It’s [poetry's] intangible and purely spiritual nature refuses to be bound down within the widest horizon of mere sounds. But it is not, therefore, misunderstood — at least not by all men is it misunderstood.
I’m getting into Poe lately
excerpts from
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45wn01.htm
… — “Fancy combines — Imagination creates.” This was intended, and
has been received, as a distinction; but it is a distinction without a
difference — without even a difference of degree. The Fancy as nearly
creates as the imagination, and neither at all. Novel conceptions are
merely unusual combinations. The mind of man can imagine nothing which
does not exist: — if it could, it would create not only ideally, but
substantially — as do the thoughts of God.
[...]
The fact seems to be that Imagination, Fancy, Fantasy, and humor, have
in common the elements, Combination, and Novelty.
[...]
Fantasy seeks not merely disproportionate but incongruous or
antagonistical elements, the effect is rendered more pleasurable from
its greater positiveness; — there is a merry effort of Truth to shake
from her that which is no property of hers; — and we laugh outright in
recognizing Humor.
[...]
but when either Fancy or Humor is expressed to gain an end — is
pointed at a purpose — whenever either becomes objective in place of
subjective — then it he comes, also, pure Wit or Sarcasm, just as the
purpose is well-intentioned or malevolent.
I have seen only pieces of the movie, one scene in particular made me notice the huge war of sexes with a clear winner: female.
One example is scene where The Bride (Uma Thurman) is about to fight the aides of O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) and others. Just before the slaughter starts, O-Ren Ishii tells the owner of the club to run away (because things are about to get dirty). The guy shits his pants and runs away. What about his wife standing next to him? She remains. It seems like a stupid detail, but it got me thinking and I came up with the following interpretation: the owner of the restaurant, a servile coward man, cannot stand the cruelty of what is about to happen, but his wife can. Just minutes ago, the wife would call him to stand for his honor in front of absurd requests of O-Ren Ishii and her gang.
These parallelisms go on and on: minutes before the slaughter, O-Ren Ishii humiliates a man sitting in their table; At the same night, The Bride is about to kill hundreds of young Japanese man …
It kind of makes sense in broader terms too. There are three male types (i) bad guys samurai soldiers on suits and ties whose limbs are being chopped off like cattle and are being humiliated by a blonde american girl in their very own weapon: the sword. (ii) kung fu masters and sword makers and the like who are amazed by the super-abilities and determination of The Bride and swear fidelity and eternal friendship to her. (iii) Bill, a rat capable of very low actions betrayal etc. On the other hand, there is only one female type (some are good some bad, it doesn’t matter): badass females. When they kill, it is for high motivations or to defend their honor in such a masculine society.
Have you noticed how one of the first things of which you start thinking when you talk abut events and their probability, are the Venn diagrams. However, when it comes to independence, Venn diagrams are really inappropriate.
First, you cannot eye-spot two independent events in a Venn diagram, since you would have to recognize that the ratios are perfectly right (with circles in a blackboard this is quite hard).
Second, given that the words “independent” and “disjoint” are somewhat similar in real life, one might be tempted to see two disjoint circles in a Venn diagram as independent. Well, they are deterministically dependent.
If you draw squares, things become a little easier. Imagine four squares meeting at a vertex, with event A being the two left ones, and event B the two bottom ones. P(A) = P(A|B) = 1/2 so A and B are independent.
Can you go up to three? Almost. You can extend the above picture to three, but *pairwise* independent events, by letting event C occupy the upper left and the bottom right. Can you draw three independent (in the strict sense) events? I gave up 
Now, are Venn diagrams really bad at independent events, or they are they really good? By ‘good’ I mean that they are just saying to us that independent events, in nature, are in some sort of exceptional equilibrium. Thus, it should be as hard to draw them as they are rare in nature.
I decided to have a blog because I feel that the data that floats around is rarely information and when that is the case, only sometimes interesting. I believe that it can be useful to write down about these privileged cases. Writing about things you happen to like might also have the positive effect of motivating you to dig more. This was enough for me to set up the page (very easy with wp), but I am sure there are other good side effects.
