News and Notes

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2006-07-10

I think once or twice, I have started a blog post in this fashion. I think I have a lot of things almost worth saying, but nothing that is worthy of its own post. So I just start slamming my thoughts all into one post. Anyway, here goes:

I posted my car for sale on Craigslist. I hope it sells soon. Because when it does, I am going to buy a mountain bike and maybe a new laptop. Also, I can “move on.”

I really get a great feeling out of doing something correctly. I usually can’t do something correctly if I am rushed. So I have learned to not even try, sometimes, if I am going to be rushed. Today with my car, I was able to take my time and get this first part done right. I double parked in front of my apartment to take all of my belongings from the car to the apartment. Then I drove it down Van Ness to get it washed. $50 + $10 tip. Worth it for a good detail. I then drove it back to my garage and took about 40 or so pictures. You can see them here. Posted on craigslist…and now I just have to hope it will sell. Actually, if I don’t hear from someone by tonight, I will post on eBay or the paper or autotrader.com. But the great thing is that my legwork is done. At this point, almost all my work can be done from a desk.

Moving on…Alyssa and I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” on Saturday night down at Santana Row in San Jose. It was a great movie. Gore covered everything: past, present, and future of the effects of global warming. past, present, and future of what is being done to prevent global warming. I think that a lot of “issue” movies miss out on at least a few of those things.

I was honestly pretty amazed at the scope of our current problem. I didn’t realize that we were already so far in the deep end. But that doesn’t much change my outlook. I was already on Gore’s side, at least I would like to think, when it comes to the environment. One thing I would like to do, however, is take a look through the Gore-debunkers’ arguments just to see if they have any substance to them.

I sometimes think that I am a bit too exposed to the liberal viewpoint of things and not exposed enough to the conservative viewpoint. And even if someone is a complete liar, you can still learn a lot from listening to them.

On the way back to the city on Saturday night, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh. I have always thought that the guy spouted complete nonsense, but I gave him another chance. He failed. He spouted complete nonsense (except for one small rant he had about a Walmart issue). But even so, it was good to listen to him because so many other people soak this crap up, and it is good to know what the talking points from the other side are.

The same theory goes with reading almost all newspapers. Even if you think that they are completely controlled by corporate America, you can still learn what corporate America wants you to think. And that is very valuable.

Moving on (again)…I am currently reading ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman. I can’t really say that this book is a great read. But it is great in the fact that the main idea is so new to me, and it has gotten me thinking a lot. The main ideas are that workers are “wage slaves.” This means that they have the freedom not to work, but they will starve if they don’t. And they are being stolen from by the capitalists – they get paid much less than their work is actually worth. This is evidenced by the fact that there is so much excess capital to go to those at the top – those who did no actual work. I can’t really say that I disagree with any of this. But at the same time, a lot of what he says is stated as fact, when indeed it could use a lot of supporting evidence. I cannot complain about this too much, however, since this is indeed supposed to be an introductory book to anarchism. I would very much like to read more on the subject after reading this book.

One way that these ideas are applied to real life is by thinking that – remember that guy that cut you off today? That was horrible, wasn’t it? Well where were you coming from when he cut you off? You were coming home from work. Your workplace where you spent 8 hours getting stolen from. So, yeah, that guy that cut you off wasn’t very nice. But if we’re going to get mad at someone, why are we going to get mad at that guy? Get mad at those who are stealing your hard work.

Having said that…I would not say that I am an anarchist. I will have to read a lot more on the subject before that previous paragraph becomes something that I would care to defend fully. The field of Economics is pretty much the enemy of anarchism – I’ll have to do a bit of reading on that as well.

Chomsky quote

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2006-01-31

I have been reading Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. What a great book. I’ll probably write more about it later, but here is a quote from it that I really like (page 188):

“Look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history, and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it’s necessary to distort history and make it look as if Great Men did everything — that’s part of how you teach people they can’t do anything, they’re helpless, they just have to wait for some Great Man to come along and do it for them.”

Truth

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2005-12-29

I am very fond of things that are unquestionably true. Some things are so simple, or so well defined, that no one but a nutcase is going to argue with you about it. Despite their simplicity, once you begin to analyze things like this, they can become extraordinarily complex. I will provide a few examples.

I thoroughly enjoy studying maps. Ironically, I am not very good at geography. There, of course, is a slight bit of ambiguity with maps, as often we will find ourselves torn between two groups of nutcases, both who provide some reason or reasons to believe that a certain territory belongs to them, such as with Israel and Palestine.

Another great resource is CSPAN. They provide unfiltered live coverage of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. This coverage is also available online. This isn’t to say that the words coming out of the politicians’ mouths are the absolute truth. But you hear exactly what is being said, and not someone else’s analysis of it.

And one of my favorite subjects is mathematics. A well-written proof is a truly beautiful thing. Since concepts in mathematics are so well-defined, then a proof is concrete (so long as you did it correctly).

To me, it is so difficult to find things in life that are pure, absolute truth. So many people are trying to pull one over on you, or have ulterior motives, that it is a constant struggle to know what to believe. When you truly have trust in a person, thing, or concept, it is a very comforting feeling.

Life Experiences

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2005-05-05

Life seems to be a collection of unique experiences. These experiences can exist mostly in the real world, or they can exist in an abstract or imaginary world. When doing something like cutting down trees or soldering a circuit, I consider that to be completely concentrated on the real world. You are extremely focused on one “real” thing, on which you have a unique perspective. One person may see a tree with a thin slice in it, while you may see a strategy well or poorly implemented. One person may see a seemingly random organization of melted metal, while you see an abstract circuit design.

But when I am in the real world with sensory stimulation that requires little to no concentration, sometimes I can feel like I am completely in a different world. If I am sitting on a couch listening to good music with nothing else in the room to grab my attention, I can be in a completely different fantasy world in my head. A passer-by will see a guy sitting on a couch nodding his head while staring at the floor.

There are also other situations in which you can feel almost completely removed from reality. One such situation for me is when I am hacking. I am completely concentrated on my command prompt or other related interface. My virtual sense of where I am almost overtakes my other senses. My sense of sight is little more than a tool to transfer information from this other experience to the real-world experience.

In essence, I sometimes have the feeling that I am in more than one place, or experience if we’d like to use the popular word of this moment, in a given day. My experience hacking can be completely separated from my sensory overload in the real world that is a walk down a city street.