The Things That I

True Detective

I really liked True Detective. I ended up watching it a couple week after it ended, so the series wasn't as much as of a mystery as a character study. And it was brilliant. Even for a story that was ostensibly about the "journey" rather than the ending, I enjoyed the predictably sappy ending. I do enjoy complex stories, but I would rather have a hopeful ending than a sad one. 

I particularly liked Rust. His nihilism was darkly funny. I'm still not entirely sure if it was all earnest and honest or pseudo-intellectual. It was probably a mix of the two. I remember that some TV critics (possibly Willa Paskin from Slate?) mentioned that the show didn't glamorize the detectives, but it did to an extent. Rust seemed like a martyr. He definitely suffered, but his suffering seemed to be the price for our sins. The show leaned a little on the "Jesus" symbolism with the images of him rising with the cross above his spare bed. I didn't always want to be him, but occasionally I wanted to live inside his mind and see what it was really like. 

Anyways, here are a couple of gifs of some of my favorite Cohle-isms:

I hate Nietzsche too! (gif from mentlst.tumblr.com)

Karma sounds so much cooler when you imagine it as an endless cycle of degradation. (gif from truedetectiveshow.tumblr.com)

I really, really loved Tales of the City. Even though there were too many coincidences, I fell a little bit in love with the residents of 28 Barbary Lane. I'm super excited to be living in San Francisco this summer!

Reasons to Be Happy

One of my favorite TV shows was The Office, and Pam is still one of my favorite characters. I'm lucky enough to be interning in NYC this summer, so I decided to see Neil LaBute's new play Reasons to Be Happy because of Jenna Fischer.

The play focuses on just 4 characters, and begins Steph and Greg meet randomly at the parking lot of a Trader Joe's three years after their breakup. Steph berates Greg for his "incestous" new relationship with Carly, Steph's best friend. The first 5 minutes of the play was filled with obscenities that contrast sharply with the meek Pam Beesly I am used to. The scene didn't seem realistic, as both characters just seemed as though they were stumbling through lines. Yet the play began to find it's momentum as it focused on the disconnect between the characters, when Greg imagines that his words can make things alright before Steph works herself up to grabbing his food and crushing it with a stomp and a curse.

The next scene introduced Carly and her ex-husband Kent, two more caricatures of childish anger intent on screaming, ostensibly about how they've wronged each other, but without any purpose. Greg shows up to pick up Carly, only to screamed at by Kent too, for betraying their former friendship. Yet the idea that meathead Kent and the nebbish Greg were ever friends seems as realistic as Carly and Kent's fight.

As it turns out, both Steph and Carly want Greg. Steph wants a second try at a relationship, and even leaves her husband for him. Greg plans to do the same until he finds out that Carly is pregnant with his child. Instead he draws out his choices, hoping that someone will swoop in and save him the trouble of hurting either woman that he loves. Real life doesn't work that way, and the book-smart Greg is too stupid to realize it.

Meanwhile, Kent manages to blunder through his life, pining for Carly and paranoid that his new girlfriend Crystal is cheating on him. His anger issues come to a head when he punches a manager, and Crystal breaks up with him. Without friends, he is forced to ask Greg to listen to his problems. Greg seems to use this smugly as proof that he is better, and happier, but Kent challenges Greg to realize that he isn't really doing anything with his life except reading books. Supposedly Kent is bettering the planet as Big Brother mentor and a coach for a flag football team, though it is quite clear that he should be a mentor for no one, nor even responsible enough to left alone with a child.

In the final scene, Greg calls the girls together to make his decision. With the help of Kent's bizarre and misplaced wisdom, Greg realizes the selfishness of his choices. Carly walks out on him, stating she can't handle the situation anymore. She aborted the child, and she can't live with Greg's vacillations, telling Steph, "He's all yours." But it seems Greg has learned nothing. He forces Steph to beg for him before telling he "needs space" to "find himself" by living alone in New York. He gifts Steph, a hairdresser, with a guide to New York with a section on hairdressing, and a hope that she'll come visit. The show ends as Steph looks out after Greg, sits down and cries, then opens the book.

After seeing the play, the only reason I had to be happy was that I got a cheap ticket. Carly was the unsung hero of the story, with goals and expectations. She was the only character who realized that she had responsibilities -- her job and her daughter -- that she just couldn't throw away on a whim. The remaining characters were annoying and unrelatable, willing to throw away what they had in misguided bids for happiness. LaBute particularly has a difficult time understanding the female voice, which was evident in both Carly and Steph. Steph was a whiny, shrewish bitch, and Carly was naive and complacent. While Leslie Bibb, who portrayed Carly, was able to give purpose to the character, Steph's caricature ran so deep that even Fischer couldn't redeem the character. Instead, she was able to lend Steph some sympathy with her portrayal of Steph vulnerability with her former friend Carly and the distant Greg.

The jokes were often crude and rude. I realize LaBute might have been mocking American's lack of general knowledge, but did it have to be so obvious? Did Kent have to be so homophobic? Yet the characterization does make sense, unlike his supposed volunteer work and erratic anger management issues.The music was harsh and jarring during set transitions, disrupting even an illusion that I was in the world of the play.

Clockwork Princess

Young Adult (YA) literature will always be one of my guilty pleasures. The stories are fun to read and generally simple -- I don't have to search for the symbolism or interpret allusions. The fantasies are fantastic.

However, I'm currently trying to wean myself off of these addicting novels, making only one last exception for Clockwork Princess, the last novel in The Infernal Devices Trilogy by Cassandra Clare. The novel reminded me why I liked YA books in the first place, and why I began to read fewer of them.

Set in London in the late 1870s, the novel follows Tessa Gray, a young woman who has realized that she is not quite human. The story begins as Tessa is planning her wedding to Jem, a Shadowhunter. Shadowhunters, or Nephilim, are tasked by angels to save the Earth from demons. Jem is dying from the drug he must use to stay alive, prompting Tessa and Jem to marry earlier than they had anticipated.

Complicating the matter is Will, Jem's parabatai (blood brother). Will loves Tessa, but she cannot tell him she loves him because she loves Jem as well. Reading this synopsis, I realize that I need to read less YA literature.

Tessa is captured by the villain Mortmain, after his automatons injure Jem. Will sets off to rescue Tessa, but realizes along the way that Jem has died. Upon rescuing Tessa, she finally confesses her feelings after Will tells her of Jem's death.

The following day, they kill Mortmain with the help of a Silent Brother -- Jem. The transformation means he is no longer human, and his parabatai bond with Will is broken. He is semi-immortal and will live for many years. He encourages Tessa and Will to marry, as he is no longer free to do so. The novel ends with some happiness, as Tessa and Will plan to wed.

The novel was everything I expected. Clare managed to excellently tie together the loose threads and questions I had, though the plot was quite predictable. My expectations were a double edged sword -- I enjoy reading novels with a predictable ending because I do not need to worry that the characters will have to suffer undue sacrifice.

Yet the epilogue changed that. Set in modern day London, Tessa is waiting for her yearly meeting with Jem, renamed Brother Zachary by the Silent Brothers. She reminisces about her life with Will, their children, and their adventures. Unlike her, Will was mortal and died in 1937.

She is interrupted by the arrival of Jem. A cure for his addiction was found, and he was released from the Silent Brotherhood. He struggles to tell Tessa that he still loves her. Tessa is confused by his reappearance, and thinks about loving Jem again. He is mortal as well, and will die as Will did. She runs after Jem, and the epilogue implies that they will live together as well.

The epilogue made the rest of the story far more plausible. YA literature irks me because the story is often unrealistic. The characters are static and rarely seem make difficult sacrifices. They deal only with superficial plot twists necessary to make the book 300 pages long. While I enjoy imagining that my only problem is what dress to wear, I often look back at these books only to realize that I have taken nothing meaningful from reading the book.

But as Tessa remembered her life with Will, the pain and the happiness she felt truly made her a person. She had made difficult decisions, and some of her choices were out of her hands, just like many of the ones we make everyday. Her realization that everything ends, but that she still has to keep living was poignant. As I closed the book, I felt a little twinge of sadness that the story was over, and there was no easy escape for Tessa or Jem. Just like life.

Therac-25 and Why I am Afraid of Coding

So, for my Computer Systems Engineering class, we read a lot of papers to learn what a well-designed system looks like. Unfortunately, on the first day of class we read this paper about the Therac-25, a medical device that uses electron beam currents or X-Rays to treat cancerous or diseased tissue. The Therac-25 was an update to the Therac-20 machine, which was less powerful and didn't use as much software to control the fail-safes.

When the system was updated to the Therac-25, the hardware interlock system was removed. Only magnets can be used to aim the electron beams, while a flattener was used to aim the X-Ray beams. The Therac-20 system had a hardware interlock system to prevent the system from using rays unless the proper aiming device was used, but they remove the interlock in the Therac-25. Additionally, there were a lot of race conditions, because the system didn't check the input as often as it should have. The operator could change the values input to the device and move the cursor back to the start position before the device had clearly read the input, and the device would not realize that the method of therapy (electron current vs. X-Ray) had changed. 

My code

Syllabus