Andrew J. Fletcher

From my Files: Eight Articles

I was going through my Down­loads folder the other day and doing some sort­ing and throw­ing out of old tor­rents and what not, and noticed a sev­eral arti­cles that I had read in the past year. Just PDFs that I had down­loaded and read. Some of them were sources I used for classes at UNCA, some were just points along my per­sonal learn­ing jour­ney. I think they were pretty inter­est­ing and eclec­tic, and had good mem­o­ries of read­ing them. So I’m shar­ing them, with a brief descrip­tion. I’ve put them in alpha­bet­i­cal order. PDFs will open in a new window.

  • Ambi­ent Tem­per­a­ture and Vio­lent Crime: Tests of the Lin­ear and Curvi­lin­ear Hypothe­ses
    • Do changes in tem­per­a­ture cor­re­late to crime rates? If so, what is that rela­tion­ship? Jour­nal of Per­son­al­ity and Social Psy­chol­ogy. Pub­lished 1984, Vol. 46, No. 1, 91–97. 6 pages. 775 kb.
  • Apollo 11 Tech­ni­cal Crew Debrief­ing
    • Aldrin, Collins and Arm­strong dis­cuss the entire Apollo 11 mis­sion, from suit­ing up to moon land­ing, return­ing to Earth and com­ments on the nuts and bolts of how every­thing worked from the view­point of the men who had to make it work. National Aero­nau­tics and Space Agency, July 31st 1969. 156 pages. 1.2 mb.
  • Hand­gun Wound­ing and Effec­tive­ness
    • There is a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion about what makes a gun deadly, and what exactly the effects of a bul­letin on the human body are. Here is a fright­en­ingly well-researched study by the FBI on just that. Bonus: “FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT DISSEMINATION ONLY.” US Depart­ment of Jus­tice, Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion. Pub­lished July 14, 1989. 16 pages. 203 kb.
  • Hydrofrack­ing: The Need for Respon­si­ble Gas Drilling Reg­u­la­tion and the Role of Nat­ural Gas
    • Looks at the prob­lems of hydrofrack­ing, and assesses what could be done to make it safe way to access energy. More arti­cles from the pub­lisher, an inde­pen­dent energy think­tank, are avail­able here. I don’t smell petro-dollars here, but as always, reader dis­cre­tion is advised. Energy Vision. 2011. 14 pages. 720 kb.
  •  McMahon-Hussein Cor­re­spon­dence: Com­ments and a Reply
    • Why does the state of Israel exist? What estab­lished the bor­ders? Who was involved in those deci­sions and how did that make them? McMahon-Hussein is a big piece of that story. Arnold Toyn­bee addresses these ques­tions from an aca­d­e­mic, not a polit­i­cal view­point.  Jour­nal of Con­tem­po­rary His­tory, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1970), pp. 185–201. 18 pages. 518 kb.
  • Road to Riches
    • Where does wealth come from? Over thou­sands of years, the stan­dard of liv­ing of humans has crawled slowly for­ward, until about 250 years ago in West­ern Europe. Why? Given Mitt Romney’s recent com­ments about the eco­nomic advan­tages of Israeli cul­ture. The Econ­o­mist, Dec 23rd 1999. 8 pages. 228 kb.
  • Power Notes: Slide Pre­sen­ta­tions Recon­sid­ered
    • Most Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion are awful. But it can be used with pur­pose and serve to enlighten rather than bore and dis­tract your audi­ence. IIID Inter­na­tional Insti­tute for Infor­ma­tion Design Swin­burne Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy. 2011. 67 pages. 7.2 mb.
  • A Steampunk’s Guide to the Apoc­a­lypse
    • A fun and styl­ish look at how the tech­nol­ogy of the past could help you sur­vive the dis­as­ter of the future. Steam­punk Mag­a­zine. Octo­ber 2007. 31 pages. 7.9 mb.

Memo to self

I have a lot of work ahead of me.

My friends and I have been bub­bling with talk of a move to New York City. Not imme­di­ately or any­thing, but the prospect excites me greatly. I’ve always had this self-defeating atti­tude that I was not good enough for New York City, but I’m try­ing to shed my self-imposed lim­i­ta­tions and level up, to bor­row an RPG term. As the song goes, if you can make it New York you can make it any­where, and I’d like to see if I’m made of that stuff. I think there could be a lot for me there.

But I still am feel­ing the old frus­tra­tions, the old strug­gles, the old weak­nesses that peck away at my poten­tial. There’s all these things I feel I could be truly great at, the things I feel I have inside me that I can’t get out — I could be a great piano player, I could be a great designer, I could be a great ________. What stops me?

Me.

And so, I’m on big self-improvement kick again.

ONE: I’m going back to school, and I’m really excited about it. I have a great sched­ule — just Tues­days and Thurs­days. I’m tak­ing Lit­er­a­ture Based Research (again, because I’m lazy and a ter­ri­bly non-prolific writer), Cul­tural Anthro­pol­ogy (awe­some), and Music The­ory I (4 credit hours, easy A.) I may yet be able to add a 1 credit Yoga.

TWO: Music has to be a big­ger part of my life. I’m play­ing semi-seriously with a friend of mine, Elias, and we’ve had some killer song­writ­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions. First time in a long time I’ve felt like I really had a great musi­cal part­ner­ship that wasn’t a student-teacher thing.

THREE: Read­ing. I’ve been read­ing a great deal more lately. I ran into Malaprop’s I bought an awe­some called Osman’s Dream, a start to fin­ish his­tory of the Ottoman Empire. But before I start that mon­ster (660 pages!) I have to fin­ish the Steven Pinker book that Laura bought me months ago, The Stuff of Thought by Sep­tem­ber 8 because the author will be at Malaprop’s that night. For as much of a nerd I am, I have never been to an author event at a book­store, and I’m look­ing for­ward to it. I should develop a good ques­tion for him.

FOUR: I must write. I’m feel­ing flush with words and prose and have been re-reading some of my old mate­r­ial and I have to say I don’t know why I gave it up.

SUMMARY: Apol­lon­ian inter­ests must tri­umph for this next phase in my life. The end­less Bac­cha­nals that have gripped my life and lifestyle must be brought into line with my larger goals. I’m on the verge of some­thing, and I aim to vault myself over the edge.

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