I've made a huge mistake

The Counterproductive Novelty Internet Website of Benjamin John Frevert
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

DISCLAIMER: defeatism is difficult to overcome, if only for the obvious and rather humorous reasons
DISCLAIMER: there are four "meanings" of the word dictionary, but only one "word" for thesaurus
DISCLAIMER: you only know what you can explain to an eight-year old
DISCLAIMER: in-between repression and obsession lay the line we walk with our discretion towards progression
DISCLAIMER: How to increase you carbon footprint: plant a tree, that eats other trees
DISCLAIMER: I would rather think in terms of being on god's side than god being on my side
DISCLAIMER: the freedom of speech comes with the freedom to ignore and ignorance is bliss
DISCLAIMER: Although I am not religious, Thomas Jefferson's motto was: Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to god
DISCLAIMER: "Yeah but still": logical opposite of 'therefore', it is saying "despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary"
DISCLAIMER: The war in Iraq was lost because we tried to fight fire with fire by using shock and awe against terrorists
DISCLAIMER: despite the saying "don't keep all you eggs in one basket" nobody keeps their eggs stored around their house
DISCLAIMER: it is difficult to find the forest when you are surrounded by trees

upcoming topics: devo, increased levels of autism, presidential frontrunners, elliott smith's next posthumous album, future of public radio waves, natural rights of humans, existentialism redux, blackwater usa, water becomes electric, hydrogen cars are a con, the roots of allergies

DISCLAIMER: as it is hard to communicate sarcasm when typing, please understand that not everything here is what is seems

the best-laid plans of mice and men | Sunday the 24th of June 2007

line of best fit philosophy - pluralism is important. I like to envision a line (a function) that nobody knows. This line is the one true way that most people try to find with books written millennia ago by carpenter's friends. The problem from an abstract statistical point of view is that there is only one data point: no way to figure out what this line could be. Every religion shares a few common concepts like murder is bad, charity is good, and not to question what you are reading. When you look at them together you can get a sense of what innate human morals we just have. I like to think since humans beings are the only beings capable of self-reference and consciousness that these morals must be some de facto set of laws. Pluralism gives you more points. More points that give you a better sense of what this magical (very metaphorical) line forms.

line of best fit philosophy? - Wikiality I say. What is popular isn't always right and what is right isn't always popular. Line of best fit philosophy averaging out what everyone believes and taking that as the one true way. A major part of the one true way is that we will never find it. We can get as close as we can, but to actually try to completely achieve it is hubris (which I will not italicize because it is a common word all 9th graders should know). Not to mention that it is all a metaphor anyways.

line of best fit philosophy?? - This would be easier if we were schizophrenic. You misunderstand you. It is always the job on the conscious induhvidual to sort out right from wrong. It is the line we will always have to walk because our world is too complex to have more than a few laws that are set in stone. Even those have ways around them. Number 6 of 10, don't murder, is excusable in self defense. Why must it be hubris to try to be the best person you can be?

line of best fit philosophy??? - Because the best person you can be would make decisions for yourself and others as they would best (father knows best), which is wrong because people can never be sure they are right because there is nobody around who correct our tests when we are done. People can entrust their decision making to others (elections), but making them choose is amoral because all people have the right to free will. Self-determinism is the non-materialistic thing that separates us from medieval surfs.

line of best fit philosophy?x4 - What are us doing here? We have strayed from the true issue of the one true path. How is it that even one single person is unable to follow along with what we are trying to do here? Perhaps this issue is of greater importance than we initially believed. I/we was/were unable to properly discuss the issue of the one true way because we were too concerned with our own issues - our special interest groups. Could it be that no single person can decide these things because we are all encumbered with the logics line we were given. I blame 9/11.

scientists' studies redux - all my education has given me is the ability to make better decisions. Just as the only difference between you and a medical doctor is their ability to make better decision about what to do with you. Education is important for everybody because it helps you make better decisions.

hibiscus, nana goose, and... - ...may the life of the land be perpetuated with righteousness. People should to a limited degree feel pious. Everybody should have a set of morals. They should follow them I guess. They should find conflict with those around them as everyones morals are different.

irony - There is talk now that New York city's major Michael Bloomberg is going to run for president under his new Independent party banner and 500 million dollars of personal financing. Could the Washington D.C. non-partisan outsider charm America and buy the presidency? I think it would be very ironic for good to come out of a bought election. I actually like this Bloomberg billionaire the more I learn about him. If only for the reason that I bribing him is pointless. I only hope he doesn't owe somebody from along the way he came into his fortune. I feel that the fear of legacy will be guiding presidents after Bush II. I still feel the most hurtful thing people can say to Bush and the gang is to say "I am a historian and I am going to write about what you did," Call the book "I know what you did with post 9/11 America."

12 dollars per hour | Thursday the 14th of June 2007

full time - I work full time, 40 hours a week, and with no health coverage. Making almost 100 a day is not bad. The best part is that I actually have something to do during the day. Many people I know just burn time all day. I spend all day doing a slow paced physics/optics lab. Today was fun. I found out my project as it stands is technically impossible. I have good coworkers so that makes the time pass easier. I also found out today that the probe thing we are making could be non-invasive, but the only way the doctors could get it to work, and I am serious about this, is by placing a camera on the patient's penis for ten minutes (they only tested males).

progressive proven - the progressive views of fifty years ago are the moderate views of today, this statement has been true for most of American history. That is why I am not conservative. Conservatives idealize the 50's and liberals idealize the 60's. Religion in American politics has never done any good. Religion was the necessary process that made the world stable enough to progress beyond it. The world is indifferent because it is not aware. People are aware and at least have the capability to do good. Every generation thinks that its morals are going downhill but over time it is actually always going uphill. Perhaps this misconception is what keeps us going uphill. This could be the turning point. But that would be statistically unusual. People like to feel special. It gives them a sense of purpose: a reason to keep on going. I like to value people based on how much they overcome, a relative measure. I like to give everybody a number within five minutes of meeting them between 1 and 10 and stick with that as long as I know them irregardless of any of their future actions.

truthiness - an honest man will always be at odds with the world.

Half and Half | Tuesday the 22nd of May 2007

glass half full - as on 10am eastern (9 central) today I am half done with Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. I finished my Optical Systems OE-295 final in two hours. This was not as bad as the 8 hours of finals I had yesterday back to back (Circuits ECE-200 and Theoretical Mechanics PH-314). It feels strange having nothing to do in an academic sense as I have lived the last nine months up to the deadlines. I guess I will be working at Venture this summer. I have to start packing my things up. To move to VQ, village quarter, (website) apartments complex by campus that is anywhere between 1/10th and 1/3rd Rose people. I will be living next year with Polish and Jimmy in a three man. It is a nice place, in relative terms. I still loathe this town and everything it stands for. I have sympathy for many of my schoolmates (thats what we call eachother nowadays) who don't understand how many better places exist on this 3rd rock from the sun.

the man behind the curtain - I know how things work, generally. In all my scientists' studies I have come across all ways in which things work. Everything from nuclear reactors to telecommunication I get the idea of how it works. I understand Fabry-Perot interferometry and why you can't put metal in the microwave. The microwave thing has to do with the metal reflecting the magnetron's microwaves back and causing it to heat up and that the electrical arcs that spark out scare people (seriously). Microwaves also don't need to rotate, the magnetron's beam can be much better dispearsed through other means (even parafin wax can be used to make lenses for microwaves). But I have seen through the looking glass and there is just not much left to see, just more ways to make better approximations of stuff. I say this as if there aren't things I don't know. Some stuff I "know" I "know" is wrong but is close enough. Newtonian physics IS wrong and not true to real world events, but we landed on the moon without any relativistic concerns. I know well enough that discover is never over. I learned that the third time I though I was as smart as I needed that things keep on changing if only because if they didn't there would be no reason to mention them. I lost count by now.

look at who would relatively benefit the most and there ya' go - hydrogen cars are evil. Why would the oil and car companies want to invest money to investigate technology that would put them out of business? It is a double strategy: to (1) get the technology first and sit of the patents (aptly named: patent troll) to prevent it from coming to market and (2) get everybody working on technology that is at least three decades off from being technologically viable. Hydrogen is a horrible idea, remember the Hindenburg? It is very explosive and very difficult to produce. Carrying the stuff around will turn us all into potential car-bombers. Transporting the stuff around the country will require vast infrastructure. The engines are not very efficient. Several very large scientific and engineering problems need to be overcome. Watch Who Killed the Electric Car if you want to learn more, Martin Sheen (Ramon Estevez) narrated it! Hydrogen is around so that auto companies don't get pressure to make electric cars which are already viable market alternatives that don't involve carrying around tanks of deadly explosive gas. Just look at who is investing in hydrogen and you will see the scam. I will go so far as to say that anybody who seriously considers it an alternative is misguided in their patriotism. But aren't we all? In defense of my one-sidedness know that I watched two documentaries promoting hydrogen (one before and one after) and they didn't sell it for me, I did some wikeality research, any my professional engineering opinion is 92% certain.

questioning authority - I believe that only intelligent people are able to question authority because most stupid people just go with the flow for their lives. I don't like how we use the word(s) "can't" (not an english major ; - ). I always think of the dark days we I was going to be a Delta Sig and people said things like "you can't where you letters...." I think it is my lack of need of authority that drove me away. That and I don't buy my friends. That and Delta Sig BS like chapter. That and the 1000 bucks a year extra it cost. That and the vast majority of my friends in Delta Sig seem to only be in because it would be too much to "deal with" to leave and feel it is too late at this point. Most regret joining, although they don't openly admit it. I am glad I came to my sense at the 11th hour and before I paid them a non-trivial amount of money. I am glad that when my GPA sucked last spring and the geniuses at Delta Sig forgot to take me off the GPA list for the frat and that is why they didn't get a party waver. Delta Sig has never gotten their act together for more than maebe five minutes. I don't associate with lightweights, I only have so much time here, I am not rude about it or try to avoid people, but I don't feel the need to listen to the Sound of Settling. I didn't mean to go off on a full Delta Sig rant, I like them better than any other frat, so take that: Fiji, Theta Xi, Lambda Chi, Triangle, ATO, Sigma Nu, and Pike. They are rather stereotypical: or rather they attract people who because of a lack of personal identity find a need to follow a stereotypical persona.

act of free will - I have officially become an optimist as I was formerly a pessimist but over the last few years have decided to switch over as we statistically live longer. People find this strange to think of changing how you think but it is not that difficult to brainwash yourself. Pessimism was too unrealistic and selfish as I found that pessimism focuses more on the plight of the individual and why whatever they go though is not fair.

ADventures - Rose-Hulman Ventures (CPNI website) is a business partnership run by my school that has students earn good wages for our age, bad wages for our profession doing engineering work with advisor and professor guidance for start-ups that don't want to pay real engineers for the early R&D. I will be working on a biomedical probe. They have all kinds of nice machinery like a rapid 3-D prototyper that can make a three-dimensional widget using lasers and stuff that is precise enough that you can make threaded pieces that screw together water-tight. It is a place where real work can get done but some people just go there and surf the counterproductive novelty internet. I can't get the sense if I will be extremely busy or extremely bored, I guess I can always do side projects if it comes to that. I will be working with Dr. Bunch (optics) and three other students I have yet to meet. I have been told that I am the key to the project as what I design will interface the the mechanical implement and the electronic circuitry that reads stuff out. I didn't think much of it until I realized that if we fail then somebody who can benefit from the final model might not live because their kidneys failed any nobody knew until it was too late. The question is: is my failure killing them or is my success saving their life? I guess it goes to responsibility and a sense of duty. I will almost certainly never meet any of these people, they are abstract, much like this line or reasoning.

Bikes Not Bombs | Sunday the 20th of May 2007

crash - I strongly believe that the vast majority of human actions are perfectly reasonable given a person's circumstances. People are rather good at acting as best they are capable of doing. Were I to hit something stationary while I am going at my average cruising speed on my bicycle it would be the equivalent of falling 11 feet. At my high cruising speed without any cargo it would be 20 feet. Top flat land speed: 24 feet. Top speed: 41 feet. If I hit an oncoming car: 200 feet. Oncoming interstate traffic: 350 feet, but this is a bit of a perfect storm.

doctor, doctor - There are two kinds of people: those who like House and those who like Grey's Anatomy. Sarcastic and stupid.

the good matrix - speaking of the topic of alternative reality theories... What if we are in some kind of good matrix, a game almost, one that you put yourself in for the fun of it. But this still fails to explain where the participants came from.

linux - since I will be making approximately 4800.00 dollars this summer I think I want to take on as a project making a desktop computer (I will buy stuff and stick it together like IKEA furniture) with a Linux operating system. It is not a scary thing as it installs easier and faster than windows and there are now open source alternatives to most programs I need to use. I will always have my laptop for windows stuff. I am thinking of going with the now very popular ubuntu distribution (a derivative of Debian), specifically the Ubuntu Studio edition (source) as it is optimized for dealing with media content. I am thinking of spending around 500 dollars for everything (case w/ power 40, motherboard 60, processor 80, graphics card 50, memory 40, hard drive 60, optical drive 30, monitor 150, keyboard 20, and I have an extra mouse priceless). My current estimate is about 530 dollars, but that will get me a 64-bit dual core 2.0 GHz AMD (processors are so cheap now), 1 GB of memory, 250 GB of storage, a DVD drive, a CD-R/RW drive, dual monitor support, TV-out, an LCD monitor, and an ergonomic keyboard. My goal is to make it scalable so if I want to really get a nice machine I can do so if I want to spend more. There is something nice about having a desktop that I miss.

the future of now | Saturday the 19th of May 2007

venturing - I have a job working for Rose-Hulman ventures doing optical engineering work on a biomedical device this summer. It came out of nowhere. I already have housing taken care of for the summer. I will be working full time 40 hours a week at 12 dollars an hour. I will be doing the optics of a invasive fiber optic probe that records relative levels of fluorescent dye in the blood stream to determine how well the kidneys are working at removing the dye. It is some start-up out of Indianapolis, IN that came out of IU (indiana university, a stupid sounding name) medical school. I will still be stopping in Chicago for the weekend on the way back to Minneapolis where I will be for a week before going once more into the breach. I will be working with Dr. Bunch and three other student team members: two electrical engineers and one mechanical engineer.

book - I want to write a book. I want to write the Great American Novel but I can't think of what the first word of the Great American Novel would be. I think it would be "Nevertheless". I think my book would be about applied pondering. My Greatest Problem is that I would come off sounding crazy. It would be what in my mind is the last book that needs to be written. As of yet there has yet to be a book written that could be called The Book. A book that teaches that The Book itself can be wrong. A way of take-it-or-leave-it philosophy that incorporates ideas to form a general plan for how think. Perhaps the best way to write this book would be not boring metaphorical philosophical lectures but a series of related articles, dialogues, and diagrams. To use an idea I would like to incorporate in my book I should recognize that I don't as much really want to write a book but to decide on what my personal philosophy is. But I think the book thing would be cool.

half--silvered mirror - as I at the end of the first half of my time at Rose, at the the end of the first quarter or so of my life, and at the end of the long era of my joblessness it seems like a good time to reflect. But I don't see why. Why ponder the past? For everybody is either stuck reliving the past, pipedreaming of the future, or lost carelessly living in the moment.

chemical burns - about 3.7 billion years ago some happened, well it started to. This self-perpetuating chemcial chain reaction that started in the ocean or in some comet or in god's heart has been burning ever since. It is the same fire of life that burns inside you, me, and everybody we know. ⅔ of the life on planet lives below the surface of earth in the ground. These so called extremeaphiles are really the status quo (not to us, but abstractly). People are not just of themselves. We have mitochondria in our cells that have their own genes and probably fused with us to give us greater power (as opposed to plants) to move. That and we have bacteria everywhere on us. Our entire digestive system is surrounded on both ends by bacteria. This is good. They help us digest and protect us against evil bacteria. Evil bacteria would prefer to kill us to eat us than help us survive to spread them around. It is an evolutionary advantage to be moved around so they perpetuate themselves for the same reason anything else does: it can and probably has before because it is there in the first place. I want to put some of this in my book, but expanded with charts and graphs to explain what a platypus is and how it is a mammal.

order of operations - This is not what I think necessarily. It is what I think average people think. Actually, it is what I what you to think I think about what most people think. Ad Nauseum. Self > family > friends > neighbors > species > Phylum > Kingdom > earth life > life. I think this is the a good biological evolutionary ranking where things are more important the closer they are to you in direct genetic relation. We don't have to be but it just comes about because it is visible. Ethnic groups aren't separated by connected/disconnected ear lobes because it is not visible from a distance. It makes sense as in why it happened but not as in if it should happen. Racism is irrational because at one point not too long ago there were twenty women in the entire world as has been traced back trough out Mitochondria DNA, which you only inherit from your mother and there are only twenty different base patterns that all of our random mutations go back towards. That could be true, I think something like it is. But the point is that we are still evolutionary animals just like all the rest of the mold, tomatoes, and platypus.

orthodox atheism-finding strength in other people being good without them doing so out of fear of god's wrath: attritionless love love

the future was now | Saturday the 12th of May 2007

Iraq in the future - given the current course that history is taking I feel that a democrat will be elected in the next presidential election. The nation does not like bush, at least 72% of us, the other 28% really liked the last six years. A neo-con will not be elected in the next election. In the words of Bush II, "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." McCain has tied himself to success in Iraq (who's markets are as safe as those in Indiana according to an Indiana US senator). But back to Iraq. So my theory goes like this: democrat elected president, withdrawal from Iraq, genocide in Iraq, international intervention, and four years later we still can't leave because we can't let another genocide happen (to white/resource wealthy people).

flashes before your eyes - all people have regret (except Bush II). We have all felt the desire to go back and change something. If you could go back and do so, would you? You would not become the same person. You would not have learned from this mistake and could just as easily make it again. On a philosophical level, could you effectively kill your current consciousness in lieu of another?

higher education - education is important for one reason: educated people tend to make better decisions. example: the decider.

behind the scenes at the laugh factory - why do we laugh? The best explanation I have is this. We become fearful at inconsistencies in the world. When we realize that the threat posed by the inconsistency is trivial we laugh in relief that it is not a problem. So laughter as a coping mechanism for stress makes sense because people encountering problems find relief when encountering trivial problems. Also laughter has been linked with a decrease in heart disease which is also linked with decreases stress. So why did the chicken cross the road makes the mind concerned about why a chicken would cross a road. To get to the other side relieves the mind of any actual trouble that might come from the chicken's strange behaviour. This explains why people don't laugh when they don't get that what is being told to them is a joke because their mind tries to rationalize the statement. This explains tickling because it is physical contact but not violent physical contact: the body laughs because you realize you are not in danger. This explains why the juxtaposition of ideas can be funny since it is unexpected but harmless. Perhaps drugs that induce laughter like nitrous oxide or marijuana inhibit the fear response in the brain and induce laughter by making all matters seem trivial. I have a few pet theories that explain the physical manifestation of comedy (laughter) but that is for another time. Laughter is also a social reaction to others laughing. Like the joke two polar bears are in the shower and one drops the soap and the other bears says "can you get the radio". This is not a real joke, but we came up with it sitting around at lunch in middle school as a joke to tell in a group where most of the people are "in on it" and laugh despite the lack of comedy and the "outsider(s)" of the group would laugh anyways. I don't see this as a weakness on the part of the outsider because there is an instinct in us to just get along with other people, social lubricant if you will. Those who didn't have this encoded in our genes (phenotypically, not literally genetically) didn't get along with others and didn't reap the rewards of civilization and got washed down the drain of the gene pool. Phenotype is the expression of genes. So I have the one gene for brown eyes and one for blue, phenotypically they blend to form greenish stuff. But comedy is funny.

helping myself sleep at night - I have lived all my life on this island. I live on land stolen from the natives. We even stole their words to name our new land. But after reading the best history book ever the Pulitzer prize winning Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fate of Human Societies which asks as a central driving question: "why did Pizarro invade the Inca in Peru and not the other way around?" To think of all the crimes against humanity committed to allow me to be here (or exist at all) it can keep me up at night. My chronic insomnia provided me with one very uncomforting rationalization of the problem: would the Inca Emperor Atahualpa "exploring" Europe (in the same sense that oil companies "explore" for oil) have not given us the equivalent of small pox blankets? The sad truth is that conflict is inevitable because the same spirit that makes us dream of a better tomorrow can be perverted into dreams of conquest. It is natural selection. Those who do conquer spread their genes and those that don't go down the drain of the gene pool. None of this justifies what happened, it merely explains it, only through understanding that can we prevent it. Ignoring the problem will only cause us to do it again as it is built into our nature. The good thing is history makes us feel sorry Inca which makes me hope we learned something through this and might not do it too many times again. Our world is a cruel place. The unpleasantness is unavoidable because some times problems just arise because there is not magic hand forcing our way to peace, we must become that hand.

paranoia pacification - suppose the conspiracy theorists are correct in thinking there is some giant global conspiracy to control world events by some group of induhviduals. Thinking about it I don't find the notion all that fearful unless stupid people are in charge of it. Since stupid people have trouble with basic math I will suppose that they can't run a secret global organization to influence world events. These men (and/or women) corrupting world events would probably be success people already since they have the ability to influence the world. So why would they -- being well-educated wealthy people -- want to do what isn't in the world's best interest? They would probably be interested in providing balance. There hasn't been a WWIII yet. So I don't want them to exist. There existence doesn't scare me because they would probably want what is best for them and their offspring which is heavily dependent on there being a world around for the next few years.

tom, the visionary | Thursday the 10th of May 2007

watch out, here comes tom - defeatism is hard to overcome, if only for the obvious and ironic reasons. Physics has been fully discovered. By this I mean nobody know what gravity "is". But it seems that there is nothing left to discover that could be discovered in an afternoon -- written on the back on an envelope. This is a defeatist attitude that everybody how ever has suck a discovery has felt. I feel that it is the lutheranism in Minnesota which is to blame for why so few famous people come from the north star state. The celebrities we do have are very private people: Josh Hartnett (most famous Josh ever), Bob Dylan, and the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince. But we still don't know what gravity "is" so I will hope that a revelation will come to me as it has not yet come to anybody before. I guess if it was all solved their would be very little to do.

renaissance man - just as being very good at going to the bathroom doesn't make you a good person, being very narrow-minded about education will not give you a good mind. Many at Rose need to learn this lesson, get a look at other flowers at least. I am just bitter that my morning glories bloomed for two days and then the flowers died, but there are more buds, isn't that the way? With no wind I got up to 33.9 miles per hour on my bicycle today on a hill (downward of course), 27.2 on a flat road, 16.9 average over the week so far, 11/3 of a mile to campus. Our town has...

what's that sound, everybody - if you didn't read when I wrote about this scary stuff a few months ago, have at it, this is scary NSA internet tapping stuff (very legitimate for the internet source). I hope writing about this does not prevent me from working for el gobierno in the future, as I am a big fan of the industrial-military-oedipal complex.

religion, conservatives, conservationists, - I found it difficult to understand why "religious" people don't find environmentalism a very important cause as this would in their eyes be the land that god gave to us. Christianity especially, but I get it. I don't see why people who live in the shadow of original sin (garden of eden) would want to destroy this world too, but I get it, now. Many very religious christians believe that they will be alive to see judgment day (because they are special) so why care about the world that will only be around for another few years. That and christ-lovers think at least a bit like christian scientist (oxymorons) that believe that god will take care of us even though they look when they cross the street and go to the store for food even though god is in control. By saying we are part of a master plan it is easy to dismiss questions as merely being part of god's plan that he needs to keep top secret. Christianity originally has several different sects, several were even polytheistic. Although in my mind modern Christianity is polytheistic because not only is there god, jesus, the holy ghost (boo!), angels, the devil, and various others in a cast of entities with god abilities. Religious people don't care about the earth because they see. I would say they don't want to admit to climate studies that use ice cores more than 5,000 years old, but come on. I like to see myself as Bob Newhart does his comedy: image yourself as the last sane person on earth, and tell people about all the crazy stuff going on. That is basically what comedy is, the recognition of irony, an emotion of last resort, sort of, I believe scream-urinate-faint is the emotion of very last resort.

Minnesota - has fewer per capita civil lawsuits that any state. Has the longest streak of voting democratic in presidential elections than any other state. Has higher voter turnout than any other state. Has 1.7 million visitor to the state fair in a state of 5.1 million.

50 year anniversary tribute to 50's era existential neurosis - I don't think it was until we started to make our own things that we really started to question where we came from other than we rose up out of the ground -- the earth itself --- which ended up not being too far off. The problem in the logic of our ancestor's had was where did the earth come from. Well it started in inside of stars where in vast nuclear furnaces our atoms (greek for indivisible) forged under great temperture, pressure, and radiation together only for the star to collapse and expelled us into the vast void of space only to collect together with other dust to form molten rocks that cool and hopefully have the perfect trajectory to stay orbiting around another star and survive the many known and unknown hazards that come with existence. Well before that space-time expanded and things cooled enough for protons and neutrons to coexist and form clouds that formed to first stars. Before that came a violent explosion because it couldn't have been an implosion and things were probably not just there since we are still being flung out at enourmous speeds from the center. At the center things just happened, perhaps in some "real" civilzation some equivalent of a third grader just started up his equivalent of a computer and we are just some logically byproduct in the system's memory buffer. Perhaps we do have a god but he does not care about us and is more concerned with some equivalent of World of Warcraft (the plague of computer literate America). Eventually I will have something important to do for survival and my mind will wander and I will not be concerned about it anymore. What were we talking about?

enveloping in word play - Do you prefer ENvelope on ONvelope? paJAMa or paJAma? poTAto or poTATo? NEither or NEIther? the last one is a trick, by answering you are declaring a preference for not liking either pronunciation (no other word for neither). It is interesting that words like "neither" that convey the entirety of a basic logical idea has through natural selection been unintentionally chosen to represent that idea. Also, no work rhymes with orange. Also I found another counterproductive novelty internet website that counts the frequency of the letters of text you paste into a box (link). I feed three of my entries into it and it matched to predicted frequency within one for all letters and exactly for most. So that can be useful for any encryption-breakers out there. Also, in spoken language, the words [ the and I to of a you that in it is yes was this but on well he have for ] are the 20 most commonly said. Over half of all words end in [ E T D or S ].

it won't get you into heaven, but it will keep you out of hell: equivocation, fence sitting, and prevarication

third rock from the sun | Sunday the 6th of May 2007

Tom, Dick, and Harry - I am going the end up in Minneapolis this summer. I can feel it coming. I will not get the position with the PHOE (PHysics and Optical Engineering) or at CLiPS (Center for Layerd Polymeric Systems) which is more interesting than you think. None of the firms I submitted a resume to in the fall will have anything to do with me. I will have to compete for jobs with punk high school kids doing physical labour earning minimum wage instead of working in . I am thinking of doing something with the presidential campaigns, especially former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel. I will need to do something other than watch Law & Order and MIT open courseware (video lectures). I will try to do even more library readin' this summer, perhaps even go to the downtown library and have some frozen yogurt. I will try not to let my schooling get in the way of my education.

derivative of my personality - I knew when I first found out about Kurt Vonnegut that I would like him. I finished Cat's Cradle within a 24-period as is usual of my reading habbits. It was a good read.

John Q. P. will not understand my dilemma- (emporia gazette) time out. The name Frevert is a statistical anomaly. My doppelgänger had to go and lower the bar for all of us. Considering there are now three Ben Freverts that exist that I know of it unsettles me to think that this punk kid had to go and screw up ⅓ of the Ben Frevert reputation. The other one is or at some time has been a part of the Idaho Department of Trasportation. I beat both of them out on google (Benjamin John Frevert) (Benjamin Frevert) (Ben Frevert), with this page being number one.

benboard top 5 - the Olympic Hopefuls, the Velvet Underground, the New Pornographers, Schubert, Bob Dylan out of:
Animals, Atmosphere, the Beach Boys, Back, the Beatles, Belle and Sebastian, Bob Dylan, Cake, Coldplay, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Daft Punk, Death Cab for Cutie, the Doors, the Eagles, Elliott Smith, Feist, Flaming Lips, Gnarls Barkley, Heiruspecs, Jack Johnson, Led Zeppelin, Nat King Cole, the New Pornographers, Nico, the Olympic Hopefuls, Pink Floyd, the Pipettes, the Postal Service, Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, Schubert, the Shins, Sufjan Stevens, Tapes 'n Tapes, the Mamas and the Papas, Three Dog Night, the Velvet Underground, and William Shatner

lost in space - [ Lost ] I have been trying to reverse engineer Lost to untangle the web and I have come to think the show is very Locke based. I think this because my idea of the concept of the show is: how a guy working at a box company goes on to save the world. The real trials of the show are put on Locke and most of the important action is focused around him. I believe that John Locke's original name was Jacob. None of this may be correct but I think that Boone being a sacrifice the island demands, the current interest by the others in Locke, and his name being Locke (the key to the story) just fits. Sorry if you don't follow Lost.

retrospection reclaimation | Tuesday the 1st of May 2007

I think I get it - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

just another day in the wall | Monday the 30th of April 2007

pass/fail - things have come to pass that a few years ago would have seemed insane. This goes beyond effigies of Richard Gere being burned in the streets of of India in hatred. I am talking about Iraq. But I digress to where my story will end... In 5th grade I referred to the Ministry of Defense (MOD) and the Ministry of Offense (MOO) because it was funny. I didn't know it was true. Well to go back to "the day" the Department of Defense was the war department. That ironically was back during our more isolationist period of history (boring!!!). Our department of defense costs half a trillion dollars a year to run. Yet somehow Iraq was "strategically flawed" despite all the scientists' studies. I find that difficult to believe in the classical sense.

Perpetual war - we will not (nor can) ever win the war on terrorism. It is a war of idea: the last war. There will always be war as in the novel 1984. Perpetual war gives more than excuses for the perpetual screw-ups of the government. It gives us unity and purpose - two very dangerous things. Terrorism always fails and usually only ever serves to strengthen whatever the terrorists are against. On 9/12/02 there were American flags everywhere. Our war on terrorism will be going on ad nauseum because nobody will ever declare it over in case something happens after that. Just as the safety color code will never go to blue we will never capture Bin Laden. Bin Laden was either shot dead or tortured or actually a six-foot tall diabetic on dialysis escaping the powers that be in the mountains. Occam's razor... If some Nebraska farm-boy ran across Bin Laden in a cave and shot him followed by every combination and permutation of three letters wanting to "talk" with him I don't think we would reveal that sort of thing. It is something that we may never know because either way we will be told that he is missing still. The government has nothing to benefit from if he were caught (other than the obvious) because he is the carrot and we are the horse that will drag the DoO behind it.

quantum entanglement - physics must have all the quantum stuff that drives me crazy because classical physics is too simple. Classical physics has everything being too concrete. When probability is thrown into the mix things can get fun. I try to imagine our world as the most simple way for things to be and still be. If energy were not conserved then everything would go nuts and have no meaning. To steal from Six Feet Under, "people die to give life meaning", just as things must be conserved to give things meaning. Imagine it this way from the many worlds theory: we live in the world where energy is conserved because otherwise things either would rapidly blow up or freeze. Think of it like rolling a ball along the top of a roof for when you start to fall off either side you just keep on goin'.

(1/2) m * v^2 explicated - I have often found it bothersome in my physics classes that kinetic energy to be "nice" should not have the 1/2 constant out in front. But I have realized that just as every force must have an equal and opposite reaction the total energy is twice the kinetic energy because imagine two astronauts in space that push off of each other. I am not sure this all works out, but it has given me piece of mind for last day or so.

2705 days - two decades that I have been alive, and counting. I have spent 7.17 years sleeping, 1.03 years eating, .1178 years volunteering, this according to the department of labour statistics.

all tomorrow's parties | Sunday the 29th of April 2007

birthday, day of birth - I would like to commended Jay and Jeff for living two full decades as I hope to accomplish by morning. I like the tradition of birthdays because everybody gets one and only one (except for February 29thers) per year. It is very democratic. It is a side-effect of consumerism, the new purpose for our lives, the new world order.

consumerism, the last frontier - human beings have two major instincts: immediate and long-term, survival and reproduction, respectively. When I write respectively I want to just write "logically". We live in a world (me and my fellow americans do) that is not very physically threatening. If you keep out of others' business you can probably survive without any realistic day-to-day threats. So the immediate need to survive has been written off except by hollywood and the third-world. Third-world originally meant not taking a side in the cold war (hence the 3rd world, with the US and USSR being 1 and 2, logically), so Sweden was a third-world country. But I digress. Reproduction is doing better than ever before. Population estimates are going towards over-population (when push will come to shove and stab shove for his stale bread). But for most families they do not lose half their children to disease as a standard. Children can survive significantly more than they ever have been able to before. Regular evolution has stopped for all but those that god really wants to die (part of a great plan, of course). So once these basic needs are taken care of in addition to all the other ones I neglected: food, water, shelter, and warmth, logically. So what is left: the last frontier is consumerism.

the end does seem more extravagant - well once you have obtained all the usually stuff what is left. Stuff is left once you have your personal physical requirements taken care of by society. That is what america has become and the rest of the world is right behind us. Consumerism allows people to fulfill their lack of need (a need of need) by providing improvements. It only logically follows that any organism is going to want to optimize if given the options. So we buy things to make life "easier". I am not the unabomber as I like technology and the use of technology. Consumerism is not evil for it is a sign that you have nothing else to worry about other than getting the latest iPod or 8-track player. It gives people something to complete over since we love doing that because we need to prove that we are the best there ever was. It is that tied with increased foreign investment from asian that has forced us into buying cheap stuff from asia to balance the trade. On a certain level we are all male peafowl (peacock) trying to show off what we are capable of obtaining.

altruism redux - like the male peafowl displaying his extra feathers the act of charity can be seen as an aggressive move to show that a person has means beyond what they need. Just as a sports car show that a man is earning enough to waste money a peafowl displays un-needed feathers to show that if he could take care of potential mates. Anybody who watches enough Frasier can pick up on this idea that charity rarely is.

european-american | Wednesday the 25th of April 2007

homelands - are not special because everybody has one, or do they? When people talk about nationality they think of German or Chinese or Dutch or Persian. Nobody is an American. Even so-called "Native Americans" only got here a few thousand years before Europeans (fewer for my people). I have run into a predicament because I have no one nation under god to call home, or do I? After crunching the math I found that no one nation can claim the majority of my genes. Sweden is in first place, so I guess in a democracy they would be home, but with instantaneous runoff balloting I they not be able to hold on. So I guess since everybody I descend from got to the US over 100 years ago I could call myself an American. I don't think of myself as a settler. Of course, Minnesota is my birthplace and the Kensington Runestone decrees that it is my birthright to live there (wikipedia). But I guess I am an American. A person of the lower Minnehaha creek watershed (upper has those lake Minnetonka people). Why does european-american sound like a moderately offensive term, as if europeans are not settlers too?

the Kensington Runestone - is probably the most romantic thing a Scandinavian could find in Minnesota. It is a stone from the 1300's that some Scandinavian explorers carved some stuff on in the middle of nowhere Minnesota. It is reasonably legitimate and gives me and other Scandinavians a great deal of pride that we (or really people related to our ancestors that died off) were here already. Scandinavians did in fact make it to the continent before Christopher Columbus besides the Runestone evidence. There are some bead in Newfoundland that prove it. It is just strange that the stone was found after the majority of Swedes decided to live in Minnesota, a bit of manifest destiny for people who's last name ends with -son. I am a Laplander anyways.

watershed down - only an complete idiot thinks that things can't be improved. One vote for one person is not the best democracy. Let me introduce you to democracy 2.0: instantaneous runoff voting. (wikipedia) Boiling it all down, instead of voting for one person (lesser of two evils) you can rank all the candidates (or chose not to) and if your #1 doesn't win after the first round then your #2 gets the vote and so on until some candidate has more than half the votes. Minneapolis (the city of lakes) will be using this system for all future city voting. This allows smaller candidates to receive votes. Think of back in 2000 and 2004 when "a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush." Now imagine that people who want to vote for Nader but know he has a snowball's chance in hell can simply rank him as #1 and Gore/Kerry as #2 and when Nader doesn't win their vote rolls over (runoff) to Gore/Kerry. This is not just my bitter heart talking. It is the best form of democracy because what you think actually counts. Maryland has three electoral votes. They benefit from the electoral college because they are disproportionately represented because everybody has to have 2 senators. They in the next presidential election (the only national vote we ever do) will give its votes to the candidate that wins the national popular vote. The electoral college will never be undone because it would require a constitutional amendment and a bunch of states would have to be with it, but all the small states are **** and like be disproportionately represented. Washington D.C. doesn't get represented at all. That is completely insane being the nation's capital and still having taxation without representation. They have a member of the House that can not vote. I rightly (and ironically) blame conservatives. Because DC is very liberal and would be giving a vote (rightfully although) to the democrats. So repubs will never allow the district where they actually vote to be able to vote themselves.

only god knows | Tuesday the 24th of April 2007

Scientist studies - after all these many, many years of development where we have split the atom (Greek for indivisible), we walked on the moon (or a soundstage in the desert), and we have fused shampoo and conditioner into one substance (only to be ever kept in Hotels). For all the scientists' studies we have done there are some fundamental questions still left. This is where god comes in for many people. I must admit I am a bit excited about now understanding Lagrangian mechanics (wikipedia). I have not won many non-optical academic battles lately and theoretical mechanics is still providing me a bit of salvation. Basically stuff takes the path of least resistance and only the occasional outliers - a statistical anomaly - goes outside the laws that have been set before us. Then quantum mechanics comes it and everything is then a probability that then follows on average the path of least resistance. Despite all my studies all I have just said is that stuff likes to go downhill but doesn't always take the same path.

we have the facts, and yes we are voting - it turns out republicans are weak people. And as it turns out our political affliction (or more correctly, our political viewpoint) comes from what we innately are, for what it's worth. (source:psychology today) To sum up the article: conservatives need law and order. On a side note, Fred Thompson, (wikipedia) conservative republican 2008 presidential candidate, former US senator, and actor as the head DA on Law and Order: classic has figured out the perfect way to court the so-called "law and order" voters. It is these voters that are what conservatives "are". Conservatives feel a need for justice in the world (clearly not regular LAO watchers like myself) as they feel on a basic level that there must be justice (there justice). If this sounds familiar it is how a billion Christians have been believing for many, many years the world would end: divine and total justice. What a great thing to think of! They all want it to happen during their lifetimes because, well, everybody want to feel important. If you really want to feel important just understand chaos. Essentially chaos theory (wikipedia) says that small changes will manifest themselves greatly in time. The example often used is that a butterfly flapping its wings in the amazon cause a hurricane in Indonesia. Think of it as the world's future being touchy. Which way you sneeze decides the outcome of wars: the fate of humanity rests in the hands of you deciding paper or plastic. But you don't know the outcome of what you are doing (isn't that the way) or that somebody else coughing might send it all the other way. Every moment is important because each one after that is built upon it. So you are important, but so is everybody else, so you are definitely not special. If you must feel special just think of all the previous decisions that could have gone the other way and yet you are hear and not not [sic]. Sic by the way means intentionally wrong.

god only knows - by the Beach Boys was listed by pitchfork as the best song of the 1960's. (source) What a horrible choice. This means they passed over Gimme Shelter since it is #12. GOK has one line that represents half the lyrics and is played 16 times in the song. Worst of all is that the Beach Boys - whom I have little respect for - get #7 with Wouldn't it be Nice. Their songs are pop music. Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone only got to #4. What is wrong with literal retrospection these days.

Virginia Tech: a critical analysis | Thursday the 19th of April 2007

Cho Seung-hui is an evil person. This person makes it difficult for the optimistic side of me to say that nobody genetically evil. I am trying to understand the why of why this happened. It hits a bit close to home when an engineering school two states away gets shot to hell. I think that I can understand what would lead to it. Possibly just being an English major at a technical school did it.

taboo: if I offend you then I have proved my point | Friday the 13th April 2007

should not a free society be without taboo topics - yes, next question. But there are some things we have in society that are not to be insulted because it would be hypocritical. Like our troops. Not that I want to insult them, I just want to be realistic, well actually I want to inspire debate to get at the real truth of the issue, but I digress. There are very few Nobel prize winning veterans. Sure they are using up part of their youth to defend the very safety that I live under (and question as a "patriotic act") instead of them going off to some university to study stuff as most stuff nowadays you can win a Nobel prize for requires years of lab work and not an afternoon of revelation. But it would be hypocritical of me to question them, or would it be my patriotic duty? Red state people would say hypocritical and blue state people would say I am a patriot: one of these groups wants to shoot my communist ass (ironically colored too)! But if they are defending democracy and freedom of speech should they not want people to actually be able to use it? Again EVERYTHING on this site is opinion, even what my opinion may at the time call facts, because it is then protected under freedom of speech (I love america)! I am fine with things here only being opinion because I would like you to think for yourself as I feel most of my arguments stand by themselves (they do more than just say they are correct, cough: bible). It is a sad fact (remember, my facts are still opinion) that the men and women who have died in Iraq may have died in vain (in the direct sense) because it looks like we are loosing and only created more terrorists. That idea sucks, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it. By debating an issue it helps ensure that our final opinions are correct. Now the people who are angry with me should be angry with the people that sent them over. But the horrible education system in this nation have created people who can't think for themselves. Being a person means you can ignore the idiot stuff I say and choose for yourself.

race is another taboo - I, as a white person, can't say some things without getting into trouble. I am just waiting for me to slip up typing at three in the morning and end up getting my website taken off my college's servers, ending up in front of some disciplinary committee, and be forced to stop my education or go to some workshop with some skin heads as I try to plead with people that I am not a racist. You don't have to listen to everybody and controlling the media is not the way to achieve equality. The reason we know we still have a race problem in this nation is that we take racist seriously enough to care about what they say. The problem is that there is no perfect solution that will heal the wounds left by this nation by people who are dead. I don't descend from slave owners, but I still pay the price for their actions because of affirmative action, that is not fair. The only people who benefited from slavery are slave owners who now represent the very poor white south that for hundreds of years didn't have to do any work (except on their kissin' cousins). Let he is without sin cast the first rock means that nobody should throw a rock because none of us are without sin (see child abusing catholic priests). There is evil in this world, that is just about guaranteed, if you don't like it do something about it, because freedom is not free. I hope the Rutgers basketball team, their coach, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson are happy with themselves for destroying another person's life. The media blames rich white record company executives for the race problems in this nation because it easy and they are the safest group to make fun of. They are targeted, not the idiots that buy angry hateful music or the people that make it. It is the people that ultimately have the power. If they didn't buy it nobody would sell it. Rich white males (of which I am two of) can be made fun of because they have the power apparently (I guess I need to work on the rich part). The thing we should learn from this incident is that if we censor speech we can all think the same thing. Rappers do not rap about what they are surrounded by unless poor black men have strippers dancing around them all the time as they drive around in their sports cars. I like that Snoop Dogg said that (to paraphrase): rappers don't talk about smart young girls trying to get an education but --- from the hood that don't do ----. On an unrelated sidenote, it turns out abstinence education and abstinence programs have no impact on teen sex rates. Education only leads to safe sex, not more sex. Disproving the notion that misinformation and bad education (la mala educacion) leads to a better tomorrow. What the black community (I guess that is Al Sharpton) needs to do is what all americans need to do to their children: put the fear of god into children that if they don't get an education they will end up in perpetual poverty where the only escape is by being really good at sports or by degrading their own ethnicity.

double standards - Double standards are a horrible idea (concerning what certain groups can or can not say) because the other double standards our nation has had have been slavery, segregation, and right for men and not women to vote. Double standards makes people think that one group is better than the other. Because if it is okay for one group to insult another, but not the other way around it makes people think one group is worse than the other and needs help. What I mean is that if Blacks can call Whites and Blacks insults but Whites can only insult other Whites it makes people think incorrectly that Whites are superior and that Blacks need protecting. Because just now I had to debate in my head to use "Black" or "African American" and if I should capitalize the first letter because I know I screwed that one up somewhere when really it communicates the same message because I try to go one way or the other and treat people equally since that is the point I am trying to make. Double standards are a bad idea because even "separate but equal" has been ruled unconstitutional and that was supposed to be equal. I don't care what people say about my people because sticks and stone can break my bones... Call me cracker, what is it to me. According to the standards we have now anybody can make fun of me and it doesn't get to me. If you wanted to make fun of me and really get to me say that if it were not for the color of my skin and my 23rd chromosome I would not be where I am today. That is far more insulting because it is to me as a person. Generalities are general, and the person being insulted could be a few standard deviations away from whatever the insulter was claiming. It is not precise. Not to mention that calling someone a typical member of a group is not as insulting as something specific because it means they are typical, they are doing what they were born into becoming (from a statistical point of view), this is assuming the generalization is true in the first place.

Overcoming - Overcoming our nations hate is the hope I have, and we will overcome. The hate comes from a lack of knowledge and a frustration with our surroundings. I blame religion because they give this idea that the world should be a perfect place. The world is inherently evil and we must overcome this "original sin" to create heaven on earth.

Sleep paradox - CNN just told me that I lose 1-1.5 years off of my life for every hour less than 8 of sleep I get a night. But if you live more than 24 years (36 to play it safe) then you will be conscious more time by getting less sleep. Of course I doubt the study took into account that people who can sleep 8 hours a night probably don't have too much stress in their life. I have lost roughly a full year of my life to insomnia. But I do some of my best thinking then, so I guess it is all a bunch of trade offs.

Kurt Vonnegut - I have specifically not read him because I read a bit of him (different meaning of "read", obviously) back in 7th grade and knew I would like it. Think of him as our mutual friend, but if any of you understand that you know it doesn't actually fit well at all. But now that he is dead I will read his material, that and I have been saying I would actually get down to read him for a few months and need to take a break from Proust.

television: opiate of the masses (although opium is very good at that too) - Here are the only good shows I know of that are on TV now: the Daily Show (CC, MTWR), the Colbert Report (CC, MTWR), Heroes (NBC, M), the Riches (FX, M), Weeds (HBO, M), House (FOX, T), Lost (ABC, W), The Office (NBC, R), 30 Rock (NBC, R), Raines (NBC, F), Studio 60: on the sunset strip (NBC, Su). Everything else is crap that panders to the lowest common denominator. Heroes I am fully nuts about - it is a bit hokey - but it filled in for Lost so I give it credit for that. Just as the music of Belle and Sebastian is good but I can't say one line of lyrics because I can just pick it up and enjoy it. I need to watch my spell checker because it doesn't have a good "go to" substitution for a misspelling of can't, think about it.

How google screwed me with my pants on | Thursday the 12th of April 2007 (once more with feeling)

what google did - I bought (or thought I did) a website domain (like insertnamehere.com) that I don't even want to mention because I am a bit embarrassed at what google did. I made this a separate entry because I don't want to disgrace JFK with my problem with google. I had always liked google, I tell people to switch to using gmail, using google earth, and using google checkout. I switched over to them way back in the day and have always liked how they carried out their business -- until now. I paid the admittedly low sum of ten dollars to buy my web address for a year. What I got was a google con job where I was forced to make google pages that have the google name all over the place with google search bars built in. The worst part is that the site isn't actually at the web address you paid for: not at insertnamehere.com but at http://partnerpage.google.com/insertnamehere.com, which is totally lame. This is practically the same address you get with a free google pages. Actually the free google pages seems to have more creative freedom with each page. They did not disclose this to me when I signed up. I was not told I would be forced to have a ridiculous google start page as my homepage since you don't get so say upload a very simple all text page like this but are forced to use their goofy frames. Google tricked me out of my ten dollars. It is not the ten dollars I care most about. It is the moral issue. I don't want to have to seek legal action against a company I had previously liked. But google stepped over the line, especially when it comes to not being in line with their usual strategy of don't-anger-the-customer-and-they-will-come-back style. Google has become a great frenemy (friend + enemy) to me. I am advising people to stop using google stuff: a wolf in sheeps clothes.

video killed the radio star | Thursday the 12th of April 2007

What LBJ did - There was a coup d'état in this nation. A recent interview with a spook (cia agent) on his deathbed revealed that LBJ (the then vice president) ordered the assassination of JFK (source, source, source). It turns out a bunch of spooks organized a coup instead of a magical physically-impossible bullet killing several people. It makes sense. Think of who would profit most and there you go. I guess LBJ's conscience got the best of him and didn't run for a second term. LBJ is now my least favorite president, although Bush II is giving him a run for his money. I wonder how much media coverage this story will get. It has been dugg on digg to hell. I don't know of any period in American history that isn't marred by the weakness of amoral men (and women). I am glad that the senate can have hearings on pet food regulation. War profiteering (treason) has not been investigated at all. Heads need to roll in corporate america (literally for treason) as executives need something to fear for their actions, one word for what we need in America: purge. All the educated are about to leave this land for Canada and Europe as we descend as a nation and as the sound of settling climbs the political music charts.

the fantastic four | Wednesday the 11th of April 2007

We still don't have a grand unified field theory - the four fundamental forces (hyperphysics) have not been unified. The four are gravity, electromagnetism, weak, and strong nuclear. They are the ONLY forces there are in nature. When you shove somebody it is electrostatic repulsion of your electrons orbiting around in your atoms that "shove" each other. Gravity is the one that keeps you on the ground. The first controlled strong nuclear reaction occurred at the trinity test site (nuclear bomb). The weak nuclear force is weaker, but is important in radioactive decay. There have been a few unifications like the electro-weak force, but there is yet to be a unified field theory that unites them all (one ring to rule them all). At really large temperatures there is a electro-strong-weak force, but at that point temperature has little meaning. So in the early universe there was a nice unified everything, but as things cool out they also separate. So now blind conjecture.

Physics is my other major - it is, and I have read plenty on theoretical physics, this is my best conceptualization, or at least an interesting theory. There are an infinite number of forces, they have zero effect until things cool enough start to matter. There have been other "evolutions" of the universe where energy was more concentrated and abundant. As things cool they expand, but the meaning of time also changes because they are cool (and by definition not moving as fast). The speed of light is the limiter that just goes with the shift, where velocity is constant. So there used to be a universe where electromagnetism was the gravity of now, so things moved faster since electromagnetism is far weaker than gravity (you can repel all of the earth's gravity on a scrap of metal using only a tiny magnet). So in the future things on the scale of people will somehow interact with gravity. Electrons are point sources (no area) like a black hole is a good analogy. I have nothing to back this up on, but it gives me hope because it means that life could exist in these past "ages" in ways that our minds have now way to grasp. So what age are we in?

we are in age number 4 - why 4 (wikipedia)? because there are four fundamental forces, four dimensions, life on earth uses 4 base pairs, there are 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, the tetragrammaton is the Hebrew name for god, it is the first non-prime number, any map can be drawn with 4 colors (wikipedia), and a bunch of physics stuff has stuff squared. It is just random conjecture (until I get my degree and it becomes educated conjecture) at this point. Perhaps there are ages that for whatever reason nothing can come to literal fruition because things just don't mesh and the self-perpetuating logic bomb that we are can't come about. The other nice thing about this is that it gives hope for the future, infinitely. Of course these ages take place on very different time scales. For a very small fraction of a second three of the forces were "unified"; and it took 300,000 years for atoms to start forming from the D-day of the big bang. Perhaps all this science talk about "inflationary periods" are the division lines between ages or the consequence of previous lifeforms blowing everything up, nobody knows(wikipedia). Perhaps our ultimate fate as a civilization is to realize this and in one large self-sacrificial event blow everything up in hopes that future existence could exist. Beware false prophets. But I like the number 4, even though the number 23 has been my lucky number since I was 8 years old (I changed from 21 in a journal entry then), which is a bit strange after watching the film the Number 23 where the main character starts obsessing about the number and lets it rule his life. Both 4 and 23 are part of "the numbers" (source) from Lost. The question that comes from my crazy idea of ages is if there were negative ages, imaginary ages, and if there are an infinite number of them. Perhaps it is all some self-referential logic bomb inside some computer somewhere (but where). Just remember that there are enough crazies out there, my theory no different from theirs, other than it being somewhat tethered to science. It is probably wrong, but it helps me get through existential problems I seem to have about one a week. It is not so much that I think it is correct, but that it is what I wish were true. Because it ultimately requires acts of complete altruism, provides for endless existence of life, has a nice self-referential aspect to it, and it gives existence some purpose. Most of the "facts" from this article are from a great easy to read book the Five Ages of the Universe (abbreviated online version, amazon, first chapter), I read it back in June of 2002, but I looked up numbers, especially 4.

three things you need to know about physics - understand symmetry, conservation, and entropy. The following paragraph is about real and widely accepted physics. Symmetry means that the center of mass of a sphere has to be at its center because it is the only symmetric point. symmetry means that for the most part left and right in physics are the same thing. Conservation means that there is a set amount of energy we have and no new energy can be created. If you figure out a way to get more energy out than you put into some process then congratulation: you just became the most important person in all of history. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Entropy is the most difficult of these concepts to understand. Basically it means that everything becomes more complex with time and all energy become heat eventually. This is another principle that if you broke you would become the most important person in history. Even getting an engine of some sort to run at perfect efficiency is partially impossible. Think of it like this, when you run your car the hood is hot afterwards because the engine is blowing stuff up inside and doesn't control that release of energy perfectly. Life are no different. Although we seem to organize the world by creating biomasss we still create a net gain in heat. This all lead to the inevitable heat death of the universe where hot and cold mix to create nothing but a non-distinct luke warm place (wikipedia). This heat death creates a medium that would be undetectable since it would be so average and I have a theory that photons travel in some equivalent aether of normality (wikipedia).

Zia - I have recently become interested in the Zia people of New Mexico, they believe four sacred obligations: a strong body, a clear mind, a pure spirit, and a devotion to the welfare of others. It seems to have served them well in the 800+ years they have inhabited the same town. They like the sun and make pottery (wikipedia). It is there sun symbol that is on the New Mexico state flag, (more general info). Nothing much can be found about them other than about a 74 million dollar lawsuit they filed against New Mexico for using their sacred symbol of the state flag.

save the earth, save the world | Tuesday the 10th of April 2007

I like Newt Gingrich - now on C-SPAN (Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network) is a debate of Global Climate Change between John Kerry and Newt Gingrich, both strong advocates for environmental change. Both men I wish were president now, one more than the other, of course. John Kerry just had a good line, "We didn't get out of the stone age because we ran out of stone and we won't get out of the oil age because we run out of oil." Barack Hussein Obama was on Letterman last night, he was funny, he is quitting smoking, I'll vote for him, as would America apparently (source). I take a bit of offense from the findings that more people are willing to vote for a Mormon than an Atheist. Anyways, their debate boils down to deciding between giving tax credits for reducing your carbon impact and fining you if you go over your predetermined level. But you need to care about that stuff. People are calling into C-SPAN now harassing the moderator personally (the debate is over). Personal attacks are for those without good arguments.

Thorium - "Plastics!" Well, you could say that the world has Graduated from our simple past. Thorium is the new uranium. It is more abundant, it creates redundantly safer byproduct that can be used as more nuclear fuel, and how can it not be awesome with a name like thorium. It is also located in a ...friendly place, Norway, which given what we do for oil is probably a good thing (source).

Imus - I hate this controversy (youtube). Partly because people are acting like there are no racists in the nation. I feel Al Sharpton is getting tired of acting outraged when people say something racist. This is a slow news day issue. Imus is only getting notoriety and fame because of it. I think of myself as media-savvy, but I don't remember ever hearing of him before. I like what Bill Maher - a brilliant man - said about it, to paraphrase: I don't get why nowadays with our media, when somebody makes a mistake it has to end their livelihood and destroy their life. Maher is touching on what I feel is a greater issue of the modern media making our leaders and other influential people be too restricted. I realized after watching GB's Prime Minister's Questions (source) about how hollow and unreal American politics are. I still despise the British and all that they stand for in the world. But back to racists. If what Imus called them is the worst racial slur they have heard they are lucky. I have been called worse, and I am white. I was once called a mutt because I had other races mixed in with my blonde-haired blue-eyed genes. It made me feel at the time what I was never able to express verbally until I watched the West Wing and Toby used the line, "thank god, because he didn't make me like them." The funny thing about all of this is that Imus seems to be a good person. He built a ranch for cancer kids, a wing of a hospital for wounded veterans, and now the team is acting like anybody really would have cared all that much about them winning if this would have gone down differently. I am glad CNN is reporting that the girls on the team are damaged but will push through and not let it affect them. If I were on the team I would be (and perhaps they are) more angry about him insulting the team's playing ability than some idiot mild racial slurs. I am not saying he is justified in what he did. Ironically the worst that can happen to Imus is get fired and then get a huge book deal. People are just too touchy about stuff now. I'll have better stuff tomorrow, I am tired.

Haunted History I : Sioux Uprising | Monday the 9th of April 2007

Not worst than 9/11 - this event (wikipedia) was one of the greatest losses of American civilians ever. The Sioux uprising took the lives of 300-800 Minnesotans in 1862 and an unknown (probably larger) number of Native Americans. I doubt you have heard of it. One of the Sioux concentration camps was built where the mall of America is now. President Lincoln himself decided after it was all over that only 38 of the natives would be executed. Since when did we execute soldiers, although they killed civilians. I strongly believe that you can't descend to the level of your enemies unless you want to become them, a very scary thought. Manifest destiny is a backwards idea, but I live on the land it brought to the United States, so it would be hypocritical to deny its importance. I would not exist without manifest destiny, and most likely neither would you. But we all descend from good and evil, black and white, rapist and victim. The sad truths of our world that can only be overcome by hope.

Eugenics explicated - I find it ironic that most white supremacists are if I had to label them from the shallow end of the gene pool. I think it has much to do with equality and the need to feel important. To make what many would see as a racist statement: no two groups of people are equal. What I am saying is that if you gave everybody in the world some abstract logic test and averaged the score for each nation they would not all come out the same. The key to not going down the hick racist road. The truth is that these differences are minor and mostly based on what we have experienced in life and not some genetic superiority. To blindly say without evidence that everybody is exactly equal is crazy. Statistically speaking any realistic hypothetical test would use a representative sample that would probably (because it is statistics) give results of equality within error (analysis of variance would be indeterminant). I think too many of my friends on the left are too into everybody being equal (yet somehow unique individuals) in a world where we all specialize in what we do. I am not as good at writing papers as solving differential equations, my sister is the opposite way, and half of our genes are exactly the same. Of course, being a scientist, I must admit that there could be a difference. Just because it is an unpleasant idea doesn't mean I will ignore it. I also admit that there is a chance that F=ma doesn't work and that all of physics experiments just happened to have worked out with this basic assumption. I still rate the concepts of equality and physics AAA by the S&P rating (wikipedia). This rating is given to companies like GE, Exxon, and the United States government. It is the chance that the company would default on a loan, less than a 1 in 10,000 chance. But back to eugenics, what is it? Are those religious "folks" who literally interpret one line in the bible to have a huge family practicing passive eugenics? These "one-liners" are displacing others in the world by ambitious reproduction. I feel sorry for the wives of these mens who are forced into into a 19th century role of oppressed passive existence where they have to crank out a new kid every few months. The men are raised to being Ward Cleaver (wikipedia) and probably be physically abuse to their families. People (99.9% men) who abuse their families physically are weak men that are really just cursing their offspring to perpetuate the violence. Our society wouldn't be so violent if our children didn't learn it in the home. A real man can gain respect without his fists. Violence has, and only ever will, lead to more violence. It brings out the caveman survivalist nature in us. Anyways, eugenics is a bad idea, let the "free market" of natural evolution sort things out. If you genes really are that strong you don't need to artificially help them. It is the weak who fear extinction that seek to perpetuate their inferiority.

Nobody in history has themselves saved the world - To briefly reference Lost, nobody has ever been Desmond (wikipedia) to my knowledge. There has not been any person to valiantly save all of humanity. There is no key to turn. End of Lost references. Many movies have somebody "bravely" sacrifice themselves to save all of humanity. That is not morally valorous. First off, if everybody died, who would you talk to? People need people because we are evolutionarily born that way. Those who didn't need "others" didn't reap the benefits of living in society and died off. People are social because through the spread of knowledge we all prosper together, moonbeam. I should amend this theory to say that nobody in recent history has themselves saved the world. There is a theory that humanity was down to only seven extraordinary females from whom we all came from (possibly creating the "definition" of our species), so perhaps one of them or some random male did actually save all of humanity. Feel free to take some pride in this, we all descend from them. We only know about women because we only get our mitochondrial DNA (wikipedia) from out mothers. Mitochondria are the "power plants" of our cells that differential us from plants and most likely were a separate organism that fused with "us" to form the superior hybrid we are today since the have their own DNA, but they are still us all the same as they are about 1/5th of your body. Humans are a hybrid. We suffer from a disproportionate number of genetic diseases because we are a fusion of two species. We did not boldly form out of a linear line of genetic progression. We are luckily physically weak. Luckily because it forced us to think our way through survival instead of using our fists. Our strength is that we are weak in almost every respect except our intelligence. The double point I am trying to make is that we are all in this together and sometimes a weakness can be a strength.

Say what you mean - what we say and do are two different things. Take for instance (iht) the recent complaint about to be filed against China by the US because of the lack of respect for copyrights over there because even the Chinese government sells bootlegs. I think the US wants China to pirate its films. What better form of propaganda can you have about America than films that people want to watch. Will and ability are the two pieces to the puzzles. The ability comes from recent technological advances and the will comes from people wanting to watch good films.

Best news on the net- This is a link (Reuters) to Reuters oddly enough news page, it is usually rather entertaining.

what we are actually doing in Iraq - I had a revelation in a dream, as I often do. I know what we are doing in Iraq. To ask a leading questions: What united the United States? It was the need to defend against a common adversary. God, I love that I got to be alive during a bit of "the Regan years"; they need a punctuation that denotes sarcasm. President Ronald Regan said he wished the aliens existed, because the next day Russia and the US would share a war room. So the best way to unite Iraq is to give them something to stand together and hate, us, the US. It will unite them behind a single goal, get the stupid bumbling foreigners out and keep them out. That is the beauty of an over the hill force in the Mideast: it will give them perpetual fear. It is best for a society to be perpetually in war to give us purpose. When we don't have any need for united purpose we bicker and squabble amongst ourselves. You can tell the Iraqis, it will just anger them more to know we were trying to manipulate them by destroying their country. So fight on you children of men. I would like to say I know and have met a few soldiers who have been to Iraq and I hope for all the best for them. They fight not for the war but their fellow soldiers around them. I understand how difficult their role is when most people here don't want them there, that takes courage. I would say I support the troops, but I don't in a literal sense. In my former ivory tower if IB TOK class the questioned was raised and answered of what "support our troops" means: send supplies, contribute to funds, and just say thanks when you see one. For more information on how to help support our troops go to this military site (link). On a side note, I didn't initially like that the US military gets the .mil domain space, but DARPA (a dream employer) did create the internet, and they get a ".mil" address. Al gore didn't ever claim to invent it, he was the main force in the senate that pushed through the internet being created, which you owe him for since you are reading this. God bless America, may she one day return to the image of her former glory.

British marines and sailors - They (wikipedia) should be able to sell their stories because I believe if you go through hardship you should be able to ressurect something out of it. The Brits are just angry that these people they once felt sorry for are now going to be well off from their struggle. Once somebody goes from rags to riches people lose their sympathy for them and start to envy them. The problem is that GB was poised to invade Iran to reclaim their lost sons and daughter when now they are shopping around the made for TV movie.

midnight in the garden of good and evil | Sunday the 8th of April 2007

Just following orders - the Milgram experiment (wikipedia) was done at Yale university. The premise was that a person in a lab coat instruct the participant to deliver larger and large electrical shocks to another participant separated by a glass wall when they got irrelevant questions wrong. The study was actually about the shock deliverers because the people being shocked were in on the experiment and just pretended to get jolted. The key to this experiment is that most people delivered a "lethal" shock (65% delivered the final lethal shock of 450 volts) to a stranger simply because some guy in a lab coat told them to do so. This experiment was set up to see if Nazis were just following orders or intentionally doing their crimes against humanity. It speaks volumes about human nature. We all act respectively in our comfortable day-to-day lives. But when push comes to shove, three and a half billions years of evolution kicks in, and we all descended from winners. Of all the possible combinations and permutations that evolution could have taken we are the one who "wanted it the most". I brought this experiment up in my IB HL history class my senior year of high school with a room full of relatively intelligent people. The reactions were mixed. Most people resented that I believed that they were inherently evil. The fact that 92% of people delivered a final shock labeled as lethal meant that on average one person in the room wouldn't kill somebody else if someone in a lab coat told them to, much less a person growing up in a culture of fear (as we do now, to an extent) with propaganda and peer-pressure to deal with. Also, nobody ever tried to leave or stop without asking permission. These experimenters did all of this after themselves understanding the pain of the shock by experiencing a 45 volt shock. I spoke up during history class that I would too administer the lethal shock and that admitting to our human weaknesses is important to understanding reality and not some dream world. Most people were personally offended and not worried about the broad moral implications of the experiment. So the real question is if you are willing to admit to your human tenancies or if you want to imagine that if you were put under more strenuous real-world conditions you would not kill another person because of authority?

the modern struggle - we have taken millennia to take power away from kings and placed it somewhat into our own hands. We still have authority - as we should - around that controls things. But there is - at least there shouldn't be - anybody above the law. The philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (wikipedia) wrote in The Social Contract:

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty. Hence the right of the strongest, which, though to all seeming meant ironically, is really laid down as a fundamental principle. But are we never to have an explanation of this phrase? Force is a physical power, and I fail to see what moral effect is can have. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will - at most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be duty?

So if you want to know how you are being oppressed just think of what you have duty towards. This is a great trick, as duty to one's country is a danger nowadays. The reason the pledge of allegiance is no longer required in school is not the words "under god" but the allegiance part, as you can only pledge allegiance to only one thing. But all religions are cults anyways, just some have enough members that what they say doesn't sound crazy because if fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong then a billion Christians must be right. But the modern struggle has been a questioning of authority. The premise of the United States in controlled dissent. The brilliance in elections is that it allows for revolutions every few years. Elections let the steam off so that we can enjoy tranquility and not constant back and forth bickering. We (American) do not live in a democracy, we are a republic (we elect those who decide), or as the CIA world fact book calls us a "Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition" (source). The struggle of the modern era is that our freedom is not free: it requires sacrifice. My main concern in this area is the civil liberties we are sacrificing for a little temporary security. It shows great weakness in moral character to compromise oneself when the going gets tough. I always find trouble with this when people talk of the moral character of fearless leader George Walker "Texas Ranger" Bush (who was born in Connecticut by the way). He and Abraham Lincoln are the two main presidents to suspend habeas corpus (wikipedia), your most important right as an American in our legal system, I doubt you have a clue what it is. It essentially the right to challenge to the legitimacy of your imprisonment (like for unlawful imprisonment). Technically Lincoln was in the clear because article 1, section 9 of the constitutions states "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." Just keep in mind my favorite Benjamin Franklin quote: Those who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither and will lose both. Dissent is the lifeblood of America.

Atmosphere | Saturday the 7th of April 2007

Concerning the lack of respect for intellectual property rights that my generations has - I was at one point concerned that it would guide our wisdom in coming decades on protecting knowledge rights, but really, how big a problem is that? Perhaps it is better for a society to think of knowledge as a public matter. It would hamper our industry to not have the great advantage of patent protection. Patents are a good thing because they give inventors a reason to invent. Because back in the old days everyone would just steal your idea. Patents are the reason we have the technology we do. I think art can be seen as a different thing from technology. Technology needs to be protected to ensure its own survival. Art could - and should - switch to a performance based medium as it was back in the day. It is only in the modern age with the ability to reproduce music and hear performers you have never seen. We become fixate on singular performances. I have become more aware of the difference between album performances and live after find archive.org, which has a huge archive of live music performances, like this page on Elliott Smith. The performance at the 400 bar in Minneapolis is good. Anyways, those damn kids don't have any respect! We are going to grow up with our poisoned wells that will skew us towards not caring. Apathy is not the answer. Apathy is the refuge of the weak and frightened. Apathy comes out of frustration and a fear of being unable to control the world around us. Apathy about politics is going to kill my generation's spirit. Very few people know more than me about how tedious and frustrating bureaucracy can be. But it is the cost of living in a society that takes care of us.

Can you see the Illinoise - I often wonder as I drive through the fine state of Illinois if they know that there are places in the world that do not have a permanent haze hanging over the land. I find that being in Minnesota the air just feels cleaner. It could be some form of separation disorder since these last three months could be the longest I have been outside Minneapolis ever. The only part that disturbs me is how little it seems to unphase me. No, I was away for all of spring quarter last year. Yeah, but still....

Concerning illegal immigration - I am against illegal immigration for the sole reason that it is illegal immigration. I think the problem is we need to stop the quotas that we impose to keep "bad" immigrants out. Ever since 1882 when we passed the Chinese Exclusion Act we have been selectively blocking immigrations from different countries. Before that we used general quotas which I am okay with (I'll fight it, but I'll let it live).. We have illegal immigration because there are many critical industries in the country that "require" employees that earn under minimum wage. We have illegal immigration because it is a trick done on the Central American populations: that like if wonderful in the United States for them. They run here to not be citizens live as our slaves since they usually get trapped in "company town" like scenarios where they can never get out of debt. There are many things in our society that are crowd control measures. We rather heavily subsidize the agricultural industry - our largest industry - to keep prices stables. Think if apples or cereal fluctuated in price like gasoline does. Gasoline is a much more stable commodity, it is not seasonal, and it flows at a continuous rate from the ground. The government guarantees to buy all the excess of many crops just so that prices stay stable because we would complain about that. Nobody ever thinks of how great it is that they turn the faucet and water will come out. The stability breeds complacency because for most people if it isn't broke... The real question is if this was done purposefully or if it just comes about naturally? Just an no American thinks of themselves as a colonist anymore because this continent was well sold as where "there" is. Illegal immigration is a great issue because every new immigrant class is trashed by the old immigrant classes that perpetuated the hate of people not wanting to share this nation with other people. I don't know if it is just me, but with six billion people on this planet there aren't that many grand things going on. No epic space program or large scale endeavor other than going about our day to day lives is going on; perhaps these projects have become commonplace. I have the fear that either this era is going to be like the early 1800's where nothing happens or what happens now is a game changer.

Particle accelerators - those giant rings that physicists make for hundreds of millions of dollars out in the countryside have a dark side. In general they concentrate a lot of energy and see what happens with that. The thing is, every time they fire one of those things there is a chance that a black hole will be created. Now this chance is ridiculously small, and there is a chance when you clap your hands that you will create a black hole (even smaller chance). The chance is similar to the chance that at any second one of the neutrons in your body will decay (we are all just dust in the wind). Those neutrons also need to be kept bound up in your atoms or they will decay in about 15 minutes. The only reason they get funded is that the nuclear bomb cost a fraction of our economy to develop and it panned out in a way. You see a countless nuclear explosion every day, it is called the sun, and you can feel the heat one hundred million miles away.

All Roads Lead Here? | Friday the 6th of April 2007

Mathemagical investigation - I want to see ratio of adjacent digits in high-order Fibonacci sequence (wikipedia) converge or have some rhyme or reason to them. What do I mean by high-order Fibonacci sequence? I mean adding more digits back to the next digit when generating the series. So going back 3 digits instead of the normal two yields: 0,0,1,1,2,4,7,13,24,44,81,149,274,504,927,1705,3136... So the ratio of two adjacent goes to 3136/1705=1.8393ish, when if you remember with adding the previous 2 digits the ratio of adjacent goes to 1.618ish, which is the golden ratio. I might save this fun fest for the ride back to Minneapolis on Saturday. Well I made a program that generates the ratios automatically, So here are the results, wherφ(n) is the nth-order phi value: