From acbrown @ sccs.swarthmore.edu Fri Sep 16 10:30:03 2005 Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 20:35:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew C. Brown Reply-To: presidents @ swil.org To: swilnews @ swil.org Subject: SWILNews 02 of We Can't Find Our Notes SWILNews 02 of We Can't Find Our Notes The Hunt is still October 1st. If you would like to be an Orc, Hobgoblin, or shiny, shiny Squire, e-mail hunt @ swil.org. You get to scream and kill people or not be stabbed and earn out eternal gratitude (which lasts until November). [Hint: squires get nifty opportunities next year, even if they are lowly freshman or first-time Hunt-participants] [Participators -m] [Participants -f] [Participators! -m] [Participants! -f] [Are you going to stab me over word choice? -m] [Hello? English major! Yes! -f] [At least do it with a red pen... -m] Jamison sent out e-mails about getting tickets for the "Serenity" premier Sept 30. If you haven't reserved tickets, e-mail him at djamiso1 @ swarthmore.edu. Susan is running the RenFaire trip. She *will* e-mail Fun about this. [Or *else*. Dun dun dun! -f] [Your momma goes 'dun dun dun' -f] [So this is Mai having a conversation with herself -m] People Proved Sentient: Miles Erik Skorpen '09 Jeffery Thomford Kaufman [Your *momma's* name is spelled T-H-O-M-F-O-R-D -f] [I *really* don't like where this is going -m] '08 Alexander Hall George '09 [As we all know -c] Kimberly Diane Comer '09 Susan was not a secretary but rather an administrative assistant [which means if we slap her butt, it's sexual harassment -m] [ha-RASS-ment! -f] [har-ASSSSSS-ment -f] Ben Newman is cute and photogenic, but he was not voted to be our mascot, because the rabble liked the Callicles better. SWILBusiness [I think we need to read these to Andrew, because trusting Andrew's speling with Susan's speelling is a bad idea -c] The rabble was called to disorder at around noonish. Alex attempted to subvbert the call to disorder, but we declared it invalid and started over. The rabble was more pathetic the second time around. We saw that Lisa had a goofy hunter face, as filmed by the Hunting Video. Last week's Saturday Night SWIL was sword-making and "Into the Woods"; a folksing conflicted, but we still made like 20 swords. Maybe. SWIL needs a hacksaw and has a PVC cutter. [Have we missed the lesbians? -m] [No, we haven't gotten to the lesbians yet -c] And FLESH-DISSOLVING CHEMICALS! We showed "Alphaville", which is film-noir and French. This week, we are showing "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". The control of the REN-Faire went to Susan, who will now send us e-mail of AWESOMENESS to get us to go to Ren-Faire. This should happen, like, NOW, because a date is coming up. [So. NOTES! -m] Andrew wanted to know if Mai was missing because she had been kidnapped by vampire lesbians in New York City. It turned out she was with her brother. To ensure internal consistency, we voted that her brother was lesbians. !ANGST We talked about presidential requirements (sentient sophomores and juniors who want to be SWILPresident [ie want to be responsible for making sure that any and all SWIL things happen, and are willing to attempt to control the rabble to GET THINGS DONE]). Ideally, a ticket involves two or three people, such that the work does not overwhelm them and cause them to explode, splattering bits of SWILPresident all over the rabble). There are five people (currently) who want to be SWILPresident. You, too, can add to the angst by deciding to run for SWILPresident, as well. Susan, Jackie, Finlay, Eliza, and Jamison have all expressed interest. Arthur, Lisa, and JC is *not* a valid presidency. [What is he writing? -c] [It's probably not important -m] [It sounds like really bad porn -c] SUBMIT TO BEM (Especially you, Grendel's Workshop people! And Mai!) [I had to walk all the way over here from Whittier! Well, I had to walk all the way over here from Sharples, but first I had to walk all the way over there from Whittier! -f] [When I was your age, I had to walk five miles in the snow to get to Sharples! Uphill all three ways! -m] [Shut up, you man! -f] Interested in the Serenity opening? Ask Jamison to get you tickets! People are showing Firefly in Paul on 3rd floor lounge Sundays at noon, and Friday night in ML. The HUNT! Of DOOM! Oct 1, starting at 8 PM. Monsters get there at 6:30 and have loads of fun. Squires get there at 6:30 and have brownie points, and monsters and squires rock. We passed around the monster sign-up sheet, and if you still want to be a monster, e-mail the Wizards at hunt @ swil.org, and you will be assigned to be an orc or hobgoblin. The Hobgoblin queen is LAUREN GOODFRIEND! She inherited it from Chris Segal, '05, who granted unto the hobgoblins their racial battle-cry. The black knight will probably be Stifler, but people should not have been scared away from the possibility of getting to be cool monsters. Sentient Proofs: Jeffrey Thomford Kaufman is sentient. The set of non-members is finite, because no one is a non-member until proven sentient, and it takes a non-zero amount of time to prove sentience, and there has been a finite amount of time since SWIL began. Therefore, there exists a mapping from the subset of non-members to the set of natural numbers from 1 to n. Every one has a number, thus there is a cardinality of set. Therefore, any two non-members exist such that one is greater than the other. This cannot be true, because one non-member being greater than the other is repugnant. Because the set is finite, it cannot necessarily be numbered. Therefore, a contradiction, and therefore, as everything follows from a contradiction, Jeffrey is sentient. [Can someone who *majored* in math explain this reasoning to me? Email abrown1 @ swarthmore.edu -m] It is possible to be both non-member and member, Mendez said, so unless we were in quantum or deconstructionism, there was a flaw in Jeff's argument. Someone pointed out that we would have to prove SWIL is a metric space, such that we would have to show that there exists a "distance" function such that the distance between two SWILlies is equal only if they are the same person. Arthur babbled about tangent functions and multiplying by Reimann. There exists only one SWILlie who is Prime. However, mapping is not an equality, because Prime is not, in fact, prime. As we determined that Prime was not, in fact, prime, the normal laws of mathematics did not apply, therefore, we had reached a contradiction, and Jeff was sentient. We dismembered him by throwing a knife at him from across the room, and missing. Kimberly Diane Comer is sentient. She dragged Jeff Mao into the room. She asked him if he knew her, and he said they'd never met. Thus, she prodded by asking him if they were strangers. In fact, they were "perfect strangers." Kim then asked if that meant she were perfect. He did not reply, so she again asked if they were perfect strangers, and pushed him out the door and closed it. Therefore, she said that her perfection as a stranger to normal people made her a perfect non-normal person, ie, a SWILlies, and hence, sentient. Jamison said she couldn't be perfect unless she were static and unchanging, and hence dead. The rabble insisted that Jeff Mao was not a perfect stranger, because she had been controlling his mind. How else would he have known what to say? Someone asked if this meant she could control weak-minded people, and was therefore sentient. Everyone spoke up in Jeff Mao's defense, saying he was strong-minded. This made Kim *better* than a Jedi, and we voted her sentient because she had the ability to control the *strong*-minded. Andrew climbed on the table to get to Kim, and took her right hand. "Now join me and we can rule the galaxy together!" he said. Alexander Hall George is sentient. He stated that Meredith, in his capacity as SWIL President, had named him Q. As Q, he is a member of the Q Continuum, and therefore has god-like powers and can declare himself sentient. We didn't like this reasoning, and asked, "Do you have any subtext with Picard?" "Have you been attracted to Picard?" He responded "yes" to both questions, and was voted sentient on these grounds. Miles Erik Skorpen is sentient [Erik ++ -c] He began by saying that he looked at Wikipedia to find a definition of sentience: "Sentience is the capacity for basic consciousness ^× the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness." [wikipedia] He insisted that he was, therefore, sentient because he could perceive people. He also insisted that he could perceive things. He claimed to be aware of touching a wall the room promptly argued was non-existent. Arthur moved that we change the definition of "sentience" to be something unprintable in SWILNews. Jamison suggested that we chain Miles to the wall, and prove him sentient if he could see our shadows as we walked past. Andrew showed Miles one of the five symbols to test ESP, on the grounds that by merely guessing, he would only have a 1/5 chance of perceiving it. It was a star, and Miles saw it. However: Upon prodding, Miles gave his alternate argument. Plato argued that no one could be taught virtue or know virtue. However, divine inspiration can make one virtuous. Sentience, like virtue, is not knowable. However, one could be sentient if divinely inspired. We started debating the existence of God. Noda was going to go fetch God, but there was leftover God, which Noda stuck to the ceiling with a fork. Then Noda threw God at Miles. Struck by God, Miles was now divinely inspired. Thus inspired, he could be sentient. His right lung was taken by Noda. Mendez wanted to be called Cruxious Serif, as endorsed by Jawaad Hussain, and is also a member of Skull and Bones. Greg was eventually voted to be the Lexis-Nexis of Unrequited Hate, a vast On-line Database. Kiki's Delivery Service won the lottery, which was Lauren Smith, who won a pen, declining to delve the depths of the Mystery Pocket. NONSWIL BUSINESS There was dim sum on Sunday, as suggested by JC Ravage and Chris Segal. Abby and Emmanuelle want to show RockyHorror in October. Sarah promised to keep us alerted of when the Bryn Mawr RockyHorror show is. Eliza organized a Goodwill/Dollar Store trip after filming, which was after meeting. Blake was supposed to take people to Michael's and IKEA. Or something. 80% off everything at Jo-Ann's fabrics Michael Karcher's brother wants to bring us Steve Jackson Games, and we voted that it was generally cool when he came on Sunday nights, so he will appear at some point. Terry Pratchett came to Philadelphia on Sept 14. Lots of people went to see this, and got books signed. [I talked to him 4 times! -f] [And Andrew's was signed 'To-!' -c] [And he told me that 'there's always someone with an orangutan' -m] Attendence List of Robo-Grandpa Blake "World Enough and Time" Setlow Sarah "Dropping Ben Newman in food" Hartman JC "My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to SWIL meeting" Ravage Katie "The Infallible" Bates Allison "I am in Katie's Pocket" Barlow (Proxy) Greg "Boogie Woogie Feng Shui" Robinson Alex "Fear my Rod of Withering!! [simultaneous whimpers -c/f][Not moans, please not moans -c]*smack* *smack*" Pshenichkin Eliza "Spelling Ninja" Blair Revan "Darth Revan" Williams Erik "Completely Pissed off about the Pillow" Ellis David "Here by Proxy Jaime Sister" Kornfilt Mike "Of the house Atreides" Karcher Emmanuelle "llama, llama, DUCK!" Wambach Lauren "Joe J. Grimm" Smith Lauren "Rile" Goodfriend Meggie Ladlow Arthur "Bad-Ass Uncle F**ker" Chu AXEL "Continuum" George Kim "Phoenix Rising" Comer James "CRVXIS" Mendez Hodes Miles Skorpen Abigail "Week = -Good + Doubleplus ungood" Graber Mary "full of bubblegum coffee goodness" Wootters Marie "SWIL-angst surrounds me" Cosgrove-Davies George "Possibly here" Dahl Finlay "THERE IS NO ANGST! >_<" logan Lisa "Angst Alert Level Yellow!" Spitalewitz Jackie "It's never too early to have SWILAngst!" Werner Blair "Too much _Thel_!" Reaser Miriam "My roommate doesn't sleep enough" Newman Jeff "semi-fallible" Kaufman 50,000 Fiendish Horrid Llamas Jamison "The Best? Why, perhaps." Awesom Jamison "Vu" Deja [censored Dahl/Jamison] Margaret "Playing rabbits" Cosgriff Michael "Problem exists between Sharples Tray and chair" Noda Jackie "Oh God, it hurts" Werner Susan "Administrative Assisstant" Zell Chris "Bored" Jager [censored Dahl/Jamison] Jean "logically challenged" Schneider BDan "subway token opposition" Fairchild m/c/f-The Ironic Signature