Great Jobs at Google

Google is looking for people. I wonder - anyone of you, my loyal readers, looking for a job?

CNN.com - Paris thinkers seek lingua franca with space aliens - March 27, 2002

Lessons to be learned from this:

Lesson one: Free time + Free Grant Money = strange shit.
Lesson two: useful information is not a biprotuct of unstructured thought
Lesson three: this is why we keep them busy teaching classes

I honestly think the only way we will be able to communicate with any alien race when we first contact them is through binary math. Any alien speicies, so long as it has a concept of a number system at all, will have come up with a binary number system of some sort. After that, we can progress to higher number bases ( 8, 16, etc) to what ever common denominator we can find between our two mathematical systems.

Once you have math, music, art, science, and eventually language will all follow. But MATH is going to be the key here.

CNN.com - Baffling black blob floating near Florida - March 27, 2002

Facinating bit of biology here. Algal blooms are a very missunderstood phenomina, dispite how dangerous they can be to fish and humans alike. Red Tide, the most famous of algal blooms kills thousands of fish in a single bloom, while another type produces the nearly psycotic behavior of sea birds who eat tainted fish (The Birds was based on real events, folks, I'm not shitting you). As for what this "black bloom" means - we hardly know enough to start guessing.

Another interesting angle to this is the fact that we would never have known how large this bloom was without satelite imaging. We monitor the entire surface of the earth now, and can observe such events in real time, where in the past we would have only had the reports of the scummy water and what not to document this. Ocean currents, cloud movements, and even the runnoff of rivers is as easily observed now as we observe the movements of ants across the driveway. One can only wonder at how complex yet elegant the planet is in its functions when seen from such a scale.

CNN.com - Thumbs: Key fingers for online youth - March 26, 2002

Just a bit of fluff science for you, my readers. Take a moment some time to notice your thumbs - many of us who grew up in the age of Nintendo have thumb muscle structures that are far more developed than any other generation. Notice too how you use your thumbs: the angle you hold them at, and what you use them for.

Amazing the things we dont pay attention to.

Low Haiku -- http://getoffme.org/maxpages/Low_Haiku

This made it on metafilter today - and its funny as shit. Please enjoy.

CNN.com - Scientists test first human cyborg - March 22, 2002

Wow - ok this snuck up on us. The implant here is far more complicated than the single and dual implant they have used with paralyzed patients in studies at Ga Tech, with 100 connections into the nerves. This is fantastic, especially his plans to wire in a ultrasonic sensor to himself. Where do I sign up?

CNN.com - Paralysed woman wins right to die - March 22, 2002

I heard quite a bit about this case while I was in Ireland. Quite facinating. Her doctors were keeping her alive against her will, administering treatments against her will, and had judged her incapable of choising her own treatments. So she took it to court. And WON. This is a great step forward for personal freedom in not only British law, but in applications of consent to treatment laws elsewhere.

CNN.com - Fossil skull fuels debate over human origin - March 21, 2002

An interesting thing here. The debate over what defines species is a facinating one, and highly important for the future of natural sciences as a whole. The point of the matter is, we make distinctions in species between types of animals that if we used the same standard to classify humans there would be possibly 10-20 species of humans. The fact is that animals, like humans, can have radically different physical apperances, yet be genetically similar enough to breed sucessfully, and even regularly across those lines.
It gets even worse when we do not have whole or even partially complete specimines of species, as in this case.

CNN.com - Zero tolerance under fire after expulsion over bread knife - March 20, 2002

The HELL!? A bread knife? Texas school systems need a reality check. Hell, all public school systems need a reality check. I'm so glad im gone from that hell.

One last one for the night.

I'm headed off to sleep now... tired tired Nessus. But listening to Blue Man Group as I do. I love those guys...

Go, run a LimeWire search, go find their stuff. THIS is what PVC was meant for...well that and very tight pants.

And remember... Kiki may love you, but Bun Bun is watching.

Lessons Learned from NYPD Blue Tonight.

God does not have to answer to us. God doesn't care. And you people wonder why I became a philosopher rather than get a religion. THAT'S WHY.

A Moment of circular logic...

Only a monster could hurt the one they love. But I am not a monster, for I feel guilt and remorse for what I've done. How much ruination have I brought into the world? How much evil, how much darkness? How much easier would it be if I felt no pain for all of this, if I were this beast, this creature of numbness. But I must numb myself to offer comfort, to keep that which I have wronged in my life. In being numb I feel no pain at the words slung at me - monster, beast, vile, disgusting. Without that pain, I feel no guilt, no remorse. So I am this monster you wanted me to become?

I will not be this beast. I AM NOT THIS BEAST.
But that is all I am.

USS Clueless - It ain't my fault

The world is FUCKED!

This is the best summary of this I have seen in quite a while. Quite enjoyable.

CoryJ007: God is a cat and is having fun with us

And that explains how my evening has been. Welcome home.

BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Saudi police 'stopped' fire rescue

.... Do I really need to say anything more about this....

How can we honestly say a nation that does something like this to its citizens is in any way a legitamate rule of law? Excuse me, one of the reasons we took out the Taliban was to end things like this. This is unacceptable -- end of story.

....Evening....

All I'll say as a description of what happend - I think it did more good than harm.

I think.

So I haven't talked too much about how I'm doing in these last few days. Oddly enough, I've been doing pretty well, 80%-90% of the time. I've had some rough moments, some very rough ones actually - but the important thing is I pulled through them and delt with what caused them.

Strangely enough, allot of what I've been dealing with is just my own mental shit - twinging as certian memories float to the surface for various reasons. But I'm taking a very Zen approach to them: when such a memory arises, I simply remember it, and feel it, and then let it go. There really is no reason to hang on to a good memory when all it does is cause you pain now. By remembering why it was good, and then accepting that it isnt how things are now, you can spare yourself allot of pain.

The other part of what I've been dealing with is of course, learning how to let myself feel things again, without them overtaking me. Allot of my rough spots were some strong emotion getting its claws into me and me not being able to let it go. Conversly, I felt myself starting to go Numb once or twice, to the point of regressing almost back into my Glass Bubble mentality. But that fades quickly, thank heaven. But learning to feel, and feel things right, is a tricky thing. It's odd really - feeling things really shouldn't be this hard of a thing to get a handle on.

But things are getting Better. To the point I'm risking something tonight I wasn't sure how I was going to face. My ex and I are going out to spend some time together. I know this is against the better judgement of some of you, my loyal readers, but I feel I need to do this now, else I will simply hide from it until we drift appart. I'm trying not to let that happen.

So here we go, folks, wish me luck.

Tampabay: ATHEIST tag wins reprieve

YAY! Ok, I take back the part about how wrong things were going in the state. Someone there obviously just grew a brain and figured out how to use it.

I still want to know what idiot thought it was alright to call this man out on this, though.

Changed my skin, thanks to the lovely folks at BlogSkins!. Love this new one, but in installing it, had some problems keeping the comment system working as well. Ugh. Still working to get the bugs out. When I get the comment system back up, let me know what you think of the new skin!

Trying to get things working....

Asteroid buzzes Earth from "blind spot"


This is God's way of playing with us, I think. We humans really need to get over our selves, and realize that one good sized chunk of rock could wipe us all out.

Remember, it's happend before, it can happen again.

CNN.com - Pink eye plagues Princeton - March 14, 2002

Let this be a lesson to those who wonder how plauges spread. This is an excelent example of how closed populations can develop outbreaks very quickly when the members are in close proximity. I'd be interested to see the CDC do some work with this, to make students and faculty more aware of how this sort of thing works on campuses.

CNN.com - Speculation swirls: Tipper Gore for Senate - March 15, 2002

Umm.... No. Let's all pretend we didn't see this, and that it will go away. And while this isn't nearly as bad at good ole HRC, the very thought of her in a position of public power scares me.

State: 'ATHEIST' plate raises a holy ruckus

As I've said before, Florida is a fucked up place. And getting more and more so by the day. I don't have to tell some of you this, as you know it first hand. But hey. This simply confirms, in my mind, that the state of this country is slowly but surely droping into the Marianas trench.

George Carlin - BBS

I love this man. Someone, give him a cookie.

This has so much potential for being used as a word bank for fun random word assemblage programs. I'm thinking auto generating mad lib filler. Or just random sentance builder.

Mmm.. Fun with "bad" words. I'm sorry, I've always been so amused by that concept. Somehow, we have managed to create the concept of words that are, by their nature, "bad" things. How silly is that? Words aren't bad or good! Its how they are used, and their intentions that are good and bad. Maybe this is the philosopher in me talking, but this amuses the hell out of me as a concept.

CNN.com - Microsoft chief appeals for trust - March 13, 2002

The HELL?! Someone slap me... I'm dreaming, right? THis CAN'T be real. That man scares me.

CNN.com - Formerly famous beat each other up - March 13, 2002

Roman empire here we come, right back where we started from.

I always said it was due to the fact we modeled our government on the Romans and Greeks that our civilization has come to so resemble theirs. This is getting close to the final straw - how soon before we have REAL gladitorial events on pay per view? Not that I think there is anything wrong with that - it would certianly be a great alternative to lethal injection, and the money it could raise for prisons... Well.

As I'm fond of saying - fake blood just doesn't splash as well as the real thing.

The nature of the beast

I had an odd quandry posed to me tonight. I don't have an answer to this, so I'll throw the question open to you, my loyal readers, to ponder.

My remorse and guilt for all the pain I've caused others is perhapse the one thing that keeps me from actually being the monster that my actions would seem to say I am. Converse: It is that very same guilt that has all but torn me appart, and caused me to be willing to sacrifice myself to the point of loosing myself.

Where is the ballance in this? How can I still retain my humanity, yet not be consumed by guilt? Again, as I said, I don't have this answer yet. I know I will have to find this answer soon, or risk repeating everything I've done once again.

CNN.com - China's army to prepare for 'military struggle' - March 12, 2002

Woah. All I can say is WTF. Not like this is unexpected, but I think we've turned a blind eye to China for far too long.

blogKomm: comments no popups

So I installed this new comment system just now. I hope you like it, my loyal readership, and make use of it.

So got something to say about what I said? Say it!

Matthew Fox

So I've just started reading Original Blessing for one of my classes. And while I'm not sure if I agree with Fox's ideas, he got me thinking about some things I haven't dealt with in my world understanding, really.

What is the nature of original sin? Is there such a thing? Fox claims that the doctrine of original sin is not inherent in the texts it is drawn from - in fact, it was basicly cooked up by St. Augustine, and wasn't even all that important to him. Yet somehow, the idea that we are born in sin, and must be saved from that sin, has perminated first Catholic and later Protestant Christian thought. Because of the sin of Adam, the sons of Adam are born in sin. Is this the case?

Are we born in sin? I don't know. We are flawed creatures, I know that. All I have seen in this world tells me this - all I have seen in myself tells me this. But is that flaw an inherent thing in humans that we are helpless to control? I don't think so. I think the flaw is a byproduct of how we are forced to be by life. We must learn to be a certian way in order to survive in our interactions with others, else we fail in them. I think our flaw developes in becoming this way. Is there an alternative? I don't have that answer.

I had to make a choise in my life not too long ago, and some are still accusing me of not having thought it through before making it. To those, my critics, I tell you I did. Do I sacrifice love for my sanity, do I sacrifice one life for my own. I have to . I can't explain why, but I have to. This is my flaw - self preservation.

Ask yourself - is that a sin - or a blessing?

Written in Blood

CNN.com - A young woman comes to grips with 'cutting' - March 11, 2002

Just wanted to Blog this. It's interesting to see this getting coverage, but I hate the format they are using. One girl's struggle to highlight all of the people who have delt with this.

"We don't know how to verbalize our pain, so we write it on our bodies"

All pain is written on your body - that's not what this is about. What this is about is being able to feel. Something - anything. The pain makes things real again, when there is no reality. It reminds you your real, that you exist, no matter how distant the world feels.

When the numbness comes, when the only thing you can feel is the fingernails digging into the palm of your hand so hard it bleeds, and nothing else feels real to you but that one thing that brings you back. When the anger and rage washes out everything else, and all that is left is the numbness - sometimes pain is the only thing that is real.

Ok, enough of that dive into my warped mind. I havent done this in a long time, and I was never as bad as some people get to be. I was wise enough not to leave scars.

Notes from a new Hole

So in my search for new places to spend my time, I've found Innovox and made it my new home away from home. So far the place seems ok, and the connection rates are cheap and the pipe is fairly fast. Food is pretty good too, and the have Red Bull, which makes Ness happy.

So I got the first 3 days of the trip typed up, but that’s all really. I'll work on more of it tomorrow or later this evening.

I just wanted to rant about something here for a minute, seeing as it’s the six month anniversary of 9/11. The US had been an island of ignorance until then, the stories of terrorism and war distant things from our shores until that day. I can't really fault us for not caring and protecting ourselves from terrorism better - why should we have? I'm no stranger to bombings and terror - I live in Atlanta, after all, and remember both the Olympic bombing, and the nightclub bombing. The later was less than 2 miles from my house, close enough you could hear it in my living room. But there was no way we could have known to what scale these attacks would be, not legally and ethically. The rest of this country saw it as a wakeup call. I just saw it as confirmation of the escalation of the obvious.

The US has made allot of enemies in the world - we have been worse cultural imperialist than the British Empire was. But is that a bad thing? Is it wrong of us to have brought the desire for running water, electricity, and telecommunications to lands where the populations knew nothing but cows and dust? We brought people literally out of the Stone Age into the information age. But what we have forgotten is a simple lesson - there will always be haves and have nots... but now it is simply the haves and the have less. There is no way the entire population of earth can have equal everything - our goal should never be this. Our goal should be to see that every part of the world has what it can sustain, no more, no less, and to raise the level of sustainability as high as we can without breaking it. There are some parts of the world where nomadic herding is the only sustainable form of life. Fine, I would think a place like that would be the perfect niche for cellular phones and wireless development. Conversely, there are places where large cities are sustainable, and where sprawling metros are the way of life - such is the world. We cannot expect life to be the same everywhere, but we can introduce those aspects of technology and culture which best suit the existing ways of life without the sort of Nike and McDonald’s mentality we have in the past. That is what won us enemies.

So what more should we do? Let's go finish kicking the Taliban’s ass, and then take care of Iraq. After that... I would be very afraid to be the country that did something to piss off the US next. Don't expect us to take things lying down any longer.

Home sweet what?

Ok, so I'm -ing home. Yay.

Ireland is WET, and COLD, and DAMP - oh yeah, and WET. More about this when I'm not so tired.

I'm glad to be home... glad to be here, and back with you, loyal readers. Have you missed me? I know you have, I've missed you. But gods, I'm so tired, and emotionally drained. It was a LONG trip. A 3 Pratchett novel trip, plus an assortment of other books. I should have, by ireland time, been asleep at 3:30. Needless to say, I'm not. Ugh.

Nice to see sunlight again. Yeah, I must still be sick to be saying that.

Welcome home.