Caveat: 한달이 크면 한달이 작다

한달이 크면 한달이 작다
one-month-SUBJ be-big-IF one-month-SUBJ be-small
If one month is long then another is small.

pictureLife has its ups and downs.

Here (at right) is a meme-picture I found in onlineland.

I imagine a door labelled “happiness” where this is true – that it isn’t locked. But I also imagine they keep changing the (very ostentatious) locks that are on it, such that you repeatedly leap to the conclusion that the door might be locked, even though it’s not. It ends up all being just a sort of epistemological security theater. You have to keep reaching out and trying the door, and sometimes you tire of playing the weird game involved.

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Caveat: Iain Banks RIP

pictureScottish author Iain Banks has died. I thought very highly of him – he was a talented writer of diverse abilities and genres. His novels, both in the “sci-fi” category and his “mainstream” ones (although I resist using those genre categories), are quite philosophical and intelligently written.

I first ran across him not that long ago – I recall distinctly that I acquired his novel The Algebraist in a Sydney bookshop in 2008, while shopping for something entertaining to read on my return flight to Korea. I ended up a fan and a “convert,” reading some half-dozen of his books over the next several years. I came to view Banks as the sort of novelist I would like to be, if I could get around to being a novelist.

Since my novel-reading slacked off so much after 2010, I’ve read less of his writing, obviously, but I feel inspired the next time I’m in a big bookstore to browse for another of his books.

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Caveat: Spreadsheet Aesthetic

There is a guy in Japan named Tatsuo Horiuchi who makes spreadsheets using Microsoft Excel that display (and print) as original works of fine art. This quote in the write-up at a website called Spoon & Tamago was exceptionally telling:

“Graphics software is expensive but Excel comes pre-installed in most computers,” explained Horiuchi. “And it has more functions and is easier to use than [Microsoft] Paint.”

picture

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog.

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