Blue Eyes Designs

(I’ve loaned out the keyboard and mouse for a while, so please pardon any
typos…)

I just finished reading Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and I like it a lot.
I’m going to have to be sure to read it again when I’m not so pressed for time
and can really concentrate on it. I’m particularly fond of the following
passage:

Hannah: What are you
doing? Valentine?
Valentine: The set of points on a
complex plane made by —
Hannah:Is it the grouse?
Valentine: Oh, the grouse. The
damned grouse.
Hannah: You mustn’t give up.
Valentine: Why? Don’t you agree
with Benard?
Hannah: Oh, that. It’s all
trivial — your grouse, my hermit, Benard’s Byron. Comparing what we’re looking
for misses the point. It’s wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we’re
going out the way we came in. That’s why you can’t believe in the afterlife,
Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God,
the soul, the sprit, the infinate, believe in the angels if you like, but not in
the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are
in the back of the book I can wait, but what drag. Better to struggle on knowing
the failure is final.

Now I need to finish A Man For All Seasons ; it’s been sitting on my
proverbial nightstand for about three weeks now. Tonight’s as good a night as
any.

It’s come to my attention that Knox can/will give CS credit for learning
programming languages. Even more reason to start learning Perl/Python. Not this
term, though. After discussing it with Betsy, we might do it in the spring.
Could be fun. Should be fun. It’s about time I got off my ass and learned
something useful.