Liberal Arts Education

I don't trust youtube to curate my videos anymore. This one was created in late winter of 2011 and was intended as a proof of concept of using ready-bake animation software like Xtranormal in order to make a movie.

Since youtube dropped a video I posted that my fourth grade class made back in 1987 and perhaps did so over 'copyright violations' and without any warning or indication in writing, I've decided that youtube is not a fitting place for my videos.

The Casino in the Forest

Fantasy games present a narrative journey for players. A common trope for this narrative journey is a medieval setting among forest, hill, brook, town, castle, and dungeon. Game characters battle in these settings with might and magic against mythical and mundane monsters. These battles and the encounters preceding them are part of the journey narrative. The outcomes of those battles are mediated by numerically defined game conditions. Game conditions motivate or dramatize continuing participation in the narrative journey through structured interactions and structured progress. A common way to express the form that this interaction will take and the kind of progress that occurs is through numerical expression. Simulations of battle encounters are mediated by chance, that is, random rolls of dice. Randomness, expressed in dice rolls are dramatic (i.e., performed actions) and common (i.e., nigh-ubiquitous in games of chance) expressions of probability. A system of probability operates transparently to the way this probability is expressed in dice outcomes and the subsequent game activity initiated by them. This level of randomness keeps the gameplay fresh because outcomes aren't clearly predictable and are tied to discrete choices made by players. The subsequent dice rolls are initiated by player actions with the resultant roll representing the outcome of that choice, be it beneficial or deadly to that player.

Many tabletop gaming environments require players to throw dice and read the result. The parameters of probability, be they 1 through 20 or 1 through 6, express variability. They represent a measure of risk as well. For example, if one throws the 6-sided dice to determine the probability that one's character is hit directly that person faces a greater probability of being hit than if a 20-sided dice is used to determine that outcome. Game parameters frame these decisions by modifying levels of risk. Game creators set those parameters.

This is a very basic introduction to how randomness is adapted to journey narratives in which gamers participate. Probability is a key component of many things here. It is a measure of how 'authentic' a gaming experience feels as a measure of the 'random outcomes,' which occur. It invites the occult desire to predict random outcomes as a manner of satisfying a mental 'appetite' to find order in the randomness of dice. Probability is an inducement specifically when it is modified through an equally mathematically expressed companion: character progression. Progression adjusts the parameters of chance to provide the player's experience of his or her character increasing in power. Specifically, an increase in power gets expressed in the increased probability that an attack will hit accompanied by a decreased probability that an attack will miss. Likewise, the size of the attack, i.e., the number of hit points inflicted upon the monster or upon the player's character, are mediated by other numbers, such as the monster level relative to the character level, or the monster's armor relative to the character's armor, or even magic resistances between the interacting monsters and characters. Numbers and their expression in random rolls demonstrate the countless ways in which a skin of probability mediate game encounters and motivate gameplay. For if random numbers express the kinds and probabilities of encounters, modifications of those numbers and outcomes influence 'state changes' in a player's game character. If that character is, for example, poisoned, their chance to hit a monster may decrease. Likewise, if this character has progressed to a higher 'level' then their chance to hit the same monster increases. Furthermore, choices about what path to take expose a player's character to differing probabilities of encountering powerful enemies. Perhaps few if any gamers recognize this functional layer of probability existing in the narrative for what it is, a casino in the forest.

Probability informs game mechanics through its role as the chance that an action will be performed successfully. Having "success" as the goal for gameplay references the motivations behind play and the motivations that induce players into continuing gameplay. The form that this gameplay takes depends upon a number of factors, which normally coalesce around expressions of probability that are themselves touched and then thrown as a matter of engagement in gameplay decisions.

Numerical operations in this gameplay model function as inducements if only because numbers and probability have always motivated a level of human awareness to seek out patterns in randomness. And in spite of randomness, players construct notions of luck that accompany them through gameplay. Throwing dice in the context of gameplay forms the dynamic core of random outcomes, each of which perfectly interfaces with the game narrative. Rolling a 6 defines a specific outcome whereas rolling a 1 leads to another. This tether between rolling dice and random outcomes is a dramatic expression (i.e., physically performed gameplay action) of the relationship between agency (i.e., rolling the dice) and fate or luck (i.e., the outcome of the roll).

I have yet to find a specific discussion by the likes of Gary Gygax in describing simply the numerical aspect of game theory satisfied by extensive use of dice. Yet, at the heart of his early game designs and simulations is the role of randomness recreated through dice rolls. Dice rolls are essential to the narrative structure of gameplay. The player rolls dice to decide an outcome emblazoned on their up face. This specifically animates the narrative structure of gameplay by introducing random events issuing specific from the hands of the roller's character . Random events decide the outcomes of game encounters, allowing the player to coincide with the narrative in a functionally relevant way. Randomness flavors the outcome dynamically, making randomness a sufficient condition for generating excited participation, which is a hallmark for satisfactory gaming. 

This neomedieval fantasy, this story of swords and sorcery, is broken down into the functionalist vocabulary of combat tables, which mediate the fateful interactions between narrative character and narrative world. Perhaps like the neomedieval world, the fantasy runs on fate expressed as a random outcome. Perhaps unlike the neomedieval world, this random outcome initiates changes in the procedural state of a game. Out of those dice branch myriad possible paths. And one meta-direction represented through conquest and battle-hardened experience, points the narrative to perpetual growth. Numbers substantiate how interactions occur. Probability provides the tether between agency and fate. Under the florid descriptions and heroic actions are the servomechanisms of mechanical fate, parameter-shaped probability, this casino in the forest.

What specifically draws us to these kinds of narratives and this kind of action? I sometimes wonder how the 'work' performed within online gaming environments, which follow roughly the tabeltop gaming model, is a critique of a society that has occluded wide accessibility to personal and financial growth. In the online game the player gathers raw materials and processes them into artifacts to be either used, sold, or discarded in some manner for the sake of gaining experience or 'learning' a profession. This gathering of resources in a natural setting is shares a nervous condition beneficial to the hunting and gathering heritage common to all of humanity. The financial overlay of numerically expressed 'leveling of experience' is something altogether different. A number provides a discrete expression of an increase in something, and in the software logic of game encounters or the dice-logic of tabletop gaming, numbers substantiate a formula for success or character death, for experiential growth or stasis. The desire for bigger numbers or at least growth is a desired direction in which to carry the narrative. So I began this speculative paragraph with a suggestive critique to the world around us, but the world created in its obverse is one driven by some of the same monetary principles driving the first. Risk, luck, and fate are common human companions. That we've ceded their substantiation to financial systems in this world and roll tables in a fantasy world only suggests that numbers offer something deeply motivating. People enjoy taking simply defined risks in order to receive a reward. Allowing these rewards to operate somewhat independent of actions taken keep the actions taken from stagnating too soon. As such, they provide the best long-term method of keeping gamers gaming both in the casino and online.

pandemic presence

Human behavior towards one another is a cellular phenomenon. The purpose of the majority of human behavior aimed at other humans is to transfer or transmit, be it: mimicry, words, ideas, sperm, blood, spit, food, milk, pain, suffering, disease, companionship. The violent aspect of the transmission between humans is the threat of trespass. And that is completely unavoidable. It's unavoidable when raising a child. It's unavoidable when you engage in intercourse. It's unavoidable mostly because we treat others as if they have something of ours a hostage. And that hostage is us, our identities, the very seeds of our own fruition.

These contribute to the pandemic presence of a one, living jaggedly, among the mass of individuals that we call humanity. 

Humanity

Humanity consists of bags of seawater ambulating upon mineral deposit skeletons belching ideologies and currying influence as a result.

The internet helped me to make this determination.

Thank you.

We are, in fact, violent and writhing sea creatures, encased in a personal reef echoing our origins. We were intelligently designed by trillions upon trillions upon trillions of molecular interactions cataloged by a protein matrix that could self-recreate. The world that got included in this recreation is merely a coincidence.

Moby Dick, Chapter 128: The Pequod Meets the Rachel

"Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin, leaving the strange captain transfixed at his unconditional and utter rejection of his so earnest suit. But starting from his enchantment, Gardiner silently hurried to the side; more fell than stepped into his boat, and returned to his ship.

"Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot, however small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were swung round; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat against a head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while all the while, her masts and yards were thickly clustered with men, as three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying among the boughs.

"But by her still halting course and winding, woful way, you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not." (pp. 401-402)

public speaking and death

I taught public speaking at the college level intermittently from 2004 until 2010. A common and unsubstantiated statistic regarding public speaking was that it was second to only death in being the most feared event in a person's life. That's an odd statistic to report in a public speaking book if only because it seems to nail home a fear perhaps lurking in the seats of a public speaking classroom that must be surmounted during the course of the semester.

I had a rather nonchalant approach to this fear. I let students arrive drunk to deliver their speeches. I tried to ease them into the process of standing before the class to deliver remarks. I didn't spend a lot of time staring at them while they delivered their speech because they interminably would be staring back with a look befitting a street urchin drawn from the quill of Charles Dickens. That fear was often palpable in their quavering voices and in that glassy stare. But the speaking events to which students were exposed in the classroom were an inevitable formality of the course. All lived through the ordeal no matter how harrowing it was to the individual flanked by a now-obsolete blackboard.

Yet why? Why was public speaking so feared? Why did it find companionship with death itself?

My mother was diagnosed with cancer. Upon further analysis of biopsied lung tissue doctors determined that she had stage four lung cancer with evidence of its spread into the peritoneum. She was sent home with hospice care to wait for that fateful moment.

And so in the structure of the two events one finds oneself drawn ever nearer to an inevitable event and that is one's turn to stand before the classroom or to cross the threshold of eternity into death. She was given 4 to 6 months to live. Her cancer is untreatable in her current, wan condition. And now she waits for the cancer to steal her last vital essence at some point within the proceeding days, weeks, months. And like the student before a public speaking classroom on that fateful day of its delivery she waits in dread and mortal fear of that precise moment.

I suppose those in my former profession could restructure public speaking classrooms to be less like the waiting, in hospice, for death to rap upon the door. And there is an afterward to public speaking that is wholly different than waiting to speak before God. But the two find a kinship in how they are structured around a dreaded and fateful future moment inscribed in time to which the student and the patient organize their waning moments and their attention.

This moment, as it structures the preceding preparatory activity, is called a deadline. The name is at once both an appropriate and a very ominous name. I used to find wisdom in the words chosen to describe the world and the affairs of people, as if the answers was there all along, hidden in some arcane usage of the words around us. But the kinship that one finds between the structure of events is simply the deeper structure shared by the analogical connections, the umbilical tracings, of the words we choose.

What is a word spoken but the rattle of a muscle in the throat, catching the lungs' exhalation like a ship's sail, turning vaporous breath into a sonic extension of the mind in hiding.

I think

The web is full of these, long harangues that perhaps took anywhere from 15 minutes to 4 hours to make. And a lot of them begin with those fateful words: I think.

To the journeyman web user the world wide web is a place to assert one's epistemology.

Flesh filtered out.

When I was a student, the scholarly work on computer mediated communication (CMC) compared it to a face-to-face (FtF) standard for situating the act of communication between bodies, in space, and over time.

Words as avatars.

The deficit model emerging from this comparison frames early CMC as something 'structurally different,' both metaphorically and in practice, from human-to-human communication, i.e., FtF. One descriptor reveals the nature of this frame: "queues filtered out." Why are queues filtered out? Because early CMC relied upon the many permutations of text to substantiate human interacting. Without face and place words were interlocutors' means for mediating a relationship.

Ribcage telemetry.

We, these skeletons, stripped to not so much an essence as a mineral pre-fact of our existence. We, as skeletons, using our counted rib cages as our currency in speaking to one another. But this isn't our essence. Face and place are essential props for communication.

Speaking as skeletons, we are a problem to ourselves and to others. Skeletal communication isn't embodied interaction molded by the exigencies of context. It's a selection of words, constructed on their own merit for the sake of assuming a superlative position in a concurrent online discussion.

And it gets constructed upon this heaping pile of bones those two words, I think, which preface all personal credos and form the brick and mortar of a citadel of wordplay and free association.

Locust 1-2-3

To characterize our time spent communicating online effectively we need to shift from mammalian analogs to the insect world. Our language has a swarm response much like that of a locust. Swarms emerge from close and continued contact among individual insects, which stimulates a behavioral and physical response in the locusts, making them change color, grow, and become more aggressive as a group. Computer mediated communication is our precipitating locust event.

What is Ironwork?

What is Ironwork

Work is as native to people as the language they speak. Evidence of this is found today in people's last names, which often refer to the trade one's ancestors practiced. A family's name and the trade they practiced were identical. When you take up the trade of Ironwork the trade take root in you. And you become part of this great and unbroken chain of family, trade, and tradition. Ironwork lives in each Ironworker as each Ironworker lives by the work that the Ironworker does.

Modern Ironworker represents a melding of practices and professions that have stood the test of time. Many of them are well beyond the scope of today's most sophisticated technology. Much like the craftwork of old, the modern Ironworker uses hand, eye, mind, and heart to build structures with pride, skill and workmanship to last for generations. Very little of the built world around us has gone untouched by the skilled hands of Ironworkers. They join land separated by water, reinforce building foundations, and erect the steel skeletons that allow those same buildings to soar into the sky. The structures that Ironworkers erect stand as monuments to the ingenuity, skill, and cooperative spirit of humanity.

Harnessing the geometric and mathematical knowledge used to build the pyramids; tying together the knowledge of knots and rigging; and marrying the modern arts of metallurgy with the jargon of hand signals and blueprint reading, modern Ironwork is a collection of many skills with very deep traditions. Opportunities exist for an Ironworker to use these skills because job sites demand the skills that the Ironworker provides. In the hands of a journeyman Ironworker these constructions skills reflect a sobering wisdom about the vast possibilities and sometimes hidden limitations of construction materials and practices. The job of today's Ironworker is to transform the engineer's and the architect's vision into a concrete reality and to do so safely and effectively.


Apprenticeship

The Ironworker apprenticeship is a four-year college-accredited program that equips the apprentice with the knowledge and skills essential to practice Ironwork competently, effectively, and safely. Through apprenticeship training the Ironworker will be exposed to the kinds of work, tools, and techniques practiced by many branches of Ironwork, which include Ornamental, Reinforcing, Rigging, Structural, and Welding Ironwork. Each job that an Ironworker accepts can include some of each branch of Ironwork. Construction projects quite often require reinforced steel foundations and walls, the use of rigs to lift heavy steel construction members into position, proper fastening of these members through bolts and welds, and the finishing work of installing windows, doors, curtain walls, and some structural ornamentation.

When class is not in session, the apprentice will have a chance to practice, enhance, and expand his or her Ironworking skills through well-paying jobs acquired through the Ironworkers Hall. Apprentices begin at 60% of journeyman scale and gain 10% raises through each successive year of the program until achieving journeyman. Through these jobs, the apprentice will be earning toward enrollment in a competitive health insurance program as well as paying into an annuity and accumulating defined credits in a retirement plan.

At the end of four years, the Ironworker apprentice will have achieved sufficient mastery in the trade to achieve journeyman status. At this time, the Ironworker will earn the full scale paid for Ironwork.

Through several semesters of education the apprentice Ironworker will be exposed to and learn the  techniques and tools of the trade. Through apprenticeship training the Ironworker learns not only the trade of Ironwork but the traditions as well. The bonds that the Ironworker forms in the class and on the job with fellow Ironworkers last a lifetime. And like the bonds that are essential to construction itself, the bonds between Ironworkers strengthen their commitments to the each other, to the trade, and to the building projects that they complete competently, effectively, and safely.

Ornamental

Ornamental Ironwork encompasses the installation of glass windows, curtain walls, metal stairways and walkways, doors, fencing, railing, and building entrances. Unlike most Ironwork, which often lies hidden within concrete or behind a glass facade, Ornamental Ironwork is the closest that the trade's work interfaces with the public. The steps the public takes, the doors they open, the rails they hold, and the storefronts they behold are the work of Ornamental Ironworkers. The Ornamental Ironworker possesses a keen eye for detail and a steady hand for layout and installation. Accompanying the function of the many construction components that the Ornamental Ironworker installs is an aesthetic consideration, planned by the architect, which is carried out by the Ironworker, and appreciated by the public who encounter it. Art and engineering find greater parity here than in virtually any other aspect of Ironwork. And to the Ironworker with a keen eye, steady hand, and patient determination, Ornamental Ironwork is a way to practice those skills.

Reinforcing

Reinforcing Ironwork encompasses the fabrication, layout, installation and tying of reinforcing bars (rebar) in concrete forms, and the installation of post-tensioning systems in concrete. Every aspect of Reinforcing Ironwork is, as the name implies, for the strengthening of concrete beyond its native capacities. Steel-reinforced concrete is a distinctly modern building practice. For this reason, reinforced concrete is the basic construction element in virtually every modern structure, from buildings to bridges and roadways. Consequently, Reinforcing Ironwork is one of the most prevalent forms of Ironwork during times of building, roadway, and bridge construction as well as road and bridge maintenance. It is also one of the more demanding branches of Ironwork, requiring not only the strength and stamina to carry and set reinforcing bar of varying length, width, and weight but the mathematical skills to layout and tie steel mats and maintain crucial distances from the ground and pre-set concrete forms. The Ironworker also must possess hand strength and adeptness to manipulate wire to fasten bars to each other and to forms. In this line of work the Ironworker will work alongside and with other professions frequently. For those that like to stay busy from the minute the whistle blows to the moment the foreman knocks off work for the day Reinforcing Ironwork is a viable and prevalent line of Ironwork.

Structural

Structural Ironwork encompasses the unloading, erection, and connection of fabricated steel columns, pre-cast beams, columns, and panels for the construction of towers, bridges, stadiums, and other large building projects. The most identifiable group of Structural Ironworkers is known as the raising gang. A raising gang consists of two crews: the ground or hook-on crew and the connectors. The hook-on crew are Ironworkers who identify steel construction elements in a laydown yard according to a picking sequence and attach rigging to it to allow the crane to hoist it into position. Knowledge of rigging and the ability to determine the center point of sometimes unevenly constructed construction elements are key to safe and effective picks. After the crane has hoisted these picks into the air, the connectors who work from either preexisting erected steel or mechanical lifts guide the piece into place and fasten it. Connecting work, along with welding, have become iconic aspects of Ironwork. Body strength and balance as well as a fearless competence at increasing heights are a must for the connector who wants to earn his or her place as a cowboy of the sky. The successful raising gang is a well-oiled machine that runs on the knowledge of one's particular job, a situational awareness of both the crane's boom and the presence of pieces in the air, and the ability to use hand signals and other forms of communication to surmount the increased distance between hook-on crew and connectors. A strong and accurate throw are also invaluable. For the Ironworker who finds great satisfaction in climbing to great heights and aiding in the erection of grand structures Structural Ironwork awaits.

Rigging

Rigging Ironwork encompasses the loading, unloading, moving, and setting of structural steel, curtain walls, and machinery. Rigging Ironworkers must possess knowledge of various types of chokers, straps, and other means of rigging used to hoist and set pieces safely, effectively, and without damage. Knowing how to find the center or to counterbalance a pick through the use of multiple hoist points as well as maintaining effective communication with the operator are essential aspects of Rigging Ironwork. Every Ironworker must practice some rigging and signaling as a necessity of most construction sites. The Rigging Ironworker has the competence to unload countless truckloads of steel and tons of heavy machinery safely and effectively with an eye to its placement for future erection or movement. Rigging Ironworkers also assist the operator in extending booms and retracting crane booms, planning difficult pick and placement operations, and working closely with the operator in carrying these tasks out. Rigging Ironwork requires confidence, competence, and critical thinking. The operator's machine does all heavy lifting while the Rigging Ironworker ensures that each lift is carried out safely and properly. For the Ironworker who is good at spotting hazards, communicating to multiple people, and planning the lifting and placement of heavy objects Rigging Ironwork is an opportunity for that Ironworker to demonstrate these skills.

Welding

Welding is the process of joining metal components by heating them to their melting point and introducing a molten filler metal along their surfaces to create a joint. Welding is an essential component of steel fabrication and construction. Welding is an art. It takes time to learn, and sometimes years to master. Accomplished welders can judge the quality of their welding by sight and by sound and can often quickly troubleshoot common problems that stem from the set up of the welding machine to the condition of the welding lead and connections. The same visual cues that aid a welder in determining the strength and quality of his or her weld are often the same ones used by the certified welding inspector who must sign off on the safety of the welds that he or she puts down. The quality put into a welding application is a product of addressing the site conditions that negatively affect the welding process in order to establish and maintain an effective weld. Given the various welding processes and their varied applications the welder spends a lot of time practicing them in the various positions they will be applied. The accomplished welder has tested acquired the certification to run a weld process in the corresponding position prior to being called to out to do it for a specific welding job. The welder must have patience and a steady hand even when the process requires the welder to get into an uncomfortable stress position for long periods of time. Not all welding is inherently safe or easy. The Welding Ironworker can recognize the hazards and the obstacles to a welding application and can meet those challenges to create successful and safe welds.

Racism as a Joke

A black man walks into a bar ...

and dies.

A representative for the police announced that the officer holding the bar has been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation.

Synesthesia

I turned three in 1980. My childhood years were spent teetering between a fatal confidence in my self and an equally unrealistic self-hatred. Both were part of my response to the world as well as the kind of self model that I possessed. I recall at a very young age fashioning myself as a generic character from a film who was vaguely teenaged or young adult with a slapstick presence in the world, bumbling and fumbling through it. Specifically, I would be walking the sidewalk toward the end of the street, eating popcorn, but this was my image of me, as a child, imagining myself and sympathetically  identifying with the naively innocent portrayal of myself as an older man by my child imagination.

I specifically remember two transient states in the sensation of my mouth laying in my bed at night. I would be tucked in, staring up at the wall. The room is quiet and my ears begin to ring in a high pitch. I see a white house down the street from mine and the sensation remains both in my ear and carrying through to my jaw and into my mouth. The second state is of a dark house next to the white house. While I'm imagining this house I can hear a deep sound, and my tongue wraps around the fullness of sound in my mouth.

By 6 I had begun my Catholic schooling and assumed my loner, quiet persona. I remember seeing my current landlord on the parking lot that doubled as our playground. I was leaning against a yellow concrete parking post, waiting for the recess to end. He was doing something similar. He shared with me a very deep fear he had of a spider falling into his mouth while he slept. Our encounter encouraged me to bring a very small stuffed animal to school in my inner coat pocket. The pocket was tucked away and warm, becoming a secret compartment for my enjoyment. I put the diminutive bear-creature in there only to never re-encounter my soon-to-be-landlord at the parking poles on the ersatz playground d.b.a. parking lot. We became friends years later as I was listening to 'Head Like a Hole' on MTV and he called me for information about our high school English class. I would spend the night at his house soon after, telling him about a GI Joe bazooka weapon that I had lost when I brought the character with which it came to class. He had actually found it and kept it in his room until that moment. At a fateful later moment when I could have gotten it back another friend tossed it behind the refrigerator where it remained until a kitchen remodel and was lost forever.

Period Play

One year I took part in a period play as a musketeer.

During one scene I was to duel with another character in period clothing, using foils.

The other character got the best of me in the scene but also stabbed me with this foil.

His foil pierced my period costume and drew period blood.

I fell into a comma.