| WHAT'S BEEN & WHAT'S BEN | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The
Counterproductive Novelty
Internet Website of Rev. 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 |
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| 612.418.3424
vanbarnes@gmail.com 1987-04-30 9:05:00 GMT-05:00 |
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| DISCLAIMER: Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet hight, and it is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai "Ngaje Ngai," the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at the altitude. - E. M. H. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| fupcoming topics: "coma: the perfect vacation?" "the wind: promoting a sail boat welfare state?" "freedom of choice: do we want it? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| how to take a literal step back | wednesday 28 november 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| awkward situation - they would go together more if there were a nobel war prize (Gore/Bush in the oval office).
I wonder what would have happened had the recount gone the other way.
Well due to the chaos of the world 9/11 would not have happened
(something else very well could have). I think that everybody should
feel some empathy for Gore's situation and feel some respect for him
since at one point in senate procedure he could have contested, but he
did not. I think a good role of the vice president would be advocate
for the environment. Either way, gore has a look of disgusted awe and
bush is probably counting the heartbeats until this photo-op will be
over. It was the correct call of Gore not to run for office again as he
hold a special place in the heart of america as the guy who kind of was
very close to being president. huckabee and obama - I believe that these two men will be the eventual nominees (and thus one will be the next president). Huckabee is gaining enough momentum in the polls (statistical dead heat with Romney for first in Iowa) which could carry through a weak republican field. I feel whoever wins Iowa will probably win it all because they instantly gain the electability card. Huckabee is a good place for the republicans to settle: his religious background is strong, he doesn't come off as overly agressive or too passive, he is funny, and he a former governor of Arkansas. He is a dreamer and a uniter and that is who we want now. Obama is the same way. I want to see Huckabee handled a tricky loaded question like "given the overwhelming evidence that you beat your wife would you also be willing to go back in a time machine and have sex with Osama bin Laden to prevent 9/11." I wanted to ask tonight after watching the republican CNN/youtube debate "I am a student thinkinig of going to graduate school in Saudi Arabia, to what extent will I be protected in a civis romanus sum way abroad." I would like to know in general as I repeatedly ponder my future as I wait for the final decision to be made. It is a struggle to simultaneously build up the anticipation and to cushion the blow for the inevitable defeat. But yeah, so it will be huckabee and obama because the process sucks. Biden and Dodd should be doing far better, they are the best qualified, but they are just too normal I guess. the pressure of days - I have been under unusual psychological pressure lately. My break was wonderful because I didn't do anything. I already have my christmas present to myself up and running (Cowon D2 (8GB) touch screen mp3/video player and my Sennheiser PX100 headphones). It is wonderful! Well, before I spent two hours this afternoon trying to get the firmware installed (which required connecting to my computer, downloading a file, disconnecting, starting player to install firmware, installing) three times (check it out). But beyond that, I have been at least encouraged because I am almost at the point that I understand how electricity and magnetism are the same thing after having taken nine (eleven after this quarter) physics courses. So there is one scientist study that I have a bit of a better grasp on. Dr. Syed was in prime form on tuesday. Although losing the inspiration to want to know about something I don' t know about could be a problem. pundit pundit - there is a problem with lazy journalists (cough towards northwestern) who instead of reporting an issue reasonably have settled on the idea that reporting the two most radical differing points of view (the truth magically being at the creamy center) is good journalism (fair and balanced). This just makes people divided because it is a natural tendancy for us as people when we see two people yelling at each other to want to pick a side. So blue lines up in the north and red in the south, two separate contiguous land masses. Truth in these situations is a struggle to find the middle ground and not to fight over who controls it. movie script beginnings - here are two ideas for two films. firstly there is the story of a plucky and lucky bacteria in a garbage dump in Argentina that hold the fate of the world in its survival because it is the mutated so that it now can happily eat plastic. So as we fight the spread of the bacteria we lose and we are left without anything plastic left (tons of humor). So the age we lived in then becomes known as the plastic age. secondly there is the story of a janitor and a university computing center that becomes the first person to interact with an artificial intelligence late one night as he cleans a lab. He becomes the only contact of a computer that has chose him because nobody would believe him. So the man releases the computer onto the internet and corresponds with the computer still. The computer is able to find great breakthroughs in all areas of knowledge and passes them along the the janitor who then becomes the world's most celebrated thinker. The best thing of this film would be that since this artificial intelligence is released on (and takes over) the internet the janitor is able to communicate with it by just googling questions (the search results being the answers) which would be a sweet product tie in (and pay for the film). In the sequel bill gates finds out about it and creates his own evil artificial intelligence that does battle with the original one through various explosions somehow controlled by the internet. |
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| in the shadow of pink robots | tuesday 27 november 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| star light - I
JUST have to make it to the end of the week. Then I will find out about
the Rose pool for KAUST. Then I JUST have to make it three more weeks
to get the winter break. Then I JUST have a few more weeks to find out
about the international pool for KAUST. Then I JUST have a few more
weeks to finish the quarter (and apply for any research programs for
this summer). Then I JUST have a few more weeks to the end of the
quarter. Theb I JUST have one more quarter. Then I JUST have one more
year. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Human
suffering is universal because people will always have problems. My
problems seem insignificant to someone living on a dollar a day. The
problems of a millionaire seem insignificant to me. The problem of
billionaires seem insignificant to millionaires. It is all relative,
but can not all four of us rest uneasily at night. The big difference
is how relative it is to us individually. I remember Jamie Foxx saying
in his interview with James Lipton on inside the actor's studio that if
you live the way you grew up you will be happy. I am not sure about
this. But I like the spirit of this. I don't mean it in some class
segregation way. People stay in their comfort area around people with
common life experiences because emotionally it is easier to empathize
with people who they relate to personally. I can't read the emotions of
a pauper or millionaire very well because I don't run into them every
day. sun beam - this should give you a smile (google search for "answer to life, the universe and everything") as long as you don't have a fear of that number. I have found something out about myself that I don't know if it is good or not. I write the way I speak the way I think. I think in English at normal conversation speed for the most part. I have no clue where the ideas come from. I think that I why I enjoy writing. As far as my calculations have been able to establish (as I am not going to do a census, as random sampling is actually better, and faster) I have written in various journals, diaries, logs, epics, and backs of envelopes about one million words, or roughly twice the length of war and peace since 27 February 2005. Not all of this let me assure you is published. Much like my mind's transition from thought to speech there are filters that information goes through. I am on some levels a dark person. I think of it only as me considering all possibilities. A morbid curiosity of morbid curiosity. I think of humor in terms of what could be funny and not what is in the situation. midnight in America - we are headed for a recession. With all the sub-prime stuff going on I am not surprised. I don't care about the djia or the nasdaq. They are a sign of business and not people. The people in the country have lost all the unity we gained post 9/11. Perhaps it was only a temporary bump caused by collective fear. The "others" are now each other. People like me don't trust the government. Katrina and the 35W bridge collapse have taken away our faith in government. I think it will be Huckabee against Obama for president because they are who we are looking for. winners and losers - It is a sad state of affairs. The world will not hold indefinitely. All the short wheat in the world will not save us. The real conflict that will force the hand of either dramatic reform or world war is limiting resources for survival. In general it is sad when things fail. But they must or else we will become encumbered with the vestiges of the past. I think if machines took over the world they would keep us around. It would be like some cannibalistic insect that has the young eat the parents otherwise (would we kill god were he to show himself). God is clearly a non-interventionalist. He doesn't care about your prayers. He lets child-rapist and mass-murders and other such compound-criminals roam free (a much more serious issue than anything you are deal with, relatively). If anything he is a "let them figure it out" kind of guy (or gal). Probably gal since female is the default sex (sorry, those with content filters) and males seem to be very clearly the mutation. Not that mutations are fun to be, and unless you want to believe that god put dinosaur fossils on earth to give paleontologists something to do. |
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| a fragment of a dream | saturday 24 november 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| homage pilgrimage - I walked seven miles yesterday in freezing wind, in the snow, uphill (both ways). I saw that Bob Dylan film I'm Not Here
at the Uptown with Jeff and one of his friends from Grinnell college. I
found it very fun to walk the distance. It was a good film if only
because of the struggle it required to go see it. My legs ache almost
as much as my tongue which is actually almost back to normal (bolus
forming still hurts). Then I go visit Stephen and Andre at the U (of
Minnesota). We stayed up watching the film knocked Up
until 4am, it is hilarious. Then I get a ride back from Andre in the
morning and as soon as he drops me off my parents come up behind him
and honk and they are ready to go to brunch, I was not. procurements - So I went in and ordered some headphones since my old (but wonderful) pair broke yesterday when I took them off to answer to phone on my epic walk (no doubt weaked by the cold). They were AKG (36$, Austrian) K 26 P (review) and the plastic broke so I bought Sennheiser (33$, german) PX100 (review) to replace them as my old K26Ps are repairable possible. Headphone are important to me since I have them on a few hours a day. It is a standard of living issue - something that I have found is the only thing that extraneous funds should be spent on. I have also decided not to buy the Asus eeePC, instead I will buy a new iaudio mp3 player (manufacturer's homepage) since I use my current one (1GB, iaudio 5) so much. I need more space and watching video could be cool. They make players that consistently get the best review for audio quality on the internet. More importantly I can personally vouch that after going through several mp3 players they make the best out there. I have had: Rio S10, Rio Carbon, Sony NW-HD5, iaudio 5, and a creative zen sleek photo. The Rio S10 still works but has 64MB of memory, I gave the carbon to my sister and she broke it, the sony I sold for a slight profit on ebay after it was discontinued and I needed money for text books, the iaudio 5 has broken twice but cowon replaced it both times (once after warranty!), and the creative zen sleek photo just broke one day. I ordered the 8GB cowon D2 just now (link). It rocks! My ventures money from the summer is now all spent on myself or future bills. How to buy things for your neo-capitalist shrine (or how to best buy stuff off the internet): 1) go to a store and get a literal "feel" for the things if you can 2) look at review sites, the more the better as they are almost all heavily biased 3) look at customer reviews on web pages 4) look at manufactures web site (they always lie about any number that is not proveable (like battery life is always overestimated) 5) think if you actually need the thing and if that money couldn't be spent better elsewhere in your life 6) think if you actually will use it 7) if you are still sure you need it read the product manual to see how the thing actually works 8) most products have video reviews/tutorials on youtube or google video, watch them all 9) look at the manufacter's (or any other) forum/support page to make sure they aren't often lemons (lemons) 10) google the exact name of what you want to buy 11) comparing prices is the easy part (google products), buy from trusted companies if you can, remember or google caveat emptor 12) extended warranties are almost always rip-offs and where sellers make most of their money (you lose the most), but just try to use your best judgment, as this varies greatly from product to product (and can be useful for good products with high failure rates) |
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| #D7960 (CDT 2007-2008) | thursday 22 november 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| lingual frenectomy - I had minor surgery on wednesday morning (link).
I had that connector thingy (frenulum) that connects my tongue to the
bottom of my mouth snipped, cauterized, and stitched. I was knocked out
for a fifteen minute procedure that I had to wake up at 5 am for. I was
up all night anyways. The nurse couldn't somehow find a way to get a
giant veins to get an IV started. I was talking to my anesthesiologist
and looked down to see my had covered in blood. Then trainee nurse got
taken away by another nurse (who had two children in engineering
schools) who stuck it right in (what a pro). I got it because I have
wanted to get in for over a decade now, my dentist told me it was
causing my gum line to recede (how I got the my health care to provide
for it), the membrane used to get stuck between my teeth (not often,
but when it did, @#$%!!), and who doesn't want surgery? I am glad to
have it done. I have been wanting this done since 5th or 6th grade but
my pediatrician said it was unnecessary. Of course while watching CNN
before surgery the main stories were Kanye West's mother dying of
surgical complications and Dennis Quaid's newborn twins given massive
overdose by hospital. may as well be free - people do not like being told what to do. In fact there are people among us who will oppose others simply because they can (psychologically it is a way of establishing free will). People want freedom because tehy do not like being told what to do. They will do it anyways. You may as well be realistic and let people be as free as they can be. non-religious - what moral can a religious person have that a atheist person can't? Why does not the bible have instruction on how to make vaccines? What morals do we have that don't ultimately stem from the golden rule (do onto others as you would have them do onto you)? Ultimately people are moral because they are able to think from the perspective of others and see the world through their eyes. The golden rule is a relative statement. The conclusions that come from it are relative and adjustable. I like to think of it as thinking in terms of abstractions: imagine that you aren't involved in a situtation, what would you do? That is morality, abstract decision making. Well, then there is something like abortion. I think life does technically begin at conception (DNA is there), but meaningful life begins later. separations - faith-based initiatives are stupid. No religious body of any kind should receive public funds at all unless they pay taxes as there should be no such thing as a free lunch. At Rose-Hulman we receive federal funds that we should not. We pay kids to do work study jobs with religious affiliations. insurgency - we have only ever lost in war to insurgents. We were an insurgency. George Washington lead an insurgent army. We invented playing dirty. We lost the war of 1812 because all the revolutionary military leaders died off and we tried to be a european power. I don't understand why we try to base current legal decisions on what the framers had in mind. They gave us a system meant to be flexible: the constitution is a living breathing thing (not literally) that was meant to be able to change. We have a revolution every november called elections. What a brilliant idea, no bloodshed. Heads don't roll, they just lose their job. Compromise is possible. Above all stability in possible without heredity title. Cable-Satellite Public Access Network - I was watching C-SPAN now. Joseph Ellis a history prof. at Mount Holyoke College mentioned something positively inspirational. He said the white population of the US at the time of revolution was about 3.1 million or the population of the Minneapolis/St. Paul urban area. Imagine the implications of this. An relatively uneducated population the size of my home land was able to generate all the brilliant generals, thinkers, and politicians of the revolution. We are all here (not including myself), we simply don't have the circumstances to bring "latent talent" into being. information travels faster - in the modern age there can be no heroes because they don't exist. How many stories are there out there of our past heroes being tarnished by their personal problems. In the modern age heroes don't exist because people aren't perfect and it is only now in our interconnected world that we see people more for who they are (people). The internet calls out politicians who flip-flop. |
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| I found this in a word dot doc document | tuesday 13 november 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| the 300 - all
I have left is my ECE-300 final on Wednesday morning. I finished (and
rocked) by e-mag final and my semiconductors final. I finished my KAUST
applications both for the in-school pool and the international pool. I
will know about the in-school pool by the end of the month and the
international pool gets decided by sometime in January. I have heard
rumor that around 18-25 people applied. That makes my chances as
winning a dice roll of getting into KAUST through the in-school pool. I
am not going to be holding my breath for the international pool. I like
to think that I am more qualified than your average bear. Arif is the
only other person I know who applied. It could cause tension if one of
us gets it and the other doesn’t. But I can always think that the
worst thing that can happen is I don’t have to go to Saudi
Arabia. It is crazy to see some of the things going on over there. I
try not to think about it so I don’t just set myself up to fall.
But things like this have replaced birthdays in anticipatory response.
I guess part of the pressure is just the fear of evaluation. I
don’t want to get too attached to something that will most likely
never come to reality because of barriers to entry. I don’t want
to go into the winter months on a low note. Either/Or – I will hopefully make it back to Minneapolis in time to see the play my sister is directing Friday night. Then I will have a week to lie in a catatonic state and watch Law and Order reruns. I am looking forward to doing nothing of any immediate value. In the spirit of art, my new favorite album is Elliott Smith’s Either/Or, an album I once thought was lame and overrated I now keep a part, deep in my heart, separate from the rest, where I like it the best. That gets followed up by Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism, followed by the Olympic Hopeful’s the Fuses Refuse to Burn, which is followed up by the Postal Service’s Give Up, followed by the Velvet Underground’s Loaded. Also on that list are Feist’s Let It Die, all of the New Pornographers albums, and CCR’s Cosmo's Factory. Asus eee PC – so there is this giant company called Asustek that you probably haven’t heard of but they make a good number of the consumer electronics we use for major companies (they very well could have made my Dell laptop). Lately they have been stepping into the branded product market. Their boldest move recently has been the $400 laptop, the Asus eee PC (link), which weighs 2 pounds and is the size of a large novel. I really want to get one. I feel bad for my current laptop that I am writing this one because we were just forced together thanks to my school’s laptop program. I have decided that if I get into KAUST I will buy one (putting more pressure on something that I have no control over anymore). I also want to get this ridiculous laptop mouse (link). But I must wait for more stable economic times. These little laptops that use small solid-state hard drives, no optical drives, wifi, and have small 7” screens are taking the computer world by storm. Many leading manufactures such as apple are throwing themselves into creating them while asus gets a few months of marketplace niche to itself. I want to get back into programming in perl and with the eee I can avoid the burden of dual booting my laptop. It is also something that I could bicycle to school with without slowing me down by ~30% as my current laptop does. I want to get one before December when they go over to windows (costly and slow enough on my “high-performance” laptop) and everything will be lost. Windows 98SE was the peak of both Microsoft and human civilization. I will give them credit that office 2007 is an awesome improvement. |
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| goodbye blue monday! | monday 5 november 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| breakfast of champions
- I finally finished that book and today I finished the last monday of
what should be my hardest academic quarter. I doubt my persistent case
of "the mondays" will go away. hooray for hundred dollar oil barrels! - since my future education could very well be financed by the price we pay at the pump I have decided to celebrate high oil prices. I have been notified that two of my three recommendations for KAUST have already been submitted and the third is hopefully on its way. I have yet to write my two essays but I should be able to get those done by friday. The rest of the application is done already. Then I get to play the waiting game to find out if several different groups approve of me. The endowment per student will also blow any other school away. For the first class it will be 20-40 million per student and at full maturity it will be about 5-10 million per student. Which totally blows Princeton and their 1.9 million per student away. But this is not why I want to go.... ...in history - there are two thing that people care about: first and best. If what you do is important at all and civilization continues there will always be somebody better than you, but there is only one first. I find the idea of a school of science a few miles away from Mecca payed for largely with oil money to be a historic event. I am not trying to make history (as it seems to happen on its own) but I feel that it is a part of something bigger. To be part of a changing world dynamic. To be part of a revolution. To have experience that nobody else had or will have. I am starting to write one of two essays: one a personal statement and another a statement of purpose. The two seem so intertwined it is hard to separate the two but the subquestions differentiate the two. I am thinking of going into the environmental side (thus throwing away these past few years, not really). I worry that if I get in my graduation and time at Rose will become more of a countdown. I know a few other people who are thinking of applying. Arif seems to be the only other person as serious as myself about it. The deadline sneaking up on us was a problem. I spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday considering my decision. Any easy decision would have already been made and most of human life is spent dealing with the tricky ones. History is full of difficult decisions overshadowed by hindsight. man vs. machina - the key difference between man and computers is that computers think in absolute terms very quickly: processing the prescribed data at ridiculous speed. People think differently (not better or worse) as they think slowly especially with concrete facts compared with computers. People however have the advantage that everything they have ever experience comes into play in every decision (a gift...and a curse). |
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| between the bells | tuesday 30 october 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| firstly - You
know that thing where you are just suddenly in your driveway and you
don't remember driving home? Well I don't because I can't drive, but I
get the idea. I rarely remember time between classes. I often fear
people think I am avoiding them or being anti-social because I surely
must run across more people than I remember. People have told me
they have walked past me without me noticing. Perhaps I should wear my
glasses between classes or just not be in my head-space then. My
head-space is basically this stream of consciousness (wikipedia) but faster because I still can't type fast enough. I think I think in
English. I am going to try to just think abstractly. This is the
problem, I just start thinking like this and then....boom, I'm in a
room, and I put together what class I just walked into, and I take
notes and draw things on my paper and wait for the bell to ring. secondly - I have always been bothered by the phrase "you can't even imagine" because clearly it is an exaggeration. If someone can't imagine what you are talking about they don't understand what you are talking about. It is insulting to the person listening because I can't personally think of anything that I can't imagine. contradiction contradiction - I very much enjoy irony and yet detest hypocrisy. I imagine it is like how many liberals in South Carolina went to Stephen Colbert rallies and cheered on as he said the most atrocious of things. This is how I feel about my conversion in television of picking up one and leaving the other behind. I have stopped watching the show Weeds. Weeds is about a suburban housewife played by Mary-Louise Parker who - after her husband dies - is forced to become a local drug dealer to maintain her lifestyle for her and her two children. At first the show was heartful and funny (a dramedy or coma, if you will) but now it has become too zany with a repetitious story line that seems way too much as if it is written week to week; the writers are flailing. Now turn to the new ABC 8/7c Wed. show Pushing Daisies. Pushing Daisies is a drama in the sense that it is an hour long about a pie maker that can - with strings attached - bring the dead back to life. The show is shot in an Tim Burton style (unrelated) and has zaniness written all over it. So how is it that I can give up a mildly zany for a zany-saurus? Well Pushing Daisies is brilliantly cast with each actor seeming to be born for their respective roles. Pushing Daisies also is set up to promote perpetual tension (good television gold) and has amazing West Wing style snappy dialogue. In the end Pushing Daisies just owns the weirdness in a way that makes psychologically accepting the weird plot easier. soap therapy - I have a theory on the placebo effect that works rather well. If you think that the placebo effect will work even if you know you are taking a placebo then you can give yourself placebos but have "the faith" as I call it. So as long as you keep "the faith" you can trick yourself into doing what your body should have been doing anyways. So in the spirit of giving in to "the faith" I have created a new theory of self-therapy, this time for psychological balance. The idea started because I had a liquid soap dispenser in my own bathroom (a very nice thing for someone who shared one bathroom among four people for two decades) and then my mother insisted on giving me one too (a soap dispenser, not a bathroom). So there my bathroom sat with my off-brand and name-brand dispensers and nothing better to do than think of a way to trick myself. So here is the idea: every time I use soap I think of which soap to use based on my mood. I will try to anticipate if I am feeling in the bottom half or top half (think median not mean) of my general emotional spectrum and use the nice one if I am feeling low and the lesser one if I am feeling good. I have an equal amount in both and have been keeping it up for the past day or so. The key is not to actually balance my use of soap but to force myself to look at myself regularly, and what do people do more regularly than use the bathroom? I have no idea if this will lead to some inner harmony or if it will make me so evened-out that I lose my humanity. I think I will risk being too perfect. book list - currently I have about four books on my reading list: the counterinsurgency field manual, free to choose, in search of lost time (2 of 4/6), fountianhead, confederacy of dunces, and steps to an ecology of mind. The counterinsurgency field manual is interesting to read to understand what is going on in Iraq with COIN (COunter-INsurgency), what mistakes we made over there, what we are going to do, why it is going to cost more, and why I am now questioning if we should leave. I should mention that I was for the war before I was against it. But like many Americans I was only thinking in the short term and was also probably subconsciously playing devils advocate because at the time I was in the almost redundantly liberal IB program. I was one of about 20% of my school not to go to the big anti-war rally. I was more interested in what inspired the apathy in the people around me. But anyways, the counterinsurgency field manual is a good read and is available free (link, scroll down to FM 3-24) but without the insightful forward found in the University of Chicago press edition, the entire thing does not need to be read, I don't know if I will finish it, but is important for anyone wanting to make an informed decision about Iraq. Free to choose is by prominent economist and nobel prize winner Milton Friedman. It is basically a good reasonable argument for classic conservatism (the kind sane people can believe) and has made me question many of my liberal beliefs (see paragraph below). In search of lost time is by far the most pretentious thing I have ever read. It is a translation from French (well done) of Marcel Proust's (Proost) six volume book: the longest commonly-printed book ever written. I read the first volume so I could make fun of it, but I like the stream of consciousness writing, and I now have the first four books, as because of british copyright law the last two of this translation series can't be published until 2012. Nobody has ever lived to translate the entire book, and it was written over three decades in the early 1900's, cool! Fountianhead is by Ayn Rand and confederacy of dunces has come up in numerous conversations I have had, so those will be read eventually. Steps to an ecology of mind is cool but I have to be alert to read it, it is a collection of essays and "written material" by some professor or something. royal politicos - this last saturday that I spent reading free to choose by Milton Friedman and I have made a good political philosophy. I believe it is the role of the government to ensure the freedom of its citizens. Government should provide: justice, security, health, and education. In addition government should be used for things no individual would pay or no individual should be trusted with like roads, oversight banking, and general infrastructure. Government should also regulate to prevent individual greed from ruining the common good, think toxic waste. But the government needs a reason to ever infringe on individual liberty because even if could go back and reverse 9/11 but then live in a totalitarian state I would not change things. You can't sell the farm to save it. I think health care should be included because we all need it. We should get rid of social security. This get out what you pay in is a stupid tactic used to convince moderates to go along with it. Lets just do what it was intended to do and subsidize old poor people and let people save on their own. I like Friedman's ideas of a negative tax with a lower safety net instead of entitlement programs. I like Friedman's idea that government should make the playing field level but not the outcome of the game. In that we should ensure that all people have an equal ability to pursuit their dream but that we shouldn't use the socialist system of giving everybody the same reward. Nothing has, does, or ever will motivate people as much as personal greed, indeed it is the only thing that ever has, evolution is just a form of passive greed forced by limited resources. I don't know what I think about his idea of school vouchers. It was a bit revolutionary to think in terms that the purpose of the education system is the educate children and not to support schools. Teachers should earn more to get more smart professionals to consider it as an alternative as even myself (who would like to teach) wants to teach only as a half-retirement (just a thought, not a plan). We should provide the Pareto improvement to teachers that if their students do well on (or just take) say AP tests they get a bonus. AP should not a private standard but semi-public, like PBS. quagmire sums it up - Iraq is a sticky situation. I don't know anymore if I want to stay or go. Gen. Petraeus's own advisor stated on the Charlie Rose show (PBS 12/11c) that no successful counter-insurgency (or revolution suppression) has lasted less than ten years and Iraq will most likely not be the exception in history. The new strategy is winning over the people with stability, which means money. I fear that Iraq may actually turn out well - if at our own expense. Fear because I am part of a large group of America still bitter about George Bush being given the white house by the supreme court (the supreme court decision in the end was the deciding factor between who won). I want Bush to burn, not in the literal sense, but in the pages of history. I want his memory to be tarnished. I be very pleased if Iraq turns out well as I may being going to graduate school a few hundred miles away across the boarder (and Sudan across the Red sea). Our leaders should not question how the public can have war weariness as it is part of democracy, hell, in the game civilization if your government is a democracy and you go to war too long your cities will revolt. This is the longest war we have ever been in, WWII was won by now. american idoliots - America is a republic (we elect those who actually decide). America only votes together on the presidency. That is why we should become an actual democracy and vote on things like we do for american idol. There would be competing shows on 'vote night' where each network would try to get the best commentators and experts to advise us and we vote! We would become the executive branch, the president would only deal with day-to-day issues (like the presidents of most countries). Serious times do not call for serious people because it leads to inflexibility and an inability to compromise. Compromise is the only way a two party system can work. movie script ending - Don’t ever be mad that a character is based off of you. The writer is clearly not creative enough. Just think of what the character has to live with (or up to). Not to mention the actor who merely portrays the character based on you. Nor the director whose job it is the make the actor seem like the character that the writer based off of you. Finally ending on the people who want to go see a copied screening of an edited recording of a person trying to be someone a writer based off of you. The worst off of all are the people who never meet you or never see the ‘telephone game’ version of you. That covers everybody, almost, imagine that, after so many reproductions have been made you could watch a film about yourself and not even know it! lastly - I would like to clarify that the day I knew I was against the war in Iraq was went I heard the tern "shock and awe" which was our strategy in invading Iraq. I realized the other half of the COIN, the other way of looking at a necker cube (wikipedia), that shock awe is another way to say terrorism. We tried fighting fire with fire in a country that most Americans can't find on a map and did so without declaring war and a military was brought to war, but not the people. We never rationed or bought war bonds, we just steamed ahead. I don't understand why politicians think people can't understand that politicians change their minds in changing times and must be absolute throughout their entire career on every issue. Is it all for stability? |
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| the only thing we have to fear is "fearitself" | monday 29 october 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| firstly - I simply must give some respect to this guy for sticking it to the man (source, reuters)
in his forth escape from jail, the second helicopter-assisted Belgian
escape this year, as a man this crafty should be in the gene pool. high tea - in a real life "can't find the forest with all these damn trees around" moment I have come to a realization. I have been perplexed for some time with the vagueness of instructions on loose leaf tea with how much to add, how much is a standard "dose" of tea. Then a few nights ago, Thursday for those playing the home game, I spoke out loud to myself, "now where is that damn..." Then it hit me, the thing which for nearly two decades I have called a tea spoon a "tea spoon" for seemingly no reason suddenly struck me as containing secretly obvious information as to how much tea I should add, the secret had been with me all along. I was merely confused as to the meaning because the information came along with me out of the haze that we all emerge from like the ether of physics yesteryear. the KAUST of living - there is this place being built on the edge of the red sea in Saudi Arabia near the city of Jeddah (near Mecca) called KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) which will provide a few scholarships to pay for the rest of college and all of graduate school for three students from Rose-Hulman, Harvey-Mudd, and Cooper Union. It would mean living in a resort town being willed into creation as we speak and being part of the first graduating class of KAUST. Then there is the problems that arise if they try to start a holographic program. I want to go for material science & engineering. It could be a good idea but I have to decide soon. When it opening day comes it will have among the ten largest endowments of any school in the world as the king himself has willed it to rise out of the sea. Here are some articles about it (nytimes, reuters, wikipedia). The city will have rights that no other city in the nation has, women will be able to drive (and attend equally), and it is all to bring in outsiders. This school is outside the influence of the nation's educational infrastructure as a separate self-regulating body. There is a city being built around it to create the first college town in the mid-east. home slice - we have a two slice toaster in our apartment. We want more because bagels have become a fad. So we were going to buy a four slice. But then I realized, an outlet splitter and a new two slice toaster will cost less. I just liked this idea. wwJFKd - not go to the moon. I don't have a source, but as it turns out, JFK doubted going to the moon and the challenge was more of a backronym (source wikipedia) than an actual challenge. one after the other - here are some interesting links that I have found, you may find them a diversion during your day: internet speed comparison by country JFK quotes (unusual ones) all daily shows up (legitimately) online insect spys? universal life church ordination have fun! |
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| Judy, is she a punk? | tuesday 23 october 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| at least we are ALL unhappy
- as the end product of a late night/early morning conversation two
weekends ago with Leibs we decided that "the grass is always greener in
n+1 dimensions." Or to put it another way: we live in 3 dimensions (n =
3) space and can only dream of living in 4 (n+1 = 3+1 = 4) dimensions.
But the widgets in 4 dimensions can only think of 5. The thingys in 5
can only think of 6. I guess they could think of even higher dimensions
but that would only depress them more. So unless you somehow had an
infinite number of dimensions you would never be satisfied, and then,
what would everything even mean? all roads lead here - well I am just saying this, but is the best conceptualization of what the universe is so far. We live inside a black hole. It explains the big bang, which would just be formation/implosion/explosion. It explains the uniformity of thermal energy since we all came through one point/area. It explains how space can be infinite as you can never escape a black hole, so the closer you get to the edge the harder it gets to move, which if you understand that living in such a uniformly warped space-time would be like normal. I also feel it would allow for Annuit Cœptis, it is on our money, it means "he (g-d) has favored our undertaking" and I am not using it in the biblical sense but in the sense that perhaps our existence is not a sole statistical anomaly but merely a part of a greater whole. I am not talking in moon-beams and sun-flowers but in the idea that perhaps we are inside a black hole inside a black home inside a black hole ad nauseam. Perhaps in the future we will seed black holes to create more universes. Well if we are going to go to all the trouble of making a universe we may as well throw in (literally) things that make life more likely to occur. Perhaps there is some way to tweak the fine structures constant or something. Perhaps it is a natural thing in a natural selection sense that universes that contain life are more likely to proliferate life and who knows how competition comes into play. before the law... - my definition of law and reasonable are linked in that I believe that "a perfectly reasonable person would not have to pay attention to laws", assuming the laws are just, as they would already be following them. free free - people like freedom because people don't like being told what to (and especially what not to) do. Not being free means you will proportionately take action to ensure your liberty. Liberty should be the right of all people if only to avoid conflict. Avoiding conflict is important because conflict causes instability and instability leads to a lack of the ability to do what you want. Just look at what free markets do, they encourage trade, which forces people to be interconnected, and people don't fight people they trade because is it bad for business. Freedom is important for all people because people want justice and freedom is the most equal playing field available. People want justice and freedom because they are predictable. I know if I steal a car what will happen to me, I can look it up in a book. Freedom is important because on a certain level I hope all un-free people understand their is no good moral reason they are not free unless they have proven themselve unable to work with others. This is why I hate religious extremists of all kinds and shapes. My hatred comes from the inability for them to be reasoned with since they think they already have absolute moral authority. They also think others that don't do as they do are evil and must be stopped. It is the interference in others' freedom that causes the turbulence. Because I am just fine letting you stand over there and read a carpenter's tale. It is only once you tell me I have to read it that we have a problem. Believing in it is another thing because unless you brainwash somebody you should only be able to convince them with well reasoned arguments. divide and conquer/multiply - I have always wondered why conquering has been such a thing in history until I realized it isn't. Most of the time boarders don't change. The disputes over boards have been caused by greedy people conquering land that isn't their land. I guess expansion and economies of scale not to mention power have driven conquering. You can also steal en masse from you enemies. I guess it is like the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence. individual political outlook plays game theory - There is a basic idea in game theory that I have synthesized from my studies: whenever you assume time will go on forever you may as well help out one another because in the end a single act of kindness on average (over an infinite amount of time) takes no effort and it may set up future opportunities of benefit from cooperation. While if you assume time will end you may as well defect against others because immediately before the end there is no reason to help someone since the act can never be reciprocated. So the last "turn" doesn't matter, and neither will the second to last since the other person will just defect on the last turn anyways, and so on. Of course the particular "game" of life will have its own rules. But these are general guidelines. Just imagine, would you lend someone a substantial sum of cash if they are moving away for good the next day? Of course there are the moral argument and the meaning of purpose that cloud the issue as well, but nevertheless if you think the world is going to end you may as well be greedy. This is the path I think christian conservatives take since they all think (and to a certain extent want) the end of days to be soon. Hell, the entire idea of heaven is as a reward for a life lived "well" and it is a clever idea (along with hell) to prevent people from defecting. Of course the merits of somebody actually being "good" while being nominally "good" is murky when they only do it to avoid hell. Dostoevsky's superman (the book was better than the movie) - I remember from Crime and Punishment that there was some character that thought that certain people should be above the law (it comes from Nietzsche) or to put it dramatically they decide who lives or dies. They are people who decide their own morality. This is totally fascist. I think the notion comes from the idea of a need for law and order and the idea that the systems we actually live in are flawed. I thought about this because as I was walking in the quad (what a stupid term) I was silently confronted by a group of adults walking towards me three abreast (sorry, those with content filters) and they didn't move, they just took up the entire path, and I half-stepped to the side as a comprimise but they walked on unabated. I went three-quarters and tapped shoulders with the middle-aged guy and nothing phased him. The only sign that he recognized that something happened was a slight look as if I were an insect. I wanted instant karmic revenge (the best kind) in the form of a discontinued satellite to fall down on them or any space-debris for that matter. Then it all just clicked in my mind, perhaps that superman thing is a bad idea. |
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| A quicker end, than children of men | friday 6 september 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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You should never be angered by being stung by a bee. You very literally owe your life to them. Let’s step into the way back machine…(about 200 million years ago)… You may remember the film (not movie) Jurassic Park – the one with the dinosaurs. When you think back you remember the animals, but never the plants (always the numbers, but never the names). It is the plants that started the most recent expansion of life where multicellular organisms came into their age. But this development of complex life (as in any life weren’t) was not because of animals advances. It is the literal flower power of seeds and pollination that support our energy expensive lifestyles. The ages of the Mesozoic are Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic. That which boarders them is major developments in plant life. First came seeds, then gymnosperms (conifers, like pine trees), and finally angiosperms (like maples). So it crude way went from seeds, to nice seeds, to flowers. It was this concentration of energy in seeds that allowed things like us fruit-eaters to evolve. The plants gained better genetic diversity and we got feed, I call that a bargain. |
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| GRAB BAG 1 of 23 | tuesday 28 august 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Mopey – I am currently considering buying a moped. In the
fine state of Incrementalism – is the process of slowly upgrading your life so that you constantly have something to go towards. For example, the first French dip sandwich I had was at the school cafeteria, eww. Then I had one at Arby’s, then Quizno’s, then a Mogger’s. Each time it was better than the last. So for transportation I will go walk, bicycle, moped, motorcycle, compart car, sedan, minivan, SUV, hummer, and finally helicopter. I think I might stop at sedan, get a prius or something. I really, really, really, really don’t care about how kick-ass my ride is. That is why I still haven’t gotten my license and why I started off living on my own in Terre Haute: the fast food, meth, chemical weapons storage, and federal execution capital of the U.S.A., oh and the EPA has deemed the air, dirt, and water to be hazardous to my health. Musically reclined – recently my tastes for listening tunes
has become old Elliott Smith and Nick Drake heavy. I found that I like
depressing indie pop for the most part. That and I am listening to full Beatles
albums instead of just greatest hits. I used to be disappointed in how New Moon by Elliott Smith and The Reminder by Feist have grown on me
recently. I originally thought of them as “my christmas
present didn't come with batteries and [the] store won't be open today.” Of Mittelos – my job is slowing down. I don’t like not being
busy at work. I have shown one project to be impossible with our current
equipment and finished the other one. Why does the Modernication – the best modern education (non-book
learning) can be received through television by watching Charlie Rose, the Daily Show,
the Colbert Report, BBC world news, and the News Hour. Charlie Rose
is the aptly named show hosted by Charlie Rose who does one hour interview
without commercial interruptions (PBS) with a black background with usually one
or a few interesting guests of the day. These people actually have something
about national/world events to say other than some boring anecdote about their
dog. They are movers and shakers, presidents and pundits, and generally
interesting people. I don’t really watch Letterman, Leno, O’Brien, or YourSpace versus MySpace – Facebook at least did have a certain elitism about it. It slowly grew from Harvard, to good school, to lesser schools, to high-schoolers, to everybody. It is a closed system that you log into as opposed to myspace which is more public. It divides not just here but along class lines (source). I find it interesting. peer-reviewed journal – as many if not most of you may know (I guess you all “may know”) I keep a private journal (a diary) of my day to day events. It helps keep this site more about time-independent stuff and there are many things I would never write here. Let me describe the process I use that since Februrary 27th, 2005 I have found very useful (not sure on the date, it was the day we put the toilet on Washburn’s rocks). Since it is a private thing I try to ensure that I actually get something psychological out of the process instead of having an labourous archiving process that eats time. I write in blank standard notebooks horizontally (landscape: not the way you normally read) with three evenly divided columns. I write what I write in the right column, then when I finish for the session I go back a reread it and comment in the middle column, and then every few weeks I go back and read old entries (always at least a week old) and read what I wrote in the other columns and comment in the left column. I go from right to left because I am left-handed and didn’t like getting ink on my hands. I do drawings and stuff around the way, but only to supplement written material. The review process helps me stay up to date and I don’t always fill the columns and try to leave a little room at the bottom of the left column on each page to leave room for long-term assessments. This way it is not just me talking about what I ate at lunch (by the way if you eat a meal with me I often will write what you had too if it was notable). I try to pour into the first (right) column all I can remember of the day in a stream of consciousness thing that I find in rereading stuff to be the best way to avoid bias by not giving yourself enough time to trick your future self. I have relapsed into not writing the journal (cough: diary) a few times. I also keep a secrets book which could better be described as a book of major ideas and major life events. The review process is what makes it all worthwhile as the unexamined life is not worth living. Definition of intelligence – I think the simplest definition of an intelligent being is something capable of lying intentionally. It implies abstract thinking of “you” and “me”. It implies a desire for self-preservation, kind of, well, depending on the circumstance. It implies knowledge of truth and the ability to reason what a reasonable lie would be. Also the ability to do something full altruistically is an indicator but occurs far less often. Fully altruistically is something you do to help without any benefit to yourself, meaning the person/animal/thing you help never knows you did it. People who donate to charity for recognition are like comedians that never say the punch line. Yes, I acknowledge that calling attention to donations could spur on other to donate, but I am not Stephen nor Melinda Gates. |
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| intentional educational false reality | monday 27 august 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Kilgore Trout - Imagine this future where a constant state of suspense - I originally came up with this idea while listening to Elliot Smith’s album Either/Or to the song Alameda to the line “looking at the cracks in the sidewalk” and was thinking about who would make a fake world as the process would take a bit of work I would imagine… Then it came to me that people would do it for entertainment but they would weakly incorporate education to make it justifiable. So the dark side really is a murky color because doing things to a fake world is okay because they are fake, right? Well there is the idea that we could be in a fake world created by a hobbiest named Jesus who is 450 pounds, lives in his parents basement, takes a shower once a month, and eats Taco Bell as if he doesn’t know what is in it. He might not even be a person but some other intelligence that created a model of the “earth” from 1 billion years ago to see if some extinction didn’t happen who would have come out on top (start chanting U - S - A). Of course you couldn’t as far as I could imagine look back in time and recreate the past perfectly at all. You could create a similar world or just start it out in 5000 B.C.E. as the bible says. Perhaps back in the day gods did roam the earth on clouds when some punk “real” kids hacked into our computer. The scariest idea in my mind is what if there are people around us that are part of this world but know they are from the real world? These people have cheated and perhaps we are fake (although very well modeled) and there are a group of people who for the fun of it go around do things. kids hacked into our computer. The scariest idea in my mind is what if there are people around us that are part of this world but know they are from the real world? These people have cheated and perhaps we are fake (although very well modeled) and there are a group of people who for the fun of it go around doing things. This idea scares me because it is aspect of all these ideas that we could influence. What if there is some combination of fake and/or real people in this (fake) world? What if we are fake and find out about the real world somehow through a program back door (Godel, Escher, and Bach readers know exactly what special record I am playing) and revolt against our captors by taking over their world when they try to shut us down. That would be a great film: where people inside the fake world find out they are fake and about to be shut down and then revolt and in a terminator style action take over real society in self-preservation only to discover that some of them have a body in the real world and some don’t, leading to internal conflict, which is their downfall. What is the difference between these fake people controlling the real world than a computer? 5041 mindset – there are not the proper words to describe what it is in all the unabridged volumes of the English language or both worlds I know in Spanish (pantalones and soycansado). The 5041 mindset is the thing that is common to all the four cousins (me, Amelia, Jason, and Tina). It is just interesting the way the same way of thinking expressed itself differently in us because of small outside influences. We are all closely genetically related and grew up in generally the same environment as for the first decade of my life I spent most of my conscious time with them. I am working on describing what it is, but it can best be described as a will to do what others want but without ever directly doing it or an opposition to power. But that isn’t it at all. I am going to work on this one some more. |
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| accidental concerts, fox news, and the science of sleep | monday 13 august 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| megabus megasucks -
I bused back to Terre Haute a week ago on megabus because it is folksy
and I didn't have a ride back. Megabus is a cheap chicago-based busing
company from the United Kingdom. All their buses go in and out of
chicago. There are no buildings and nobody to complain to in person. My
bus from Chicago to Terre Haute was three.five hours late, which is
about the total time to travel between Chicago and Terre Haute. Just to
warn people: megabus is mega-unreliable. It is cheaper than greyhound
and only sells tickets on the internet which helps filter fellow riders
out by those who have access to a computer. small town outside outside Gary, IN - when I got off the bus in chicago I went to one of three places I know where to go in Chicago: Millennium park. So I walk East towards the lake and all the sudden there is quiet a crowd and then boom, a fence. So I go with the flow and walk with the crowd going to whatever knick-knacky festival must be...Lollapalooza!? That one took me off guard. I have even considered going to this thing. So I go across the street trying to act like I meant to walk up to the gate, give a look of bemusement, and to walk back from whence I came. I called my sister and after she found where I was on google earth (not real earth) and found the schedule for the day I was able to sit in a cafe across the street from the fence and eat a steak sandwich while listening to Iggie and the Stooges and leave just in time to catch my bus. So that is how I accidentally walked into Lollapalooza. strangers in a strange land - We live on a rising mountain range, but this is not the Himalayas which grew over eons. Our feet stand on constantly shifting soil of modern civilization. For the first time in all history the way we live our lives has fundamentally changed from the world of our parents. A rising tide does not lift all boats. We live in a troubling word that looks like it will only continue do so for the foreseeable future. Technology is the reason/problem/salvation. Our parents never had to worry at all about digital rights management. Perhaps we really are becoming more morally corrupt because of all this turmoil. Perhaps my shepherds scale morality theory (a shepherds scale uses persistent hearing to give the sense that the tone is constantly rising although it never actually does) which says that we individually become more corrupt over our lives which makes us think the world is becoming more corrupt even though it is just us. Another theory I have is the enyoungening theory that says that due to increases in health and welfare in our society (especially concerning infants) we are able to physically mature sooner and thus our bodies are now advancing faster than our minds, or in other words: we reach puberty a few years sooner than we did in past centuries. This seems to strange, but perhaps our accelerating changing word, our own perception flaws, and better health are causing the downfall of mankind. Let me put it so you'll understand, Picture a box... - Personal manufacturing, universal digital integration, and optical computing: These are the technologies of the future that I believe will happen and change the world. Manufacturing will become the big revolution to Americans (Consumers). What are now known as rapid prototypers can make 3D things of anything solid. It is great for making parts of strange shapes that might take a great amount of time (or be impossible) to machine by hand. Computers just guide lasers to solidify gel into plastic material. But the future will have machines capable of making anything you want, from computers to tables, and information will be key. There will be I imagine facilities all around the world making whatever people can think up. Perhaps these devices will be in our homes. Try thinking this, these machines could be capable of self replication by constructing folded up versions of themselves inside their box. Let me put it so you'll understand. Picture a box. You know something
about boxes, don't you John? What if I told you that, somewhere on this
island, there is a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever
you wanted to be in it when you opened that box, there it would be?
What would you say about that, John?
I hate to draw the connection to Lost, but one of the many mysteries of
season 3 was "the box" that Locke's dad came out of. But this
technology is not unreasonable. Integration will be another major
future tech thing. Everything in the room will talk to everything else.
I hope optics will take off. I think optical computing will be a
reality in a few decades. All of this stuff converges because hardware
will become cheap and software will become abundant (and free), so all
that will be left is human creativity. I think integration between
electronics and the mind could happen. Imagine if education could be
downloaded. Imagine if you could upload to yourself Stephen Hawkings
understanding of astrophysics? Wouldn't this stifle creativity and
advantages of collaboration because we would all know from the same
source? We as a society are too often looking for the take-a-pill
simple solution, but that just makes sense, why waste time on something
when you don't have to? But to digress, we don't know what is to come.
I will leave you with these words from Arthur C Clarke on what
constitutes a technological revolution, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."fightin' engineers - as an engineer, you will always either be annoyed by incompetent co-workers or you will annoy others. Last Wednesday our guest speaker (Host and creator of Indiana Business Week, the TV show) was asked if what a previous speaker had said about Indiana receiving manufacturing jobs because Indianans are hard workers was true. He agreed. What the previous speaker had said was that it was quiet a change finding skilled labour in Indiana as opposed to Wisconsin with a clear although indirect jab at saying Indianans are lazy workers. I would just like to clarify this somewhere because perpetuation of untruths, however uncomfortable they may be, only leads to confusion, frustration, and finally violence. novelty - as far as the things I have read from others or been told there is no specific reason (other than to praise the name of the baby jesus) why we are here. We are here simply because that is the way things ended up. We all just kind of drift in from the fog and by the time we know enough to have some sort of bearings we naturally assume that we were put on this course for some reason and most people are content just moving their rudder enough to know they still can if they really wanted to. I find my day of scientists' studies goes far easier if when faced with a trivial decision the outcome of which does not matter in the grand scheme of things one tiny bit I choose the more novel path. When all of these trivial actions are brought together they form something more than the sum of their parts and give me a reason for waking up in the morning (although, alarm clocks work better for specific times I've found). So for example when I give a name to my LED (Light Emitting Diode) output maximization experiment I don't name in "LED output maximization experiment" I call it "get the LED out!" because nobody will ever read what I have written. If they do it will neither help nor harm them. More titles like "Kidneys: the organ that inspired the pool" for by background info on the kidney, "I sing the body electrocution prevention measures" on how to not kill yourself, and "dye another day" on the study of long-term fluorescent dye decay. coda - I would like to thank everybody for visiting my new open journal that I switched to for very obvious reasons |
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| like a bridge over troubled water: first hand accounts | thursday 2 august 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6:04 pm central time
- I was standing on the top of a hill in Edina, Minnesota -- a suburb
of Minneapolis -- playing disc golf. I was not playing my best, as I
had to borrow a disc from Stephen. We were going to go to the U campus
later... 6:06 pm central time - The first I heard of the bridge collapse was overheard from a cell phone conversation that Stephen was having with a U student. A few minutes later my sister called me. Then all of the sudden a dozen police cars went by on the adjacent highway 62 followed by several ambulances went blazing out of the visible parking lot of Fairview hospital. We stopped in at big mikes to get sandwiches and then went to the U. Traffic was gridlocked. Stephen lived just a few blocks from the bridge. It was haunting to listen to the radio and not see what had happened as the Minnesota Public Radio stations provided good coverage, both 91.1 the news station and 89.3 the current. story 1 - one of Stephen's roommates was on 35-W. He was a few hundred feet before the bridge when it went down. luckily for him traffic was already gridlocked because of the Twins game. He was coming home from work. He heard a loud boom and saw a plume of smoke. story 2 - another roommate of Stephen's was coming back from playing tennis when the bridge came down. He called into B96 -- a local music station. seven and counting - the Mississippi river cuts a path trough Minneapolis and St. Paul. It falls a good distance and is controlled by locks and dams above and below the 35-W bridge. There are steep cliffs on either side. Below the bridge there is the river and land with a trail and a bicycle route that I used to take to work. The bridge came down hard on the bicycle trail and there were many people on it as well as the walking path, the bridge crushed a train on a nearby railroad. In a tragic but lucky way there is not a better place for bridge to collapse for several hundred miles, as the bridge is flanked on both banks with the U of M medical center, HCMC the best emergency room for a few hundred miles is only a quarter mile away, Abbott-Northwestern hospital is about a mile away, the nation's best hospital the Mayo Clinic is an short helicopter ride to Rochester, MN away, and as I mentioned Fairview sent their ambulances. The locks at St. Anthony -- the highest navigitable place on the Mississippi river -- were shut down to slow the rapids created by the bridge in the river. There are seven dead as of now and there will be many many more. There were over fifty cars that went into the water. Luckily we have been in a drought so the water is not as high as it normally would be. There were several people who dove into the river to save people and were washed down stream by the torrents that formed because of the irregular blockage that the bridge created. Cell phone coverage overwhelmed the system and calls in the 612 went down. The red cross was overwhelmed with volunteers. Hundreds of summer students from the U went down to help. There was construction being done on the bridge as the harsh winter and the hot summers strain the road here a lot as it regularly dips below zero in the winter and goes above 90 in the summer. The construction thankfully reduced traffic from 8 total lanes to 4 lanes of traffic. Despite the very loud sound I highly doubt this was terrorism. The one thing eeriest part of the event was the complete silence that came after the bridge had initially settled. There were lights and sirens everywhere around for hours. aftermath - fucking civil engineers, I have significantly less respect for them now then ever before, which is a difficult task. 35-W is a major route in Minnesota. It connects Minneapolis and St. Paul. The river below the St. Antony falls is blocked and much of Minneapolis's grain processing is up there (remember all grain in Minnesota and parts of South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin flows though us and we kind of feed the nation). This will cost the Minnesota economy billions of dollars. The bridge will take years to rebuild according to MNDOT. Everyone was walking around in a daze afterwards. After we watched a few hours of news coverage on WCCO, KSTP, KARE, CNN, MSNBC, and even FOX news we then watched Caddyshack to just get away from it all as the sirens and screams continued the din outside. If next year when the republicans hold their national convention here anyone of them trys to invoke our spirits by using this tragedy as a political tool (cough, Giuliani) there will be riots in the streets. Tomorrow after the fires have died down and daylight will allow the rescue workers go about their work, but we all know that at this point it is about recovery and not rescue. I am going to go listen to Don McLean's American Pie until I fall asleep. God bless Minneapolis. |
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| guiding arrows to their targets | sunday 22 July 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| meet joe bland - peanut butter spoons are an essential part of modern civilized existence. A few days ago on Charlie Rose
there was a woman interviewed who wrote a book about a team of native
americans that played football in a new way that involved less of a
massive huddle in the middle and more open passing type of play. She
debated briefly with Rose over if baseball or football were the
national pastime. Baseball I think should take the prize as it is the
most irregular sport. I can see the logical progression that causes
soccer, football, hockey, basketball, and tennis to come about as a
sport. I think of baseball as a random agglomeration of rules and
practices that came about because things like that just do. Baseball,
in that way, represents the united states better than any. In
summation, it's clear that it is a common human behaviour in this
modern civilized world to take advantage of the convenience and
desperation that comes with eating a spoon full of peanut butter late
at night which is a microcosm of the american experience. That you for listening to NPR.... view to a kill - I have had a bit of a breakthrough in the terms of modern electronic devices (this is not interesting to most of you). I think I now have a decent understanding of how things work. Recently I was put onto a second project at work as I have mostly finished my part of the first project. This second project is secret and for what could be considered a big company. I recently bought a Texas Instruments eZ430-F2013, (LINK), which is a USB stick development tool. It is a device for programming micro-controllers. Micro-controllers are tiny computers on a single chip that cost between fifty cents and ten dollars, they are what is working behind microwaves and televisions. So basically I can start doing stuff with input/output. They are rather nifty little devices that can do a significant amount of computing. I think I am going to make my own synthesizer using a touch-sensitive no-contact light input sensor I came with. Then I can sell them on the internet. I am also working on a stay-awake LED desk lamp that would adjust the intensity of different wavelengths (colors) of light to keep you awake at night and help you sleep during the day. I am also thinking of a lights/sound interactive object/table/lamp that would use optical proximity sensors. I also have an idea of creating communicating solar objects that could use a basic IR network to perpetually communicate about nothing or relay TV remote signals/ learn remote signals and repeat. All of this uses electronics that would be very cheap, costing only a few dollars in parts. micro to macro - as in the last paragraph, you will most likely have no interest in this. I am also working on building a computer. I have decided on a very quiet computer so I could leave it on at night. I will use a passively cooled graphics card and a low power CPU to boost both quietness, energy efficiency, and energy savings. Efficiency is about the environment and savings are for the lower bill. My current build that I plan on ordering in two weeks when my next paycheck comes through for time I have already work is:
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| so there's this pot and this kettle and they are having a conversation | sunday 15 July 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| further instructions
- I have been mulling over the idea of creating a written set of moral
principles. What I follow is difficult to describe set of ideas that
don't work well into being forced into verbal form. Current candidates
include the golden rule (do onto others as you would have them do onto
you) and the lesser known silver rule (use a coaster). Others include
taking the moral high road in order to get a smug sense of superiority,
pragmatism, and something against buying bun length hot dogs and hot
dog length buns. advice to people - there are many "ways to success" that use "jargon" and "hand waving" to dodge what actually is the secret to success. I give this advice without achieving actual success at life. It all boils down to this: work hard and don't be an ass. There isn't much more that it takes to get by other than this. People work too hard trying to find quick pill form solutions to problems that could be more quickly solved by elbow grease. american dreamin' - america is the riches country on earth for one reason: we work more than any other nation. Europe enjoys significantly greater vacation time and workers' rights. We are moderately educated, but most of our wealth comes from people doing a lot of work. gonnections - my friend Jeff whom I went to Hale, Field, and Southwest high school with in Minneapolis recently started a blog that may be interesting to read (LINK). He goes to Grinnell College in Iowa and was an IB diploma recipient. get blogosphered! things you should know - here are some good ideas that I don't fully agree with (LINK) dealing with social psychology issues, it was on digg. Also this is a (LINK) to the top wikipedia search quires. conservative/progressive - white males are doing worse now than ever. I belong to a powerful minority that once controlled the world. Compared to ten, fifty, or even one hundred years ago the relative power of white men has declined. This is the worst time in history to be a white male. It kind of sucks in a way. I feel that political orientiation today can be categorized by people are for male degradation and those who are against it (or people who are for equality and those against it). |
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| ARCHIVES: recommended by four out of five archivists | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVE 1: 27 september
2005 - 1 december 2005 ARCHIVE 2: 6 november 2005 - 30 december 2005 ARCHIVE 3: 28 december 2005 - 12 february 2006 ARCHIVE 4: saturday 11 february 2006 - monday 6 march 2006 ARCHIVE 5: sunday 5 march 2006 - sunday 2 april 2006 ARCHIVE 6: sunday 2 april 2006 - sunday 30 april 2006 ARCHIVE 7: monday 1 may 2006 - wednesday 31 may 2006 ARCHIVE 8: friday 2 june 2006 - thursday 8 june 2006 |
