Quote Unquote

There are a number of things which I don't like about English grammatical rules. The one I want to address here is the nested quotation, which is not only confusing but unwieldy. Consider the following example:

Adam said, "I like apples."

What if this was part of a narrated story?

Beth said, "Adam said, 'I like apples.'"

And if I nest that again...

Carl said, "Beth said, 'Adam said, "I like apples."'"

Obviously, anything this complicated should be rewritten in any case (Carl said, "Beth said, 'Adam said that he likes apples.'"), but putting that aside, it really bothers me that I cannot just copy and paste a piece of text, wrap quotations around it, and be done with the change. If you notice carefully, the rules of English require the outer-most pair of quotation marks be double quotes ("), and each nesting from then on alternate between double quotes and single quotes. For the copy-and-paste usage case I just mentioned, this means all the quotation marks needs to be switched, which is extremely annoying.

Despite this asinine rule, I can actually see the reason: the inability to distinguish between nested quotes and sequential quotes. Compare:

Carl said "Beth said 'This note reads "This note can talk."' I like talking notes."

with:

Carl said "Beth said "This note reads "This note can talk."" I like talking notes."

The first sentence is Carl quoting Beth who is quoting a talking note. The second can mean the same thing, but the ambiguous quotation can also mean Carl quotes Beth, then adding his own comment, and someone else replying. In proper quotation, this latter meaning should be:

Carl said, "Beth said, 'This note reads.' This note can talk?" "I like talking notes."

It can be argued that the alternating quotation, therefore, makes the meaning of nested quotations clearer (with some excuses as to other improper punctuation, of course).

The main problem with the quotation marks is that the starting and ending marks are the same. By nesting the quotation marks, inner quotes will never be "accidentally" terminated by outer quotes. More modern character encodings solve this problem with using different characters for beginning and ending quotes. You can look at the Wikipedia page to see how to type the different ones - although most word processors will do that for you automatically anyway. With computers, the problem is compounded by the starting and ending single quotes doubling (or as it were, tripling) as the apostrophe as well. This is only really a problem for contractions at the beginning of words though, such as "'cause", which could be interpreted as a starting quote. I'm not sure how word processors deal with this.

Personally, I prefer to stick with ASCII. Since I quote a large amount of emails and chats in my journal, and the emails and chat themselves very often quote other things, I can't be bothered to switch the quotation marks back and forth. This sometimes does cause me a little more comprehension time, but compared to the time I would have wasted on changing punctuation, it's not a big deal.

How do you use quotation marks?

CTY

I’ve been tracking the presence of CTY online throughout the two sessions, especially through Twitter, but also through blogs. Last year I found several blogs which expressed their amazement at what CTY does for them and for children. I did the same this year, and found this:

CTY’s a place where the top end of the ability curve can find a community. Unlike just about anywhere else, there’re lots of other people like you there. Any strange, obscure reference you make, probably at least 3 people in earshot will get. Any weird thought you have won’t seem all that weird to more than a few people present.

And the same goes for how you act. A lot of gifted kids are, let’s face it, pretty crazy sometimes. But that’s perfectly normal there. In fact, it becomes self reinforcing so that almost everyone acts even weirder than normal. And, because we’re all like that, it’s Ok! You get cheered on, not made fun of.

And by that same principal, because there’s a lot of the shared experience of being pretty lonely at home sometimes, people are very quick to form friendships, and just generally very accepting of and nice to each other. People understand, and so they accept. Most of us have a few friends who will do that so that we can be ourselves with them at home, but here for three weeks it’s like that with most people!

I’ve never done the real CTY (both summers I’ve worked with young students), but I totally agree with what the author said. And I don’t mean it just for the kids - I mean it for the staff as well.

On the other hand, because I’ve never done real CTY, I don’t shout "Die! Die! Die! Die! Live! Live! Live! Live! Sex! Sex! Sex! Sex! More! More! More! More!" during the American Pie chorus. So I was surprised to find a blog post by someone who claims to have started the "Sex!" chant:

...Because I’m the one who started "Sex! Sex! Sex!"

It was Slut Day. That wasn’t a camp tradition, it was something I started on a whim, this being a period of my life in which I valued attention above dignity. To be clear, our definition of sluttishness was pretty mild; no one scored below a 70 on the Purity Test and most of us were lying. Anyway, shouting "Die Die Die" at the chorus of "American Pie" was already a long-standing tradition when I arrived at CTY, but the summer of 1994 something had happened--possibly a suicide?--that convinced people to tack on "Live! Live! Live!" afterwards in a flurry of PC-ism. Then as now I found the revision pretty lame, so on that particular day, Slut Day, since we had been talking about nothing but sex since breakfast, I threw in "Sex! Sex! Sex!" as a kind of musical one-liner. Well, it caught on like hula hoops. The next thing I knew it was part of the canon. The addition of "More! More! More!" followed hard upon, but I’m not sure who was responsible

Whether you believe her or not is up to you. Do visit the post though, and read through the comments - it’s more evidence of how CTY bonds people.

A Small But Important CTY Complaint

CTY ended about a week ago, and I'm still very much in denial about it. I've mentioned previous that I wish the program would continue, even if it was just for one session. This summer was everything I had remembered it to be: the rush of seeing the light go on in the students, being swept away by the excitement in learning that everyone shows. I do, however, have one complaint, which I thought this site didn't do as well in comparison with last year. This involves the communication between staff members, and in particular, between the residential, instructional, and administrative staff.

As a residential camp for middle schoolers, CTY staff is not only responsible for the education of the campers; we are also responsible for the emotional and social well being of the kids. If the kids are older we'd have more problems (like people being in relationships, breaking up, or God forbid, getting pregnant), but at this age most of our problems have to do with being homesick, provoking or being provoked by others, and bullying or being bullied by others. All three happened to my students this year. Under CTY procedure, as a TA I am required to talk to the RAs several times every day, to find out if anything has happened to the kids over the night or during activities. There is a system of paperwork for everything that happens to a student, and those are left in mailboxes for staff to read. In theory, this system allows a rapid dissemination of information on the students, so everyone knows what's happen.

What I found this summer was that while the system is designed properly, people don't really follow them. I have seen TAs and RAs simply bringing the kids to the drop off point, then walk away after seeing they are picked up - without talking to that staff. The paperwork system, while detailed, does not provide a rapid enough response. In one case, I was lucky to have found out about an incident the morning after from the RA. They had put in the paperwork as well, but it had taken over a week for me to be notified of the administrative response. There was a worse case - I heard about the incident from the RA, and never ended up reading the paperwork. Although I knew the gist of what had happened, I didn't really have the details. And since the incident was rather serious, I would prefer to have it - but I didn't. And finally, there were things which I never knew until I read the paperwork - like the fact that one of my students had daily meetings with a member of the administration.

Don't get me wrong - things worked out great this summer, and as I said I had an awesome time. But I was really disappointed by the things I just pointed out, which not necessarily made my job harder, but it did give me unpleasant surprises. If I got the chance to talk to the staff before CTY started, I would say this:

Administration: My management philosophy is simple - it's about the people who's close to the action. For a summer camp, that would be the RAs, the TAs, and the instructors. We are here to make their jobs easier, here to support them. This means that we might have to work longer hours to resolve issues as soon as possible, or we might have to do extra work to ensure classes and activities goes as the RAs and instructors have planned. We get paid more not because we're more important, but because we have to work harder.

RAs: I know you have a tough job - you have to take care of over a dozen kids all by yourself, for multiple hours at a time, sometimes sacrificing sleep. But remember that besides making sure the kids are under supervision at all times, there is a larger goal: to keep them excited and motivated for class. Think about it this way: you can spend 5 minutes talking (and listening!) to the TA and instructor about a problem that arose, or you can spend hours afterwards trying to comfort the student, explain to the administration, or even the parent, about what happened. So please, talk to your TAs and instructors.

TAs and Instructors: You're what the camp is about. Congratulations. But your job is not just to teach the kids; as with the RAs, you have to make sure the students are having a good time. This certainly involves finding out about things which happened in the dorm, or during activities - and remember, finding out earlier saves time. If you could, however, lead an activity! Join the talent show! The kids are never more excited than seeing their TAs and instructors spending time with them outside of the classroom. If it doesn't earn you friends, it at least earns you camaraderie - and that goes a long way in talking with the students.

The Fountainhead

I have been collecting and clarifying the thoughts I have about the book and its concepts since I finished reading it. There is a collection of ideas, many of which I’ve had before, some of which are new to me as presented in the book, and some which took me till now to figure out. I have a few things to say about my reaction first. Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, her last novel, Atlas Shrugged, is supposedly a book which makes a difference in peoples lives, coming in second only to the Bible. The Fountainhead, written earlier but containing the same heavy dose of what would become objectivism, might not have as large an impact, but I still expected it to make me question things I believe. Instead, beginning early in the novel and continuing after I finish, I was more surprised by the fact that the book did not change me at all. Rather, I found that I have individually arrived at a lot of the conclusions presented in the book. There might be a confusion of causation here; it is entirely possible that I have read books about objectivism first, which lead me to Ayn Rand, thus me finding the books uninspiring. The most supportive evidence I have of this is that I’m a fan of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, which expresses a lot of objectivist philosophy. That might indeed be how I first came across Ayn Rand. Since there was a gap of several years before my first reading in 11^th grade in high school, my subsequent discovery of the series in junior year of college, and finally reading The Fountainhead, I feel this is unlikely. I would prefer to believe that I have come to the same conclusion as Ayn Rand has, at least on the subject of how best to live one’s life. Due to my focus on the individual and not in society, I have the feeling that if I continue to read Atlas Shrugged, I will in fact like The Fountainhead more. But that’s an essay for another day.

Let me start by addressing the thoughts that I’ve had up to the reading of The Fountainhead, then show how the thoughts are tied together by the ideas in the book.

The first idea is one I’ve expressed for a while, even on this blog: it is the idea that work and play does not have to be separate. I just finished six weeks of working for a summer camp, where I wake up at 07:00, spent at least 7 hours a day with middle school kids (more often closer to 8 or 9), have to work in the evenings to prepare lessons for the next day, and still have paper work to file. If this sounds like a horrible job, it isn’t; I love the entire experience, and my only feeling at the end of six weeks is a wish for just one more session. I may have complained in the middle, about how the students are not getting along with each other, or that some policy about paperwork is stupid, but those are minor things. Compared to watching how quickly these children can pick up material and what their minds are capable of understanding, the things I’m complaining about are insignificant. Part of the reason I complain is to express a moment’s frustration; the other is that somehow, I am expected to complain.

That last one is strange, when one thinks about it. Of course, there’s no rule saying that all employees must complain about their job. But most people do, and it has become a ritual of bonding to talking about jobs as such. In the same way, my parents have very often drawn the distinction between working and play: yes, play is important, but work more so. By the way it is phrased, it creates a false separation between work and play, that the two can not coexist. Play is the fun one, but in order to have fun one must first have fame/fortune/influence, and to get that, one must work first, which is not fun. CTY is the greatest counter-example to this theory. People are taking vacation time from their normal jobs to come and teach children. The salaries are much lower than what I could get if I do an internship at Microsoft, and the food, accommodations, etc. are all at lower standards. But I’m not taking the job because of the meals and wheels, but because of what I’m paid to do. And I happen to like robotics, I happen to like teaching, I happen to like playing frisbee with children.

In the last year or so, I’ve realized that this sets me apart in several ways. The first, of course, is that I complain less than other people. But more than that, I realize I spend more time being productive, being happy. At CTY there are people who don’t want to spend time outside of class with the children. It is not part of the job description, they say. That’s true. But the very nature of the job involves spending hours with the kids. If they didn’t like kids, why did they take the job? The real reason is probably more subtle than that; I’m sure everyone at the camp liked children. In my case though, I’m taking time out of my own life, when I’m not “on duty”, to do more “job work”. The distinction between work and play is blurred: I do the same thing whether I’m paid or not. In things besides summer jobs there’s a difference – I would have to work a part-time job to support myself, I would have to worry about time and transport and all that stuff. But it’s a start. Paul Graham suggested that the test of whether someone is doing what they love is asking them whether they would continue doing that if they weren’t paid. I would do CTY; in fact, I did. Living in a dorm, my address changed during the summer, so I never got the last check which was mailed out (the others were collected in person). In essence I was paid only two thirds of what I signed up for. I didn’t know until this summer that there was a third paycheck. But I didn’t care, I came back; I didn’t do it for the paycheck, I did it for the sake of doing it.

The second idea I want to address is one that was on the waiting list to become a blog post. There are two related ideas: an arrogance and over-confidence that I sometimes show, and a condescension for people who don’t try.

I recently noted to a friend that arrogance and being full of oneself is different: the former usually has something to be proud of, but they are overly so, while the latter may not in fact have any accomplishments. I believe my arrogance comes from several things: abilities as a quick learner, a mental (and by extension, limited physical) resourcefulness, a refusal to be defeated (at least emotionally), and perhaps relative success so far in life. Because of these things I see myself as better than other people. I’ve never really worked hard in school, but have pretty good grades. One might object here that my definition of work is different. That is true; I had a lot of fun in school, and part of that fun comes from learning and understanding new things. But that just proves my point. Being able to enjoy this required process of schooling sets me apart. It is like I’m gaming the system, except I’m not. Everyone can be happy at school; some just don’t know how, others refuse to.

Wanting to learn and being curious gives me the advantage of knowing a lot, not just in my major, but also in things outside my major. Here again I clash with convention. Look at lists of 100 must read books. Count how many are non-fiction. I’ll bet that fiction books dominate. In fact, back in freshman year of high school, in English we had periods where we were required to read. There was one caveat: it had to be a fiction book. I once tried to bring in a non-fiction book, perhaps about physics, perhaps about dinosaurs, but it was rejected. Granted, on that occasion I was sent to the library and thus discovered Terry Goodkind, but I never understood why reading must focus on narratives. I find books on science, philosophy, and sociological studies equally as absorbing, and I don’t think that there are any more good authors in fiction than there is in non-fiction. And from these books, I learn a lot about other people, about how the world works, things which I can use in my life.

As for emotional stability – not being allowed to read non-fiction in class didn’t stop me. It just meant I had to be somewhat less efficient. I write journals, blogs, debates on philosophy, which helps me get rid of any bottled-up emotions. I’m the kind of person who would be happy in many situations, even if things are not working out they way I want them to. One question I’ve always hated on the “getting to know you” type games is one which asks for things you regret. I tend not to have them. I’m sure if I plan now and act, I can be just as happy, if not more so. Wallowing in despair is not going to help anyone, and you’re in charge of your own emotions. That doesn’t mean I don’t have goals or that I just let things happen to me. It’s the same way I deal with grades. If I’m doing well, then I’ll care about them; if I’m not, well, I’m still learning material.

Although I’ve been aware of these things about myself for several years now, sometimes I’m still surprised when I see other people don’t share the same ideals. Being rather secure in my belief that this is the way to being happy and productive, sometimes I just can’t bear other people complaining about their life. Have they tried to make their life better? Have they tried to stop complaining and act? It is perhaps not surprising that, if they haven’t tried to make things better, things don’t get better. This idea actually sprang from a discussion about search engines. We were talking about having additional power operators, like the negation of a search term or searching only pages on a site. Other people in the discussion were saying that these functionalities should be provided, maybe by adding buttons, sliders, etc. I argued that these functions already exist (indeed, Google has them), and people are just not taking the time to learn them. The conclusion that the class had about me was that I’m a power user, and I don’t understand how the “average user” works. On reflection though, I think the difference might be wider still: I believe in doing what is possible to get things done. Where is the line drawn between people being stupid and the object of use being badly designed? As a Linux user, I subscribe to the philosophy of “scratching your own itch”. If you want something in a program, either work around it, ask someone to code it for you, code it yourself, or forget it. There is enough documentation and forums online to solve most problems, and these solutions are only a Google search away. People should be willing to do this much to solve their problems; less than that, they’re just lazy. I was reminded of the computer help desk acronym PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. My personal conclusion on the matter? I shouldn’t be in human computer interaction.

The last idea I had is one which I never intended to write about, but is inseparable from these ideas. This idea is dedication, and I will sidetrack into romance and love to demonstrate my point.

As I’ve said, I don’t like people who don’t try. Some people do try, but very often I feel they don’t try enough. Although perhaps I don’t do it for everything I do, in general I want to see things to the end. For a project in my freshman year, I was in a team of four, except two of the group members didn’t really do anything. So the remaining guy and I, we worked the entire evening, through the night, and most of the next day to get the project done on time. We’ve talked to the other two before, and they’ve somewhat acknowledged that they haven’t pulled their weight. We were supposed to meet the evening before to get the thing done, and what happens? Those two don’t even bother to show up. It might be said that this is the simplest case of dedication, that maybe half the people my age have done something like that to get homework finished. True; but I do this not just for homework or group projects, but also for clubs and other activities. I don’t value sleep or food much, and would rather see things finished than go to bed.

Let me take this into the realm of feelings. Taking to a friend recently, I was surprised to discover that she had never felt a certain feeling: that of loving someone so much that she would be willing to give them away. It can be slightly paradoxical, but in the simple case it’s easy to understand. Let’s say that my friend likes someone, but that someone is attracted to someone else. If the happiness of the person she loves is of such value that it is shadows the value of her own happiness, then letting that person go actually makes her happier, solely for the reason that that person is happier. This particular idea has been with me since high school, so it’s strange for me to hear that it has never occurred to other people. This is dedication: a commitment to something – whether an ideal or a person – which goes beyond your personal needs.

I’m not sure how well I’ve explained the ideas, but in the form they’ve existed in my head, they’re intricately connected, although I could not explain how. Reading The Fountainhead gave me ideas, but it still took me until today to realize what it is. I summarized it this way:

By loving what we do, we become self-sufficient – an unprecedented liberty, freedom from the judgement of others, freedom from failure – because it is not other people’s reactions or the result which matters, but the journey, the act of doing itself. By loving what we do, we become powerful beyond measure through the knowledge that no matter what happens, we are happy.

The link I was missing is the self-sufficiency. If someone loves what they do, and are totally dedicated to it without regard to anything else – as Howard Roark was to architecture – then they are truly happy, and can be smugly so. This only applies to things which don’t require other people – architecture as a personal art, or a boundary-pushing science where politics doesn’t interfere. In these cases, it doesn’t matter what other people think, because the goal has never been their approval. The goal is to design, or to push the boundaries of human knowledge. That is all that is necessary for happiness: not praise from other people, but the internal certainty that something worthwhile has happened.

I’ve once read somewhere that a book should not be read just by virtue of it being a classic. They should be read for their own value, and if it turns out to be a boring book half way through, stop. I myself skipped the last half of Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded because he kept repeating himself, and also skipped Steven Pinker’s chapter on abstract syntax in The Language Instinct. I’m not reading the books because I want to say I’ve read them; I’m reading to see what they have to say, and maybe gain a new perspective. I don’t want to suffer hours of indecipherable babble for a single moment’s claim of finishing the book. The same is with life. Work, enjoy work, and dedicate yourself to it. Don’t do it for the fame, or the fortune, or anything besides your own happiness. Because when you do so, you are self-sufficient, and you’ll be the happiest person.

The Fountainhead

I'm in the middle of reading The Fountainhead, and have some thoughts on that. I will write it and publish it when I have time, probably this weekend. This is just to let you know that I'm not dead, and to expect something from me soon.

Education and Games

I'm in the middle of CTY, and I'm having a grand time. If I come back next year, I'll be back as an instructor. The future's not certain though, and there are several factors preventing me from coming back. First, CTY fits Northwestern's schedule really well - we end mid-June, then I have a week before CTY starts. UMich though ends mid-May, which means CTY cuts my summer in half. That  means it's harder to get things, and I can't just start research later during the summer - I'll have to start it, stop for a few weeks, then go back to it. Of course, the whole research thing will probably be the main competitor for my time. I really wish I could come back though; I'll have to talk to my advisor about it.

Anyway, this post isn't about my 2010 summer plans. I started off saying that I want to be back as an instructor because I was thinking about ways to improve the course. While the course as it stands is pretty good, there are several things which bugs me. For example, the pre and post tests are almost irrelevant to the course material; I'm sure I can think of some better questions which deals with breaking goals into steps, or how information travels through a program, or how to build sturdy objects.

One thing that my instructor did, and which I like a lot, is the focus on not only robots, but on design as well. Before each big project, we have the kids fill out design documents, so they have to think through what their problem is, and how their robot will solve that problem. Right now though, the design templates are very heavily physical. There is no room to do some good thinking about the program, where as there's an area for a sketch of the robot. I would totally redesign the design sheet, so the hardware and software components are given enough time. I also think there's some space for more reflective questions; for example, start off by asking the kids what they think will be hard, then afterwards asking them whether they predicted correctly, and if not, what was harder than expected and why.

All this led to thoughts of flow charts, which I know the other robotics class do. We never teach the kids flowcharts, although I learned that some earlier iterations of the class do have that in the curriculum. The main problem, I think, is that we don't deal with branches and loops until Thursday, and by then it's a little late to start adding flow charts to the design process, especially if they've already filled out several of those sheets. One option, I guess, is to move the branches and loops lesson to earlier in the week. My only qualm with that is how comfortable the kids will be with that material that early. And besides, flow charts don't work very well with variables anyway (as a side note, is there any kind of diagram allows the diagrammer to keep track of variables over time?).

So I was thinking about flow charts, and how to best structure the class so kids can learn more abstract concepts, when I found myself wondering how video games have tutorials which slowly guide the player to more advanced skills. The tutorials have to start off easy, get progressively harder, but at the same time must remain fun for the whole time. And isn't that exactly what we want to do at CTY? Yes we're cramming a lot of material into the kids' brains, but it's also supposed to be fun. In this sense, I liked what one of my other instructors did; he had a theme of the students being robot builders throughout the course, and told them that at the end they'll be "little Gorts". This is in essence a "leveling system", so the kids feel like they've accomplished something.

But really, I think game designers should talk to educators more, so kids are learning more but remain engaged.

Porn and Intimacy

It is rare that I talk about something so personal on my blog. My life is at a changing point, very saliently a point where the future is wide open and I get to decide where it should go. There are some other circumstances which I don't feel like elaborating on, but let it be suffice to say that this has been on my mind somewhat recently.

I think it would surprising some people for them to know I consume a lot of porn. I actually remember the first time I saw anything indecent on the internet. I was probably only 10 at the time, and was trying to get on the search engine Infoseek. I had mistyped the URL, however, and typed in "ifoseek" instead, which turned out to be some porn site. Much later I would classify this as an instance of cybersquatting, but I didn't know any of that at the time. I remember fighting the urge to go back, but eventually I succumbed, and the whole world of online pornography opened up for me. For a long time I was ashamed of it, but in the last few years that changed. It might partially be due to the fact that the Internet being filled with porn is just widely accepted, and as well as the fact that a lot of people watch porn. I think part of it also has to do with me taking a more rational trend in life, and I critically pondered the question of whether porn ever actually does anyone harm. I concluded that, aside from cases where the actors are forced to do it (most prominently, child pornography), there is no physical reason pornography is damaging. As for the whole moral degradation argument, if you were one of those people who were surprised that I watch porn, maybe you should rethink the argument that porn makes men objectify women.

But I don't want to spend this post rebutting the negative affects of pornography. Instead, I want to give a more personal account of pornography, and what I have learned about myself from it. Regardless of it's influence on morals, I do think pornography often depicts humans as (shall we say) animals. That is, the plot of a pornographic movie, if there is one at all, tends to portray people as thinking of nothing but sex. There is no consideration of time, money, possibility of getting caught (unless that's what the director wanted). This past statement, of course, is something I couldn't have said even 3 years ago. In the early days I didn't really discriminate, and everything explicit on the web looked the same to me. As I grew up and learned and thought more, however, this trait of porn became clear to me. I must say that there are times when mindless sex is exactly what you're looking for, but most of the time nowadays I'm looking for something else: a connection.

My real problem with porn is that the actors rarely show concern for each other. Although the act of sexual intercourse requires another person, it is safe to say that both characters are more often than not only concerned with their own desires. If the actress gave a blowjob, it's not to please the buy, but because she "likes it". If I may, it's the difference between being a friend because it keeps you from feeling guilty, and being a friend because you truly care for their feelings. Sex in the real world, I would think, is more about the other person's desire. Both people may be horny, but there is the desire to make the other person happy first. In porn, these acts of "giving" seem forced, and are there more to satisfy the /audience/ than the /partner/.

Instead, lately I've been more attracted to amateur pornography. I don't mean what professional studios label as "amateurs, but actual home made videos. Often these are videos that couples have filmed of themselves, probably for their own entertainment later. Because the actors are real people (not fake characters) with feelings for each other, however, these videos depict much more intimate acts of love making. And that's what I'm looking for: the sense that what is shown is not simply two animals copulating, but two humans with emotions and an intellect. What they are doing is an extension of their love, because even a piece of cloth between their bodies is too much to bare. It is, almost by definition, a private moment, and therefore I also feel somewhat guilty about it's distribution and consumption. But again, it's (mostly) a victimless thing.

Given that it's rather easy to spot whether two people like each other, I'm surprised that not more professional porn is done depicting this connection. The most obvious clue, I think, are the actors hands. Are they clasped and fondling (gently), or are they there just to hold the other person in place? Is the brushing of the hair to see their face better, or to give the camera a better angle? The face, too, is a big area, just because we are so good at reading emotions. And then, of course, the big orgasm thing - is there any involuntary movement?

I think the fact that I think in this way says a lot more about me than the fact that I watch porn. One last thing... you may comment that I'm looking for intimacy in the wrong place. I know.