Myth and Folklore

Patience-Stone and Patience-Knife -A girl is sitting embroidering, and a bird shows up -The bird says her kismet is with a dead person -The girl is afraid and locks all of her doors and windows the next day -But the bird appears yet again on her table with the same message -Taking extra precaution the next day, she works by candlelight in the cupboard -But yet again, her feathery nemesis shows up -Mother and daughter confine themselves to the house lest the bird return -The girl goes out with friends, but while drinking at a lake she is cut off from them by a wall -The wall has a door, and inside the girl finds a splendid palace filled with gold and jewels -Encounters a bey with instructions that whoever fans him and prays by him will find their kismet The Imp of the Well -A journey ensues that ends up at a garden -There a miller was grinding mill with a cat beside him -A woodcutter with a "cantankerous" wife lived nearby -She was greedy and purposefully dis...

Fear -A young boy's mother tells him to shut the door because she has a fear -The boy asks what fear is -The mother answers that it is "being afraid" -The boy sets out to discover what fear truly is -Finds a group of robbers, who tell him fear is there with them -They ask him to cook helwa in a nearby cemetery, where a hand reaches out of a grave to ask the boy for food     -The hand is beaten back by a spoon     -"Naturally I should feed the dead before the living" (what a sassy child) -The robbers send him to abandoned building, where he finds a bracelet, but not fear -The boy then helps save a sinking ship by flogging the daughter of the sea, who is rocking it and causing the passengers to be afraid -Three pigeons dive into a fountain and are transformed into women     -Each drinks to the health of the boy for his various encounters with fear that he did not flinch by The Wizard-Dervish -Padishah = great king -A padishah with no son encou...

-Create freedom appears liberating -Ironically, we find ourselves paralyzed by "boundless freedom" -Cost, materials, laws of physics: creative constraints  -Apply across professions -Constraints are essential    -This is especially true of scientific experiments, where variables are controlled    -Engineers discover constraints and then find solutions to problems by working around them -Iterative vs. innovative   -Iterative: How can I create a better...   -Innovative: How can I reach my goal when the best solution doesn't work... -"Serendipitous failures" sometimes end up being the solution to the constraints of other problems -Orwellian    -Can mean authoritarian   -BUT this is not the whole story   -Deceptive and manipulative use of language -George Orwell opposed to tyranny  -Believed language shapes our thoughts and opinions -Double speak: words used not to convey meaning, but to underm...