(Sat, May 07, 2005)
Against inclination I recently succumbed to a book recommendation for a mainstream novel called _Angels and Demons_ by Dan Brown (author of _The Da Vinci Code_). "This book is good," my erstwhile recommender insisted. "Really good!" I had forgotten that several days earlier this same person told me that _National Treasure_ is a great movie; otherwise I might have saved myself.
As to _Angels and Demons_, I have a few grievances that I need to yell about. I don't even care about the 5th grade prose, ragdoll characters, contrived plot, or buffoonish dialogue. I don't care that the book reads like it was targeted at Hollywood script-adapters (the way coloring books are targeted at Hollywood Producers). I don't even care that the protagonist -- a Harvard Professor of "Symbology" -- is completely retarded (which is rare in literature, and in Harvard Professors). And I'm even willing to accept that Harvard *has* a Department of Symbology (a discipline that the real Harvard would probably call Iconography or Semiotics). But I just have a few factual peeves:
1) A poetic couplet is not two syllables in pentameter as Mr. Brown's Mr. Langdon believes; that's called a foot. A couplet is a two line stanza, typically rhymed.
2) And that poem he attributed to John Milton! He might as well ascribe credit to Herman Melville for _Angels and Demons_....
3) Unless the Swiss Guard are using some weird hybrid technology, cell phones do not have dial tones.
4) CERN did not invent the Internet! They -- specifically Tim Berners-Lee -- developed the World Wide Web, a technology that was built upon the existing Internet (which was invented by Americans damn it!).
5) The wireless webcam that the combined resources of the Vatican and CERN are tragically unable to locate. Too bad they don't have a Radio Shack in Rome, because a $10 RF signal strength meter could have come in handy.
6) Yoga is a Hindu discipline, not Buddhist.
7) I've saved this for last since it's largely a research dump. The pyramid/eye/motto seal on the one-dollar bill was placed there in 1935 by Roosevelt, but it was not invented there. It comes from the Great Seal of the United States, designed 1776 - 1782 by three committees and approved by Congress.
Contrary to the insistence of alt.conspiracy fruitloops like Mr. Brown's Mr. Langdon, "Novus Ordo Seclorum" does not mean "New Secular Order". It means "New Order of the Ages". It comes from Virgil via Charles Thomson, who finalized the Great Seal in 1782 and explained that the phrase was intended to inaugurate the new American Era.
Furthermore, the pyramid represents strength and duration: the long-lasting and durable creations of man, its rows symbolizing the new generations of Americans that will rise up from its foundation (thirteen representing the original thirteen states). It is unfinished because the country remains unfinished.
The eye at the pyramid's apex indicates providence, and was a common art symbol for God (something that a Professor of Religious Symbology should probably know). The triangle around the eye indicates the Christian Trinity. The phrase "Annuit Coeptis" means "It [the Eye of Providence] is favorable to our undertakings". (Thus composed: "One nation under God").
The Freemasons never officially referred to the Eye of Providence until 1797, fourteen years *after* the Great Seal was designed, and a pyramid has never been a Masonic symbol. For the Mason's position on the Great Seal see here.
As to _Angels and Demons_, I have a few grievances that I need to yell about. I don't even care about the 5th grade prose, ragdoll characters, contrived plot, or buffoonish dialogue. I don't care that the book reads like it was targeted at Hollywood script-adapters (the way coloring books are targeted at Hollywood Producers). I don't even care that the protagonist -- a Harvard Professor of "Symbology" -- is completely retarded (which is rare in literature, and in Harvard Professors). And I'm even willing to accept that Harvard *has* a Department of Symbology (a discipline that the real Harvard would probably call Iconography or Semiotics). But I just have a few factual peeves:
1) A poetic couplet is not two syllables in pentameter as Mr. Brown's Mr. Langdon believes; that's called a foot. A couplet is a two line stanza, typically rhymed.
2) And that poem he attributed to John Milton! He might as well ascribe credit to Herman Melville for _Angels and Demons_....
3) Unless the Swiss Guard are using some weird hybrid technology, cell phones do not have dial tones.
4) CERN did not invent the Internet! They -- specifically Tim Berners-Lee -- developed the World Wide Web, a technology that was built upon the existing Internet (which was invented by Americans damn it!).
5) The wireless webcam that the combined resources of the Vatican and CERN are tragically unable to locate. Too bad they don't have a Radio Shack in Rome, because a $10 RF signal strength meter could have come in handy.
6) Yoga is a Hindu discipline, not Buddhist.
7) I've saved this for last since it's largely a research dump. The pyramid/eye/motto seal on the one-dollar bill was placed there in 1935 by Roosevelt, but it was not invented there. It comes from the Great Seal of the United States, designed 1776 - 1782 by three committees and approved by Congress.
Contrary to the insistence of alt.conspiracy fruitloops like Mr. Brown's Mr. Langdon, "Novus Ordo Seclorum" does not mean "New Secular Order". It means "New Order of the Ages". It comes from Virgil via Charles Thomson, who finalized the Great Seal in 1782 and explained that the phrase was intended to inaugurate the new American Era.
Furthermore, the pyramid represents strength and duration: the long-lasting and durable creations of man, its rows symbolizing the new generations of Americans that will rise up from its foundation (thirteen representing the original thirteen states). It is unfinished because the country remains unfinished.
The eye at the pyramid's apex indicates providence, and was a common art symbol for God (something that a Professor of Religious Symbology should probably know). The triangle around the eye indicates the Christian Trinity. The phrase "Annuit Coeptis" means "It [the Eye of Providence] is favorable to our undertakings". (Thus composed: "One nation under God").
The Freemasons never officially referred to the Eye of Providence until 1797, fourteen years *after* the Great Seal was designed, and a pyramid has never been a Masonic symbol. For the Mason's position on the Great Seal see here.
(Sat, May 21, 2005)
Requiring Java 5 support, I had to dl the current eclipse 3.1 milestone. It seems I'm always channeled to the milestone releases for one reason or another.
Now commences my belated exploration of Java 5. First off what I don't get is why they went from Java 1.4 to Java 5.0. Please explain.
I'm somewhat irritated initially by some C/C++ cosmetics: a printf method, enums, generics that look like C++ templates. They're mostly pretty useful though, especially enums. Enums kick ass. But I wonder if some Ra over in Sun City is pondering the extremely weird notion for Java to one day support C/C++ source files...? Take a C program, compile it with javac, produce a java class.... Nah, that would be too... weird. And what would malloc do? How would pointers work? &c.
A lot of the Java 5 additions just try to make syntax less cumbersome by doing more behind the curtain for you. For instance, "autoboxing" decreases the ever-woeful distance between primitives and their Object wrappers, so finally we can do stuff like:
One of the things I liked about Visual Basic back whenever was variable argument lists. In Java you used to have to overload methods in order to do that, which just produced more source code: you'd usually have the real method, usually private, then a bunch of a public accessor methods to handle different argument signatures; or else you'd have an array for an argument and ask it how long it is. Now we can use something like this:
These new language features make it mucho important to know the language version you're targeting, so for instance toolsets in Java 5 are probably a bad idea for now.
A basic intro:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/introducing-java-5
More esoteric:
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/04/20/javaIAN5.html
Everything:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/relnotes/features.html
Now commences my belated exploration of Java 5. First off what I don't get is why they went from Java 1.4 to Java 5.0. Please explain.
I'm somewhat irritated initially by some C/C++ cosmetics: a printf method, enums, generics that look like C++ templates. They're mostly pretty useful though, especially enums. Enums kick ass. But I wonder if some Ra over in Sun City is pondering the extremely weird notion for Java to one day support C/C++ source files...? Take a C program, compile it with javac, produce a java class.... Nah, that would be too... weird. And what would malloc do? How would pointers work? &c.
A lot of the Java 5 additions just try to make syntax less cumbersome by doing more behind the curtain for you. For instance, "autoboxing" decreases the ever-woeful distance between primitives and their Object wrappers, so finally we can do stuff like:
Boolean foo = new Boolean(true); if(foo) {...}. The primitive is still pulled out of the object in the same way, but now it doesn't need to be done by the programmer. One of the things I liked about Visual Basic back whenever was variable argument lists. In Java you used to have to overload methods in order to do that, which just produced more source code: you'd usually have the real method, usually private, then a bunch of a public accessor methods to handle different argument signatures; or else you'd have an array for an argument and ask it how long it is. Now we can use something like this:
public void someMethod(Object ... args).These new language features make it mucho important to know the language version you're targeting, so for instance toolsets in Java 5 are probably a bad idea for now.
A basic intro:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/introducing-java-5
More esoteric:
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/04/20/javaIAN5.html
Everything:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/relnotes/features.html
(Wed, May 25, 2005)
Could this be the world's largest photograph?