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My favorite forum is out of commission for the time being so I’ve invited some Pastafarians over to visit my blog while we all impatiently wander the internet, mentally or literally biting our fingernails until a solution is found. In an effort to be a good host, I’ve decided to put more effort into my posts.
I came across this press release via my favorite science news site, EurekAlert, about carbon nanotubes and how they have now been used to detect the entire spectrum of visible light. The next time someone says the eyeball must have been Intelligently Designed, remember this quote: ‘“In our eyes the neuron is in front of the retinal molecule, so the light has to transmit through the neuron to hit the molecule,” says Sandia researcher Xinjian Zhou. “We placed the nanotube transistor behind the molecule—a more efficient design.”’
I also read this piece in which fish are supposedly shown to experience something that ‘sounds an awful lot like how we experience pain.’
I’m a little too tired to really think about this but it just seems to me that this guy is projecting. Garner says: ‘They acted with defensive behaviors, indicating wariness, or fear and anxiety.’ But he doesn’t explain how he knows that these ‘defensive behaviors’ indicate ‘wariness, or fear and anxiety’ as opposed to the defensive behaviors of other fish. I don’t want to pay the money to buy the paper he and his associates wrote, but what I’ve seen so far just doesn’t lead me to the same conclusions.
And then there’s this great underdog story in which a clockmaker (just kidding, Andrei) says, We don’t need no stinkin’ Collider! I’ve got your extra Z-bosons right here!
I’ve wanted to get a Kindle ever since I heard about it but cash was tight.
Then, out comes the Kindle2.
Now, I read about technology that would give the Kindle2 color.
My fantasies are becoming obsolete almost faster than I can come up with them.
I’m sure many people discuss their online relationships on their blogs and the contradictory nature in sharing private, intimate emotions and camaraderie with someone who you’ve never laid eyes on, never heard speak, and might be feeding you a fantastical picture of themselves with no basis for existence in the real world.
Well, I feel the need to jump on that particular bandwagon.
Eventually, we will come up with a new word to describe online friendships that aren’t really friendships, but a coming together of like-minded individuals who don’t care about anything but the shared interests and acceptance found in these anonymous-ish meetings. Until then, I will call those toward whom I feel a fondness, be it filial, fraternal, or otherwise, friends.
I really want to list those folks here, but I worry about forgetting to mention someone or slighting a future friend. I will take this opportunity to say hello to S’presso, whose post today on her blog inspired this one (in a roundabout way, which is how my mind works); Hello, S’presso!
Life has no inherent meaning.
Oh, you want more?
Life is simply the result of a replicating pattern that was really quite inevitable given the available resources of the universe and an unlimited amount of time. Some patterns find themselves in situations unfavorable to reproduction (i. e. they are killed or die without producing offspring) while others, through chance or by exhibiting traits advantageous to their surroundings, flourish and replicate exponentially. This has happened enough times to result in the world as we know it. There is no purpose or meaning in this. If one particular type of pattern, be it carrier pigeon or homo sapiens, finds itself eliminated by some set of circumstances, other patterns will continue until they, too, are disrupted to the point of extinction.
But here’s the good news: We can create purpose and meaning! I will discover the things in this world that mean the most to me and pursue them. I will find joy and comfort in my surroundings or take the initiative to change my surroundings so that they include those things that provide me with a sense of fulfillment and contentment. This is the purpose I have assigned myself.
I enjoy my family and friends, increasing my body of knowledge, entertaining others with my creations, and dreaming of the future; these are some of the pursuits that shape the significance and importance of my life. The universe did not give these to me, I was not born with these, they have been instilled in me by my upbringing, the society I find myself in, and the hard work of an unrelenting quest for satisfying accomplishments that I have devoted myself to.
Search for meaning, chase opportunities for happiness, define your own life on your own terms.
You are a pattern. Nothing more, nothing less. But you are a self-aware pattern that is the result of billions of years of fine tuning, with the capability to change the world around you in ways that are only limited by your imagination.
Have the courage to construct your own questions and answers to life, the universe, and everything.
Back by popular demand. (Yes, I’m so pathetic that one comment makes me feel popular.)
The ‘Support a Cause’ links are organizations and projects that I feel are worth time and effort to promote. I usually don’t care too much for charities since I work very hard for my money and believe charity begins at home. My wife and I both come from relatively large families, with individuals spanning all walks of life and we help them out whenever we can, financially and otherwise. Education, technological advances, and the quest for knowledge, however, are important enough to justify sharing some of my home computing capabilities and, time permitting, I look forward to contributing to many sites dedicated to increasing our species’ wealth of information in easily accessible form.
So please check out the links and feel free to inform me of any I might not have come across yet.
I’ve discovered a wonderful cause that I hope many of you will support or utilize: openlibrary.org
Visit their website and contribute if you can.
Well, apparently my sense of irony supersedes my tendency to procrastinate.
Procrastinating is a difficult trait for me to get a handle on. I have a very busy lifestyle but I still feel as if there are important things I should be doing. As Perry and Hamming mention, prioritizing is a type of procrastinating. I have short term goals, long term goals, and an infinite number of tasks that must be accomplished in order for those goals to be realized. Not to mention all those mundane, trivial chores that take up so much time but are unavoidable.
But I must admit that I spent more time than necessary on non-productive, leisure activities. My greatest accomplishment lately has been finding creative outlets that are as enjoyable as my passive, vegetative hobbies were, if not more so.
One of the dreams I put off for most of my life was of becoming a writer. When I sat down with a book, usually fiction with little depth, I would rationalize it as ‘research.’ And those rare times when I did attempt to write, motivation escaped me and the novels beckoned, like Sirens, giving voice to my insecurities: ‘You don’t have the talent to be a writer. You don’t have the patience. You lack the skills, experience, and knowledge it takes to communicate your ideas effectively in an entertaining manner. Relax. No one is asking you to be the next great American author. You can afford to sit down and lose yourself in a world someone else created. It’s not like you don’t have more serious responsibilities to worry about.’ And so I shelved my dreams again.
Until one day I took a nervous dip into an online community. After lurking for a few weeks and discovering that I had much in common with the individuals on a particular site, I made my first post. I was immediately welcomed with positive comments. And thus began my foray into the forums. I took advantage of the anonymity of the internet to express the thoughts and feelings I could not articulate in spontaneous real world conversations.
Over the last several months, I have felt my prowess with the written word grow and I can only hope that others find it as entertaining to read my thoughts as I do writing them.
If you are reading this anywhere near the time it was posted, you’ve most likely come from the site I speak of and I want to welcome you as warmly as I was welcomed, even if you joined after I did. Or especially if you joined after I did. I will attempt to entertain you and pique your interest by filtering the content I gather into this blog and its companion webcomic (which I promise will be coming soon).
That’s enough soul baring for one day, I think. Hope to see you again, soon.
While searching for ways to justify my procrastination, I came across these interesting essays, which, indicative of my internet habits, eventually led me to this transcript of a speech by Richard Hamming.
Perry takes a more humorous approach and recommends more structure to your procrastination, while Hamming actually encourages more procrastination in certain areas in order to prod us into accomplishing something truly impressive (i.e., on a global scale).
Personally, I’ve eliminated some time-wasters over the past year and have been amazed at how much I can now accomplish. Of course, the number one time-waster was television. Before, I watched between fifteen to thirty hours of TV in a week. Now, I’m down to less than five and even then I sometimes find myself thinking of all the other things I could be doing instead of sitting in on the sofa watching the Holiday Special episode Mythbusters, yet again (is that the only episode they show now?!). Think about it – I have an extra ten to twenty-five hours of productive time every week! What could you do with an extra day in your week?
The downside is that the things I do for fun have fallen on my list of priorities due to the increase in the amount of obligations I’ve taken on with my newfound work ethic. This blog, for instance, as well as the growing stack of books in my ‘to read’ pile.
I’m off to work on the webcomic now, but promise to continue this ASAP.
I’ve been thinking about the upcoming singularity and some of its perceived benefits. Like how it wouldn’t really benefit me to download all my memories and thought patterns into an immortal machine intelligence if my body continued along its current path of decay. What good would it do me if I created a doppelganger who thought he was me? Sure he would remember my life as if it were his own but what would that accomplish? If we’re going to create a new species that will live longer, faster, and better, I’d rather not burden it with all the hang-ups that make me me.
No, no, no. Like Woody Allen, I’d rather achieve immortality by not dying.
Here’s an interesting thought, however. What if it were a gradual occurrence? Much like the sword that first has its hilt replaced then, years later, the blade is replaced … is it the same sword? If I add additional memory to my grey matter, copying, over the span of years, the memories of my youth before they fade due to brain cells dying off, would I still be me? I guess as much as I am the me I was in my past. Instead of biological processes replacing dead cells with new cells made of the same components, we just substitute man-made microscopic mechanisms.
The best of both worlds would be to make a copy or copies of yourself and share memories at some later point in time, much like David Brin’s Kiln People.
For now, since it’s all speculation, I’m content to encourage others to pursue the avenues of science necessary to fulfill these dreams.
And make funny songs about them. Check out I am the very model of a Singularitarian
at KurzweilAI.net
Okay, there obviously aren’t enough hours in the day for me to continue my current lifestyle and blog and work on getting my webcomic up and running. So far I’ve been cutting back on sleep but the sleep toxins are building up. I fear I may have to cut back on the recreational drinking next and that just wasn’t in my plans.
Today I’m gonna work on the site appearance but I will leave you with my new favorite site: EurekAlert
It’s got everything from some possibly very serious issues regarding anesthesia and Alzheimer’s, to W boson mass, and the newest nano-car!
Masticate on that while I get some work done.
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