You wouldn’t know it from the Baptist church I attend, but today is the first Sunday of Advent. As a child, I thought of Advent as a time to light Advent candles, sing Christmas carols, make paper chains and popcorn chains for the tree, and put up the Nativity scenes. It was a time of preparation, but mostly doing fun things in preparation for more fun things. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned about Advent being a time of spiritual preparation.

Past years I have tried to do a family Advent devotional using an Advent wreath I had made (for our first Christmas together, twenty years ago). As the boys get older (and less excited by the simple act of lighting candles and blowing them out) and my husband’s work schedule has made family get-togethers infrequent, we’ve gotten away from it. This year I decided to try something different.

Al loves to play games, and he is always wanting a new game to play. (Today we made a “Christmasland” game, modeled after Candyland, with red and green squares, plus some special squares showing items such as ornaments, a nutcracker, a candle, etc.) So I talked about Advent being a time of getting ready, and how we get ready in different ways for things. He gets ready for school by getting dressed and eating breakfast, and he gets ready for a test by studying. If we go on a trip, we get ready by packing.

So if you were going on a trip somewhere for Christmas, what would you put in your suitcase to make sure that you had a wonderful Christmas?

I said I would pack

• a camera, to take pictures of people and the wonderful times we would have
• a Bible, so we could read the Christmas story
• a songbook of Christmas carols
• a warm jacket, hat, and mittens so we could go Christmas caroling

Al said we would need to take gifts to give to each other and to other people, and we would want to be sure we had food to eat (he suggested apples and bread).

Note that these need to be items that can actually be put in a suitcase. It might be handy to be able to pack sufficient patience to deal with the people and situations that often cause stress during the holidays, but patience isn’t pack-able – you only get it as you use it. Besides, I’ll deal with character traits later in Advent.

So what would you pack?

This book apparently belongs to the “literary thriller” genre. Naturally it is compared to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, depending on the reader’s prefernces, I suppose. Not having read Brown’s book – or heard anything that would interest me in reading it – I can’t comment on the comparison. But The Geographer’s Library is a decently-written book if you have an interest in esoteric bits of history and patience for a slow-moving mystery.

Attaching the word “thriller” to this book seems somewhat inappropriate, as the pace moves fairly leisurely, especially with historical vignettes interspersed with the present-day story. As many reviewers at amazon.com noted, these short stories-within-a-story are generally better than the frame story. (I saw one review that opined the opposite, which surprised me. The one drawback I can think of to those shorter stories was that they were good enough that I would have liked them to continue.)

The common thread through all the historical pieces is that they deal with items that have some significance in the history of alchemy. You learn, over the course of the book, something of the ideas of alchemy – which is much more than trying to turn lead into gold. I found all this very interesting, almost more so than the present-day story. Of course, I was expecting all these items to show up sometime, somehow, in the present-day story. That they did not was part of my disappointment with the ending.

The narrator also lost his appeal for me as a character at the end. He is a young man who ended up as a journalist more or less by accident, and he still has not figured out what to do with his life. I do not expect every book to end with success for the main character, but at least a triumph of the human spirit over obstacles makes a satisfying ending.

I realize that, given the way author Jon Fasman chose to resolve the central mystery, the young journalist’s options were very limited. And perhaps acting the way he does is true to character. But if anything he appears less mature at the end of the book than at the beginning. (Admittedly, only about a week has gone by – so much has happened that it is hard to remember that so little time has passed.)

If this were a book by an experienced writer, I would probably not try another book by the same author. But it turns out that this is Fasman’s first novel. His second novel, The Unpossessed City, just came out last month, and it is getting better reviews on amazon.com (4 stars compared to 3 for the first book). Rather than jumping across centuries and continents, this one is set primarily in Moscow, and gives a close look at life in that city today. (Considering how many of the historical pieces of The Geographer’s Library were set in the USSR, I am not surprised that Fasman has a familiarity/interest in Russia and its people.)

I ran out of tiles and room on the board, or I would have added GAMES such as Scrabble – particularly since it gave me a way to creatively express some of what I am thankful for.

I was going to make it a crossword puzzle, and give descriptions for each word, telling why I am thankful for each. But I know some of you are not aficionados of word puzzles the way I am. Plus that would have taken a lot more time, and I still have to cook corn casserole and green bean casserole and sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes.

Most of these are self-explanatory, but I will add notes on a few of the words. Speaking of words, I was going to write WORDS, since I have so much fun with words, but I had no more S tiles. Then I realized it could mean the Word of God, so I was happy to leave it in the singular.

WIT can refer both to intelligence and to humor; I am more gifted in the former than the latter, but I greatly appreciate others whose humor enriches my life. (Note that WIT is linked to LAUGHTER.)

I am thankful both for the FREEDOM I have as an American, and the FREEDOM I have in Christ.

I am thankful for the opportunity to communicate with GOD through PRAYER. And for the PRAYERs said by other people in my behalf.

PIZZA seems a bit out of place with the other, more profound things I am thankful for. But I wanted to use every tile, and I do appreciate pizza – both for it being a delicious one-dish meal (if it has lots of toppings including vegetables), and because when I am tired it is so easy to prepare dinner when I have a pizza or two in the freezer. (In case you have noticed that there appear to be two Z tiles, while Scrabble only has one – I used a blank tile, and digitally copied the Z to the blank tile.)

The final “word” in the puzzle, OXO, represents hugs and kisses. The kisses are for family members, but to all friends and family, I extend a warm hug and wishes for a blessed Thanksgiving.

This will be a short review, because it’s hard to say much about the movie without telling too much about the plot.

Knowing is a good movie. I don’t think I’d say, as one viewer does at imdb.com, that it is a fun movie, because it’s serious and dark in some ways. It’s definitely not your typical disaster movie. It’s not non-stop action – I wasn’t on the edge of my chair (I actually managed to mend a long rip in a pair of my husband’s shorts, though it took the whole movie). But I certainly never lost interest.

The premise is certainly interesting – a time capsule containing schoolchildren’s predictions about the future. (I remember doing that – the predictions, not the time capsule - in 1970, and our predictions about the year 2000 were certainly way off.) One girl, instead of drawing a picture, fills her page with numbers. The boy who gets her paper, fifty years later, is intrigued but puzzled. His father, though, is the one who finds the key when he spots the date 9/11/2001.

I knew that much before I saw the movie, and that was the reason for my interest – plus I’ve been impressed by other movies starring Nicholas Cage. Where the movie would go from there I had no idea – and if I had tried to guess, knowing the formulas that Hollywood typically uses, I would have been very wrong.

This isn’t a movie for kids. It deserves its PG-13 rating. It’s very sobering to see the disaster scenes, with so many people killed. (I could hardly believe one comment at imdb.com saying how cool the disaster scenes were.) It’s not a depressing movie, like some I have seen. But it is sobering. I wouldn’t watch it if I were feeling down and wanting to be cheered up.

This morning during breakfast, my son Al asked me, “Where did the idea of genies come from?” I have no idea what brought the question on, as I don’t remember they’re having been part of our conversation up to that point. I was tempted to answer that the origins of legends are almost by definition unknown, and that at most we can say what part of the world they come from. But I don’t think he meant the “where” geographically.

I could also have given an abstract answer about how people have come up with fanciful stories to explain things they don’t understand. But that wouldn’t really answer his question either. He wanted to know where the idea of the genie, specifically, came from.

So I decided to see what I could find out to answer his question. Just how did people come up with the idea of powerful beings with no more substance than smoke, who were kept in lamps and granted wishes when they were released? I’ve read a fair amount of mythology, but mostly that of European origins. Genies, as any kid who has watched Disney’s Aladdin can tell you, come from Arabia.

The word genie is the English equivalent of the Arabic jinn (or djinn). According to wikipedia, it came by way of the French translation of Arabian Nights, where the French word génie (from the Latin word genius for a guardian spirit assigned to each person at birth) was considered a particularly apt transliteration of the Arabic. Most of our ideas about genies came from the stories in Arabian Nights (and modern stories building on those literary foundations), especially the story of Aladdin. Oddly enough, this story was not in the Arabic version, and was added by the French translator, who had heard it from an Arab Syrian storyteller from Aleppo.

I read my father’s copy of Arabian Nights when I was growing up, but I had long ago forgotten most of it when Disney’s Aladdin came out. I knew that of course Disney had made up a good deal of it, but I couldn’t tell which elements they had kept from the original story other than the poor boy finding the lamp and the genie. From poking around on the web, I see other features of the original story that were preserved in the animated movie:

• A sorcerer recruits Aladdin to retrieve a wonderful lamp from a booby-trapped magic cave.
• After the sorcerer attempts to double-cross him, Aladdin finds himself trapped in the cave.
• The sorcerer is later able to get his hands on the lamp by trickery (in the original, he tricks Aladdin’s wife).

In the original, there are actually two genies, one in a magic ring and a more powerful one in the lamp. Disney left out the ring and gave Aladdin a magic carpet to fulfill some of the lesser genie’s functions in the story (remaining with him after a sorcerer gets the lamp away from him, and getting him out of some difficult situations). Neither genie helps Aladdin out of friendship and goodwill, as Disney’s Genie does. Jinn (which is the plural form of the word in Arabic) are generally not at all kindly disposed to humans, and serve them only when they must.

Several years ago I picked up an entertaining anthology of stories about genies (Aladdin: Master of the Lamp). Truer to tradition, these genies fulfill the letter of the requests that are made but nearly always manage to do so in some tricky way that makes the person worse off. Jafar’s treatment of Abis Mal (who finds his lamp and asks for a legendary treasure, only to find himself, with the treasure, at the bottom of the sea) in Disney’s The Return of Jafar is a good example of this.

I was surprised to discover that jinn are discussed in the Koran, and are considered a creation of God, somewhat similar to mankind. Man was created from dirt; jinn were created from “a smokeless flame of fire.” (And angels were created from light.) One of them, Iblis, disobeyed God by refusing to prostrate himself to Adam, because Adam had been made from mud. Iblis and other disobedient jinn became known as shayateen (satans).

According to Islam, jinn eat and drink, and procreate. They live in some kind of organized society, and are generally hidden from humans although they can see humans. We see them only when they take a material form, which is usually in an unpleasant or ugly form such as a snake or a black dog, as opposed to angels who take pleasant and handsome forms. They have free will, and can choose good or evil. They can even choose to be Muslims, or to be unbelievers. Like men, after death they will go to Paradise or to Hell. They whisper deceit to men and mislead them.

[Side note: I found it strange to read a FAQ page where people’s questions about jinn, such as whether a human can marry one, what they eat, and whether they have pets, are answered based on verses in the Koran. In some places the expert giving the answers acknowledges that scholars differ on the matter, and I was reminded of Random Name’s comment on WorldMagBlog recently in the midst of some theological disagreement:

Once a person accepts things that can’t be proven are the foundation of truth, they can argue about the details for the rest of their life, always claiming that they have “proved” their case.

Having scholars debate the details of the lives of jinn may seem absurd to us (considering that they are not arguing about it as literature but as an aspect of our reality). But the arguments that Christians have over the meaning of the Trinity or the nature of heaven no doubt seems just as absurd to non-Christians.]

I was further intrigued to read an opinion regarding evidence of jinn influence in our world today. Occult activity is attributed to them (whereas conservative Christians would attribute it to demons, and skeptics to trickery or pure imagination). So are religious visions of Christ or the Virgin Mary, and even visions of Mohammed or Allah (presumably Allah does not grant such visions). And so are the illusions performed by magicians, who are thought to have sold their souls to the jinn in exchange for their cooperation in tricks such as making objects disappear and reappear (which the jinn can do easily by traveling long distances almost instantaneously).

What I still haven’t found is how these jinn entered folktales as granters of wishes. I found an interesting article discussing characteristics of Arabic folklore, showing how the stories reflect the culture they grew out of. But while it mentions jinn (as one of the evil forces that control human beings), it makes no mention of lamps or wishes. As people everywhere do wish for things they do not have, however, it is not surprising that the folklore of cultures around the world include stories of wishes granted by magical beings.

In a culture where the most common supernatural beings are jinn, and they have powers that could grant some (though certainly not all) of people’s wishes, it is natural that stories would develop where jinn grant wishes. Since they have no desire to be servants to humans, however, the human would have to be provided some kind of power over the jinn in order to compel them to grant the wishes. Possessing a container which could be used to imprison the jinn would provide such a degree of compulsion.

As for why the wishes are granted by jinn who try to trick the humans and give them technically what they asked for but not what they really want, I suppose it reflects the wisdom of the community storytellers (typically a very respected position in a pre-literate society). Observation of human behavior over time will show that people very often wish for things that are not what is best for them, and often regret it later when they have what the wished for and realize it’s not what they really want. (And this applies perfectly well to non-magical wishing.)

Lately Al likes to ask me a question such as “What would you like to invent?” or present a scenario such as “Your teacher comes in holding a strange bag… What happens next?” Apparently these are exercises he has been given in school to develop creative writing abilities. Yesterday it was “If you had three wishes, what would you wish for?” Assuming that “more wishes” was probably not allowed as an answer, I came up with the relatively unimaginative “A million dollars” for my first wish.

A million dollars really wouldn’t go all that far, once I paid off all our debt, saved some for taxes (even money delivered by a genie would come under some taxable category or other), provided for our sons’ college education, given a good chunk to charity, saved for retirement, and fixed numerous problems with the house. So I don’t think that I would be ruined by sudden wealth, as I have heard that many lottery winners are. But I suppose I would lose the opportunity to trust in God to provide for our needs, so I will have to reluctantly conclude that it’s just as well that genies only show up in fiction.

I downloaded this game at the same time as Peggle Nights (both were already paid for), but waited, as usual, for an opportune time before installing it. We had company (friends of my husband) downstairs where Al and I usually play together, so I agreed to install a new game.

Super Collapse 3 is a “match 3″ game, which I just learned is a type of game that goes back some two thousand years. After the fall of Rome, the idea of the game (no ancient gameboards survived) was preserved in medieval monasteries. Professors from England brought the game to America when they went to teach at Harvard. The games became very popular in America for the next two centuries. There was a popular match-3 game show in the 1950’s, but it was quickly cancelled after evidence surfaced that the producers had “fixed” the game.

I suppose there were so many inexpensive games available in the next few decades that match-3 games lost their popularity. I certainly don’t remember playing any, or even being aware of their existence, until Al started playing them on the computer. They’re relatively easy to create and easy to play.

Some of the match-3 games I have played previously (and reviewed here) are Luxor, Newton’s Nightmare, Ultra Block, and Mr. Peanut Matchup. Of these Super Collapse 3 is closest to Ultra Block, but unlike Ultra Block it has very “modes” of play. Classic mode is very similar to Ultra Block, though it differs in one helpful way: when there are no available moves the game speeds up (temporarily), so you not only don’t have to wait as long to make the next move, but you always know whether there is or isn’t a move available.

One challenging variation on this is “Relapse” mode. Unlike any other match game I have played, this one has two “bases” to play simultaneously, one at the bottom of the screen (which is normal) and one that starts at the top and grows down. I assume that you lose if the two sets of blocks meet in the middle, but so far I have won all those levels on the first try – despite the strangeness of blocks “dropping” up when other blocks are removed.

Another very interesting variation is “Slider” mode. Instead of remaining stationary on the screen (except when blocks below them vanish or drop), the blocks are constantly in motion. Some rows move left, while others are moving right. The challenge is to catch a group of at least three same-colored blocks while they are together – which doesn’t last long at all. And by the time the blocks above drop down, they may be in a different spot that when you planned your move – if you can even plan at that speed. Mostly I just react and hope I hit something.

I haven’t really gotten the hang of “Strategy” mode yet. You have more time to plan your moves, but you’d better plan them well, because each time you click on some blocks, more are added at the bottom. (I think none are added except when you click.) So you’d better remove more blocks than will get added. In classic mode, you can do quite well by finding groups of just three, but doing it fast. In strategy mode, that’s a quick way to lose.

Then there is “Puzzle” mode, where no blocks are ever added. The screen starts filled with blocks in a pattern, and you choose which groups of colored blocks to remove in which order, realizing how the other blocks will be positioned after they drop to fill the gaps. As they do, previous separate groups of the same color will become contiguous, allowing you to remove them all with one click. The idea is to remove all the blocks (you lose if any blocks are left over, such as only two of one color at the end) in as few moves as possible.

All that appeals to me, but it might not appeal to Al as much if it weren’t for the quests. (This is why I picked it as a good game for us to share.) He likes a game with a storyline, and this one has you move through different places on a map. Along the way you can also stop at Stores to buy helpful items such as color bombs (they remove all blocks of a single color) or hints. And you can go to Casinos and use coins (which you earn by winning levels of the game, and by blowing up “unmoveable” blocks) in games of chance such as a slot machine.

 The storyline is hardly as interesting as Bookworm Adventure, where you are exposed to elements from classic literature, and where both the bookworm and its opponents have interesting personalities. I’m not sure it even has as much of a storyline as Peggle Nights, where characters were dreaming (that’s where the title comes from – they’re asleep at night) of doing whatever it is they have dreamed (as in wished) of doing.

But it’s new, which is often enough of an appeal for a while. And there is a Quick Play for when you just want to play a certain “mode” such as Relapse or Slider, so I can work on getting better at those. At least, I can play them in Quick Play once I have “unlocked” them, which either requires a certain level of success at them in Quest play (I’m not sure if it’s number of games won or superior stats when playing), or spending coins at a Store to unlock them.

Did you know that today is World Hello Day? I didn’t either, until I found the link at wikipedia. It’s a rather obscure holiday (at least I consider something obscure that has been around since I was ten years old and I never heard about it), the purpose of which is to use communication to help bring about world peace.

People around the world use the occasion of World Hello Day as an opportunity to express their concern for world peace. Beginning with a simple greeting on World Hello Day, their activities send a message to leaders, encouraging them to use communication rather than force to settle conflicts.

I think saying hello to ten people is a good thing, but as most people can easily say hello to ten people within their own community in the course of their daily routine, I have trouble seeing how it sends a message to leaders or to people elsewhere in the world who might not be at peace with us. I’m not sure how many people I said hello to today – not knowing that it was a special day for saying hello – but even if it was ten, how would that make a difference outside my community?

Let’s see, there was Jane at the Girl Scout Stocking Stuffer event (we donated toys and school supplies to be put in stockings for needy children in the community). And another Girl Scout leader whom I don’t know, but who was very friendly to us. There was Jackie at Wal-Mart, who pretended to bump her shopping cart into mine by mistake.

I would have said hello to the teenage girl who answered the door when we went to deliver popcorn (from the Cub Scout fundraiser) if she hadn’t forestalled my greeting by saying, “No thanks, we don’t want any.” (I explained that her mom had already bought it, and we were just delivering it, at which point she was much more friendly, and accepted the popcorn from us.)

And of course I said greeted the other members of my family, when we got up this morning (or this evening, in the case of my husband with his night work schedule). I think a cheerful and friendly hello is a great thing, and it’s good for both the greeter and “greetee,” and does lead to a greater sense of community and mental and emotional health. But unless we say hello to people outside our community, how does it help the cause of world peace?

Well, here on my blog I get to say hello to as many people as visit. Based on recent stats (helped greatly by my having been a finalist for the Fun with WordPress Logo contest), considerably more than ten people have been visiting here daily. I don’t know how many read my current post, as opposed to the one I did for the contest, but I’ll assume that some at least will read this.

Most will be English-speakers, since I’m writing in English. But I’ll say hello in a few other languages anyway, just in case.

Hello!

¡Hola!

Salut!

Hallo!

Aloha!

Saluton!

Alô!

And if you speak a different language, or would like to be able to say hello in another language, you can find out how to say hello in a lot of different languages here.

It’s 11 PM, and normallly I would be heading to bed now (if I weren’t already asleep), but I’m still pumped up from tonight’s concert. Listening to Monroe Crossing was fabulous. I enjoyed our own part of the concert too, singing the spirituals, and later singing the Bluegrass Mass accompanied by Monroe Crossing. But I couldn’t help thinking, sitting in the audience while the band performed, that all the chorale rehearsals were worth it to get to hear Monroe Crossing without having to pay for a ticket.

I don’t know whether I’m a fan of bluegrass in general now, but I’m certainly a fan of Monroe Crossing. (I even went to facebook to become a fan of them there.) They are funny, friendly, and superb musicians. Amazingly versatile, in terms of the instruments played and the styles of music they can do. Bluegrass is a meld of styles to begin with, and apparently it has branched off into a number of sub-genres. They could probably do all of them if they chose to.

One of the really fun numbers Monroe Crossing did was what they said was a cross between bluegrass and Motown – what they call “mo-grass” (say it aloud if you don’t get the humor there). As ignorant of much of pop culture as I am, even I recognized “My Girl,” even if I had no idea (until I looked it up on wikipedia) that it was a hit from The Temptations. I don’t know what The Temptations would have thought of their song being play bluegrass style, but the audience tonight sure enjoyed it.

There were Gospel numbers, including two written by members of Monroe Crossing. I liked “Into the Fire” so much that I bought the CD afterward. They did numbers that were pure bluegrass, including one written by the “founding father” of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe (for whom this band is named). Because of the upcoming holidays, the banjo player even performed a solo version of “Carol of the Bells” – on the banjo, of course.

If you get a chance to hear Monroe Crossing, take advantage of the opportunity. Even if you don’t think you’d like bluegrass, let them surprise you. As quoted in our concert programs tonight, “I dare ANYONE to watch Monroe Crossing and not get happy!” (D.A. Calloway, Silver Dollar City)

Monday evening, our Webelos den went to the library to work on earning their Communicator pin. After going over how to find books and how to take good care of them, the children’s librarian brought out what looked like a very large photo album. This was a Braille copy of the Bible, she explained, and she gave the boys a chance to feel the pages.

My parents had friends who were blind, so I was familiar with the look and feel of Braille materials from an early age. (Not that I ever learned to read them.) It came as somewhat of a surprise, Monday, to realize that it has been so long since I have seen someone actually using Braille that it was probably something completely new to these fourth grade boys.

The librarian added that no one was using the Braille books anymore, so they had been removed from the library’s holdings. She saved the Braille Bible herself, because it seemed a shame to lose something so wonderful. Today people use recorded books instead, she explained.

When I was growing up, there were recorded books, but they weren’t widely available. When my grandfather had cataract surgery, he had patches over his eyes while he recovered, and we took turns staying with him and helping him out while he was unable to see. To pass the time, he listened to some recorded books, which were loaned out by the organization that made them available to blind people.

They weren’t on CDs of course, or even cassettes – these were LP records. I knew how to use a record player, but I was always nervous about setting down the needle, afraid I would miss and scratch the record. It’s easy to see why most people wouldn’t be interested in audiobooks of that nature, and with demand being low, naturally supply was low also.

Cassettes and portable cassette players changed all that. Instead of having to get volunteers to read books aloud to be recorded, today’s audiobooks are professionally produced, read by people who become known for the quality of their voice characterizations. This makes a much larger range of materials available for blind people – and decreases the motivation to learn Braille.

I started wondering how much Braille is still used. I see Braille on signs for public restrooms – and I always wondered how people who can’t see find the signs to begin with. I found out yesterday, reading through an online discussion of such signs. Most of those who are considered legally blind have some vision – not enough to rely on for many purposes but enough to locate signs on walls.

Unfortunately – according to proponents of Braille – fewer visually impaired people are learning Braille today. Only an estimated 10% can read Braille, while the rest rely on recorded books, devices that convert text to speech, and (if their vision is good enough) magnifying devices that enable them to read printed materials.

A librarian in Tennessee explains the benefits of knowing Braille, even in an age when electronic devices can do so much for the visually impaired.

I always emphasize that you can do many things with braille that are impossible with audio materials, such as label the cans in your kitchen cabinets, or the bottles in your medicine cabinet, learn punctuation and spelling of words, etc.

One article I read explains another reason for the decreasing use of Braille – it has not been encouraged in the public school systems. Once children with special needs were integrated into mainstream schools and classrooms, teaching Braille to blind children became a low priority. Having a special needs child myself, I can’t imagine any of his teachers wanting less for him than the best he can do, but apparently some special ed teachers have had low expectations for the career prospects of blind students.

A blind woman who rented a room in my parents’ home, after my sister went off to college, was employed at the local VA hospital. Unlike another blind friend who worked in a sheltered workshop, where blind people were provided with routine work (packing boxes, I think) and paid very little, Genevieve was a skilled medical transcriptionist. The fact that she had once been sighted no doubt helped, as she had probably already been an excellent typist before the car accident that blinded her. But she was evidence that a totally blind person could function quite capably in a demanding job.

Most blind people who are employed do read and write Braille, according to Chris Danielson of the National Federation of the Blind. I don’t know how much that indicates that knowing Braille helps one get work and succeed on the job, and how much it is because people who are driven to succeed will work to give themselves whatever advantages they can. But it explains why states are passing laws requiring that every blind student be assessed to see if Braille will help them, and to have Braille taught to all those who will benefit.

I tried to imagine how Braille could be useful in the kind of work I do. Certainly one can type without seeing the keyboard (that’s the idea of touch typing – you’re not supposed to look at it), and I’m sure there are printers that produce Braille output, but how in the world could you make a computer monitor with raised bumps?

It turns out there is such a thing as a Braille terminal, but those that are currently available are very expensive. If you work with computers, you’ve probably noticed that the components that break most often are the ones with moving parts (printer, mouse, keyboard, disk drive). Just imagine how many moving parts are required to make all those sets of bumps go up and down. Keyboards and mice used to cost a lot more, but with such widespread use they’ve become throwaway items when they stop working.

Braille devices will never have that large a market. But fortunately enough R&D is being done that a new, simpler device is being developed. A rotating wheel moves the display past the finger, instead of the finger moving over the display. This means that only a single dot grid is required instead of dozens, which will greatly reduce the costs to manufacture these once they are commercially available.

I hope I never lose my sight. I have heard many people say that if they had to choose between sight and hearing, they would choose hearing. I wouldn’t like to lose my hearing (though I do like silence), but I would hate to lose my vision. I’m glad to know, though, of all the possibilities available to me if that should happen. And now I know that I should take good care of my fingers, so that if I ever need to read Braille I’ll be able to.

In a recent post I quoted mountaineer George Mallory’s famous line about why he climbed mountains: “Because it’s there.” The challenge drew him irresistibly, even to his death atop Mount Everest. While I like hiking, I’ve never been drawn to dangerous climbs. But I do respond to the challenge of a good puzzle.

My sons, especially my younger son Al, do not seem to feel the same way about challenges. I am annoyed when he helps me with a puzzle I’m working on, though I try to express appreciation because I know he means to be helpful. I do not want help, I want to solve it on my own. Some of that may be pride, but it is also because it is the challenge itself that appeals to me, and to the extent that hints reduce the difficulty of solving it, they reduce my pleasure in finding the solution.

Over the years I’ve noticed that some kinds of challenges appeal to me more than others. At one time, the idea of fiendishly difficult jigsaw puzzles appealed to me. One sort has no picture, just a solid color, and only the shape of the pieces shows how to put it together. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there is The World’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle, where every piece is exactly the same shape, and only the picture provides the solution - plus the puzzle is double-sided, with the same picture on both sides! But by the time I had money of my own to purchase such puzzles, I found I was no longer interested.

I enjoy difficult crossword puzzles, but if I spend an hour on a puzzle and have only come up with a few words, not enough to help me get any more, the puzzle is simply too hard for me. I will try even longer on an acrostic, but eventually I will give up on those also if too many clues are too obscure for me to come up with even a decent guess. I can do “cross-sums” puzzles, but I find that too often, I discover three quarters of the way through that I must have made some error in logic early on, and the only way to undo it is to start completely over. So I rarely start them at all.

One kind of puzzle I enjoy is computer programming, but never purely for the sake of the challenge itself. I like doing programming that provides a useful solution to a problem, or an entertaining game to play. I work at the application level, meaning the level where the program interacts with the user, rather than at the systems level where the program simply provides a platform for other developers to write their programs.

One kind of computer puzzle I have never found an interest in is hacking. The term hacker is often used in a pejorative sense, because some hackers have used their ability to alter hijack code for malicious purposes. But at root, hacking is simply figuring out the secrets that are coded into computers and not intended for anyone but the people who put them there to know. It’s not a challenge that appeals to me, but it has a very strong appeal to many people – at least to many young men (estimates of hacker demographics indicate that about 90% are male and median age is 25).

Some weeks ago, I read in the Wall Street Journal about people “jailbreaking” their iPhones. (I can’t find the article now, only a video about a teenage hacker trying to “go legit.”) Jailbreaking is apparently very popular, but most of the people who do it aren’t hackers themselves, they simply follow instructions in order to take advantage of apps they wouldn’t get otherwise.

Today I read about calculator hackers. I never imagined hacking a calculator, but then I’ve never used a graphing calculator. (My older son has one for use in math classes, and I have watched him use it, but I prefer the more familiar numbers-only devices.) The only way I ever learned to use a calculator for entertainment was for spelling – you turn it upside down so that a 3 looks like an E, a 4 like an h, etc., and spell out words. The possibilities are very limited, and the game loses its appeal after about five minutes.

Hackers can do a great deal more with today’s graphing calculators. An article in today’s Wall Street Journal lists a few applications some hackers have developed. How would you like to use your calculator as an Etch-a-Sketch? Or play Tetris on it? There’s a catch though – how would you like to receive a cease-and-desist letter from lawyers for Texas Instruments, ordering you to stop messing with their intellectual property?

Perhaps it’s my lack of understanding of the technology, or of Texas Instruments’ business model, but I have trouble seeing how these hackers are doing any actual harm to the company’s intellectual property. So far as I can see, the hackers aren’t making any money off their home-made apps, and as Texas Instruments isn’t in the business of selling handheld electronic games (are they?), it doesn’t seem that they’re losing any revenue by this either. (In cases where the hackers extend the calculator’s ability to do more complicated math, this argument would be harder to make. But I have to admit my sympathies still lie with those who can make their purchased devices work even better.)

Unlike the iphones apps which require jailbreaking, these calculator apps have little if any purpose other than the challenge of creating them. That’s not a criticism of them – if anything, that seems like a more acceptable motivation to me, than if the hackers were after personal gain of anything beyond the satisfaction of reaching a difficult goal. After all, crossword puzzles and jigsaw puzzles have no purpose other than the challenge of completing them, and whatever entertainment one derives from the time spent on the activity.

When I was learning to create web pages using HTML tags and the python programming language, one of the first things I did was create a page to play Yahtzee. For convenience and ease of play, my handheld electronic Yahtzee is far superior. But duplicating the logic using python and HTML proved to me that I had a good handle on the syntax – and it was certainly more entertaining than practicing with more staid business applications.

However little interest I have in exploring the inner workings of calculator brains, I can certainly understand the motivation that drives those who do. As one calculator hobbyist explains in the WSJ artice, “There’s no greater feeling than being told something can’t be done and then showing them it can.”