Oh, Pinecone!

This piece is about 100 words below the limit, so if you have any advice on how to expand this slightly I'd love to hear it. Other advice is always welcome as well, of course. Enjoy! :)

2.  How much do you curse and why? 

     As a child, I was taught never to curse by my parents. No one in my family swore in my presence for years, and my first exposure to the subject came from foul-mouthed friends in elementary school. In fourth grade, everyone was beginning to try out these strange, new words, discovering the weirdly extreme reactions they provoked from adults. I learned the f-word, s-word, b-word, a-word, on and on. However, I was never interested in using them. I’ve never been a rebellious child, and there never seemed to be good enough reason to stir up trouble.

    Around the same time, my aunt Jenny taught me a rather profound lesson about swearing, one that is fundamental to my current understanding of the subject. We were on summer vacation in Wisconsin, and she pointed out that the reason people curse is to release and communicate negative emotions. The words themselves usually have little to do with what we’re upset about, they’re just customary thanks to cultural taboos. Shocking words convey shocking emotions. To release the emotions though, any word will do. If you say, “Oh, pinecone” with enough conviction, it can act as a swear word for you just as well as any “real” one. I thought this was hilarious at the time and spent the rest of the day shouting “Pinecone!” to anyone within earshot, but in time I realized how right she was. Don’t get me wrong, I could never seriously swear using the word “pinecone,” but other inoffensive words almost always suffice. For example, I often exclaim, “Oh shoot!” after realizing that I’ve forgotten to do some piece of homework or dying in a video game. Many of my friends would use a short string of Anglo-Saxon vulgarisms there instead, but the emotional content is no different. The reaction is just a reflex, and by falling into the habit of using innocent curses, I avoid unnecessary offenses.

    That’s not to say this method is flawless. It’s very difficult to change cursing habits once they’re well established, which makes this hard to implement for older people. I still use the word “God!” in my cursing, which can definitely offend some people. I’ve tried for years to drop it from my vocabulary, but a surprising event still brings it back out. In addition, I believe some situations are calamitous enough to warrant “real” swearing. I’ve never been in such a position, but if, say, my house were to burn down, I think a harsh curse or two might be in order. Furthermore, swearing can be humorous. An occasional dirty joke is hilarious, and by cutting out major swear words one loses the opportunity to make those jests. Would Mr. Sutton be as funny if he didn’t using swearing (judiciously) to make his points in class? I think the shock factor of such cursing adds something, but the key is that it’s shocking. Swearing is a powerful tool, but only if used sparingly. Just as bacteria become resistant to the drugs that we use against them, we become jaded towards curse words if they are overused. Dweeby though it may sound, I think I’ll stick to my tame swearing until there’s better reason not to.

I Stole the Essay

2.  Have you ever taken something that you weren’t supposed to? 

Yes. I’m normally a very honest person, but I was in a rush to finish my homework so I stole this essay from an unsuspecting student in the hallway yesterday. Enjoy my ill-gotten gains!

Dreamland Tweezers

3/1/16

What's Your Type?

The other day, I took the Myers-Briggs personality test for fun. It said that I am an Advocate (type INFJ-T), which apparently means that I’m focused on deep relationships and ideals. It says I have a lot of passions and want to make a difference in the world. It says the last thing I want is power/leadership, but I will still end up getting it sometimes for my high level of interest. It goes on and on for pages like that, sometimes accurately, sometimes laughably not. On the whole, it was very interesting to read, but I don’t put much stock by it. I’ve heard too much about personality tests for that.

In 1948, a psychologist named Bertram Forer gave a simple personality test to his students. A week later, he gave his students results and asked them to judge their accuracy on a scale of zero (terrible) to five (perfect). The students’ average response was a 4.26, but there was a catch. All of them had been given the same list of results, which Forer had compiled from a newsstand astrology book! Students felt that results represented them well only because they were so general, with statements like “At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.” This has come to be known as the Barnum effect, and it makes me considerably more skeptical of any and all personality tests I take.

The Myers-Briggs test in particular has a lot of flaws. It was developed over half a century ago by two housewives who were fascinated by the writings of Carl Jung. That isn’t necessarily bad, but Jung was often criticized for being unscientific, which casts some doubt on the test. More importantly, the test is entirely bimodal and does not measure fundamental personality traits. For example, people are classified as either thinking or feeling, introverted or extraverted, and so on. There’s no middle ground. Most people are in the middle of the extraversion spectrum though, and thinking and feeling are definitely not on opposite ends of a spectrum. Even if these fundamental issues didn’t exist, people are unlikely to answer truthfully. Variation in mood likely causes variation in results and we all idealize ourselves to some degree. But does that matter?

I honestly don’t mind the inaccuracy of the Myers-Briggs test, provided it’s only being used for its intended purpose. The test was never meant to be a factor in job applications, for example, but it is frequently used in such circumstances anyway. I’m totally against these usages, as the test is plainly inconsistent and thus should never be considered an important factor in life decisions. However, it’s wonderful when used for personal enjoyment. I have a lot of fun comparing my results to friends’, and sometimes they can really make you think. On this test, it was surprisingly accurate about my hypothetical parenting style. It said that my goal would be to raise children who I could eventually speak to as equals about my passions, and I would likely struggle with not pushing them towards those interests. Out of everything it said about me, that particular statement seemed quite true, and it prompted me to think a little about my future and what it would be like to have kids. That seems like the “proper” use of a personality test to me: a source of amusement primarily, and occasionally a prompt to help us reflect a little on our personalities.

On the Beauty of Dice

Sorry about the small text, this blog is being kinda weird again. Anyway, for this piece I'm mostly curious to find out whether or not it is understandable to non-gamers. I tried to explain most things, but please let me know if anything is unclear  I'm also slightly over the word limit, so recommendations for small cuts would be appreciated. Thanks!

What possessions does your family treasure?

Dice are cool. Most people don’t realize this, because they’ve never seen the full glory that is the polyhedral die. I had my eyes opened when I received my first d20, back when I was a lad of ten. Allow me to educate you. Many think dice are limited to the pipped cubes of Yahtzee and Monopoly, but those are just the beginning. There are six main types of dice used in role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, which are named for the number of sides they have: the d4 (tetrahedrons), d6 (hexahedron (or cube if you’re boring)), d8 (octahedron), d10 (pentagonal trapezohedron), d12 (dodecahedron), and the noble d20 (icosahedron). All of these dice save the d10 are Platonic solids, which are inherently beautiful in their regularity. Together they look like a handful of strangely-cut jewels. The d10 is awkward and I personally dislike it, but everyone has to deal with them. Maybe this explanation is just making dice sound even geekier to you, but hear me out. It gets cooler, I promise.

One of the neat thing about dice is that although there are only six main types, there’s an almost infinite variety of styles. Most dice are plastic, but they still come in all conceivable colors and patterns: from gold-flecked purple to bloody scarlet swirls across a black void. Sometimes the shape varies to yield knucklebone or crystal shapes, and the more outlandish designs include dice within dice or even spherical d6s. If you’re willing to pay some real money, your dice don’t have to be plastic either. It’s possible to obtain wood, bone, stone, iron, gold, obsidian, opal, jade, and mammoth tusk dice, all of which are beautiful in their own ways. Some dice light up, while others dent the tables you play on if you roll too vigorously. This variety makes dice individually lovable and infinitely collectable.

Still not convinced that dice are worth loving? If we don’t care about their usefulness (which we don’t), there are plenty of bizarre alternative dice out there. There’s the d3, which allows you to play rock-paper-scissors without playing rock-paper-scissors. There’s the irregularly shaped d5 and d7, which look like they can’t possibly roll fairly yet somehow do. There’s the d14, d16, d24, and d30, which have no redeeming qualities aside from their quirkiness. There’s the d100, which looks like a numbered golf ball and rattles when rolled. And there’s the d1, a Möbius strip wrought from metal for when you need to make a choice with only one option. It has been conclusively proven by many a gamer (myself included), that one can never have too many dice. I have jars of them.

         There are few things more fun than building up an admirable dice collection. As you go, each die accumlates stories and a reputation of its own. There’s the d100 bought on a rainy day from a game store tucked behind the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the d6 that never fails to deny you healing in times of need, and the striker d20 that always manages to roll high enough to hit tough bosses. You laugh with your friends about the time you collapsed the ceiling of a cave upon yourself with a critical hit from your light-up die in the name of Science, then remind them of when they bluffed their way through the guards by summoning the Holy Baritone of the Great Quartet with a few lucky rolls from a famously lucky die. Some dice have to be pointed towards true magnetic north to roll well, while others can only function when rolled with at least four other dice and others must be shaken for exactly five seconds before release. Every die has its place in the set, ready to be used in an hour of need. When you gaze upon your collection, you don’t just see dice. You see jewels, each with stories waiting to be remembered, a lifetime of gaming.