Very not free, though, which is why you’ve got my humble li’l workaround instead.

That slope activity where you punch in an equation to try to hit points already exists in game form. Look up Green Globs. It even allows you to use equations with sine and cosine etc….

Coffee on me next time.

*sigh* Now I’m left shrugging: you win. I don’t know if I ever disagreed. I mean, I’m decidedly not a nonfiction documentary kinda guy. My favorite movie, 25th Hour, has spoken more truth to the reality of growing up a dude in America than any interview or expository essay in Harper’s ever has. That fact isn’t lost on me.

I just can’t really hang with this debate, “which is more true?” ’cause it’s really really a matter of personal preference.

Do you prefer the more boring, objective truth (they died) or the more nuanced, recreation of the truth (they died and here are the author’s thoughts on what they were like in life)?

And I think I know which I and my pronouns prefer.

To sum up, doesn’t seem we’re disagreeing about AVK12ST. You say it’s shameless, and I say it’s shameless, and (actually) I also say that therefore it doesn’t qualify as truth at all. Truth does not manipulate. End of story.

Now, obviously, I also think truth resides in other places than facts (myth, metaphor, and the responsible appeal to emotion). You’re feeling a little weird about that idea. I get that. I guess I would be really interested to have you crystallize why this is.

Take the two grenade stories. To me, the second one– the “unreal” one– doesn’t manipulate. In fact, I love the last line precisely because it’s overtly and recognizably reaching *beyond* fact– a dead guy can’t “begin to smile”, we all know that. No manipulation, see?

But because the teller knows something of the souls of these men, he has supplied an opportunity for the men in this story to react– an opportunity that the grenade took away. THIS is what he means by “something factual happening and still being a total lie.” There is a fundamental lie in the horror of wartime robbing these men of an opportunity to say their wise, funny, profound last words. Am I making this clear?

So in a way, it’s the second story that’s more “real” to me than the first.

It isn’t that way for you, clearly– so I’d ask you: why? And I’ll also give you permission not to answer since I’m obviously continuing to veer way off course in these comments. :)

I’ll reiterate here, then, that my problem with AVK12ST isn’t how true or untrue it is, rather, how shamelessly it goes about its truth. I mean, why not have kids speak those lines, except it would rupture the abused-mute-child vibe Nesbitt is clearly going for.

Back to our coffee & cigarettes: it matters to me that one grenade story was real and one wasn’t. I want to know. I’m digging deep for rationalization from the philosophy classes I never took in college.

All right, so I’ll throw one last post out. I swear to God that I was flipping through this book just this morning, seeing if I could recommend it to a kid, and fell on this page randomly. The book is by all accounts spectacular: “The Things We Carried” by Tim O’Brien, about the stories of Vietnam vets, finalist for the Pulitzer etc. It says the following.

“You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let’s say, and afterward you ask, “Is it true?” and if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer.

For example, we’ve all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.

Is it true?

The answer matters.

You’d feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it’s just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen– and maybe it did, anything’s possible– even then you know it can’t be true, because a true war story does not depend on that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.

For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it’s a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, “The fuck you do *that* for?” And the jumper says, “Story of my life, man,” and the other guy starts to smile but he’s dead.

That’s a true story that never happened.”

What say you to that, Dan?

dina, why are you giving up so easily? let me kill the party, please! all you gotta do is ask dan if he thinks that “the wire” is a truthful depiction of the city of baltimore.

truthiness…what a great topic. sigh.