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
Well, 2006
went rather well. Me and Chris Farstad's interactive art project is
working electronically, a relief that great for me, like a large weight
being lifted from my shoulders. I was told by a guy who worked on the
electromechanical timed relay that the project is based around and he
said I did not need to wire up pin 7, so I did not, little did I know
that he must have meant that pin 7 is not required unless you want the
timing of the relay to work. So on the eve of having the box work we
decided to expand the project a bit by building a base. I have found
myself having to defend my choice to go into the relatively lucrative
field of optical engineering often in recent times. The truth is that I
would be doing it if there was no money in it, and I don't feel that I
should need to defend the happenstance that what I want to do is
lucrative. So I will tell the story of why I went into engineering.Man of science, man of faith, I don not think of being an engineer until I had already started. When I think of my I became an Engineer I think of the West Wing episode where the president talks about why air force one took off late, in the evening. I knew generally that I would be going into science while daydreaming - as I often did - in Ms. Sexton's 11th grade IB english class. We were reading Walt Whitman, specifically the poem When I heard the learn'd astronomer, and I realized what I must do. This was the same moment I decided I did not like Whitman in preference to T.S. Elliot, which for me seemed like an Either/Or - not the Elliot Smith album - situation. I realized that most anybody can gaze at the stars, and that somebody - myself - must create the proofs, the figures, and charts. Sure I was already going on that path, but I don't think I had every consciously thought about it in the same way that a person does not pause their day and think of themselves as breathing in but merely takes it as given as they know no other way to them.
When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
This could be seen as merely a poem about being unable to find the forest with all these damn trees around. But as my mind wandered all I could think of was the divide between science and religion. I feel I had to make a choice, this one more between science and art. It is BS to say they are the same thing. I feel that both sides should be offended to be considered in the same league as the other. The idea that music is math is BS. Music has patterns that repeat, has harmonic qualities, and has some sort of innateness to it. But you can not solve a song. There are not many singer/songwriter/mathematicians. One requires a lifetime of training the other is practiced by anybody who needs to communicate the torment in their souls. Everybody can understand music. Not everybody can understand math. There is a strong anti-math (anti-intellectual) bias in the cultures of the world. It is because those who can not do instead turn to hate. Intelligence is something that can not be obtained by surgery or money. I link mathematical ability and intelligence because math is abstract. It has a correlation coefficient of say .7ish. This misunderstanding leads to god, and why smart people do not believe in him.
I will not praise a god that is created by my fellow man. If he does exist he would feel quite insulted that followed some idea of him that somebody else came up with for no representation of him could be perfectly authentic even if he did speak to a select few of us. I have always contended that Jesus was the cleverest man of all time. But how could people with an incomplete language that can not perfectly describe the world around us accurately represent and pass down the word of god. Then there is a nice little logical argument I have set up. If god created me then why should I be punished for him making me so I don't believe in him.
Pagans were just confused about the world around them, so they had a god for each thing they did not understand. People are able to see things abstractly so they see things beyond their control as being controlled by other people, who they set above themselves as they were able to alter things they were not able to, these are gods. Then we slowly grew to understand our world, eliminating gods along the way as we understood that which lay around us until there remained just one question - one door unopened. We still do not know what existence is or where it came from. It is because of this that we have around us the last religions that our species will likely have because they are well established and there is only one more reduction step, a step that will eliminate the very need of religion.
Moments of weakness lead us to faith because we want justice and need to have a reason that it is not happening. I will rephrase that it is not that smart people don't believe in god, I mean that strong people don't believe in god. Because they are not willing to take the easy answers of faith. I find that one of the most comforting notions is that people without faith who do not have a fear of eternal damnation still act like good people, that gives me faith in people, because they have no reason to.
High school classmates, are interesting to run into. Unlike many of my classmates I do not enjoy the continued company of my old classmates. I do not go to college with people I already knew. I find it so strange to think of still hanging out with the old gang. I realize that in seeing old classmates beyond a group of a one or two dozen people from Southwest I do not feel any sense that I want to revisit them. I don't try to avoid contact with them, but I make no attempts to see many people. Sure, I do not get to see everybody that I want to see. I have some watercolors and want to make a painting, I think I will make a series of pictures of the traumatic experiences of my life, or at least the poignant ones. I think I would rather do the actual painting in Terre Haute because I feel more distant from society there, a better place to have an abstract perspective.
Man does not live on bread alone. I told that to many people over the last few days and none of them seemed to get it. It means that a person requires more that just what they need for survival. You can call it faith or religion but I think of it more as self meaning. I used it in reference to my actions. I biked in the rain to Java Jacks for some live music. I could have taken 46th as it is more level, but I went up the hill on 50th only to go back down it. There is something very sacred to be about bicycling at night. I do not like the word sacred. But it fits as best any word can. It could be said that I took 50th because I was more used to it, but if I am used to taking the hill as opposed to the plain then I am all the better for it. I have prided myself on not taking the path of least resistance despite what it means for the efficiency of it all.
It sucks,
I am going to be arriving in Minneapolis essentially at the beginning
of christmas eve. Not that I care as much as I used to. I will not
being doing anything on Christmas day, because of family, so that kind
of takes all the joy of the holiday. But today's subjects are:
contemporary media's role in politics, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, American
race relations, current social potable policy (ironic in more than one
way), Sen.Barack Obama, Rep. Keith Ellison, the person of the year, and
social intellectual tolerance. It has been far too warm for December. It got up to 60 last week, and I feel strange missing cold weather. The Daily Show and Colbert Report did there last episodes on Wednesday. On the Report there was a guitar solo contest between Stephen Colbert and the lead guitarist for the Decemberists (who held the home-field advantage, being December) the contest judged my a panel of three including the New York Governor-elect. It featured Henry Kissinger saying things like ", lets get ready to rock." I wonder if the writers and hosts of the two shows realize their influence. Many influential people watch the show and I wonder what affect the two shows have had. I do not like the Decemberists.
I lost my cell phone last weekend, I don't know where. But I might be stranding doing nothing over break because of it. I rarely use it in my day to day life nowadays. But I need it some times. But oh well. I don't like the saying that something is always in the last place you look because it is redundantly obvious, and is equivalent to saying the last thing you do is always the last thing you do.
I come from a land where people do not sit on their porches. In the lower Minnehaha creek watershed it is usually too hot or too cold to be outside for long when you don't need to (the Goldilocks non-historical theory). I find it very nice on a nice (temperature) evening to sit out and watch over the neighborhood with a cup of tea. Even during the worst of storms I find shelter and sit perpetually in the eye of the storm - at least from my perspective.
I was shocked for the second time at Rose about race relations. In my American Literature Survey class (SL233) we had a discussion about race relations after reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The first time I was shocked was when we had to be given a talk during freshman orientation about being tolerant of other people's nationality. I was shocked because I don't remember ever before in my life having to be told that people are equal. I always went with it as being kind of assumed. I wonder why I feel no need to maintain cultural heritage as opposed to people of other races. I do not feel I need to be a subset of American that must maintain a separate identity. I always think of myself as American, as I have no intention to return to whatever homeland I would go to. There is a cycle that goes on when new immigrant classes come into a country: they are treated like dirt at first because they are dangerous foreigners, then they build up enough numbers that they start to form segregated colonies within America, then they have children who don't care about staying around the god old enthnic neighborhood, and finally they are assimilated into the melting pot of America. I don't like that people move somewhere but still classify themselves as a member of an outside group. I don't get why they then moved in the first place if their allegiance is elsewhere. I understand that they may not have moved out of choice but it is insulting to refuse their new homeland. I guess it has something to do with a search for identity in a new world that is usually hostile. I am interested above anything at the black/white dichotomy in America. Is it that the two subcultures of America don't integrate because they have opposing views? I find it strange that people insult those who try to cross the 8 mile long divide. I blame organized religion.
The other thing that I came to was that it is when people do things in others self-interest that things go downhill. When it comes to ideas, tolerance should always be followed. If your idea is actually good then calm non-threatening debate should be able to sway people. I was able to squash many an argument from religious types because their fundamental error is that they are correct. The reason I think organized religion is hokey is because there is a very strong correlation between the religion of parents and children. If there was one true faith then why would people not all jump on the wagon. But I digress. I find great comfort in knowing that without fear of hell and enternal damnation I and many others still do "the right thing" in most cases. Speak of right and wrong, and my literature class, a few weeks ago somebody sent an email out with attachments that were photographs of my professor's DUI arrest, and other supporting court documents. Apparently somebody is trying to blackmail her or something and we had a talk about it as we ate the wide variety of cookies that she brought in for the class - with a glass of milk too. In the end I don't really care. She comes into work and does her job well, I don't see any problem with it or whatever she does in her free time. It reminds me of the story a few days back about mothers against drunk driving (MADD) trying to stop ALL drunk driving by putting breathalysers in the cars of all people with a DUI. This is a stupid idea from a stupid organization. First off, it would be impracticable (impracticle, but makes you sound smarter) to eliminate all drunk driving without cop on every corner, even in corn fields. Secondly, MADD is more about prohibition than drunk driving. They just use it as a pretense for limiting alcohol consumption. Thirdly, most first time offenders don't ever re-offend, and for repeat offenders they are already getting breathalysers. I see it more as a moral crusade that is hopeless. Almost as hopeless as the war on drugs. Recently some report that I read off digg.com said that marijuana was a 35 billion dollar cash crop, making it the primary cash crop of the United States, with corn coming in second at 23.3 billion dollars. I think of Huck Finn when I see our society, with a set of moral standards that it clearly does not follow. I wrote a paper last night about Twain's message of morals and civilization entitled: Truthiness in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I always wonder how experts figure out how much illegal activity is going on. But I digress, the with America are great, the democratic party seems to be obsessive about Barack Obama running for president after serving one term in congress. I guess he should get out of the senate before he becomes corrupted. He is coming in during a great time for democrats. I realize that it could be a tough race as he would be the first African-American candidate to run from a major party. He is rather moderate but passionate about it. He comes in 4th when it comes to voting with the party. In the house my representative from the fighting fifth district of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, is having some trouble with him swearing in on Al-Quran, but I am cool with that, I own a copy, he is Muslim, the first elected to be elected to congress. I was stunned to find that as the DFL candidate Ellison was able to only get 55.6% of the vote, but the republican only got 21%, tied with the independent candidate, so all is right [left] with one of the most liberal districts in America. I guess my vote could have been better used in Indiana, but I can not go through the psychological torment of considering my place of residence in Indiana. I could handle almost anywhere else, by that I mean a blue state. The democrat's problem is that they gave the moral high ground to the republicans. Oh well, what is the worst that could happen?
In other news I am TIME's person of the year, being an internet presence, by using the next communication medium that will revolutionize and equalize the information asymmetry (you know matter slightly more as an individual than before). I feel it is a decent idea for person of the year. I would like to clarify that this is not a blog because it is one way, I know all you and I need to know so there is no reason to have information flow back to me. In this modern world where everybody is closer and yet more anonymous. I find that one of the great trends since we have left the farm as a society is that we are trying to define ourselves in this urban environment. There are six billion of us, the number alone means that you are not very unique, except me because I am an optical engineer, and when I look around my paraxial optics class I am looking at over half of the optical engineers in my class in the world. When optical computing comes along you will probably know more about what we do. But the rest of your are struggling to define who you are because there are so many of you. I really want to get into the virtues of a proportion response in conflicts (military, person, and otherwise) and why being able to view problems omnipotently is important, but I will be in Minneapolis in under a day, and there is no Iowa storm to slow me down, and Iowa does not have the speed traps Wasconsin does. After much contemplative thought I have realized that the role of M. Legrandin in Swann's Way is to show that hypocrisy is the ultimate sin for which there is no forgiveness, every day I like Proust more and more.
Of
all the various events, ideas, and people that have influenced my life,
none has had such a profound affect as the first half of Marcel
Proust's Swann's Way, the first of seven volumes of the novel In Search of Lost Time since reading the Selfish Gene. In Search of Lost Time was written between 1913 and 1927, it is the longest commonly printed novels, at about three times the length of War and Peace.
I have taken it on, a great challenge of literary ability, a new
frontier for me, for I do not often read fiction, much less such a
complicated mess of characters, flashbacks, metaphors, and the
sometimes off translation from French. I have skipped an entire
lifetime of reading fiction. I find it strange that books concerning
reality are non-fiction, as if to say that books concerning real things
are the strange thing, in the stead of having false existences be
denoted as the subset. But alas, English majors must have something. I
enjoy Proust's writing because it wanders, often with run-on sentences,
which meander from subject to subject while still retaining some
general motif that ties together periodically so that even if someone
should for whatever reason not be able to finish the volume that
preoccupies them now, they could still get a message about what Proust
is trying to convey. I have high hopes because Lost comes back in a mere 57 days.Nobody should ever try to understand modern physics in the hopes of having a better conceptual understanding of the world. I feel that a good deal of the direction of my education has been decided by my need to understand why. I vainly thought that I could better understand the world. Then you learn that an electron is essentially a small black hole with a charge and mass. I don't want to get into what evanescent waves are, but just know they decay exponentially and only kind of exist. Your body is made of of atoms that only have a probability distribution of being where they are. I initially thought that I would be able to reconcile quantum mechanics with my classical views, but they don't mesh up.
The office is one of the funniest shows on television now. My current list of currently running shows is: Lost, House, the Office, the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and that is it. I was disappointed to learn that Jeff Goldblum's show will not be on until at least mid-season madness. There seems to be a shift in television, but first let me explain how there are only two kinds of shows. There are two kinds of shows: static and dynamic. The static shows are like Seinfeld or the Simpsons, nothing changes so the show can go on forever. Dynamic shows rely of constant change, like a soap opera, these shows can last as long as the plot drives them forward. Shows like Lost you would initially think as being dynamic(ly awesome) but it is static because it is character driven, as everybody usually eventually returns to the beach, keep in mind that nothing has really happened in the show so far considering the iceberg that can be seen below the surface.
I treated my house to a meal, well most of them, I did it as part of driver appreciation day. Basically because I am constantly getting rides and never giving them (no car, no license, no permit) I make food for everybody that does from time to time. I made bacon-cheddar hot dogs and tater-tots, I was going to make chicken breasts and wild rice, but I didn't have enough time to bake the stuff. I think it went well, at least better managed than the night of six different noodles, where rigatoni, spaghetti, rotini, bow-tie, conchiglie, and fettuccine were all made together. But it was good, fed six people, since Ramzi was not here this time. I think I am going to watch a movie tonight, perhaps the original Casino Royale (the fully sanctioned Woody Allen spoof), Inside Man, Fitzcarraldo, or Match Point. Oh well, I wish I had more to say. Oh, ironically, on driver appreciation day, was the only day this quarter where I was unable to get a ride to school and had to bicycle.
It is a peculiar thing, how
convenience plays such a role in what we do. How simple changes in how
easy something is can change our overall behaviour. I drink about eight
to ten cups of tea a day. It all started when Polish brought back an
electric teapot, which makes boiling water easier, which brings me to
the tea isle of kroger (grocery store), which leads to me spending my
relatively event-free past few days sitting on a couch drinking various
teas, talking with my housemates about the best teas. I like bitter
teas because I am not from the south/inbred. I don't add sugar, I take
it like my coffee, black, or at least without additives. I find it
relaxes me, but from what false image of a hectic life I've made for
myself to give me purpose...perhaps my purpose is to make my life seem
troublesome to give me a purpose, something to fight against. Which
gets me back to Lost, of
which everybody in my house and Jimmy, all six of us are caught up on
now, we all suffer together waiting for FEBRUARY 7th 2007 to roll
around, as we wait, fully understanding that we will still not know
what the truth is for a while. What if giving yourself purpose - false
hope - in the end helps you by giving you drive. The laughter I held
back today came from my English Literature professor asking ",does
anybody know about the poem Beat Beat Drums."
All I could do is think back to my IB formal oral, the 21 lines of the
poem, my scribbled out sheet of insight, the wager Colin Eide and
Jennifer Allen made about me forgetting to mention the meaning of the
drums in the poem, and of course the memory of the realization of no
remembering to mention the meaning of the drums in the poem. I need to
get over my superiority concerning the humanities, it just makes me
lazy. 
There are two
videos that are worth mentioning, one is Micheal Richards going on a
racist rant, the other is a sweet video of, well it is overlapping of
several cars racing the same course set to music, it just looks cool,<LINK> to Micheal Richards video on CNN.com
<LINK> to cool video that is set to music
I have the feeling that Micheal Richards was not intending to be legitimately racist, from is tone I have the feeling that he was being sarcastic, or at least I hope he was because I like his work so much. He did an interview on Letterman (Seinfeld was the guest) and he seemed to be completely shaken up. The audience kept laughing because I am sure they thought it was a bit, but they died down eventually. I have never seen another person so emotionally destroyed. I guess he went to far. I really didn't like that some comics that Larry King interviewed said that free speech has its limitations,especially having run into the fascist (naziesque) staff of the Northwest University online paper (see below on my Justin Long hates me), a group of America haters who believe they are above reproach. Free speech has no limits with the exception of threats, but that does not communicate ideas. Of course words can't hurt unless you can yell really really loud.
Serious times call for unserious people. Serious people start wars. Serious people created think tanks that endorsed preemptive nuclear (nucular) strikes during the cold war. Serious people are zealots who have commitment to a single idea which becomes so singular in their minds that it blinds them from the light. Serious people firebomb abortion clinics in the belief that the end justifies the means. Forgetting that abortion will always be legal. Abortion will always be legal because conservatives know it will inflame the liberal community towards action. Liberals don't really care now because all that seems to be left for civil rights is gay marriage rights. Nobody really cares much about it People don't care as much because homosexuals don't have seperate bathrooms. I was confronted about this at GRINNELL, but our generation has forgotten what an intense civil rights crusade went on a few decades ago. I have yet to see a governor standing on University steps saying that homosexuals will be shot if they try to attend. Yes, there are many instances of homosexuals being abused, even killed. But they have the right to vote, and I believe placing their struggle on par with those of African-Americans is ludicrous. I don't mean to stereotype (althought I will, but I wanted to put in a caveat) but most homosexuals are not deeply religious compared to the average population. I would certainly not subscribe to values that say I am abomination, or that say I shall not wear clothes woven from different threads. So I don't know what the big (as in critical to literal survival) deal is with gay marriage, I am all for it, but I am not going to any rally. I believe in complete equality. Which goes against feminism, depending on your definition. I am against affirmative action because if it exist out of a pragmatic logic then the idea that it causes more indirect trouble by having the issue out-weights the social good that comes from it. By giving one group over another is stereotyping and assuming that one group is not as competent as the next. Equality like freedom is not free. Back to serious people. Unserious people are merely those who are not fully dedicated but still have an interest in the topic at hand. For example, me going to see Stranger Than Fiction is a goal I have, but if the showing is sold out I will not follow a ticket-holder to the bathroom and pick-pocket his ticket off of him. Having one goal in life is generally a bad thing, because you will sacrifice all else, and a man does not live by bread alone. I don't have a problem with people of faith, just when they deny logic to allow for their comfortable blanket of ignorance, which is sacrificing logic for moral warmth, an abandonment of the need for self-preservation, which is a sign conscious awareness. Animals have an innate hereditary evolved sense of self-preservation, the success of the human mind is the ability to self-derive this, and comes with the Rose thorns of being able to go against it.
I visited Jeff and Chris, once more, in Grinnell,
which was, as it always is, awesome. I got to reintroduce myself to
people that I kind of remember from a year ago. When I felt it didn't
matter I said I was an University of Minnesota Student looking to
transfer, posing as a philosophy major by the name Rutherford.
Rutherford being a name so ridiculous that nobody would make it up.
Among many things, I got to see the film Half Nelson,
a film that makes me fearful of the kind of film I would make. I also
experienced some Orchestral pop music thingy, that involved many many
people on a very very small stage. It was not as whatever Grinnell "is"
- which I believe involved a beret - as the throat singer last year,
but it was still intense, and far easier to dance to. I think the
Minnesota costumes were a bit too warm. Three interesting topics came
up. 1: Could there be other conscious entities inside our brains that
are not able to directly control our physical actions, like in Being John Malkovich,
only these "others" do not get dumped out onto the New Jersey Turnpike.
2: If you believe that the placebo affect will work even if you know
what you are taking is a placebo, does the placebo affect work, since
it is all about belief anyways? 3: We agreed that a woman can rape a
man, but can a woman rape a woman? These are all very unimportant
questions, well perhaps the placebo thing. These mysteries bring me
around to something I though a lot about while on my six hour greyhound
bus extravaganza (trip), what is going on with the show Lost.
I have the feeling that nothing will be reveal until the end, which
artistically I agree with, but I have to wait 80 days just to find out
what happens in the next installment. So I want to just give my top ten
questions in no order that I want to check back on later to see if any
are resolved. 1. Why was Locke in a wheelchair? 2. What is the smoke
monster? 3. How did they survive the crash? 4. Who is the eye-patch
guy? 5. What is the deal with Desmond? 6. Will Sawyer survive? 7. What
happened in the hatch? 8. What do the numbers mean? 9. How did Ethan
get to the beach so quickly? 10. Who are the others?False hope is a dangerous thing, that usually only delays inevitable suffering, but I think it is human nature to have hope, so I will maintain my hope, at least until I find some other quixotic dream to follow, for with few exceptions dreams can't kill you.
I could get into the circumstances that lead to several of my comments being removed from the comments section of the below mentioned article about Justin Long. I think they took issue with my mentioning the fact that Northwestern University is more willing to allow in male applicants than female applicants. I think it all went down a good road that stirred debate about the ideas of censorship and moral authority.
This is the guy from those "I'm a PC" with my personal hero John Hodgman, from whom I have stolen a failed palindrome to title this site, slow speed: deep owls. He commented vigorously on an article written in the North by Northwest student
newspaper thing at Northwestern University. In the comments section for
the article bashing him called "Why Justin Long is the worst person of
the year", here is the <LINK>
to the article, scroll down to the comments to see the comments that I
have confirmed to be Justin Long, himself, here is an excerpt from his
comments about an article about himself."...- and i get that you find me annoying - but i guess i’m sort of baffled
and maybe even slightly masochistically flattered that i could be THE
most annoying person. not to be too defensive,
but you realize i don’t write those commercials right?..." - Actor Justin Long
but you realize i don’t write those commercials right?..." - Actor Justin Long
So there you have it, actor Justin Long, of the good show Ed, is
very annoyed that people are annoyed by how annoying he is. THE best
part about THE comment he left was his ability to capitalize THE word
THE in order to show us that THE comment he left was serious about THE
subject was writing about. And no, I did not realize that you did not
write the commercials, they are not all that complicated, and I thus
assumed him to be the author. He does not mean to be too defensive, and
yet he goes to great lengths to defend himself, or at least his public
persona, on seemingly trivial matters. and that THE word.
He is a disgrace to the name Long, if that is his real last name, how dare he disgrace the great name of Huey Long, the corrupt Louisiana dictator of the late Jazz age/early great depression. But I guess Justin Long is a Long Just In name.
It all kind of makes sense, he wrote these comments only a day or two after learning he was fired from being the "MAC" guy. The writer of the article is an idiot, he complains about how bad the film Crash was just to prove that he had refined tastes because he can not like a film that everybody else seems to, comparing its suckiness to Kevin Federline's music abilities. This writer dude is clearly a Pseudo-Fascist-Idiot(PFI), who wi shes Castro death, not a christians who would respect life, while at the same time being so jingoistically patriotic as to ironically warrant an warrantless wiretap, still fueled by self-destructively self-protectionism of the 1950's that prevents me from buying cheap Cuban sugarcane, so I have to use high-fructose corn syrup, which is going to wreck havoc on my already corn rich diet. Any by the way, has anybody seen low, or even medium, fructose corn syrup, do we really still need this specification. So in conclusion the writer of the original article in question is a bone head who is on par with Bill O’Reilly. Good day sirs.
He is a disgrace to the name Long, if that is his real last name, how dare he disgrace the great name of Huey Long, the corrupt Louisiana dictator of the late Jazz age/early great depression. But I guess Justin Long is a Long Just In name.
It all kind of makes sense, he wrote these comments only a day or two after learning he was fired from being the "MAC" guy. The writer of the article is an idiot, he complains about how bad the film Crash was just to prove that he had refined tastes because he can not like a film that everybody else seems to, comparing its suckiness to Kevin Federline's music abilities. This writer dude is clearly a Pseudo-Fascist-Idiot(PFI), who wi shes Castro death, not a christians who would respect life, while at the same time being so jingoistically patriotic as to ironically warrant an warrantless wiretap, still fueled by self-destructively self-protectionism of the 1950's that prevents me from buying cheap Cuban sugarcane, so I have to use high-fructose corn syrup, which is going to wreck havoc on my already corn rich diet. Any by the way, has anybody seen low, or even medium, fructose corn syrup, do we really still need this specification. So in conclusion the writer of the original article in question is a bone head who is on par with Bill O’Reilly. Good day sirs.
I
don't have long to chat. But, in case you missed it, the democrats took
both the house and the senate, as well as the majority of the
governorships, not Minnesota's somehow. It seems as soon as I stop
paying attention to politics all goes well, I guess I am not needed.This last week was tenth week, the last week of the quarter, and it had quite a bit of work in it. Now all I have is sixteen hours of tests left and a paper on why digital photography is better than film photography, so yes I did have one easy class this last quarter. I have too many classes that I am borderline A / B+, I need to bring that up so I have something to show to companies that I want to do internships with. Actually the only reason I care is because I need to defeat Ramzi for best OE sophomore GPA, defeating him has made what nothing else has been able to do before: care about my grades.
On Saturday I went to TGI Fridays to have one nice sit down meal after a quarter of work. Well, my milkshake was water and ice with a bit of cream, my bacon cheeseburger had one piece of bacon on it, and it was just not a good experience. I have some stuff left to do, like study for: physical optics (monday final), electical systems (tuesday), many particle physics (wednesday), and Differential Equations and Matrix Algebra II (thursday). After all of this I hope to, if things work out, visit Jeff and Chris in Grinnell for a two days, then have a week to relax, then start the cycle over. I wish I had chosen a different image today, it seems to match the last one too much.
I had a dream, that I will not get into here, in case you are not up to speed in Lost, but it was basically the continuation of the plot from the Season 3 mid-season finale, so I will have to wait to see the last 16 episodes of Season 3 until February 3rd, 2007, almost three months away. I think if I don't kill myself in the interim I will be okay until the summer, and another three months, after waiting the initial three-ish months from last summer. Lost is one of the few things keeping me going, but is it a false hope? If you want some lost humor, check out this <LINK> it is a comerical on youtube for a medication, Losticil, a drug to catch people up in Lost.
First off, check this out, I want to go there, only to see what is really going on, it is in northeastern Canada, <LINK> Q & Q, are our elected representatives there to represent themselves or their constituency? Do we elect them because they represent our opinions or do we elect them because we trust they will represent our collective will? Do we elect them to literally represent us or to do things in our best interests? Why do beliefs and self-interests differ? Does it mean that our fundamental beliefs are incorrect if they differ, or that our self-interests are not what we thought they really were? If we are not governed by self-interest, then by what? Can self-interests collectively be mutually beneficial?
Am I the only person who understands that sites like myspace, facebook, and the NAMBLA forums are just places for data mining. They are huge storerooms full of information that el gobierno and advertisers can soak up. Why would facebook allow you to upload picture if it didn’t make money off of it, just check the privacy statement, they can give you private information, even information that you have deleted to people that they have a contract with or intend on having a contract with. So they can sell your information to future companies looking to hire you, the government so they can make a file of your favorite films, or creepy stalker guy who you really don’t want knowing that you like to jog alone in the state park every Saturday morning. I think it is all a search for an identity in this world that is rapidly getting smaller. It all goes back to the idea of the equal individual, search for both personal identity and a sense of belonging at the same time. The huge backlash that came against facebook a few weeks ago was people finally getting sic [sic] of all information. People want to be a part of something so bad they don’t realize what they are joining. This leads to the idea of people’s need to have purpose. Lost has taught me the meaning of this, as well as the meaning of false hope (see below) and being perpetually confused. I am glad I was able to hook
I have gone a few days without writing here, therefore I would like to apologize to myself, well my future self, as that is who I am writing this for. Lately I have been listening to a lot of The New Pornographers, also sorry to all of those using censored computers that now can’t see my site. I have been reading a lot of Proust lately, I understand the brilliance of it, if only because it gives me a smug sense of self satisfaction to be reading such lofty material. I get a strange joy out of belittling others indirectly, or at least their failure to see pompous around me.
Vernor’s ginger soda is sold less than a block from my house, thus defeating the long held myth that the beverage had to be shipped in
False hope is a dangerous thing. If I have learned nothing from the approximately five days of my life spent watching Lost, I have learned the power of hope, and black smoke cloud monsters. Season 1 was much more epic, season 2 was more intense, and season 3 has been more of a psychological battle, wherein I prepare to keep myself sane for the almost three month break the show will take after the next episode comes out. That is all I will say on the subject. Back to false hope. It is a dangerous thing. I find myself yelling at the television because I don’t understand why the fake people on Lost don’t wonder why they are there more. But then again, how often do I think about where I came from, really it is more about where existence came from? The answer is quite a lot, but most people don’t think about such things, it is like I ♥ Huckabees only not pseudo intellectual.
Feel free to skip this next paragraph. Now, every whole number has a unique prime factorizations. So you could have the first 26 prime numbers represent the letters a-z, and the next 26 do the same, so on, ad nauseum, as there are an infinite number of them, so when you multiply these numbers together you can make sentences that describe an object, a person, an idea. So using this idea, you could make a number that describes you at any one moment, take that idea, and combine it with the idea of a Fourier series, have the period equal to your life, and the numbers be inputted at each time interval you with, plank time even, of your life, then generate an and bn terms for sine and cosine series, you are now an equation, really no more than a bunch of constants, that is what you are in every physical way at any one point. You are an equation.
The film Its All About Love is one of the worst films I have seen in years. My faith in the cinema has been eliminated. The film was mindless BS, not even cleverly disguised with novelty. The only redeeming part of the film was the last shot, where you finally get to see flying Ugandans, a premise that film brings up, then dismisses for an hour and a half. That idea and the wastefully absurd idea that all freshwater on earth freezes once a year. I am not making this up, Sean Penn and the older brother from Signs are in it. The idea of all water on earth freezing stupid because of the conservation of energy, the magical ability to discriminate between water in a cup and water which makes up 95% of the human body. It is rather comedic to see all these Ugandans suspended in the air a few meters, after tethering themselves to the earth. If there are two things I wish all people could understand about physics it is conservation and symmetry principles. Good grief, how do people not understand these things. Which brings up the concept that ten percent or so of Rose is mentally challenged, they got in by accident, and struggle the entire way, not understanding that force is mass times acceleration, or what the quadratic equation is, or how to add vectors. It is like an English major not knowing how to make a sentence, a history major not knowing about bias, or a philosophy major not knowing paper or plastic.
Let's look at this
common saying. It makes the assumption that nobody enjoys their job and
that people think about how they allocated their time. I think that
people who are about to die more often think of say what is causing
this death. Actually most people die while asleep, so most people are
thinking of nothing in particular when they die other than perhaps a
dream about dragons, hobos, or other imaginary things. Most people, who
are conscious, when they die are probably more concerned with the semi
truck that just tipped over in front of them, the oxygen mask that just
dropped in front of them, the gang of hobos that confront them in a
dark alley asking to borrow their copy of the book how to kill a person in an
alley: for hobos, or the Jeff Goldblum standing over them
with a chainsaw.When
people die they are probably more concerned about someone else not
doing their job: a surgeon drinking on the job, a lazy construction
worker, or a polar bear repellent tester. Of course, the surgeon's
patient is more than likely under anesthesia, so they get lumped in
with don't care because not conscious. The really the problem is not
usually with the deceased spending too much time at the office as
someone else spending too little time there.Well we all want each other
to spend as much time at the office as possible with the idea that it
will help extend our own lives. Thusly, whenever you are not working,
you are endangering every other life, including those who are not
currently in existence. So next time you are thinking about leaving
early or playing hooky. Hooky, or hookey, stemming from the phrase "off
the hook." "Off the hook" being used in the way meaning free of
obligations and not awesome. Of course I am neglecting the percentage
of people who died at the office, thus most likely wishing they had in
fact spent less time in the office, esecially concerning their last few
moments in the office which most likelyl involved some sort of
copier-toner-related incident. Most notable, on the above chart of occult deaths, Jeff Goldblum, is immune to hobos, as he is their leader, but suffers from a strong likelihood of being killed by himself or the oncoming traffic that seems to gravitate towards him. Hobos are imaginary, as shown in My Areas of Expertise, and other hobo myth related resources.
So, in conclusion,
- There are in fact people who wish they had spent more time at the office while in the process of ceasing to exist as a conscious entity.
- I have a mortal (literally) fear that Jeff Goldblum will be present at my death
- Hobos (imaginary) have sworn a blood-oath to resist the natural urge to kill Jeff Goldblums
Firefox,
the internet browser, just released version 2.0, it is great, it has
better security, user interface, and isn't Microsoft for those who hate
a company because they make lots of money, go to here <LINK>.
I only tell you because Rose-Hulman has told me that 72 percent of you
use firefox, and that 63 percent of those people haven't gotten the
lastest version. Don't worry, I am not into the entire big brother
thing, I just wanted to check on how fast people made the switch. I got
the version early because I overheard some people in the commons say
that it was released early for developers, so I have been running it
since monday (lunes).Usualmente, I update this site more often, but I have had quite a busy week. I spent 12 hours at school today doing various things, it started with two hours of playing experimenting with liquid nitrogen, ended with making a hologram, all capped by bicycling in the rain, freezing rain, both ways. On Tuesday, bid Tuesday, I ended up, of all things, spending my evening helping with a lego robotics class for elementary schoolers. So there was that, and I finished John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise, a great book, that I think I could do better, but that is a matter of facpinion. For example, he gives a list of failed palindromes, such as "Slow speed: deep owls." This is not where my problem is, instead I have a problem with his fluctuation between writing about all knowledge, and about his knowledge, two very different fields. I am looking forward to reading Marcel Proust's Swann's Way.
Did you know? Did you know that a blueberry muffin, when frozen to 77° K, -321° F, and shattered into an abundance of pieces, tastes like a raspberry muffin. Fighting never proved anything other than who is better. I feel like a tool, I lost my TI-83+ calculator, my sword in the world of engineering, so I replaced it with a TI-89, the far superior version. It got me to thinking, I played as much for my calculator as I would for a playstation 2, imagine how much money texas instruments must be making off of all the calculators they sell that must cost less than thirty dollars to produce. I intend on buying a wii, nintendo's next console when it comes out, over fall break, I am still borderline on how wise it will be, anyways. It seems minor, losing my calculator, but I have had that thing for five years, always at my side, battle worn.
There was this punk kid at the lego thing that volunteered for, on a busy night, because I knew they would be shorthanded since every frat member would be busy, that did nothing but complain about how difficult his day was. For a moment I thought about telling him about the heart of darkness, but instead I found I could no't tell him how difficult the future was going to be if he was already having trouble. Ironically, I could not tell the boy about the heart of darkness.
Q & Q, I was wondering, as I often do, would it be better to know why we are here, or how this place works? Because knowing how we got here would be nice, but knowing how it works would be beneficial to society, pragmatism vs. idealism. I see this as the ultimate battle for my soul. That or choosing between boxers and briefs.
A Shepard scale is a repeating piece of music where notes are played with varied intensity and pitch so as to give the effect of a constantly increasing tone. I have a theory, society is like a Shepard scale, in reverse. We are constantly in fear that society is crumbling, around us, but that is crumbelievable, crime rates are going down overall, things are getting better, we just idealized the past because something in us, the emotional things that drives us, wants us to strive for something better, and cripples us into thinking we are failing somehow. I should not lead you into thinking it is a bad thing, it is what gives us progress, but it comes at a cost.
These
are the two paintings on the wall in my room. They are the same two
paintings that I used to stare at in Mr. Kennedy's English class in
10th and 12th grade. They were on sale for about a dollar a piece at
the Hobby Lobby. They are Starry
Night by Van Gogh, and Christina's World
by Andrew Wyeth. Well, I also have two Kerry Edwards signs, one signed
by Al Franken, an Islamic bird/tree painting on papyrus, a Rose-Hulman
handkerchief , and two movies posters: Adaptation and Crash. All of this
is well and good, but what is the promise of our generation.The thing I did not get about going to the career fair was the potential relative importance of my theoretical future job. To think I could be one of those guys in the white suits assembling an interplanetary probe. That I could be involved on something greater than myself. You see, I grew up in Minnesota, where we were taught that we were only a minor player in a grander game, that we as individuals are not important, and that we should try not to cause to much trouble while we are here. Not that the idea is not true for most people. It is common to want to be more than just an individual. It is why people desire fame, and I have a feeling it is why religious zealots always think that judgement day is happening next week, it is so they can be a part of it, for whatever sick and twisted reason they have. On the ongoing dateline special To Catch A Predator, a show that is a televised series of sting operations for internet child sexual predators. There are three groups that do it: hillbillies that must go to the library for a computer, marines that must be sick of being the ones in control, and computer engineers (CPE) who comprise about twenty percent of my school and an equal share of my friends here, I guess they are already on the computer. First of all, I don't know when the word sting replaced entrapment. I guess I am glad these guys are off the streets, but there is a certain illegitimacy to the way they are caught in my mind. I believe laws should be created pragmatically and carried out idealistically. I found a new New York TImes on a table marked with a free sticker by it so I took on last Thursday. For any of you that read the Star Tribune and look down at it from your NYTimes tower, just know it is worst here. First off, the Terre Haute city paper here is called the Tribune Star, the reverse of what is should be, and is worthless, the Indianapolis Star sucks, and the crossword is difficult because of my lack of bible knowledge. The library gets three day old NYTimes from somewhere.
A lack of color here, I am proud that I am not "well read". I read what I needed to in IB, but I do not read fiction for fun with the exception of philosophical based fiction that has transparent meaning. I enjoy watching television and films that are fiction, but books I don't really get. I do from time to time get some arrogance from people because I haven't even heard of ______ because I don't plan on working at Barnes and Noble and I have technical knowledge. My knowledge leads to the general welfare of society whereas their knowledge lead to an outdated form of entertainment. I guess the abundance of English majors is a sign that society is over-productive, having the necessary means for to support artists, the last thing society needs. I am serious about that last one, the reason that great art is not coming out of Africa is that they have better things to do, people don't have excess funds to enjoy art, only a fool would keep to his art in such hardship, and why would you want to listen to a fool. I would like to bring the conversation back to me reading, which I do more than the vast majority of Americans. It is only among intellectuals that I get any sense that I do anything other than read too much. But "literary people" are the among the ultimate elitist, they have a direct parallel, computer nerds who sit around talking about bit rates and networking servers. They in my mind are the same evil the different packages. Just switch that notebook with "deep poems" scribbled furiously in it with a PDA and you are done. But I respect the computer nerd more because he can do something for society other than go to Starbucks. So while I don't know about the brilliant work of _____ I know what a Fabry-Pérot interferometer does, which by the way, saves lives every day, hour, and minute. I believe that literary intellectuals come from raw intelligence that does not have any other direction to go (not good at math). All of this brings us back to me sitting in English class (which I enjoyed greatly) staring at those two paintings. Perhaps there is something I don't get about literature that made me go away from it, perhaps my existence as a optical engineer/physicist is the real sound of settling.
Theory of existence, energy is not conserved, we simply exist in the future where it is because if it did not, even a little, then nothing would have reason to it. We need the structure to exist. Do we have free will. No. But the stuff affecting it is so complicated that there is no reasonable means to fully anticipate what others are going to do. So does thinking this make me act differently. No. Because I believe that I will not act differently anyways, without free will I have no way to change this thinking.
Game theory primer, there are four rules to follow under all conditions, and other various rules,
|
|
There
is
no such thing as a free lunch, and no such thing as an energy efficient
space heater. A space heater is a giant resistor, and the energy you
are charged by the power company is the same energy you get out of it.
All things that plug into the wall inevitably turn all the power they
use into heat, and I mean inevitable. It is a law of thermodynamics
(hot and cold stuff).I would like to promote the Holmes HCH4954-U Whisper Quiet Twin Ceramic Heater. I got it at walmart, the wall, for 32 dollars is very quiet, and has good temperature sensing skills. The front grill also glows when it is hot, isn't that cool.
At the career fair I don't think the guy from JPL thought it was cleaver when he asked what skills I could bring to JPL, and I told him that I could convert units well.
On a lighter note, electric blankets are amazing. Lost is on tonight, and all may soon be right with the world.
Without sleep
you will die after 26 days, if you go more than 13 days without sleep
you will die as well, and if you think about it these two facts are not
logical fallacies. I have not had a dream in far too long. I don't know
if it is me just not remembering it, or if I have somehow lost the
knack for it. I am usually able to control them, but they still rarely
seem to turn out well. Fall in the most common dream. It is engraved in
our minds. Even people who grow up in Iowa, or some other very flatland
(in more than one sense) have the prebuilt dream of falling. I think it
just kind of flows naturally from our innate understanding of gravity.
Some fraudian psychologist will tell you that it means you have an
inability to be out of control, or a fear of losing it. I think it is
just a common possibility. What goes up must come down, most of the
time. I do some of my best work while sleeping. My favorite episode of Newsradio
is when there is a heat wave and everybody is daydreaming. I have a
dream, a recurring one that I awake from every day as I go to sleep.Why is it that modern war seems to involve almost exclusively the killing of civilians. Some soldiers may be taken out, but it will be the people that will suffer? What is the value in our civilized world that we focus on killing average people. I think it has to do with serfs not having influence. When we vote we become the enemy because we collectively are the country, not just a few kings, queens, and archdukes. I still hold that the last honorable act of war was in 1914, during WWI, at chirstmas time, when both sides set down their arms, and celebrated. After that things only went downhill. Americans ruined war if that is possible. We fought for our independence with a guerrilla war, we would not line up and shoot.
Greatest generation is a stupid term. First of all, I would find it highly unlike from a statistics point of view that a generation, comprised of millions of people, would somehow rise up and become great compared to all others. We just idealize our war heroes. You can blame propaganda, you can credit the human spirit for kickin' it up a notch, or you can chalk it up to fate. But there is nothing but circumstance that sets one generation apart from the other. I liked when Ronald Regan said he wished there were aliens so the pettiness of the cold war could end and people could ally against a common threat. It is like in the book 1984 (based off the 1956 film 1984) where the government is constantly at war to give them purpose. Purpose is everything.
Oh!, the
weather outside is frightful. A few of you may remember the Halloween
blizzard of '91 that struck Minnesota. So today as I provided emotion
support to James as we (he) drove through snow in Iowa it was a bit of
a surprise seeing it, by that I mean snow, not Iowa, which is never a
surprise. The super unleaded was cheaper than the unleaded, so I am
assuming that has to do with Iowa being obsessive with ethanol as a
fuel and having it subsidized by the government. Other than that, it
feels good just to be back in the HC (Hennepin County) and have some
Land O'Lakes sour cream, some old dutch potato chips, some berry
flavored H2Oh!, and watch Lost.
I made it back just in time, as in I missed "previously on lost" and
the first flashback, but it is all available on abc.com. I don't know
why I torture myself by watching Lost,
but I guess it helps pass the time.Minnesota nice comes from some old legislation that sets this state apart. Minnesota has the lowest qualifications for incorporation of a town than any other state. Minnesota in addition to being the easiest state to create a town in, it is also the easiest to maintain the status of town. So Minnesota was able to have smaller towns. This is important because when a social population is at or below 150 people it gains a cohesion. By having cohesive groups there is far greater repeated interaction, which means better reasons to interact "nicely". So the logic goes legislation to social groups to game theory.
Rudd, IA, is a small town which now has two grain elevators and is located east of Mason City in northern Iowa. The town was offered by a man during its founding 1000 dollars to name the town after him (quite a bit at the time, well over the price of 999 silver dollars). So the town decided to go along with it and name the town after Mr. Rudd. Well, Mr. Rudd never fulfilled his end of the bargain, but the town, being low on funds, didn't have the funds to refile the town under a new name, so it stood, like imperial units, a monument to the sound of settling.
Radio stations are given call signs based on which side of the Mississippi river they broadcast from. There are some stations that were grandfathered in, but for the most part, stations west of the Mississippi start with a K- and those east start with a W-. Those letters were chosen to make it difficult to make words starting with those letters. But anyways, there is a problem, The Mississippi does not divide the nation, it stops in northern Minnesota. So Duluth is in no-mans land, the DMZ of radio, a place where rules don't apply, vigilante justice holds the power, and the FCC has no authority.
Well, I
will be back in the HC soon, well, later today actually. I plan on
relaxing, watching the new Lost
episode,
and enjoying the land of freedom. I don't have much time, but I have
one question for you. Where does authority come from? The answer,
authority comes from apathy, most people strive for power, and when
people stop caring about something then somebody else will gladly come
in and take over. When people say they don't care about politics
because politicians are crooked and the entire system is wrong (which
is so I am 14 and angry
at my parents)
all it does is empower the politicians to act that way. The best way to
solve a problem is not to ignore it. Not caring about something, or
more importantly not doing anything to help, is what perpetuates the
problems. All people desire power, so not exerting your proportion of
it is just handing it over to someone else. Authority is a birthright
of all people, there are some that have it taken from them (slaves, 99%
of our ancestors before 1700), authority is naturally derived, we all
have the potential for power. Power is given not taken, as there is a
bunch of free power out there because of apathetic wastes of space. If
I have learned anything from my education I have learned that our
collective greed drives us forward, and we think more rationally as we
care more about a distant future. From what I have read of John Hodgman's ("I'm a PC") book the Areas of my Expertise I am just a younger version of him.
My schedule for winter classes has been worked out, I have class from 10:50-2:25 MT RF: Engineering Statistics, Paraxial Optics, Foundations of Modern Physics, and Survey of American Literature. I have labs for six hours on Wednesday also. This will apparently be the term that makes or brakes me as an optical engineer.
I always am excited to return to Minneapolis, if only to breathe the fresh air, drink the clean water, and escape a city that literally sucks the life out of me, as the EPA has declared Terre Haute, Indiana toxic to my health. Churches should not be tax exempt.
Well, I
my main problem was that my computer needed a good once over. I would
try to sum up everything that has occured since last time, but the song
Judy is Punk just
starts
to play in my head. Since I have missed most of June, July, August, and
September I will try to bring things back to normal.
So I got that going for me. Since the last time I left you I have
become quite taken by the shows Lost
and House.
I have switched from being a Mechanical Engineer to being an Optical
Engineer, and am about to switch again, well step to the side, and
become an Optical Engineering/Physics double major.I was emailed by Hydrogen Technology Applications Inc. to thank me for writing about them on my blog, I emailed them reminding them that blogs have reader input, this on the other hand is a one way street, much like the streets of Anchorage, Alaska. I have spent the rest of my time doing various things. I now know the true meaning of christmas. I have learned about "real" engineering with Chris. I have done many amazing things. I will be back with more, as always.
So these two kids were hanging out on the porch of the house across the street from mine. I am just chillin' out there with Polish and Brandon when this ~7 year old kid comes up and asks us each for a dollar with holding an unopened pudding cup in his hand. He receives a barage of responses. He then goes and takes polish's cell phone. He runs back across the street when the ~10 year old he had been hanging out with across the street started yelling at him to give it back. So the 7 year old kid keeps bringing the phone back and saying psych! So he comes up again, I tell him ",come on buddy, say psych again and run back, just do it, it would make my day." So he does it. Then his friend comes over. The 10 year old is yelling at the 7 year old, as we just sit there on the porch of our new house, well, newly rented. So the 10 year old keeps telling him to go give it back. So the 7 year old walks back a bit, opens the pudding with the hand he is holding my friend's cell phone it, getting pudding on it, Brandon goes and gets Polish's cell phone. goes over to his 10 year old friend, and throws it at him, promptly running away. So the 10 year old kid instictively reaches down to a rock on the ground and throws it at the 7 year old. The 10 year old proclaims that his shoes are 81 dollars, and that he knows the 7 year old momma. So he grabs the rock and throws it at 7 year old again. The 10 year old then runs back to his house, emerging seconds later with his own pudding cup, saying he is going to ruin his fiend 150 dollar shoes. The real question is, why do they have such nice shoes at their age, I feel guilty spending more than sixty dollars on a pair.
Q & Q: How can we all be unique and equal, they seem like opposite things to me, or at least inversely related? I believe that the middle east crisis could be solved by making the entire region radioactive so that nobody gets it, in the end there would be fewer deaths. Is the United States hated out of envy or did we do something to set it off? Is it ever a good idea to have a large standing army, for it is far more tempting to use a force that is just sitting around otherwise? Is slavery partially justified by the better lives that African-Americans lead today in America than if they had stayed in Africa? Is is ever a good idea to silence ideas, or better put, has silencing ideas ever lead to an improved society? Why does the holocaust justify Israel, is it merely the transference of the payment of guilt by the west onto the middle east? Does a martyr have to die for his/her cause, or can they disgrace themselves and provide a counter-example? People often mock the old battles where armys line up and shoot at one another, but there were not nearly as many civilian casualties in those days, you could even watch from across the field; so how is it more "civilized" to kill more innocent people? How can there be war crimes, aren't wars the sanctioning of crime on a mass scale? What gives nations power? What creates authority? Why did the north so violently oppose the south's session? If god exists and is trying to guide us, why did he/she not give us a better guide, and how are we supposed to act with imperfect instructions? Why is it that atheist accept the existence of believers while people of faith often don't? On Lost, what is going to happen to Sawyer, Jack, and Kate?
ARCHIVES: find out why Joan Baez called me the shallowest man in the world
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
ARCHIVE 6: sunday 2 april 2006 - sunday 30 april 2006
ARCHIVE 7: monday 1 may 2006 - wednesday 31 may 2006
ARCHIVE 8: friday 2 june 2006 - thursday 8 june 2006
Minneapolis tour dates: October 11-15 November 16-26 December 22 - January 7 February 22 - March 4 April 6 -15 link