Block Game

This game does a great job of illustrating how a single event occurring at one point in space can drastically affect an event at another point, even though the two seem utterly unrelated due to their distance. As drastic as making the impossible possible. Sounds fuzzy, but you'll see what I mean if you play the game, especially level 21.

--"Master, last week I spoke to a boy I know. He insists the world is round because his patron told him so. Stupid, yes, for any donkey can see with their own eyes that the world is flat. But is the boy mad to believe what his patron told him? Would you call every person who believes an impossible thing 'mad'?"

--"Fabrizio, if one sees what isn't there to see, madness is the only possible explanation. So, yes, if your friend insists the world is round, alas, he is mad."

And so it goes, 'round and 'round like a merry-go-round. The above quote is taken from a children's book, Midnight Magic, a medieval mystery taking place a year before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, where reason and empiricism are pitted again magic and vengeful Shakespearean ghosts. The former pair win out this particular battle, but as suggested by the above quote, even their world is fated to be turned upside down- or spherical- in the coming months, though not by magic. The relationship between Magnus the magician and his servant Fabrizio is so reminiscent of the one between Merlin and the owl Archimedes (hoot hoot!) in The Sword in the Stone, that I wouldn't be surprised if the author, Ava, actually had them in mind when he sketched out his own two characters. Even the quote above reminds me a lot of the one to the side of this homepage.

Also, this Tuesday, the whole Science Times section was devoted to the topic of Snoozing. Besides the regular articles, they had sleep quotes running down the sidelines of the pages, sources ranging from an ancient Buddhist to English poets and playwrights to present-day physicists. One of these physicists was quoted as saying that he had a colleague who dreamt that he was an elementary particle. How...I...What I...yeah, I'm speechless. I read about them and make jokes about them, but to actually have dreamt about being one...he must be one quarky dude. I wonder if biologists dream about being DNA or proteins. A Day in the Life of a Nucleotide. The Adventures of Alph, the Elementary Particle. I think I'll pitch these ideas to Chronicle Books.

Speaking of grammar, to whom it concerns, I sort of take issue with the fact that the very British, very colloquial term "cadge" is included in the GRE verbal section. Isn't this an American test to get into American schools? As if we didn't have enough of a British invasion already. Fine! I'll learn it! But I'll learn it grudgingly! And maybe I wasn't speaking of grammar, but I was thinking about it (dreamed? dreamt? They both sound wrong to me), so I figured that was enough merit a transition.