Mind Garten

For the past couple days I've been reading the works of Herman Melville . He's the guy who wrote Moby Dick . But I haven't been reading that. I've been reading Billy Budd and Bartleby the Scrivener . This is all for my American Literature independent study. Billy Budd is pretty straight forward although excrutiatingly boring. It took me a good 5 hours to finish that thing. Its basically about a 1-dimensional character that's always cheerful, stutters when in a tight spot, and throws a blow when he's cornered. That's about all there is to this character. The main content of the story is when he's aboard a military ship at sea and he accidently kills a superior officer. Although he may have been in the moral right, military law demands that he be hung. And he is. So the basic premise of the story is that we have a martyrdom on our hands. Scholars compare it to Christ's crucifixion. Others claim its a parody. Bartleby the Scrivener i...

Last Friday I had my wisdom teeth removed. All 4 of them. The doctor put me under for about an hour, but I only remember waking up right after I fell asleep. It seemed like no time at all. I had them save my teeth too. They put them in a little plastic container that's shaped like a molar. You can really get a good look at the huge cavity I had in one of those teeth. You could fit a ball bearing in there! My mom drove me to her house and I spent the entire weekend watching TV, movies, and reading my book. I watched Tigerland, Cast Away, and Shrek. Of course it was kind of eerie when I watched the self-dentist scene in Cast Away when Tom Hanks knocks out a bad tooth with an ice skate and a rock. Nightmare dentistry aside, it was a pleasant weekend. I also finished reading a book called Cryptonomicon . This is definitely a geeky book. It talks about the lifestyles of being a mathematician in World War 2, and being a geek in the dot com mania. Of course this is a fi...

I finished reading Elegant Universe on Monday. I finally know everything there is to know regarding the Unified Theory of Everything . Except for the math of course. I'm not *that* smart. Finished reading all of my Edgar Allan Poe stories too. Now I just need to do a little writing on them as well. Yesterday I went through the OSU schedule of classes trying to figure out what I was going to take for the next 2 terms. I mostly have to sort out what Bac. Core classes I'm going to take and when. So far on my wish list is Russian Culture, Chinese Culture, Scientific Reasoning, and some others I can't remember off the top of my head. I also have to sort out what restricted electives I'm going to take. So far it is tentatively "Analysis of Algorithms" and whatever is on the "Selected Comp. Sci Topics" class.

More books. I'm currently reading Edgar Allan Poe for my American Literature independent study. This is the easiest author to read so far since I always liked Poe's works. His topics are always about death and despair and have strong symbolism that can't take months to dissect. I'm also reading "Neuromancer" having picked it up from the bookstore. I originally went to the store to pick up "Shadow of the Hegemon" but it was nowhere to be found. So I ended up getting "Neuromancer" and "Cryptonomicon". Neuromancer is sometimes hard to follow because it makes strong use of slang terms that I am unfamiliar with. I can't tell if they used to real slang or were specifically invented for the book. It may have been a combination of both, but regardless I have to infer the meaning of a slang term when the author first introduces it. Another book I'm reading is "Elegant Universe" which gives a laymans introduc...