 3 Sybil tells Kinbote that Shade has begun a poem but will not discuss it till he finishes it (n. 47–48). {Kinbote notes in his diary, “poem begun!” (n. 42).} That night Kinbote infers that the Shades are making love (n. 181). {Between here and July 21 One morning Kinbote sees Shade burning index cards that bore unneeded drafts (FW: 14).} July 4 Shade finishes Canto 1 (FW: 13) including Card 9 (n. 109) {and the card supposedly bearing the supposed variant about the secret corridor, which Kinbote later acknowledges is his (n. 130: 128)}. In the evening, Kinbote drives a young friend 200 miles to his home, where Kinbote attends two all-night parties (n. 181). {Oswin Bretwit suffers a pain in his groin that keeps him awake this night and the next two (n. 286).} July 5 Shade’s sixty-first birthday. He starts Canto 2 (FW: 13, l. 181, n. 181) and reaches line 208. Kinbote breakfasts at the second party and returns home. In the evening Shade gives his birthday party, which the uninvited Kinbote watches (n. 181). At noon Zemblan time, Gradus leaves Onhava for Copenhagen, synchronized with Shade’s waking up (n. 1–4, n.181). July 6 At 3 AM Shade returns to his desk and brings his poem up to line 230. At sunrise (4:30), Kinbote infers that the Shades are making love. In the morning, Kinbote delivers to Sybil his present for John and the third volume of A la recherche du temps perdu (n. 181). Later, Shade writes at least the next card (n. 231). In the evening, Shade and Kinbote go on a ramble, with Sybil accompanying them part of the way, and Shade refuses to discuss his progress on his poem (n. 238, n. 802). As Shade reaches line 230, Gradus and the Zemblan consul in Copenhagen buy clothes for Gradus to wear in later notes (shortly before noon Copenhagen time) (l. 181). July 7 Shade’s writings include lines 286–299 (n. 286, n. 287). Kinbote, on his way to Dr. Ahlert’s office for a 3:30 appointment, runs into the Shades and learns from them and Dr. Ahlert that they’re planning to rent the Hurleys’ ranch in Cedarn in August. Kinbote gets information from a travel agency (n. 287). Gradus flies to Paris, telephones Oswin Bretwit from the airport, and has a futile interview with him (n. 286). July 8 Oswin Bretwit dies during surgery (n. 286, I.). July 10 Shade’s writing includes lines 406–416 and another card (n. 403–404). Gradus drives from Geneva to Lex, where Odon is resting at Joe Lavender’s villa. Gradus is shown around by Gordon Krummholz, who mentions that the King had gone to the Côte d’Azur, but Lavender sends Gradus away by phone (n. 403–404). [KP: He stands at the road bay where the King had stood the previous September.] {Back in Geneva, Gradus has an incoherent phone conversation with Headquarters, who think he’s suggested breaking into the Villa Disa to look for letters with the ex-king’s address (n. 470).} Around this time [KP: July 10], Kinbote mails a booking for a cabin near the Shades’ (n. 287.) [KP] July 11 Shade finishes Canto 2 (FW: 13). Kinbote prowls around the Shades’ house, sees them crying, and accidentally bangs a garbage can but (believes he) isn’t discovered (n. 47–49). Gradus visits a Finnish bathhouse and sees his bare feet for the last time until July 21 (n. 949). [KP: July 12: Shade starts Canto 3. This seems very likely, but he could have taken a day off.] Mid July {Kinbote sees his plan of the Onhava Palace in a storage niche in the Shades’ house (n. 71). (This could be at his intrusion of July 15.)} July 14 {Shade’s writings include line 596 (n. 596).} Around this day (“a week before Shade’s death”) a clubwoman tells Kinbote in a grocery store that he is remarkably disagreeable and insane (FW: 25). [KP: Definitely July 14, and the woman is “Dr. Sutton’s daughter (the president of Sybil’s women’s club)”. His identification follows if New Wye has only one women’s club and she’s the president.] {Gradus, having fretted in his hotel in Geneva for four days, telegraphs Headquarters to say he’s moving to the Hotel Lazuli in Nice (n. 596).} July 15 {Kinbote waits in vain for Shade (I. s.v. Shade, reference given as 338 instead of the correct 334) to go on a promised walk.} Eventually he intrudes into the Shades’ house, but Shade begs off (n. 47–48, this being St. Swithin’s Day). Gradus lands in Nice in the early afternoon and sees but doesn’t recognize the Shadow Izumrudov as well as Andronnikov and Niagarin. He learns from the cab driver taking him to his hotel that Disa has gone to Italy for the rest of July (n. 697). [KP gives her departure date as “July 1 (approximately)”.] That night or early the next morning, Andronnikov and Niagarin break into the Villa Disa and find, among other things, Kinbote’s letter of April 2 with his work address (n. 741). July 16 [KP: Shade writes lines 698–746 (n. 741).] Izumrudov gives Gradus the information about Kinbote and orders him to America to continue his mission (n. 741). July 18 Gradus travels by train to Paris (n. 949). That night, or in the early morning of July 19, Shade writes card 65 (second part of line 797 to line 809) (n. 802). July 19 Kinbote prays in two churches. As he gets home, he hallucinates Shade calling to him. When he reaches Shade, he breaks down in tears, on which Shade agrees to go on a ramble with him at eight. By then Shade has finished Canto 3 and started Canto 4. He cuts the ramble short to return to writing (FW: 13–14, n. 802, n. 835–838). July 20 Shade begins writing with line 873 (n. 873). He cites Pope in a footnote on Zembla (n. 937), which Kinbote strangely doesn’t reproduce. {At the same time, at Orly airport, Gradus boards a jetliner for America (n. 873).} He arrives in New York {in a thunderstorm and after finding that the early flight is full and the train is inconvenient, makes a plane reservation (n. 949).} July 21 Shade starts with line 949 (n. 949). [KP: In the morning, Jack Grey escapes from the Institute for the Criminally Insane.] This seems likely, though he could have escaped earlier. {Gradus passes time in New York learning all kinds of interesting information from the New York Times, among other things. The “pro-Red revolt in Iraq” may have been “a confused uprising of Kurds, Communists, Moslem factions, and Army troops” on July 14 around Kirkuk; it was suppressed bloodily by July 20 (Dupuy and Dupuy 1977: 1282). Gradus checks in at the airport at 2 PM and arrives in New Wye after 5, not feeling so good. He reaches the Wordsmith campus, and after various good and bad directions and a glimpse of Kinbote in the library, he gets a ride from Gerald Emerald to within sight of Kinbote’s house (n. 949).} {Kinbote gets home from the library and finds that Shade is nearly finished with the poem. He induces Shade to come over for Tokay and walnuts (n. 991). A Red Admiral cavorts around them in the evening light (n. 993–995).} As they arrive at Kinbote’s house, Jack Grey or Jakob Gradus, who has been waiting, shoots at them. Several bullets miss, but one kills Shade. {The gardener subdues Grey with a spade, and Kinbote calls the police, who arrest Grey. Sybil arrives.} Probably that night, believing from the gardener’s testimony that Kinbote had tried to shield Shade, Sybil brings up the possibility of recompense and agrees to let Kinbote edit the poem. [KP places Sybil’s decision on July 22.] Kinbote puts the poem under the Goldsworth girls’ boots {and then moves them to his valise (FW: 16, n. 1000).}

Line shift. From Canto Two to the end of the poem, the verses are written on the proper line of each card, and the structure is accurate. But the first canto I've reproduced with a mistake with the structure of the lines starting from card one. Line 3: "Retake the falling snow..." should be written on the fourteenth line of card one, not at the first line of card two. This mistake does not carry over to subsequent cantos; only the lines in Canto One are out of place by one line.

Italics. I chose to write words in italics ... in italics. I know you're supposed to underline instead of using slanty font when it's handwritten and stuff, but I hate how that looks and disliked doing it from the time they taught us in fifth grade. Granted, it may be harder to discern whether the word is italicized or not, when hand-written, but I think you can figure it out without too much uncertainty.


Any last words, John Shade?

A popular theory is that the 999 lines of Pale Fire are incomplete and that the final line the author John Shade would have written is a refrain of the first line: "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain". Note that the unwritten line 1000 would fall exactly on the last line of the final card! Coincidence? I think not!

Writing out Pale Fire onto note cards payed off. See, there is structure within the poem according to the fourteen line organization of the cards! You can find it in each card, in some way shape or form.

I have this many years: 29

Tradition:

Following my personal tradition of Ice Cream cake on my birthday, I bought a Lil' Love at midnight and ate as much as I could before bed. Woo hooo!

Then in the morning, I drank the remaining soup out of its plastic bag. ^_^

Burs:

Every celebration needs a swaggin' song.

"If u don't sing, u don't get no bursday cake" - Gil (gmcfosho).

Ice Cream Cake:

Why every birthday should have Ice Cream cake. 'Cause Lenny got to!

"But-but-but, you're gonna kill us all!" - Ned Flanders

Badly misunderstood, but seldom wrong!

I came across this comment (which I find hilarious) in the MIT Quantum Physics II lecture series:

In my opinion, 'badly misunderstood, but seldom your misunderstanding leads to a serious mistake'  describes all physics education in a nutshell!

False Logic

Nabokov writes this silly logical fallacy in Pale Fire:

A syllogism: other men die; but I
Am not another; therefore I'll not die. 

Logic

Here Nabokov is intentionally misusing the syllogism of the form:

AGG
All P are M
This S is not M
\ This S is not P

ref: http://www.thelogician.net/2_future_logic/2_chapter_09.htm

Take 'P' as mortal, 'S' as I the narrator, and 'M' as other men. The logical reasoning then goes like this:

All mortals are other men.
This man, myself, is not other men.
I am immortal.

The first statement (major premise) is clearly the false one. Other men are all mortal, but not all mortals are other men. There is one mortal who is not another; that mortal is myself. Therefore the syllogism is false.

Or if you want to separate the truth of the premises from that of the validity of the logical deduction, you could say the syllogism is valid but its conclusion is false, since its major premise is false.

/sil'oh-jiz`*m/ Deductive reasoning in which a conclusion is derived from two premises. The conclusion necessarily follows from the premises so that, if these are true, the conclusion must be true, and the syllogism amounts to demonstration. To put it another way, the premises imply the conclusion.
For example, every virtue is laudable; kindness is a virtue; therefore kindness is laudable.
Strangely, a syllogism can still be true if the premises are false. Compare inference rule.
[Relationship between premises?]
(2009-10-28)
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © Denis Howe 2010 http://foldoc.org

Satire

I believe Nabokov is using this false syllogism to make fun of the hubris of man to attempt at the power of immortality. I wouldn't be surprised to hear false syllogisms like this intentionally used in politics. And sure enough, a book has been written about using these deceptive logic tricks in rhetoric to gain political sway.

The Art of Conversery (aka The Art of Being Right) by Arthur Schopenhauer is a satirical how-to treatise written in Germany in 1831 on directing a false, but seemingly plausible argument as an expedient way to deceive the masses, or discredit opponents. wiki. The author was a philosopher who reviled and wanted to expose this unethical practice to stop it. (I think contemporaries read his work with the opposite intention.)

Politics

The twenty-fourth strategy discussed by Schopenhauer is to 'State a False Syllogism' to attack the true statement from which your false conclusion illogically derives.

This trick consists in stating a false syllogism. Your opponent makes a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from it other propositions which it does not contain and he does not in the least mean; nay, which are absurd or dangerous. It then looks as if his proposition gave rise to others which are inconsistent either with themselves or with some acknowledged truth, and so it appears to be indirectly refuted. This is the diversion, and it is another application of the fallacy non causae ut causae.

Applied to Nabokov's example, one would use the false syllogism to discredit the assertion that other men die.

 'Look, you're saying other men die. But I'm not another man... I won't die! That's absurd, of course I will die. So clearly you are wrong to claim that other men die.' 

This refutation is just as silly and easy to disbelieve as Nabokov's original assertion, but a tangled misdirection causes some confusion as to why exactly the argument is false. Applied to more ambiguous issues, the false conclusion might go undetected!

How bout something like:

'Look, you're saying our belligerent policies are killing our young men who go off to war. But I'm not a soldier... does that mean I won't get killed?!? I could just as easily get killed while driving! So it's ridiculous to suggest that we're putting soldiers in danger!'

We have a gut feeling that the fictitious politician, speaking above, is lying to us (beyond the simple fact that he is a politician), but it is less obvious how he is doing it. And if we happen to agree with the insanity he is spouting because we want to believe it, then perhaps we let him spread his conservative views on the radio like say, Rush Limbaugh.