this site is dedicated to the delusions of grandeur inside the warped psyche of a hollow shell of a human being
originally entitled Trimalchio in East Egg
It
was strange to see this number, and something struck me as important.
100-97 is 3 and the right side has 3^0 3^1 3^2 3^3.... So I mentioned
this to Jay and Max. We skipped learning the lessons and decided why
not deprive everyone else of their education. So we investigated. We
came up with this formula:
This leads to use witting it in turns of an infinite sum instead of a sequence. So this equation went:
Then it was discovered that the 100 was something that could vary in scale since:
So an expansion variable was put it:
Which can be rearranged and made for values other than 3 using a J to create:
The 10^B can factor out since it does not have a n in it:, 10 can be replaced with the variable M:
Multiply each side by M^B, then replace the M^B with B and J with A, finally arriving at a wonderful little formula:
Only recently
did I discover eq(8), a simplification that lead to the reduction to
eq(10), an equation so simple that it baffles me. The discover of eq(7)
in general form is what lead to the development of the Southwest Think
Tank, a group founded by myself, Jay, and Max. We never actually met,
but it sounded good on a college resume. The equation is only theory
based on a few trials, it was discovered completely independently of
any outside knowledge other than the nature of numbers, and with the
three of us represented the culmination of years of study. It is
depressing that I will never discover something more interesting in
mathematics. I plugged the equation into maple, the computer software
Rose uses to solve complicated things of similar nature, and sure
enough, after a minute or so of calculation it spit out that this
theory was indeed sound, at least as far as an advanced mathematics
program can determine. Albeit an insignificant discover, this taught me
how people could dedicate their lives to figuring out the next thing in
mathematics. It is also a very fast way to divide two numbers if you
know what you are doing, it is probably best to use eq(7) in a
generalized version (where 3 = J), to rapidly divide two number,
multiplying by the proper numerator after determining the decimal value
of the denominator. This is all rather simple math, the sigma notation
is merely a notation to denote that the series is infinite. The
elegance of math should be a course in itself. On the beach tonight
there was a huge bonfire, 30 foot flames, that was made with shipping
palates and some accelerant by some sophomores to ruin the high school
prom that was going on across the lake in the cafeteria. You might ask
yourself (as nobody else is likely around you) why I didn't write about
something more important on my birthday, and I can not think of
something more significant to write about.
To start out on a tangent: a Harvard student is getting way too much attention for plagiarism. For being a weak and useless person, a bane to society, this student is number ten on amazon. The book is one of those stupid books that serve as the basis for lifetime movies of the week. But people want to see what all the trouble is about. Think of it like a car accident that everyone wants to see only the person who causes it gets paid for every on-looker. She probably does not feel any regret it doing it now that her sales are up. The author she stole from is receiving increased sales too so she probably won't take legal action unless they want more money. I like the fact that students quoted in articles about it take joy in her pain, typical Haavard college types. The thief says it was "unintentional and unconscious." I don't think so. I don't like that her doing this is actually going to help her career, like the N.Y. times reporter that made up stories, they feel a little guilty, but the seven figure book deal to write about it cushions their pain a bit. I will tell you the title now, since you can find is easily anyways, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. It makes me feel pain to think this book is flying off the shelves. The title gives it a certain otherness that is beyond description. Do not buy this person's book. They are a failure as a person. The book is being recalled, but the copies out there are going for much as a tickle me Elmo in 1996. Another useless novelty, a Elmo with a cell phone vibrator inside. Rose ventures asks incoming applicants what topping on a pizza they are, where the pizza represents "the team". My reply is "stuffed crust, because it is a frivolous expense that doesn't really help anything other than change the taste a bit." A reason that I personally don't like this plagiarism fiasco is that if I stole parts from another person's technical paper I would never find a job again, there would be no deal with Random House.
Patents were invented to provide an incentive to create. Before patents only maintaining information as a trade secret kept a person's right to their own ideas. Patents allowed for an economic advantage to invent new things. By giving the invent the unfair advantage of the invention itself the inventor is compensated by their creativity. Benjamin Franklin invented a very efficient wood stove, bifocals, catheters, and the armonica. But his greatest creation was the lightning rod. Franklin patented his other inventions, but not the lightning rod. Franklin saw it as his greatest gift to humanity and specifically left it unpatented so that all could benefit. Back in those days in lightning struck your house it would explode from the electrical impulse going through it. Lightning rods gave a target for lightning as dissipates it into the ground.
Several attempts have been made lately to provide ways of preventing digital media from being copied illegally. Technically it is illegal to burn CDs into mp3s, but that is not something I think people have to worry about. DVDs had a sort life time where they could not be copied, then toshiba released a DVD player with the decoder hardwired into the circuitry, then people who know significantly more about computers than me stole it, now it is like urine in a pool. As long as there is a digital output of the data it will be possible to steal the data and redistribute it. Federal law states that it is legal to make a copy of any digital media for archival purposes. This loophole is what allows for many programs that rip DVD movies to be distributed. I can always just record off my sound card, it is a losing game. Artists don't care very much about people stealing their music. Artists make money off of the concerts, not album sales, most of them prefer that people listen to their music to inspire them to come to their shows. All things digital are fighting an uphill battle, they will lose it in the end, for the end user is a insurgent that will win in time.
To go off topic, hardware is the future, software is going to die off as a means of profit. Open source software is gaining too much popularity and is too tempting as much of it is becoming as good if not better than its for-profit counterparts. It says something about the human spirit that so many people work on software from which they will see no monetary gain. The future is hardware, technical support, customization, and ease of use. Hardware is something than can not be easily duplicated, requires a lot of research, and is very expensive to produce, as it will always be since it is a constantly evolving market. People will pay for customization since some programs have a very small group of users who will have to pay a premium for their specialized software. The market also has a need for convenience in the form of support and the overall convenience of use. For convenience of use think of the difficult of buying a song off itunes versus finding it on whatever the current napster like program is. The future will see the development of what netscape tried to do, replace large and generally clunky front-end operating systems. netscape tried to include everything you need your computer for in its browsers, but failed because of many reasons, among them the anti-trust actions of microsoft. Google will be able to do this. They are currently developing their own distribution of Linux. Google is a "good" company that shows how good guys can finish first. The future of computing is based on the increased importance of network applications. Virtualization (running several operating systems on a single computer, like windows XP and Mac OS) is one of the new trends, but the future will be formed by integrating large software suites into essentially an internet browser. Modularization, personalization, and incorporation of media is the future.
Open source is an amazing phenomena. An entire computer structure that can compete with professionally made systems is an amazing idea. The internet browser Firefox has over a ten percent market share. Don't buy microsoft office, open office works just like it and is free. Don't get photoshop, get the gimp. There is still a lag, but in the near future open source programs will match and exceed the capabilities of private software. The internet runs on linux, not your side, but most things you talk to are running free software. It is just cost effective.
Back in the day there were no rights on knowledge. In the history of mankind the idea of owning an idea is new. Cave men didn't cite the guy who invented the way to gather berries fastest, they learned from others and used what they thought was best. Invention back in the day was a slow process. New technologies came along every hundred years not every few months, things became optimized very quickly but then great times of stagnation developed. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable form magic -Arthur C. Clack.
I am going to defend the president in order to give my readers a sense of the other side since I assume most of you are communist elitist unpatriotic liberals who enjoy artificially inseminating women just to give them abortions using bibles to clean up the mess before we go help the terrorists. People need to understand pluralism. It is the heart of democracy. I am not going to defend the policies but the man himself.
I once thought I wanted to be president until I realized what the job entailed. I feel sorry for Bush, he wanted to be the education president and ended up becoming a war-time president. Even if you think his policies are counterproductive for education you need not understand he does not want for us to have a bad education system. America has yet to have a president that didn't want the best for the country. We have a lot more that unite us that divide use, we just disagree over the way to go about it. In Bush's heart he honestly believe that what he is doing is in our national interests. He is not trying to cause harm he is just very bad at his job. He is a patsy, he is lead by a group of yes men and men with their own personal agendas.
Bush's past drug and alcohol use is often brought up as well as his poor service records. But he went trough a religious conversion. He thinks of himself as trying to start anew. He is a religious man and believes in the power of redemption. He probably had a religious awakening and feel not that he is on a direct mission from god but that he needs to atone for his past sins. He is trying to hard, being president must be thoroughly frustrating, you are on one hand the most powerful person in the free world and on the other hand most of his recent initiative have failed lately. Imagine knowing that almost two hundred million people think you are doing a bad job, and that is only within this country. This speaks more to the difficulties of being president. You have more responsibility than anyone else, go.
Bush takes a lot of vacations, more than any other president. He has spent about a quarter of his presidency on vacation. I don't think he is having trouble handling it. Just look at former president Bill Clinton. After Clinton left office he seemed to be a few decades younger, even after encountering heart problems. I see how it can become a burden.
Bush has the following things to deal with: a failing war in Iraq, the hurricane Katrina disaster, raising gas prices, mixed/poor economic development, a sliver of a mandate, a growing threat of terrorism, the CIA agent controversy, failed legislative efforts, a Vice President shooting somebody, and most importantly a country divided. Some of these wounds are self inflicted but it all seems to be piling up and there is no end in sight. He was reelected but that is about it. His initiatives have failed. I feel that his inability to be the education president really bothers him. I know it would bother me. That is what is important, to realize that he is just a person trying to do his best.
Bush is loyal to a fault. I respect that he stands by his people through thick and thin. For all the trouble that they have caused him he stands steadfast. He made too many political appointees out of his election staff. They are two different enterprises and it eventually caught up with him. He kept his friends because that is all he can trust. For all his family connections he is an outsider to politics. I do believe that he is smarter than he lets on. I just have the feeling that some times it is a bit of a facade to make him more appealable. He like Harding seemed to gotten elected and found himself not able to do what he thought he was going to do.
The most important thing to take out of this is to understand that only a few enter political office for the glory. At the heart of most politicians in an sense of public duty. They are trying to do their best, although that does not mean they should hold office. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. His own party is distancing themselves from him for the upcoming midterms, that of all things must hurt the most, and I feel somebody needs to help him other than Fox news because they are redundantly insane.
Corporations were created with the best of intentions. Their original purpose was to enable people to contribute to a project greater than any one person could afford the financial cost or risk of. So things like bridges, mining, and large scale trading operations. If you have access to the film the corporation just know this is me paraphrasing it with some other stuff. Corporation were more publics trusts that were not intended to be used for business as they are today. Today it is a relatively simple task to make a corporation, but back in the day they were designed for good. Corporations have become the way business is done, and they have become a strange thing.
Corporations are people, they can own property, they can legally merge with other corporations, they can sue other corporations and other people. They have almost all the rights people have. Corporations do not have to die eventually, Stora Kopparberg has been going for almost eight hundred years now. It is a Swedish mining company. Corporations can not vote, but they seem to be doing rather well at finding ways to influence politics. Corporations work by having a charter. This charter represents their goals and they are only supposed to do things in advancement of these goals.
Non-profit corporations today are seen as a subset of corporations, but their intentions are those that corporations were originally intended to have. There are several other types of corporations and the definition varies between countries and states. But they share two traits that are why people form them. Corporations provide limited liability to the people that work for it. If you are in charge of a corporation you are not responsible for any debts and obligations of the organization. This shield allows for more risky undertakings that individuals would not normally be willing be burdened by. Corporations have shareholders, that elect a board of directors, that govern the corporation for the shareholders. It once was difficult to form a company and it required a special charter by the government. Old corporations were usually made for specific enterprises and would expire after a set amount of time. Harvard college is oldest corporation in the united states, and it is college not university, as it states in its articles of incorporation.
Modern corporations are something different. I find it difficult to describe without resorting to natural selection and it can best be seen as an evolution. The stronger companies like Walmart and McDonalds are able to reproduce (expand). New developments allow for companies like Google to explode. Then there are leeches on society like Microsoft that are toxic to everything around them and kill off everything around them. Pirates of Silicon Valley is a great film about the microsoft and apple. Now for all the bad things corporations have done.
Enron is why corporations need to be heavily regulated. Enron used an accounting method that allowed them to report projected profit as real. Microsoft maintains its power by methods similar to those of my high school assassins team, the courts technically ruled in their favor, but there was something not right about it. Enron did some shady things with power in California and their overall company policies created a cesspool of unchecked greed.
DARE groups all drugs together in one category. So marijuana and heroin are shown equal evils. After listening to love line for a year or so off and on I learned (or was brainwashed) that drug education to the public needs to be pragmatic. For some scary statistics on at least one use by the average person over 12 years old: Marijuana 50%, cocaine 40%, painkillers 20%, LSD 10%, meth 1%. This is illicit use for those wondering about the painkillers. Drugs are like pee in a pool, once they are in society they are not leaving without extreme measures. These statistics may seem scary, but they are better than they have been in the past, and civilization will still stand. This is not including alcohol and tobacco, the last two remaining legal drugs.
Alcohol and tobacco are two of the most addictive substances we have, they are also both poisons. Alcohol is the byproduct of anaerobic respiration in plants and if they don't get rid of it they die, like animals and lactic acid. Tobacco has killed millions by destroying the lungs. These two substances are great evils for civilization, and yet they are legal, why? Well, because back in the day when people thought that prohibiting a substance would end the problems it created several things just worked out. Firstly, it was respectable to use alcohol and tobacco back in the day. High society would use both without thinking about it. Secondly, they both were established industries. There were not huge plantations of marijuana or cocaine distilleries. Alcohol and tobacco represented huge industries that had the ability to lobby. There is some tragic irony in fact that the only reason that alcohol and tobacco had established industries was because they were so addictive, and yet did not immediately kill of the victims (addiction is a disease). They tried to ban alcohol in 1920's, yeah, that worked. People just drank dangerous bootleg potions that blinded them because it was not an open market that could be regulated.
I am not for the widespread legalization of drugs. America could not handle it, our culture would never allow for it, and the alcohol and tobacco industries would not allow for it. It at first seems like legalization would allow for more safety, lower prices, and more control in the end. But most drugs could not be handled by the public. I don't trust others to be on cocaine, PCP, meth, and a host of others that cause too much damage to a person's abilities. Other drugs have social stigma. Marijuana is the often cited example. The FDA ruled recently that it had no medical benefit at all. Well that seems to be going too far, and that is more about two battles: between the state and federal governments, and the other between two cultures. America glorifies the 1950's and 1960's, but most people don't think equally of both. Some think back to an America of Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet where everyone spent their time at church. The others think that the era of flower power, peace, and free love was the great American age. Now these are generalizations, but they can be seen as the basic force behind the two political camps in this country. I don't think Marijuana should be legalized, as the statistics seem to show that it doesn't seem to make much of a difference, but it should at least be rescheduled. Marijuana is classified as a schedule I drug, meaning no medical use. Cocaine and methamphetamines are schedule II, meaning that doctors can decide to give you a prescription for them. In an instance of using states' rights that doesn't involve slavery, this has been circumvented by states. Some how states have just said no to not giving marijuana to the sick. I don't like the disconnect, as a union divided cannot stand, although I don't think a trivial issue like this will cause another civil war. On a final thought about corporate greed, no other drugs will probably ever become legalized because the alcohol and tobacco industries have too much influence to allow for any competitors.
One of the best onion headlines was "drugs winning war on drugs" and it had some drug users standing a podium at a press conference. But America has a problem, and the only way to solve it is to change socially. We can continue to pump as much money into fighting drugs as we spend on them, but this is attacking the problem from the wrong angle. DARE doesn't work. So this is a problem that I don't know how to deal with. I think we need to just keep up the fight, and increase spending on education, not on drug education, but regular education. Education is a general sense is the key to improving society. Drug use is more common in poverty, and by improving society as a whole we can cure many of our problems. I will leave you with three interesting anecdotes. The first is that one arrest of two men in 2000 led to a 95% drop in the production of LSD. The second is that states collect over a million dollars a year in marijuana stamp taxes, taxes that people pay on illegal substances, I don't know why they pay it, it actually doesn't put them into legal jeopardy. The third is more of an idea, that the U.S. government is responsible for many of the illicit drugs it now is trying to destroy, and it makes me wonder if they are just providing opiates for the masses. If you want to put the fear of god into yourself, go to drugabusestatistics.samhsa.gov
Minnehaha creek flows past the end of block I grew up on down to the Mississippi River, and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico where it will eventually evaporate and rain back down. It is a relatively simple process that takes a few thousand years. My experience with Earth day always meant the creek clean-up. I have done it just about every year since it has been around, one year when I was young I found a case of beer that some old dude tried to take away from me. It is a great thing that people take time out of their day to clean up the place. Random trash is much less of a problem now than it was a few decades ago as people become more eco-conscious. There are the cases of forced caring, like the deposits on cans and bottles. It reminds me of a time several years ago as I was being told not to pick up glass for the umpteenth time a young trendy couple approached a group of us as we gathered cigarette butts at the corner of Bloomington and Minnehaha Parkway (one of many reasons I think tobacco is a horrible thing to do). They asked if we were doing this another day, because they were interested in helping. the question was asked in a vague way but still was generally directed at the only adult so as not to be too confrontational. The adult was a major organizer of the clean-up and he told them, and I am paraphrasing, that any day was a good day to clean up mother earth. They walked off in a way that was completely devoid of any guilt about taking a walk to a coffee shop instead of doing something for a common good. It bothered me that they were unphased by it, if they even felt anything it was contempt for us.
Nature is in trouble. It is a horrible state of affairs, but after pumping pollutants into the air, water, and land we have poisoned all that we draw on. But we justify it because we need it to live our current lives. It goes to the preservation of standards of living. It is a matter of us versus nature, and bears hibernate during the winter, although winter is not what it used to be. The world is not stable a place. It is a common misconception that the Earth had been basically the same for all four and a half billions years. The world was gone out of balance before. We were once covered with ice. You would have to use a way back machine to get back to the time when life held on by a thread, living by the light that passed through the sheet of ice that covered the world. It was of all things carbon dioxide that saved us. The world was a ball of ice until the huge geothermal output of greenhouse gases. The main greenhouse gas is water vapor. But with less life to absorb the carbon dioxide it built up until the ice receded like former Purdue basketball coach Gene Keady's hairline. But that was more an issue earth went through in its formative years. It is true that back in the '60s there was fear that the planet was cooling, but today we have a better grasp on things.
I have to admit, it's not getting better, but the rate at which we are becoming an fireball is slowing. But recently things like deregulation has taken us a few steps back. There a countless ways we are destroying this world, a few of them are: excessive greenhouse gas emissions, the creation of dangerous chemicals, strip-mining, over packaging, deforestation, over-fishing, over-hunting, and the harmful abundance of hormones in the water from contraceptives.
To me the day people lost what could be called innocence, but I think more of as the day we became guilt was the day the last Dodo died. It reminds me of the story of the Lorax. These bird did not fly, they walked, as they had no predators. Then one day a boat of Dutch people landed. Dodos are large, they were large, about three feet high and fifty pounds. They did not know to fear people, it is a cautionary tale. They stood their in amazement as men move towards them. They were killed because they were easy prey, not only for men, but also for the animals that people brought with them. I find comfort only in the fact that the last of the Dodos had no idea that he was the last. It took fewer than one hundred years for man to learn of the Dodo to the time they vanished from the face of the earth. Had the Dodo not been featured in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the bird would have been nothing other than one of the other many other species we have played god with. I know that extinction is just part of the evolutionary game. But it is the ignorant malice they were killed with. Dodos have some kind of symbolic meaning for me of man's greed (this is the use of man that means man and woman, humankind). I wonder if I would alleviate any guilt if the Dodo was brought back by science, but it is the intention that matters. Although I would very much enjoy to see one, but unless it their feathers cure impotence I don't think it is going to happen.
As a side note, it was very difficult to rotate the b in ebay, especially in paint.
Suburbia is the barren wasteland of civilization. The suburbs are the greatest achievement of modern civilization, well-planned, low-cost, and user-friendly. They are an endless maze of cul-de-sacs in a homogeneous landscape of sameness. The suburbs have no character, a term I dislike using, but the suburbs are storage for people, for now ant like conformity is an option for all of us.* I grew up in a neighborhood built in the Jazz age (~1920's). I know exactly where the bathrooms, the bedrooms, and the kitchen is before I even set foot in the vast majority of the houses within a mile of my own. But this is a general guideline. We do not have the same room dimensions, roof angle, and garage. There is some sense of non-conformity. Not to say non-conformity is always good. Not everyone can be different, there are six billion of us, we are getting more members each day, and we share enough common experiences that there are several people that are at least very similar to you. It is a great Scandinavian idea of insignificance, that we are all just a brick in the wall, and even the greatest of us will eventually fade into myth.
Countryside living is great*, all the nature, the feeling of a doing a hard day's work, and the sense of not being completely separated from our roots as people. But there is not much out in the country. It is a relaxed pace of life, work is paced by the whims of the crops, and a lot of it is just sitting back and listening to corn grow, an activity that is possible if the soil is moistened and it is a hot day in the growing season, away from the noise of the city. I understand the joy of living on a farm. But there is something that neither of these two living areas have to offer, as they are just as much states of mind.
City living is the best of the three worlds (two and a half if you count the suburbs as only half worthy).* The city has art and culture. There is an energy of it that has entranced the now countless city dwellers that have been only a recent development. I really don't like saying a place has character. It makes me think of a TGI Fridays, with contrived and mass-produced unique artifacts. The kind of art that a design team decided would give people a feeling that the restaurant has been around for decades, is a part of the community, wasn't built to a cookie cutter schematic a few months ago, and even if it existed for another few decades it would still gain no character or feeling other that a false image of being charming. But the city has character. The contrived feeling returns when I go to a place like block E or any other forced entertainment district. I have a problem seeing past the face of things, I need to learn that books have covers to tell you what is in the book.
People can not be both unique individuals and perfectly equal. There is a strange duals standard in society where we must all be exactly the same but still completely different and unique individuals. This is not a matter of race or sex.* We are different genetically, but it is not much at all, and these differences are minor when compared with the affects of society on developing individuals. The problem is that people are trying to find someone to blame for societal differences when really it is human nature to generalize. Some things are not the fault of anybody but a byproduct of human interaction and specialization. Why does engineering and science have a lack of women? It might have something to do with men and women specializing many years ago to jobs that at the time they were better at which has been perpetuated but is now being broken down. It is how society started, with people doing things they are good at so that time can best be used. It is basic trade advantage, and trade can always benefit everybody. Women have to have a higher body fat percentage because they had to ensure that the fetus would develop well, since temperature and reaction rates guide several developmental processes that eventually lead to reproducibility. So they had less ability to run down and kill dinner. Females need wider hips to fit our large brain through, another disadvantage when taking down a gazelle, and that is not to mention testosterone. It is interesting how civilization developed, or at least how it is thought to have evolved. Civilization evolved right along with our brains, but not as much for the intelligence. Most animals can walk soon after birth for the develop mostly in the womb. But people have large brains, which are the main size constraint, and females could not keep getting wider hips to accommodate this, so they just started giving birth earlier. So now they have to carry it around for a while, so they have to have a support structure in place or else they will be heavily disadvantaged by having to also provide for the child, and thus they would be naturally selected if they didn't have a form of civilization to rely on. So that is how all of this came about, which all lead to suburbia, which has caused a great spread in the use of taupe and beige.* But ant farms are economical, and other ways will be selected naturally, just as ant hills have been streamlined. I think the liberal/conservative split in America is a cultural war that has been going on since the beginning of time. It can be seen as a battle between educated and not, but I think it is more a reflection of difference between our romanticized past and our ambitious future. Some times I think of it as the gradual breakdown of values, but people always think that society is decaying, and there are fewer murders every day, well percentagewise, as we are constantly getting more members, and there are only so many seats.
*not for the third world
Darfur is a place where everybody knew there was a Genocide going on. Rwanda didn't seem to serve as too good of a warning sign. I like the blind hopefulness of people saying never again. But genocide will happen again. The key is to prevent it and to stop it once it has happened. The world is too afraid of becoming too powerful, which I guess is a good thing.
The key is to understand that it is not a civil war when only one side is fighting. But it is usually a matter of people killing of other ethnicities in their own countries, and we are kind of okay with that as long as you only kill your own people. That and most countries that can do something about it are europeans, and europeans care mostly about europeans. Africans killing africans seems like an outside problem. One of the best reasons I can see for not going to war in Iraq is that we could have instead fought the good fight in Africa.
People have a propensity to look out for those they are related to, it is basic natural selection, and to a certain extent it seem odd to berate people for not going to a distant land and saving another group of people they have no contact with. It has to do with globalization. A few hundred years ago the news of the killings would barely start being heard of in the developed world by the time it was over with. But it makes it more realistic to see images of it on CNN a few hours later. In this modern age we have the ability to do something about it, and that is what makes it weigh heavy on the conscious. But people are in my opinion basically good, but not great. It is just evolution: gene pools that don't generally pull together for the common good die out, there will be parasites, but their number should be limited by the group reaction, another inherited trait. This kind of social genetics is more about general trends and should not be seen as something that divides modern man into groups but instead defines us as a species.
My favorite psychological experiment has to do with shock therapy, but more with human nature. Subjects, after signing up for psychological testing, were brought into a room with a glass divider. On the other side sat a second subject hooked up to electrodes. The first subject was told to ask questions of the second and give them increasing shocks for incorrect answers. Well the second subject was really an actor, and not attached to any current. The key to the experiment was how much voltage would people deliver. Under only the orders of a person in a lab coat over 90% of people delivered an electric shock that was marked as lethal. The actor also at one point pleads with the tester, claiming that they have a heart condition and that the pain was excruciating. I brought this up once in history class, a girl exclaimed that she would never do that, and I told her that that is exactly the wrong thing to be thinking, because in our class there were statically only three people that would not kill the person, and of those three, two would give the next highest. It may seem cold and heartless of people, but it is a survival instinct, and if they didn't want to live at all costs they would be less likely to survive and be represented in the future gene pool. This lets me see how genocides like the holocaust can happen, and how "just following orders" is justifiable.
This may go against all of my IB training (I learned a lot about genocide) but I feel that IB told me to look at issues from all sides. People don't think of the 17 year old German who joined the Army to fight for his country - to save his homeland in his mind - and ends up being ordered to kill people or be killed, and how that must haunt him. I am not saying that they were justified, I am just trying to provide different prospectives. Nazi Germany was a disgusting thing, and the Holocaust is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of mankind.
I believe that freedom comes with a heavy price. I don't like it when Holocaust denial is a crime. Freedom of speech involves a great compromise of tolerance. Tolerance does not mean that you agree with someone else or that what they say doesn't make you angry, it just means you put up with it, and there is nothing in my mind that justifies denying free speech. I believe we were created with certain inalienable rights, that neither state nor god have any right to take away. I don't believe in god, but I used him for dramatic effect, even I will admit is a little blasphemous, but if the bible is right then I think all the clothing I wear of two thread already have him rather in the mood for vengeance.
In the autumn of my junior year, I remember having two series of conversations...the first was with a friend in math class. Jay Ackley told me of the Share Our Wealth society, a national organization that Long organized. Its goal was to place a wealth ceiling and floor for all citizens. It was an interesting idea with several parts to it and we discussed it in math because we both had skill. The conversations I had were with my Grandmother, who had recently visited Louisiana, a state that finished the river we started. With her I discussed the politics of Long, and his effect on the state as well as the country. I had a disconnect between these two individuals, who once I found out they were the same person I was left flabbergast. So as things tend to I wrote my essay on him, but now onto him.
Long in retrospect embodied the idea of the ends justifying the means. He ran on populism. He came from Winn parish (a parish is like a county), a place that was a stronghold of dissent, a place that opposed the civil war because it was a rich man's war. Long took down big business in Louisiana, built the infrastructure, and looked out for the little man. Although he never was able to publicly declare it, he was a champion of ethnic minorities, especially the many unemployed and undereducated blacks of Louisiana. He made sure that his health care and education initiative were given to whites and blacks equally, he was a champion of the black community in a time and place when they had no voice or power, and did so even when politically disadventagous. Long banished the KKK from Louisiana. Long brought Louisiana into the modern age by mortgaging their future, and did so during the great depression before the federal government could clean up the streets in New York City. Long was a charmer and a crowd pleaser. He brought Louisiana together and unified the previously geopolitically separate state. He built the road of Louisiana, a system which if New Orleans didn't would have made the Katrina disaster last year a massacre. Long gave jobs and education to Louisiana. He was the hero of Louisiana, winning his U.S. senate election 92,941 to 3,733. He was poised to run for president against FDR, had he not been assassinated, I don't think anyone would know of Roosevelt as anything other than a minor political figure.
Huey did some evil. He kidnapped a political opponent, then "rescued" him and force him to say over the radio that Huey had saved him. Huey used the newly developing media in ways that no other politician could. He could wear a three-hundred dollar suit and at the same time rally a crowd against the rich and powerful Standard Oil. Huey was an alcoholic and a womanizer. Huey at a party once while he was governor was too impatient/inebriated to wait in line at the bathroom and simply urinated between the man in front of him's legs, without success, after the man tried to fight Huey, Huey had his bodyguards take care of him. Huey burned his sources of financing by going after the rich, and had to find other means to finance his expensive media campaigns. Huey forced all state workers to subscribe to his propaganda newspaper, which cost 10 percent of their salaries. He was not afraid of reprisals because he controlled the government at all levels. He once denied a state senator a handshake, telling him that he bought him, and wasn't paying for a handshake. When another state senator opposed building a new capital, Huey put a hole in the roof above the senator and would only hold sessions during storms until he agreed with him. He had no fear of loosing elections because he was so popular with the poor who would turn out in droves for him. He was the kingfish. Huey had a lot of national influence too. He is credited with the liberalization of the New Deal, after FDR became his opponent. Huey had the record for the second longest filibuster, all on issue, and he prevented a banking bill which won him great favor with the farmers of America. He was a dictator that did more good for Louisiana than any other person in history. I don't know if I fear another one of him or fear that there may never be another Kingfish.
I can go on for hours about him, but I will leave you with a powerful and somewhat ironic quote of his:
"If Fascism comes to America it would be on a program of Americanism."
A storm is threaten'in my very life today, well actually a small but powerful storm system is about to hit me. But outside now it is calm, a calm before the weather. There are flashes of lightening outside in the distance.
My roommate asked me a few days ago if I was going to leave the lights up in our room, I told him I was not taking them down. They have nothing to do directly with Christmas, the tree is topped with a santa. One of the two chains of lights are out on the tree, the green of the green, red, and blue lights around the room are out, and blue is about to take the last train out of here, or bus, as Terre Haute has no Amtrak despite having every other rail line in the country going through it. But I have learned that tragic irony is just a part of life. But only a few days ago, April 10th I believe, so I could not have used it for my spring break anyways, a new bus line was started that originated in Europe, the United Kingdom mostly, that has very low bus fares, like a dollar, they are ultra cheap, have no physical buildings, they sell tickets only over the internet, and they service cities coming out of Chicago, and more interesting to me, they service Minneapolis and Indianapolis, my favorite and least favorite sudo greek cities. Well I can get to Indianapolis (which I will not call Indy on the record) relatively easily. So I can ship myself back and forth that way. Which is much cheaper, hell, I'll break a five to go home and back. So all I have to do is find a ride to Indianapolis, about 45 minutes. Which considering one way costs: 80 Amtrak from Indianapolis, 130 to greyhound, and 170 to fly from Indianapolis, or about 25 in gas if I ride with someone. Transatlanticism is a great album, I dislike liking music my sister gave me, but the Postal Service is great, and shares common member. The storm is here.
The south makes me doubt my belief that human nature is at least well intentioned. I sensed a general disdain for what I think is just general civilized behaviour. I didn't come to this conclusion based on any one specific event. Large gestures can be intentionally faked, so it is in the minor actions of a person that there real subconscious beliefs are revealed. It was the attitude of the convenience store clerk who leaves the money on the counter and leaves your items next to the other edge of the table, next to the scanner, where he lasted used them. I don't know why a people that aren't cooped up during winter as much as northerners could still walk around with such indifference toward each other. It could be economically based. The south really doesn't have much going into it other than military contractors and service industries. This country is becoming too focused on the service industry, it reflects the consumer driven society that we live in.
Our nation is failing to provide for a better future. One problem is immigration policy. We are an immigrant nation. Nobody was here a few dozen millenia ago. We are giving temporary homes to students and then sending them back after becoming a potential member of our workforce. We have a lack of professionals, and the outlook is not good. The education system has been failing for the past few decades. We have mortgaged away future generations by defunding schools. We have failed to keep up with a world that we will no longer lead. We have decayed into a society that paradoxically requires education while berating it at the same time.
One thing I find humorous that most don't is the story of the recent extinctions in the Americas. When the first inhabitants of the new world came over they encountered species of animals that had never been seen before due to their geographic isolation. Well the two species had an symbiotic respect for each other, they had no natural balance since they did not evolve together, but were instead suddenly thrown together. So as they came into the Americans several species of wild cat, elephant, and dogs were killed off. These "Native Americans" later on found out what it was like to be overpowered by foreign invaders. This same thing happened in Australia and several other places. So who would have thought that if two competing groups came into contact, and one was significantly more advanced, that the greater society would overwhelm the less society, by war, slavery, or assimilation. I am going to just overlook the five cases were this was not true: the african tribe that slowed a european invasion by stretching animal skins that deflected bullets. Any some may argue that advanced weapons don't make a culture "greater", but the fact is that there are no nations that have a wooden club defense strategy and that self preservation is just a basic element of natural selection.
If you are bored go scroll to the bottom and look at the archives. I have published over 50,000 words on this site and if you have read them all you have probably forgotten them by now. Just keep in mind that most of this is written at about three in the morning after a long day. Try not to judge me for failing to stay above the Mason-Dixon Line, it is Florida. I feel that I need to leave with one good message or intriguing idea.
When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself
Humans evolved from primates that lived in trees. In the trees these creatures would spend their day swinging on branches and collecting fruit. This required two abilities. The first is the ability to see fruit and tell that it is ripe. The reason why we see color is because we needed to be able to make quick decisions on the ripeness of fruit. So we can detect color better than most things. We also need to be able to clearly see the fruit and the branches around us to make sure we don't fall to the ground and an almost certain death. So we also have clear vision. This comes with a price. We are blind at night compared to other animals. But we can read, something that cats could never do, for their eyes don't see clearly enough. Oh, and we also don't see movement as well, this is because fruit does not move. This is all well and good. But the other key to this is that moving quickly in tree canopies also requires a good ability to estimate movement. On the ground it is all two-dimensional, but in the trees it is three. So our minds developed to "see" things in three dimensions. We have large brains because those stupid creatures that feel were removed from the gene pool. Well intelligence has a great number of bonuses, and it all snow-balled from there. So we evolved to become bane of this world, causing the extinction of more animals than all but four great extinctions. But that is the topic for another day. People find it strange to think that they descend from lesser creatures. I think that pride comes into play. That and the bible. There is a disconnect between our old selves and the latest version of us. We surely killed off any intermediately intelligent being around us. So after we killed of the Neanderthals (or interbred with them) we were all alone in the world. We gained knowledge, and the knowledge of knowledge, and left to our own devices we became fearful of our lack of knowledge about why we were here, and it all snowballs from there.
The movie contact has a line in it that bothers me, to paraphrase it is basically poses the question of how can atheists think that 90-95% of the world is living in delusion. Well I have no problem with it. People live in delusion all the time. We tell children about Santa and the Easter bunny. It makes people feel comfortable. I don't judge them for it. In a way I envy them. I wish there were a god, but I am rather sure there isn't one, if man was created in his image then god would want to claim credit. One problem with god is that there are too many of them and they seem to be sending mixed messages. Even if there is a god, then at best a sixth of the world is right, and that is if someone actually has it right. I like to think of god like gravity. Every so often a new theory comes along to define gravity, and every time we think we have it right. Did the pagans have it right? If not we probably should have copied some many of their holidays into our modern religions. One god makes things simpler and allows for an absolute authority. In the past the gods were individual characters that had flaws and everything, and thus better reflected real people. But moralists came along and wanted a perfect god to follow. Having one god also makes it so that people can't be gods. Back in the old days the rulers of lands were gods, well they called themselves god, and this idea is still around, cults do it. Having a physical representation of god is a nice thing to have, people die but if you just have your children be gods too everything is great, the divine right of kings, Egyptian pyramids, and so on. So, in summation, most people live in a delusion, but I am okay with that.
Why god is needed is another matter. Many people need a god in their life. They need a sense of stability and meaning that they can not always count on in their own lives. People don't like just living. They must have some reason for getting out of bed in the morning. God is also a good thing to blame stuff on. You can just say it is all part of a bigger plan of...god playing some kind of sick chess game against himself I guess. Then there are those who have god as more of an observers. God being an observer makes sense if you think of this world as fictitious. By this I mean something along the lines of the Matrix but where the body never has a physical presence. Just think if there was a giant computer that could simulate every atom on earth interacting with each other. Well in a way this would be the real world, until someone wants to play solitaire or the power goes out, and whatever the conscious mind is vanishes, but this allows for silent observers (god). I think one problem is that we are the only intelligent creatures on this planet. We feel special and we can't explain where or exactly how we think. So we must be special, and it all snowballs from there.
God has had several different representations over the years. There is the vengeful god (proactive), gone fishin' god (passive), and that is about it. I also wonder why the idea of their being one true almighty god and the common ancestor of all life. I am surprised there is no religion that worships the original source of all of this, at least in a scientific sense. But there is a disconnect between science and spirituality. I really wish everyone could see the Woody Allen film Shadows and Fog, it gives a good interpretation of the search for meaning and god while still having some comedic parts. If god exists he is either mean-spirited or criminally negligent. I don't like it when people say tragedy is all part of a greater plan, why pray to someone if they are just going to let horrible things happen. I don't mean not having people die or something stupid like that, I just mean that how does god let say his employees sexual abuse children (cough in direction of Vatican city). Why would god be so concerned with beard length and not slavery. I will end with one thought. I believe that Jesus existed. Jesus was essentially a kool-aid man who thought of a way to be the remembered for all time, or until the next cult collects enough converts to be considered legitimate.
Keillor is of course a Minnesota native. He was born in 1942 and went the U. He is a bit of a political force in Minnesota. He has already endorsed Al Franken in the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota against Republican Norm Coleman. A seat once held by Paul Wellstone. A Prairie Home Companion delves into political issues for time to time, but my real exposure to him was through his book, Homegrown Democrat. A book that helped me understand not only what my own values are, but why they are. The more important thing is church. I don't...do that, going to church that is. So on Sunday I listen to him, and through that process picked up morals from the various components of the show. Then, there is the news from Lake Wobegon.
Lake Wobegon is a real town in Minnesota, I believe my grandmother is from there. It is a fictional place that represents the idealized version of small town Minnesota. The small town is the backdrop for Keillor's narration of a segment that gives a him a chance to give a powerful monologue that satirizes Minnesota culture and delivers a moral, usually. The best one are done in Winter, the one done is summer is usually to optimistic. Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Minnesota nice is the behaviour of Minnesotans to be nice and have a shred of common decency towards other people that the false arrogant jerks of this country don't respect and find to be a negative trait. Minnesota nice keeps us going after a few months of winter and no end in sight. I can make small talk with strangers and not feel strange about it. Minnesota nice sometimes means being passive aggressive. When a Minnesotan says they only want a little dressing on their salad it means they are allergic but don't want to inconvenience you with it. It means that when there is a flu vaccine shortage we don't all go run out and get one even when we wouldn't get the shot otherwise like the rest of the country does. We are not hostile drivers, we have winter, we drive in a way that keeps the most people alive, we are usually good drivers that can handle bad situations (take my almost accident on the MN-WI boarder). It may seem that I am off track here, but Keillor, at least to me, represents this, the Minnesota spirit. I can openly say these things because I was brought up in the cities and therefore do not have all my morals together. Minnesota nice is humoring each other to help us all get through the day. In Minnesota you don't refuse food, somebody made it and there is no need to waste it, we can always make more, the winter is coming anyways and you need to store up. Adults have been using whatever here for decades, usually preceded by an oh. You have to just let some things go by, we are all in a 5X5 foot cabin and there is nowhere to go if you get angry. In Minnesota you can not just leave, you don't have anywhere too important to go anyways, and the people you are around are what's important. I do not usually talk in the Minnesota way, you know, when you get into a rhythm that comes from the way the Swedes talked, but I drop into sometimes if I spend too much time (impossible) in out-state Minnesota. I sometimes consider myself more of a Minnesotan than an American. Now that HUAC is onto me, I will leave you with a quote of his ", I think the most un-American thing you can say is, "You can't say that"." Google him, listen to a show, they are in the Prairie Home Companion archive.
Minneapolis was originally going to be called Brooklyn, hence the suburbs of Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center. But instead it was formed by the combination of the Dakota word for water and the Greek word for city, Minne-polis. The city is a bastion of liberal politics founded on Scandinavians principles. Minnesota has the highest voter turnout of any state, and the DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) party has 12 members, the Green party has one. It is a glorious city with an overdeveloped park system and strong art community. Outside of New York City, Minneapolis has the highest per capita attendance of theater performances. Parks cover ten of the city's sixty square miles. It is a city on a hill, situated half way between the equator and the north pole, it is cold as Dante's version of hell,
Murderapolis was the term used to describe the city in the 1990's after attaining a higher per capita murder rate than New York City. But times have changed from the days where we averaged a murder a day. Segregation occurs between the city's different ethnic groups, even after forced busing was starting in 1972. But that is the bad part of Minneapolis, there is always education.
The University of Minnesota is the largest university in the nation with over fifty thousand students. This is one of the more interesting stories of Minnesota. When Minnesota was first being formed as a state there were three main cities: Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Stillwater. The state needed to start building infrastructure, namely a capital, a prison, and a university. Stillwater chose first, and got the prison because it offered the most jobs. St. Paul then got to chose, they got the capital. Then Minneapolis was stuck with a university. Well, a few generations later and the University employs thousands and covers the northeast corner of the city. But other than that Minneapolis is awesome because of the culture that its highly educated population creates. The arts are everywhere that parks aren't, and I have a theory on why it got to be so awesome.
Poor people are weak. This is a generalization. But in terms on immigrants it is true. Minneapolis was first populated my German and Swedish immigrants who came over from Scandinavia as semi-rich skilled laborers. These were not the ordinary immigrant class, they came with skills in carpentry and the means to travel over perfectly settleable regions to Minnesota. Poor people on can not afford to go to Minnesota when they can stop in New Jersey. Winters are cold, summers are hot, and the in-between is about five minutes. You have to want it, you have to be a stoic and more importantly stubborn Swede who could care less that urine freezes before it hit the ground in the winter. I don't want to sound superior, but poor people are usually unskilled laborers that due to means beyond their control can not lift themselves out of economic squalor. Poor people in Minnesota freeze to death. The farm land is the most fertile on earth, but there is only one harvest a year, you have to have accumulated wealth to get through the winter. Of course there are poor people here, but we have winter, if it is cheaper to live in Ohio, then people will move there if they have to. This gets me to the other thing about winter. It gives us a human decency that we share with Canada.
Ever see Fargo, guess what, the Coen brothers (natives of Minneapolis) were not that far off with the accents and the attitude. You don't issue commands, you ask leading questions. You are nice to people, and treat them like people. Of course Minneapolitans take out their aggression when driving, but we have to be ready for the winter. Winter is what really defines us, we have to live cooped up with each other for a few months, we only get to use our amazing parks a few months of the year. We have lakes, too many, we have a lake each, you can't drive around without bumping into another lake.
Minneapolis has the amazing trait of having no real clear reason for being so awesome. It has just kind of perpetuated itself and nobody bothered to stop it. I should mention that when I talk about Minneapolis I am talking about southern Minneapolis, Uptown, and Downtown. North Minneapolis is its own thing, it is like Springfield and Shelbyville, it has a different taste to it. But all of this is just me going on about Minneapolis because I realize now that I have been to dozens of cities around the United States, and Minneapolis has a quite greatness that overwhelms me sometimes. Minneapolis is an oasis of culture.
Scandinavian is an often mis-applied term. By this I mean that is made up of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (best). Finland is in no way part of geographic Scandinavia. Maybe after Scandinavians raped and pillaged Finland for centuries they became ethnically Scandinavian. But the same is true of Russia, name after the people there having red hair, a trait not found in the region until after viking invaders came. Vikings were awesome, everybody in Europe descends from them. When historians were first investigating England they thought that the English government originated in Norway. Why? Because Norway had ten times a many English coins than England itself. The historians who made this error must have been English. But Minnesota is rather awesome.
I am the result of thinking outside the box for about two decades(hence awesome). Take the following example.
Leonhard Euler is a mathematician and physicist and the story I am about to attribute to him could very well be about Gauss of some other math guy, nevertheless the story is important. As a young boy Euler had always shown a gift for mathematics. One day his teacher gave out an assignment to add every number from one to one hundred in order to give herself time to grade some schoolwork. Well Euler wrote on his paper for a few seconds and went up to the teacher. She thought he was asking a question but to her surprise he had already added all whole numbers from one to one hundred. He did with with a cleaver trick. He found that 1 + 100 = 101 and 2 + 99 = 101 and so on until 50 + 51 = 101. So all that needs to find the sum of the numbers 1 to 100 is multiply 101 by 50 and bang 5050. So this is all well and good, he was a brilliant child. But what most people never think about is what happened that night. Image little Leonhard was sitting at the dinner table:
Paul Euler: what did you do in school today, son?
Leonhard: well, I did something so brilliant, that people will be talking about it for hundreds of years after I am dead
Margret Brucker: that is very nice Leonhard, Paul your son Lester won his cricket match today.
Leonhard: uhhh, good grief!
Euler went on to discover such things as the most beautiful formula in mathematics: e ^ (π * i) + 1 = 0 and that most people mispronounce his last name.
Russia did not have a written language until priests wanted them to read the bible, and hence there became the Cyrillic aЛphaЪeТ.
Organized sports, organized religion, and organized crime are all great reasons for nihilism. I don't give a damn about sports. I don't see any justification for spending government money on stadiums. It is outrageous to think that we seriously consider building huge stadiums for private companies that make loads of money when our public education system is failing. Building stadiums for teams is subsidizing an already lucrative industry by giving public money to billionaires to pay millionaires. Guess what? We could have people play that are good at sports play and have people watch, for free. Just invest in local parks, then people can actually play a game instead of sitting on their ass and living failed fantasies of how they 'almost went pro', living vicariously through a millionaire who they idolize but in reality wouldn't give them the time of day. It gives joe-six-pack something to dream about, a lottery for the masses.
All of this juvenile angst comes to the subject of me doing well despite overwhelming odds and how I now know that I am better than at least half a million college students. I have 105 points on the facebook NCAA (not NAACP, the only anything to still use the word "colored"). That puts me at number 10 out of 350 at Rose and 16,328 out of 582,512 out of all facebook, which puts me well into the top three percent of all people who entered. I didn't even know what the abbr.iated names of all the teams were, I think I used the order in the alphabet of the third letter in the team names, I don't remember. All I know is that I am better than most people who entered this pitiful contest, and considering that I am way better at just about everything else, I have an increased smug sense of superiority. All of the years of watching basketball and all they have to show for it is the plume of dust left by me racing ahead of them. I could still do better if UCLA wins the final game. So I cared for the first time about the outcome of a basketball game.
I went to Southwest high school. I remember hearing that we had the fourth worst football team in the nation. I give them credit for playing despite not even getting half as many points as the other team for a few years, but the again, I had to use low-grade text books to buy new uniforms. I think perhaps new uniforms were not the thing prevent a winning season. But then they hired a former U (University of Minnesota: Minneapolis) football coach or something. I did play tee-ball once as child, I don't remember it, so I assume it sucked and I repressed it. Either that or at the age of five or six I figured out baseball is boring, and there is a reason they have to sell alcohol at the games, although the people who watch baseball really need all the brain cells they can get.
On a somewhat related noted I did care about outcome of the recent American football tournament. I wanted the Indianapolis colts to win, only because Rose is their summer training facility. That way I could say I use the same weigh room as super bowl champions. In other words I wanted a way about talking about how awesome I am. But hey, I use the same ____ machine as _____ _______ who was almost really good at what he does. My favorite Schubert song just came on, and I need to go listen to that, although after watching Manhattan I kind of feel like some Gershwin.
ARCHIVE 2: 6 november 2005 - 30 december 2005
ARCHIVE 3: 28 december 2005 - 12 february 2006
ARCHIVE 4: saturday 11 february 2006 - monday 6 march 2006
ARCHIVE 5: sunday 5 march 2006 - sunday 2 april 2006