Chaos to Order

I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.

As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their madeup tales.

And so on.

Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Why is the Hiragana ‘mi’ so similar to the Devanagri ‘ma’?

Devanagri ma

Hiragana mi

I’ve always been bothered with that question. The similarity is unmistakable, but I fail to see any connection. The katakana mi isn’t similar to the hiragana mi, why should the hiragana mi develop such an unusually strong resemblance to the devanagri ma?

A look at the history of Hiragana shows that the alphabet originated from the Chinese man’yōgana. Here’s a table showing the evolution of the man’yōgana to the hiragana, sourced from Wikipedia:

For mi, check second row, fifth slot

This appears to hint that there is no connection between the devanagri ma and the hiragana mi, as the man’yōgana mi looks vastly different from either of the two letters.

I suppose the only answer left is coincidence.

Year of Lassitude

I checked the History of my blog and learned that I barely posted at all for the last one year. Perhaps it was something of a gap year for my blog.

Wicked Sick

I had a dream last night where I played two entire games of Unreal Tournament 2004. I think the second map was HyperSpace, and I was doing really well.

I wish I have more dreams like this.