{"id":1737,"date":"2010-12-02T10:46:22","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T10:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2018\/11\/28\/1010-revision-v1\/"},"modified":"2019-07-09T12:36:22","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T12:36:22","slug":"dec-2-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/12\/02\/dec-2-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Dec 2, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a\u00a0log\u00a0of my experiences\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to date. Today I was pushed over the\u00a0line<\/a>\u00a0and have won myself\u00a0the right to vote<\/a>; seems a good an occasion as any to do this. This log is not meant to be anything more than what it is: A record of some recollections that perhaps later may be of interest. If it’s ordering appears random that is because it is.<\/p>\n

My first post was\u00a0Rituals of marijuana<\/a>. I’m not sure why – the theme felt rebellious and what better way to test the waters? It initially gathered a neutral sum of votes, but I’ve made some changes and it’s slunk back into the black. I do very much like the possibility of seeing a writeup’s reputation change over time, but unfortunately, that’s only possible over long periods of time due to the low voting numbers on old posts. That makes it hard to get a feel for how changes to a post influence its reception. So be it. It’s not the best First-PostTM<\/sup>\u00a0– but then I can’t think of anything special enough to justify that arbitrary position. I’m happy with it. Below its surface lie a few aspects of my\u00a0approach<\/a>\u00a0to E2 in those heady, ahem, early days. For instance, I’d noticed that many posts are quite romantic about past experiences, which was something I felt I should incorporate. (This makes me sound manipulative I realise, but I’d like to remind\u00a0people<\/a>\u00a0that I still\u00a0wasn’t<\/a>\u00a0sure what I’d stumbled into). Also, I’d quickly appreciated the strength of using soft-links to link to something other than the\u00a0word<\/a>. Which is something I still have a lot of fun with. It’s like the text shimmers with fluctuating meanings – which is what the internet was supposed to be all along; a representation of language’s cybernetic nature.<\/p>\n

Many of my next posts were about pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, which was something I was reading up on at the time. And here I found a new use for E2: to concretize and explore my ideas about interests I explore. It was also rewarding to get my first\u00a0C!<\/a>\u00a0(thanks) which shockingly confirmed that there’s a whole world of people who find things about things interesting. Thank-you all.<\/p>\n

Another area I’ve already written quite a few posts is biology. In my experience, and despite peoples antipathy to maths and chemical symbols, most people are fascinated by science, they just don’t have opportunities to ask scientists question and are too\u00a0busy<\/a>\u00a0to seek out the answers themselves. With this in mind, I’ve been trying to write some intelligent reviews that don’t presume too much pre-existing knowledge. I’m not sure how I feel about my limited – only three write-ups so far – progress to date. They’ve all gotten good responses, but I haven’t gotten much feedback on what is and isn’t understandable, or what else should be better explained, etc. Just today I joined\u00a0e2science<\/a>\u00a0which may or may not help in this regard. One problem I am aware of is that those write-ups were very long and that more non-specialists would be inclined to read shorter summaries that require a less intense commitment. However I’m not sure whether I\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0write shorter introductions to such particular topics – e.g. retrotransposons and neuronal diversity; shorter write-ups would work better with simpler topics, e.g. “neurons”, than with what I’m interested in. This leads into a second problem, which is I’m really not sure what the baseline knowledge I should be presuming is, and also how much background people need in order to follow my trains of thought.<\/p>\n

One thing I’ve been working on is a three-part introduction to molecular biology which will let me say to myself “People either will or won’t read this, but if they won’t I can’t make them hear” and then use that as the baseline for writing more complicated\/specialised writeups. We’ll see how that goes. I should note that my science write-ups have received far more “I Like This” than any of my other posts. I’m not sure whether that’s just level zero users, or also non-members (I hope the latter especially), but it’s a good sign.<\/p>\n

Another area I’ve been submitting in is book reviews. This includes\u00a0my first review<\/a>\u00a0which was a bit experimental and was happy to be accepted by others.<\/p>\n

I have a habit of copying down quotes and making notes in 50c notebooks while I’m reading. Historically – i.e. before I fell into this ditch – those would never be read by anyone else. Some of them migrated to word documents – or more recently my friend\u00a0Microsoft OneNote<\/a>\u00a0– while others are hidden in drawers and in boxes with old school books at my parents’ house. I don’t want to make it sound like I’ve got a thousand books jotted down, but I do have quite a few, and I hope, s-l-o-w-l-y to transmute them over into this place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a\u00a0log\u00a0of my experiences\u00a0here\u00a0to date. Today I was pushed over the\u00a0line\u00a0and have won myself\u00a0the right to vote; seems a good an occasion as any to do this. This log is not meant to be anything more than what it is: A record of some recollections that perhaps later may be of interest. If it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,204,128],"tags":[],"metadata":[280],"class_list":["post-1737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-everything2","category-journal","metadata-notebook-reference"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1479,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/05\/11\/letter-to-a-jewish-nation\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":0},"title":"Letter to a Jewish Nation","author":"Pala","date":"May 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I could never find an audience in my mind, and so I have invented the unborn child\u2019s face to address. Hello, child of Judah and Benjamin and Levi, sons of Israel, son of the one who was laughed at, son of the Nations. I don\u2019t know what your parents taught\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1057,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2011\/08\/16\/ketamine-and-the-sky-crawlers\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":1},"title":"Ketamine and \u201cThe Sky Crawlers\u201d","author":"Pala","date":"August 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A comparative review of a competitive NMDA receptor agonist and a film by award-winning Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Oshii First off: spoilers. If this was the future that word would be flashing right now[1]. Some background to set the scene: Ketamine[I]: it\u2019s a drug best known as \u201cthat horse tranquillizer\u201d, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1771,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2011\/02\/27\/my-life-as-a-night-elf-priest-br-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":2},"title":"My Life as a Night Elf Priest (BR)","author":"Pala","date":"February 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"World of Warcraft\u00a0(WoW) has the population and GDP of a small country, and yet for all that, it's just another niche\u00a0community. Some two billion people all around the globe have access to the\u00a0internet, and while they may have a few inducible portals in common - google, facebook, Wikipedia - there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2557,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2013\/04\/22\/bibliomes-scribbles-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":3},"title":"Bibliomes: Scribbles","author":"Pala","date":"April 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: For a broader elaboration on Shai's 'Bibliome project' see the Editorial notes to\u00a0'Philosophy Readings Through Time' (Open link in a new tab). Here I start to plan bibliomes - they being organic districts that are fertilized by interest and motivation, and whose seeds can be defined as specifically\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":455,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2013\/10\/05\/master-switch-part-one\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":4},"title":"Master switch – part one","author":"Pala","date":"October 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Prelude: I call this post \"Part one\", not because I have a second or extra content intended to complement this one. But rather to acknowledge the overwhelming observation that what I have achieved here is but a very basic introduction to the question. And so: There's a switch I can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1758,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/12\/14\/antiochus-of-ascalon-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":5},"title":"Antiochus of Ascalon","author":"Pala","date":"December 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Taking a Fresh Look at Antiochus' Criterion of Certainty Introduction to Antiochus With\u00a0Antiochus of Ascalon\u00a0(c.125-88\u00a0BCE), Platonism took a dive back to its roots \u2013 or at least, it claimed to do so. 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