Reflections from a Phantasmagorical Realm

     Blindly thrown 1000 vaguely similar realities, I move frantically through the night. My vision renders the world incomprehensible and offers competing images of what the dark world around me seems to be. All I think that I know is in direct conflict with the world around me. As if the only truths ever known to me were recently discovered to be false. I see hundreds of blue points of light all mystically blinking simultaneously. I feel terror grasp my heart as I struggle to come to grips with the reality I find myself in. Suddenly, I glance off of a hard, cool surface and nearly fall from the sky. I recovered my path through the midnight air for only a few moments before another unpierceable barrier obstructs my flight pattern in this phantasmagorical realm. The terror I feel in the pit of my being only escalates. The longer I live, the more frantic I become, and predictably, the more frequent my collisions become. Each is more painful than the last. They leave my sides quivering with paroxysms of agony. 

     I am on the very cusp of madness. I am on the edge of a unrecoverable fall that would lead to utter desolation of my conscious. I fear that I may have already teetered off of the precipice. That I may have unwittingly tumbled into madness already, and that the despair I find myself in now is a product of my condition. I fear because I believe the decline into true madness blurred and without true distinction. The only items by which one may mark the journey are the beginning and the end, and I would wager that once one has stumbled across the finish line, they would be unable to discern the status of their mental health. I presume that they would be pleasurably ignorant of their unfortunate erraticism. But in that proposal, I find a horrible possibility: I am already mad. Maybe we are all mad, only immune to the reality of our individual madness because of our madness itself. Each of us sees a a different segment of the population that is afflicted--some more severely than others. It does seem a happy fate: blissfully ignorant of all but one's self. 

     Truth is an unknown privilege that has not graced my presence for an indeterminate period of existence. I have lost sight of all of the constants that I vaguely recall from my past life, if there ever was one. I seem to believe that things weren't always this way; that once, a broad and illuminating source of light guided my progress and allowed my nimble avoidance of obstacles. That in a distant past, I had truth. I have lost it all now. I have nothing but a the continual thud of my body against the immovable boundaries that surround me. Time has almost altogether fled me, and in it's stead left me with an existence that I liken to hell. I question whether I am there now. Trapped in an inescapable loop of agony and fear. But nigh! I do feel that the air grows colder now. I welcome the numbness that accompanies this newfound partner of my muddled mind. It gives me hope that my torment may have a conclusion in one of two possibilities. Firstly, the decline of the temperature marks the forward progress of time and that eventually time will come to a close. Time reminds me that I still exist in a physical form and that physical form must die, thusly granting me my freedom. Sweet death! It is a delightful prospect that is accompanied by morbid silence. A silence that extends so far into the future that I have trouble considering whether the metaphysical could support a conscious for such a long-winded account of silence. The second situation which would grant me my liberty is merely a permutation of the first: my experience of cold alerts me that indeed do have a physical form, and as science reckons, all physical forms rely upon some measure of heat for their prolonged survival. In time, therefore, my form would be granted repose and I would enter the lyceum of the mute. 

    The other possibility that I, until now, have attempted to evade is the more likely of the options. Namely, it would be that I am already dead. That I have been robbed of the stillness that I covet so officiously. The horror of this possibility is enormous. It entails that I would be sentenced to an eternal elongation of my current existence. Each undefinable event of the addition of pain and discombobulation indiscriminate from the last other than the heightened sense of pain that I experience in the dungeon that envelopes me now. I break now. I can no longer perpetuate the lie of the possibility of escape. I am lost. The buzzing that haunts my ears is syncopated only by the nauseating blows that wrack my mind. 

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.0~

High School

The smell. The disapproving whispers. The horrendous food. Certainly such a prodigious academic location would offer something more profound to our erudite minds. Maybe. Maybe not. It is doubtless that high school at minimum sets the mood for one's intellectual appetite to be whetted. Many a futures have been swayed by the things learned in secondary schools. This does not seem to support that they are the least bit efficient at fulfilling the overall purpose of their very existence. Even a device as broken as this is incapable of holding back those striving to achieve excellence.

However, I will, without further ado, get to the point. The point being there is no point. To high school. The fact of the matter is that the  information furnished by high schools is trivial. Placeholders to what the future will hold. While overlooking the odd anecdotal case, there have never really been any true scientific revelations that have sprung forth from the bowels of one of the 17,000 high schools in America. While one may posit that I would be missing the point, as it were, of high school, I would dare to submit that it provides pupils with nothing more than a platform upon which they may refine their study skills before really beginning their education. A high school diploma may be earned with a disgustingly tiny modicum of effort. It's value is that it allows you to give college a go.Which to present day, the only merit I can award high school is that it will end. It will cease to be, and something of actual value will fill my time.

As I see it, high school is a metaphorical gas station in our road trip of life; a necessary step to getting to your destination, but has little to no affect on what you actually accomplish upon your arrival.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

The Morality of Teaching.

Directly below these words is a picture one of my friends posted on Facebook, and below is my response. This fits in well with the theme of Morality, so I thought I would bring it here.

"Not that they don't study. That percentage of students that don't try will stay within a insignificant bound throughout the years and won't fluctuate all that much. However, based on the specific teacher, there will be a difference in how effectively that teacher inspires kids to learn. If a teacher is really ineffective, then a higher percentage of kids will be choosing failure over the input of effort.

Now I don't believe that anyone has ever really blamed the teacher specifically for children failing a class. Failure is expected in any given course. If everyone is passing with ease, then the teacher isn't attempting to challenge his or her pupils. So the teacher must ramp up the curriculum and then inspire the children to benefit themselves.

So your picture is correct in the fact that it is silly that we blame teachers for kids who are intrinsically self-destructive and aren't motivated to learn, but it is addressing the wrong issue entirely. Just as not all children can pass a class, not all teachers are good at teaching. Many are horrible. If one doesn't do a job to a high enough standard to deserve pay, they shouldn't have a job. But I fear that in the current state of things, teachers are practically promised job security despite their performance. Which isn't deserved. You are addressing the wrong issue entirely."



stet.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

Journaling

After perusing my old journal entries, I received a super intense wave of nostalgic excitement. I remembered, for the most part, all of the events I had written about nearly a year and half ago to obviously just over a month ago. I remembered why I felt the way I did, and it was just cool to see how much (and little) that I have changed into who I am today.

It is interesting to see myself not a current snapshot, id est what ever my current emotions may be, but as a true fourth dimensional being. All my emotions and thoughts in their irrational and rational undulations alike, all neatly (and messily for that matter) recorded in Evernote or on the pages of a black spiral notebook on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. A surprisingly dynamic concoction of thoughts and emotions that often surprises even me. Most of my written rampages still hold true to this day. I feel the same things about certain issues today, as I did whenever I wrote my thoughts down, which is comforting to think at least I'm consistent in my insanity.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

The Quandary of Morality

What is morality? Is it something that we can grasp? It is something easily defined and is there a clear line drawn in the metaphorical sands of ethics?

These are some very powerful questions I've been toying with in the past weeks. I do believe there is a God. I do believe there are some very important things that we cannot do because they are innately wrong and can be easily discerned to be right or wrong. Things such as taking something which doesn't belong to you or lying.

Now I will step back and ask how do we view right and wrong? I will venture to say that an activity which is nearly always "wrong" isn't wrong itself. The context of the situation is responsible for the transition of morality. Some activities, such as rape, will be permanently wrong. After much pondering, I have never been able to devise a situation under which a rape could benefit someone. They may force themselves to grow into a stronger person, but that is not a benefit of the actual evil itself, but rather of the individual choosing to be positive no matter what they are facing.  But, for many things, doing wrong isn't always wrong.

I think the only real difference between the right and wrong would be the object of the benefit and the target of the misfortune. When a soldier jumps on a grenade to save his friends, his actions are said to be good, because he choose to sacrifice himself for the benefit of others. He received the bad and others received the benefit of prolonged life. Good.

Therefore, according to our current hypothesis, we can judge the right or wrong of a specific action based on how it will affect others. In this way we can now see that stealing your sister's pack of cigarettes would ultimately benefit her, despite the theft required for the benefit to come about. So would this then make the act of thievery a morally right thing to do? I think so, but for some reason I still cannot view the actual action of removing the cigarettes from my dear sister's possession as a "good" thing. Those are her cigarettes. I do not own them, and therefore should not endeavor to do so, without the permission of my sister. But I would be adding years to her life if I could succeed in motivating her to quit.

Now let us enter the mythical realm of the hypothetical. Let us pretend for a moment that I am driving a bus full of school children across the Alaskan wilderness in the dead of winter. A blizzard is mounting and I am running low on fuel. If the bus were to run out of fuel, all of the children and I would freeze to death within the hour. We haven't passed a gas station in hours and then out of nowhere, we happen upon a unheated store. The owner's car is sitting outside, and he is just about to leave. Let's also say that we know the store owner lives almost an hour away. If I were to stop and steal the store owners gas so that I would save the lives of the children, but also certainly kill the store owner, because he then would not be able to make it to the safety of shelter, what would be the proper thing to do? Would the right thing to be the action that gave the most number of people the biggest benefit? Or would the fact that I would be stealing from that very unfortunate store nullify the benefit? I don't have the answers. I don't know what is the right thing to do.

I thankfully believe that the world is never nearly that dramatic, but I think that often the black and white line of morality is severely muddled both by our perception of what good and bad will occur based on our actions.

Food for thought, my friends.

~V 1.0~

 //If you have any topics you would like to see me write about, drop me a comment\\

Bookbinding: Part 1 - Printing Book

Well this is the first part of several on printing and binding your very own book. I definitely not a pro, but I certainly enjoy bookbinding.

First off, you need a book. I would suggest Google Books. They have basically everything, and if you select the "Free Only" or "Full View Only" option when you search, Google will only return the free results. They have most classics, aka out of copyright, for free. I chose Dante Alighieri's Inferno. Now whenever you have your book, you need to download it. I had to jump through a couple
hoops in order to get this to work. In the search results, click on the "Full View" link then 

Click on the "Full View" Link

click on the Download a PDF button in the right-corner. 

PDF button

Now you should have the full text of your book in PDF form. Whenever you open it up in Adobe Reader, you can view the full text of the book, or, as we shall do, print it!

I went for the double page printing, with 2 pages per side, like a real book. I folded the pages into 4 page signatures and then stacked them on top of one another.

~V 1.1~ 

 //If you have any topics you would like to see me write about, drop me a comment\\

The Written Word

As a society, why do we always seem to gauge a person on their proficiency with the written word, through reports and essays? Adults are required to give multipage reports of themselves to even get someone to consider them for a job.

College undergrads must write a several hundred page thesis in order to prove that they understand a certain topic. Knowledge is not proven by an ability to write down information from other sources, the magic occurs when the ideas are used to synthesize new ones. That is not something that is recorded on paper, but merely the aftermath. I believe that in order for an accurate assessment to be made of an individual's proficiency, that we must depart from the ways of old (because papers have been written by college students for hundreds of years). I think that there are many individuals who are very successful, but would seem rather dull and silly if they were to try and show their genius on a sheet of paper. Success isn't something that someone can find on a sheet of paper. It is an intrinsic quality (along with genius) and if you try to measure of quantify it, we will end up with a very broken system of education and assessment of education. One very much like we have today.

So in closing. Let's find a way to teach kids better, and also a better way to make entirely certain that they have learned. I believe the first step to an educational utopia is personalization on the student's behalf. We shouldn't focus on things the student already knows and things which come easy to the student, but the things which don't. And to accomplish that goal, we need to depart from the current methods of education and testing. Writing papers needs to be saved for those points in time when giving an oral presentation or doing real world examples simply doesn't make sense.

Our educational system is a broken mess.

Community

Not like the typical suburbian dream community of block parties and unspoken lawnmowing competitions, but the community which exists between members of a technological community. The type of community which actively supports sharing of content and one's own creations with others for noncommercial usage.

This type of sharing began in small groups of hobbyists who built computers out of basic components before personal computers or computers with real displays even existed. Much like the group Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak developed their tastes for computer-building in. Wozniak especially would design something really revolutionary or a chip which gave a speed increase, and then just give it away to other members of the group. While Jobs eventually decided to capitalize of Wozniak's designs, when forming Apple Computers only a few short years later. However, that is another story entirely. But the point is, they would share brilliant technology and designs with each other for no charge. These small homebrew led to the distribution of a small OS kernel by the name of Freax (later renamed Linux, after its creator, Linus Torvalds) which is now distributed for free.

This community is something that I cherish. Whenever I have a problem with my computer, I know I can go to a forum and ask a couple questions and within a week, I will have several in-depth answers, and maybe even a link to a tutorial( written by an unpaid member of this forum community) on how to resolve my issue. But with more complex things like building a Hackintosh, or Rooting and flashing custom ROMs to my Android, the entire community is made of people who figured out, or wrote code (eg Tony Mac x86) to actually do these things. But the killer part is, they simply give away all of their brilliant engineering and programming for no charge whatsoever. Their only interest is to make the lives of other people better.

Or in the creation of indie games like ADOM, Dwarf Fortress, or Dig-n-Rig. These games are extremely addicting, feature-rich and people would definitely pay to play them. BUT-and that's a big but-the developers like to develop and just give away their hard work for free. That is America, my friends. That spirt of community is contagious, because it is just so exciting to see everyone enjoy free

//If you have a specific topic you would like to see me post on, comment below\\

version 1.0

Style

What is style I wonder? What factors exactly lead society to the "realization" that a certain meme is cool. Be it words, clothes, methods of wearing clothes. Be it pants, hats, sun glasses etc. How does the mob determine what is good and bad of these styles?

I struggle to understand this sort of hivemind the crowd takes on, because almost everybody takes an instant liking to a certain trend and reproduces it, and launches it into sociological stardom. I hypothesize that it may be more of a hysteria type situation. Almost relating to the work of Dr. Zimbargo and the Stanford Prison Experiment. How a group will make crazy decisions, that when viewed from the outside, ie old people, looks and is understood to be rediculous, but whenever someone is on the bleeding edge of fashion or style, they understand these styles and trends and believe them to be popular. It would certainly be interesting to see some research done on this topic. To exactly pinpoint how and why a amorphous group makes seemingly unanimous decisions simutaneously without discussion or communication. They simply see it and ba-boom. A style is born.

Food for thought, my friends.

permanence

We often think of the internet as a permanent addition to our lives. Sure. I'll agree to that. For the rest of time, humanity will be interconnected via an internet of sorts. But the goods and services provided on this everchanging internet will vary dramatically. We often think of facebook, and twitter, and even google as the titans of the internet. The permanent Apollo, holding up the very fabric of the internet. Facebook and Google account for well over half of all the web traffic in the United States

But...they will not be here forever.

GOING RETRO.

Take for instance geocities, it was "the thing" in the nineties. Anyone and everyone could and did make a page. Either a blog, or about a topic that interested them. People spent countless hours documenting the lives of their children and how their days went. But in the early 21st century ;) yahoo decided to remove all of it. Total, it was less than 2 terabytes. But one day in the summer of 2005, it was deleted. All of those pages were forever lost. Some people were up in arms, some (archive team) decided to download as much as they could, and then put it up on piratebay for all to download. But for most people, nothing changed. The next "the thing" came along and everyone migrated to it, restarting their digital persona on a new service.

RETURNING TO PRESENT DAY.

So with services like Facebook's Timeline, I don't think will really be that relevant. It will last 4 or 5 years more sure, but after that. Will the interest still be there? Will Facebook will have become the next myspace, friendster, yahoo, or lycos? The irrelevant service that rarely anyone uses. I don't see anyone who will really be able to compete with facebook on the horizon atm. Google+ does look promising, but come on. Google has tried social before and that didn't ever really pick up steam. SOO I'm thinking Google+ will never become the next Facebook. Just because social just isn't in the DNA of Google.

GOING TO THE FUTURE.

So what will happen when Timeline isn't relevant any longer? What will become of all of our data that we intrusted into this service? It's almost frightening to think of it, but just remember, someday, this will happen.

//version 1.1\\

Civil Liberties

Today I have a provoking qustion: Do people really deserve their rights? Keeping in mind people like Terry Jones from Gainesville, FL (the one who burned a mildly popular Islamic religious text) who caused people to lose their lives due to their ridiculous protest, do all people deserve their rights to free speech? Albeit, in this case, he did do more than talking, but lets include this under the umbrella of rights known as Civil Liberties. Are there ever situations when free speech should be limited? Take Schenck v. United States, where limitation of citizens right to free speech was upheld during wartime, when it posed "a clear and present danger" to the nation. Is this something that as a nation founded upon the ideals of freedom to all people, should continue to allow?

What is freedom? Is it something that is just "the ability to do as one pleases" or is it "the ability to do as one pleases*" [*-As long as these freedoms do not restrict the freedoms of others]? I think our definition of freedom may be contributing to the misconception that freedom is infinite. Which it can never be. There is a limited form of freedom which is present, or at least was present in America, but nothing that can be described as "true or total freedom". It must be limited so that all may have any freedom at all.

Food for thought, my friends.

~version 1.0~