Brain Dump
I've realized that a lot of posts on Collision Course have been of the longer essay type rather than the brain-dump here's-what's-going-on-in-my-life-right now types. I want this blog to be about more than Kansas and manic pixie dream girls, so here's a diary entry-type thing.
=====
Currently reading: Brave New World, by Huxley. Good, but 60% through it's not what I expected. There seems to be less focus on what the world has become and more on what shenanigans the characters get up to -- contrast this with 1984. (Caveat, it's been ~5 years since I read 1984.) I read it with the intention of writing a post on how Huxley's dystopia view is more plausible in 2014 than Orwell's is [1] and how there are probably 10 Facebook notifications you'd rather be checking than reading this post, but Yan already wrote it. I'll probably take the time to type up a few thoughts when I finish BNW, but I no longer think I urgently need to write about it all.
[1] Hannah, a dear friend at NYU, recently made the point that the proliferation of the internet makes Orwell's dystopian view increasingly less likely. My $0.02: this is why net neutrality is so important and we have to fight tooth & nail for it.
I must be behind on my read-60-books-this-year goal, but I'm putting it down to new semester jitters.
=====
Current favorite quote: One I can't actually find a link to right now about how the news shouldn't give equal weight to both sides of the debate. I originally had this thought in re: creationism v evolution, but the quote itself is, iirc, on the reporting of rape. Will update tomorrow.
=====
Classes are great! Longer introspective post coming soon, but in short: history of philosophical thought is great, essay-writing is straightforward enough, Spanish is a little better this semester since there's less focus on grammar & the classes are more fun as a result, and international politics is fantastic.
I find myself working a lot harder than I did last semester, probably because I'm no longer a noob first-semester freshman. Probably putting in close to 35 hours work each week.
=====
New York's experiencing an unseasonably cold winter atm, which is fine apart from the slush. We're forecast one last snow storm tomorrow and Thursday but I can't see it being majorly bad. I think NYU screwed the pooch two or three weeks ago not closing the school when the NYC mayor declared a state of emergency in the city.
=====
Theater I'm excited for: Love and Information, If/Then.
=====
Current music loves: KT Tunstall, The Boat People.
=====
A pro-Government-killing-trees lobby group exists. Ah, America.
=====
This Star Won't Go Out was recently released, a posthumous memoir written by Esther Earl, who died of thyroid cancer. Such is the nature of the internet, I knew of Esther's YouTube channel and writings without knowing her personally. Given that we were both 16 and aspiring writers, I felt a certain affinity for her. After her diagnosis, I read her parents' CaringBridge updates half a world away with a weird sense of adopted grief -- here was a girl dying of thyroid cancer who I had never met, and yet felt so much sadness. Her death, which came on August 25, 2010, is one of those deaths you remember where you were the minute you found out.
It's hard to find words for how happy I am that her memoir, her journals and drawings interspersed with familial reflections, is out in the world, and that her dream of being a writer is coming true. An even better piece of news came when we [the collective internet community drawn together by our affinity for Esther] learned that TSWGO appeared on the New York Times bestseller list on February 16, 2014.
