Author: Mark

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Frankenstein and Retelling Old Tales

I just finished Frankenstein, which I last read during my British Literature class in high school. It reminded me of the phenomenon of Disney retelling an old story with key details removed and altered to make it kid-friendly,1This most recently came up when running trivia for some friends a couple months ago, when I learned the original written version of Pinocchio ends with the puppet being hanged on a tree. though in Frankenstein this happens in reverse.

Every representation of the monster2Indeed, we all know Frankenstein is the name of the scientist, and he creates an unnamed monster. in popular media that I’m aware of is a green, slow-moving, large man, often with bolts in his neck. In reality, the book shows a monster who learns much about the world by observing a small family in a cottage, eventually becoming literate and quite eloquent. He also possesses superhuman speed, strength, and stamina while requiring only a limited vegetarian diet. It’s a fascinating tale that explores the concept of sin, revenge, and responsibility; most of that is lost in the classic “monster movie”.

I fondly recall the surprise I had at this in high school, and rediscovered a similar enthusiasm reading it a decade later. I wholly recommend Frankenstein to anyone who is willing to wade through flowery British prose from the 1800s.

  • 1
    This most recently came up when running trivia for some friends a couple months ago, when I learned the original written version of Pinocchio ends with the puppet being hanged on a tree.
  • 2
    Indeed, we all know Frankenstein is the name of the scientist, and he creates an unnamed monster.
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Elemental, a Pixar Film

I’ve watched nearly every Pixar movie. I have some I entirely adore and will happily rewatch whenever the opportunity presents. The others I still enjoy but they don’t have an ongoing impact on my life. Elemental is firmly in the second category. Its charm and inventive physical humor kept me delighted, and its role as a modern fable about immigration and racism makes it worth watching, but its story had inconsistent pacing with confusing characterization.

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Writing With Care

I read a short dialogue with the previously-mentioned Frederick Hess, in which he complains about researchers intentionally obfuscating their ideas behind a wall of jargon. He argues that plain writing, using diction that is clear and precise, is the ideal way to present ideas. Anything else is grandiose and an attempt at an appeal to authority. While I don’t agree with several details in that discussion, or the flippant attacks hidden among the core of his argument, there is insight worth exploring.

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Cory Wong in Oakland

After a bout of COVID in November of 2022 stopped Erin and I from seeing Cory Wong in San Francisco, I’ve been eagerly awaiting his next tour. He announced tour dates last August and I immediately jumped on tickets and invited friends along. It was a magnificent concert, easy to enjoy, fun, funny, thoughtful, and precise.

Cory is a musician’s musician, but straddles the line of speaking to a knowledgeable fan-base while creating music and entertainment for a broad audience. His Cory and the Wongnotes variety show dives into musical topics in collaboration with amazing musicians. His On the One series discusses details of music production and what decisions go into making a finished piece of music. Meanwhile, Wong on Ice is impressively absurd.

I’m not a huge fan of musical artists in general. I never followed anyone closely growing up, and don’t have a strong knowledge of any particular band’s discography. I don’t often go to live music. But something about Cory Wong continues to capture me, and I’ll continue to see him whenever I get the chance. I’m rooting for my fellow Minnesota boy.

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“The Great School Rethink” and Assessing Ideas

Last fall I read The Great School Rethink by Frederick Hess, who works with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. He focuses largely on education policy initiatives, many of which might be familiar: school choice, assessments, funding distribution, and curriculum adoption, among others. While I find these topics and the debates around them interesting, my main takeaway from reading this book was broader. It reminded me that a person is not static, and when we talk with someone we have to focus more on the thoughts they’re presenting and not conflate that with our notions of who the person is when taken as a sum of their parts.

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Vision Pro Part 1: Outside Looking In

Last week, Apple launched Vision Pro. I’ve read and listened to commentary, and watched many reviews and demos since its release. I have a good sense of what it can and can’t do, but that’s hugely different than experiencing it. Here is my current understanding of Vision Pro and what I find most important and interesting without having used it. This Wednesday I’ll be going to an Apple store to demo Vision Pro, and I will follow up with what I’ve learned.

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A Winter Sunset

The world plays tricks on us. Nature can be brutal and unforgiving. It simply is; if you are on the wrong side of it being what it is, so much the worse for you. But look closely: there are moments of pure fairness, perhaps of generosity, that peek through.

Consider the late afternoon on a viciously cold winter day. A biting wind winds its way through the air, its icy tendrils working its way in the gaps of your scarf, slapping at the inch of exposed skin between sleeves and gloves, sweeping across your nose. The air is pure and frozen. Snow deadens the world; it muffles sound that paradoxically travels farther and clearer.

As you walk through the landscape, the snow shuffling and crunching beneath your boots, the world around you lays dormant. A few evergreens continue to defy the slumber surrounding them, while the birds have moved elsewhere, plants are brown, the palette of the world has been deadened and dulled.

Yet some early evenings hold a surprise: the sun begins its plummet to the horizon to begin another moonlit night that stays brighter than one imagines, as the cold reflected light meets a glinting snow cover that palely illuminates the world. Thinking about this black-and-white night, anticipating the warmth of a fire and the cozy companionship of others, you see vivid pinks and purples and reds blazing in the distance. Truffula tree and cotton candy clouds, backlit from a now invisible source, lazily move along in the cold wind; their luminance is entirely ignorant of the world below.

Standing outside in a biting world somehow intensifies the hues. They shine vivid and hopeful through spidery limbs of leafless trees. They attract shivering eyes and halt chattering teeth, and steamy breaths release quiet Wow‘s that reverberate through the chilly air. It is a simple joy of the world that accelerates the spirit through the forthcoming night.