Ad Mundo Exteriore,
Self, you must remember to start coding the new layout for Have Faith and figuring out how to setup multiple blogs. You must also finish the Sai skin before the end of next week, in order to keep up with oniichan's frenetic updating pace. ::falls dead::
( Books meme )
By the way,
phoebs and L.P.? Thank you, thank you, thank you for recommending One Hundred Years of Solitude. I have no idea how to interpret this book, but it's absolutely fascinating. I think I was half in love with Colonel Aureliano. I'm zipping through it at a horribly swift pace though, which means I should probably reread it more slowly sometime in the near future. Mother bought it for me yesterday, when we went to B&N. I also got Shadow Puppets, which is out in paperback. Anyway, I should return to The Origin of Species but screw priority for the moment. I need to know what happens to the twins.
Also, the Flushing library has The Magic Mountain. The world conspires against me. ::resists temptation:: I not only have Darwin, the yet-unfinished biography of Thomas Aquinas, The Tale of Genji, The Golden Bough, and yes, the 800-page Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Steven Jay Gould waiting for me, but also Mother is about to assign me a Korean book to read before the end of the summer.
Which reminds me that Father expects me to memorize the Thousand Characters and study the tsumego book. I played my first real go game last night and lost by about fifty or sixty moku. That's better than the game in third grade, when I knew nothing and lost by about a hundred. Father said that I wasn't too awful and that some of the tsumego lessons had stuck in my head, but I never paid enough attention to defense. I was pleased to realize that I could predict Father's su about a quarter of the time although this ability was largely useless considering I had no idea what I should do in response. All it says is I know how Father thinks. Father likes to play objectively, not psychologically, because he has a strong idealized sense of integrity when it comes to mental activities—he thinks it's cheating to base your judgment on your knowledge of the opponent's mind, rather than making the most advantageous and the most perfect move possible. So he squashed me completely, refused to go easy on me, in order to teach me the true spirit of the game. (That is, striving for strategic perfection.) He does the same in Chinese chess and omok (gomoku, in Japanese). Nevertheless, I think at my current abysmal ability, my only advantage is my knowledge of Father's habits and preferences, his playing style, so to speak. (Not too difficult to ascertain, even with my poor knowledge of go, because it's just Father's personality.)
Anyway! My goal is to lose by forty moku next time. ^_^ I wasn't too disappointed by the crushing defeat because I could tell that I lost certain territories, though I still wasted a lot of stones trying to save them. I also managed to protect two corners, although that's probably due more to Father's leniency than anything else. Father isn't an amazing player on the amateur scale, but he has a small talent for strategic games, which makes him a good objective to aspire to. In any case, go is a little bit more intuitive to me than Chinese chess, although I'm not a very good strategist regardless of the game. But I can look at go as a sort of conversation between the two players, a dialectic argument if you wish, and that helps tremendously in my understanding of the game. I need to study the book more though, in order to avoid the stupid mistakes.
I've more than depleted my online time. The Society site is updated, by the way, so take a look at the roster. I need to get back to the Buendìas, amici, so goodbye.
...Tari
Self, you must remember to start coding the new layout for Have Faith and figuring out how to setup multiple blogs. You must also finish the Sai skin before the end of next week, in order to keep up with oniichan's frenetic updating pace. ::falls dead::
( Books meme )
By the way,
Also, the Flushing library has The Magic Mountain. The world conspires against me. ::resists temptation:: I not only have Darwin, the yet-unfinished biography of Thomas Aquinas, The Tale of Genji, The Golden Bough, and yes, the 800-page Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Steven Jay Gould waiting for me, but also Mother is about to assign me a Korean book to read before the end of the summer.
Which reminds me that Father expects me to memorize the Thousand Characters and study the tsumego book. I played my first real go game last night and lost by about fifty or sixty moku. That's better than the game in third grade, when I knew nothing and lost by about a hundred. Father said that I wasn't too awful and that some of the tsumego lessons had stuck in my head, but I never paid enough attention to defense. I was pleased to realize that I could predict Father's su about a quarter of the time although this ability was largely useless considering I had no idea what I should do in response. All it says is I know how Father thinks. Father likes to play objectively, not psychologically, because he has a strong idealized sense of integrity when it comes to mental activities—he thinks it's cheating to base your judgment on your knowledge of the opponent's mind, rather than making the most advantageous and the most perfect move possible. So he squashed me completely, refused to go easy on me, in order to teach me the true spirit of the game. (That is, striving for strategic perfection.) He does the same in Chinese chess and omok (gomoku, in Japanese). Nevertheless, I think at my current abysmal ability, my only advantage is my knowledge of Father's habits and preferences, his playing style, so to speak. (Not too difficult to ascertain, even with my poor knowledge of go, because it's just Father's personality.)
Anyway! My goal is to lose by forty moku next time. ^_^ I wasn't too disappointed by the crushing defeat because I could tell that I lost certain territories, though I still wasted a lot of stones trying to save them. I also managed to protect two corners, although that's probably due more to Father's leniency than anything else. Father isn't an amazing player on the amateur scale, but he has a small talent for strategic games, which makes him a good objective to aspire to. In any case, go is a little bit more intuitive to me than Chinese chess, although I'm not a very good strategist regardless of the game. But I can look at go as a sort of conversation between the two players, a dialectic argument if you wish, and that helps tremendously in my understanding of the game. I need to study the book more though, in order to avoid the stupid mistakes.
I've more than depleted my online time. The Society site is updated, by the way, so take a look at the roster. I need to get back to the Buendìas, amici, so goodbye.
...Tari