You are currently browsing the daily archive for February 26th, 2008.
Whenever I hear the word enormity used to describe how gi-freakin-normous something is, I always willfully misinterpret it to mean an act of extreme evil or extreme wickedness. Now before you start screaming prescriptivist and throwing Kleenexes drenched in the snot of sociolinguistics at me — I’m not being a prescriptivist. Of course people have the right to use enormity that way. It is certainly the trend for that word and it probably will be within my generation that almost everyone forgets its original meaning. I just so like the meaning of extreme wickedness that I want to be able to use it to mean that without being misinterpreted. And a lot of people only know that word to mean gigantic.
So I was listening to a promo video (below) by Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic. Branson opens up with this line:
”Astronauts of the past 45 years have all returned to Earth struggling to convey the enormity of what they have discovered and with their perceptions clearly changed.”
And quite frankly, the sinister music blends with my interpretation of enormity far better. Astronauts have all returned overwhelmed by the vast wickedness they encountered in space. Awesome! I totally wanna go now. Actually, I’ve always wanted to go and probably would go even if I was told I had a 50/50 chance of making it back alive, so enormity just ups the thrill level.
Go (围棋, 碁, 바둑) is one of my obsessions. I’ve been playing for a year, mostly as ealdent on Online Go Server (OGS) and am currently about 12.5 kyu, though I shift around a bit. At the moment, I’m in a bit of downswing, mostly because stress and not concentrating is leading me to make foolish moves, plus I don’t have a lot of time to devote to analyzing what I’m doing wrong. One of the coolest things about Go to me is the fact that it is an accepted fact in the Go world that your health and mental state contribute to your ability. It makes sense: when you sit down to a game that requires hours of concentration, if your health isn’t good, you will be distracted.
So in one of my games against a lower-strength player (about 7 kyu lower), I just noticed the emergence of a really cool symmetry. I have a double snapback (I am the white stones) set up right now. If he plays at E12, I can kill the three stones at F11, E11 and E12 by playing again at F12. If he kills my stone at G13 by playing at H13, I can kill those three stones. Two identical snapbacks back to back. Cool huh? Plus, if he plays at F14, he will put my stones at E16 and F16 in the exact same snapback position by playing again at E15. Go is a beautiful game.
I recorded what this would look like via my cell phone, so sorry for the crappy video. I need to look into some sort of desktop recording software.
