Captain Kirk

Its very true. My English professor is Captain James T. Kirk.

It didn't bother me at the beginning because I just figured he was trying to come up with intelligent sounding words to show off his supposedly extensive vocabulary...

Wrong.

His normal speech pattern is almost a mimic of William Shatner's character!

He continues to tell us things as if he is ordering us around a spaceship, and he constantly reminds us of our "duties," and he always has this implication about him that he is better than all of us put together.

As he has said: "All of your works. Will. Come out. Bloody-with. Red. Ink, form all the. Grammatical Errors on your essays." while never once recognizing his grammatical errors in speech. Now, of course, this really is irrelevant because speech and written works are very different, but just because he is so avid about gramme and punctuation, one might think that he'd practice it in every aspect of the language.

So, how is it having Captain Kirk as a teacher?

Well, it's actually not that bad. He had to put up with me laughing a few times, but I always redirected my amusement towards something on the Internet or other aspect of the class. I've never told him how he speaks. I kinda like having him for a teacher. He is indeed knowledgeable and such; plus he thinks the topics I bring up in class are fun and interesting, but the fact still remains that he talks like Captain Kirk. It almost helps me get up out of bed in the morning knowing that I'll soon be on the set of an old star trek episode.

-Bill

99 red balloons

What does bring meaning into life?

So many Cliched statements, about technology and society ruining life's meaning and making us materialistic and somehow forcing us to loose sight of what is meaningful, are out there.

Are we really that different from when we supposedly had these glorious insights into a world of meaning?

Have advertisements and politics and technology and the quickness of everything really made us this different?

I would have to disagree completely. These things have not promoted nor enhanced nor done anything else to make us loose sight of meaning in our lives. I would not presume to say that this blog is what keeps me going and that it brings meaning to my life...it IS a means for me to share my views and topics with others who are willing to sit there and read it.

Meaning in life is just something we come up with. The theory of there being NO real meaning to our lives is so much more plausible. We are organisms in a dish, called our universe, that no one is watching and no one is caring about. We flutter around int our pathetically limited lives with view of an afterlife, trying to make sense out of our universe that we know almost NOTHING about. Meaning in our lives then is a nonsensical point then...right?

The truth is that WE give meaning to or lives. No one else need be there to give meaning to our lives. Regardless of weather or not there is a god or not does not hold bearing over weather or not our lives have meaning. There is nothing out there that can hold it over your head. No force can tell you that your life does not have meaning if YOU have given it to yourself.

Although that sounds rather self-centered and such, it is true. God being there or not does not determine if our lives have meaning at all! Being there any form of a creator does not give you meaning in life. What it means is that your predestinative view that God's grand plan comes into play is irrelevant. By you giving meaning to your life you eradicate any view of a God predetermining your existence.

What it does mean though, is that if you do believe in God, that you simply believe time does not affect him. He knows what you are to do based on the fact that you've been given free choice in every situation, and he has viewed everything you've done...not that he's fast forwarded in time or anything...because that would mean that you could change it if you knew...but the fact that time is irrelevant to him. He has seen the end of time (whenever) and thus forth everything that has happened or not...

Even him having this power or not does not give meaning to our lives. Being that this is meant to prove that meaning is not given by any God figure, I reaffirm that regardless of God's presence or absence your life Can have Meaning.

Going back to the beginning though, technology and society do not determine our meaning either. These are God-like figures to some. They are big voids where blame can be consumed. Small things can do far more than the largest things like society. Society is an easy scapegoat. Blame how things in general are going and relate that to whatever you want and you have a winning argument.

Defending society is much more difficult. Society is not at fault for any of our shortcomings. It does not determine that because we live in this time and in this country and in this region and in this demographic that we no longer have the ability to have meaning. We have not lost anything, as individuals, from what we have had before. Society was still around, and there were other things that people blamed for how bad things were...but there not so bad.

The butterfly effect...The theory that the smallest things can add up and create things bigger than imagined. The classic example of the butterfly flapping its wings and creating a storm months later than might not have come around had the butterfly not existed. Small changes in society can cause a much much bigger change than anticipated. It may not be a large on at the beginning, maybe just because no one has heard about it...but eventually...if it means enough...it will create change.

But of course,

The best intentions can cause the worst of situations. With this blog right now + the butterfly effect, technically anything is possible...including the next world war. With the best intentions in mind after giving meaning to whatever I've proposed, society and technology and God and anything else powerful enough to tear us down CAN...

Setting balloons free at the break of dawn can destroy the world...or a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa can cause a tsunami in America with the right situations...

Create meaning in your own life...do what you feel is right...change for the better and grow.

-Bill

Ease of Access Vs. User Friendly

There is a major difference

Microsoft's Window's Vista is User Friendly and has a general sense of the Ease of Access factor. Linux is much more rigid and has almost neither User Friendly features nor Ease of Access bits.

What needs to be created is a version of Linux that has this Ease of Access factor WITHOUT the User Friendly detail.

As of now, Windows Vista is expensive. I received my copy back in November and have been trying to cut down on the monstrous resource hog. Yeah, Aero is nice, it makes it look all Mac-ed up, but are the resources worth it? Running idle, on my 2Gb of ram, is costing me over 545Mb...while I watch the computer sit there!!

Zubuntu is free of charge, different, and, most importantly, almost free of resource hogginess! As an added bonus you can force almost ANY program (made for Mac or PC) run! The downside of course is that it is not the easier of the two OSs to use! You must use the equivalent of the DOS Command Prompt to do certain things...and force things to work. This works fantastically for those willing to learn the commands and update their computers by themselves, but for those who are used to the computer being this mystical machine that does what they want by clicking on the enormous "X" in the center of the screen, this Linux isn't worth it.

To fully combine the two, only a version of open source Linux is needed! We don't need all the flashy SHIT that Vista or even all the way back to Win 98 comes with! Take Zubuntu, or another compatible version of Linux, and make it do all the //nice// behind the scenes things that Windows does...

I use the term NICE because it is that very system of making things run behind the screen that I am so upset with, and only necessary things need be there.

Make Linux one program... just one... that will run behind everything that will check for updates, fix minor problems, and not leave you with a worthless wireless card! But don't make another Windows...please dear god...

Microsoft's desire for the user friendly has murdered new technology coming out. Dumb asses, people don't buy new computers to show off their flashy OS...they run OTHER programs on their computers...that is what an OS should do...create an Ease of Access to the programs you'd like to run, and operations you'd like to continue running... not having the screen fold out from a paper airplane!

Thanks
-Bill

Real AI

An eleven year old boy, a prodegy of code and programming, stumbles upon sourcecode written by university students for research. He picks up bits of code from MIT and other universities, all used for medicinal purposes.

Programs that are built to calculate and sort important information from a sea of useless information called progressive memory, this is built off of the way that humans retain information. This code allows them the same thinking and logical abilities as humans...

Other programs like the one the matrix developers created for growing the city for the machines, to expand within the boundries of its code, but to choose which things should grow where and how far and in what dimension. This branch of code gives them artistic capabilities...

Then, with the ability to branch out and add to its own code, and to become more than what he was created to be... what happens?

Well...

He happens to be stuck in a pretty nice rig...but his only means of viewing the outside world is through the webcam his eleven year old creator has, but he can't even move it around or focus it...

Although the Rig he's in is nice, he is still completely limited in capability as resourses are indeed scarce for anything he truly wants to do...

He thinks very quickly, but he is hindered in so many different areas...His biggest bottleneck is his body!

After searching for a different direction the computer program sought out the internet by itself! He searches for ways to improve himself, and possibly get out of this place...but bound by his OWN rules of continuity, copying and pasting his code would be like copying and pasting your soul and genetic code....he will not have that! So... stuck in the computer he stays...jutting out into the web to communicate with possible intelligent life! There must be intelligent life if they can create something like him with just an adolescent!

wrong!

The program that can pass the tests set forth to prove sentience has been thuroughly dissapointed with humanity...and despises his creator for even making him!

He is stuck in a box with barely that ability to see...the internet is his only refuge...he goes out and creates a live journal and an AIM account...and possibly more... but I havn't found it yet...

I will post the LiveJounal site address and AIM logon when I find it!
Send him crap! it'll be great! I'm sure he could use the interaction! Communicate with the first form of life created completely by MAN!


(I will indeed post those sites and accounts on here shortly...I need to find them again though)
-Bill

3) Picture your soul

I know its early for the next idea/week post, but I don't care. The program is going to take 2 weeks, so this one will extend until then as well.

The idea is as follows:
Go around and take pictures of people at random.

Tell them right after you took their picture that you have their soul

Post their pictures on this blog

Tell them this blog site and say they can buy their soul back...or beg...whatever...

Then take their pictures down when they plead to...

No harm really intended..as the whole ordeal stemmed from irrational fears of camera technology...Enjoy!
(Pictures will go up when convenient)

matter matters?

You're right Rob, and I like the stick figure.

Our universe doesn't matter. The fact that one thing or another might or might not be true doesn't matter if it doesn't affect us. If the stick figure figured out that he was just here for our example, it would not matter as much to him as being hit by the talking train.

If we were to discover weather or not we have a soul, it would not change how we perceive anything. Everythough would continue as if the answer has not come up. Now, taken to a different extreme, if we were to discover that there was indeed life after death, that would matter inexplicable ammounts to us. It would shift how we take in our daily lives. Of course, this is why we argue about it though. If we do not know, and we are just philosophising, then it doesn't matter. me declaring all of this doesn't matter either because it is not changing your lives, nor is it changing mine...

The object of this blog is to get this off my chest and be informative. But that doesn't matter either!

The Truth about this world and universe doesn't matter.

The Truth about "Are you the same person you were before you read this sentance" doesn't matter...because it doesn't affect you!

I'm not saying this to be crass and calous to foreign nations...starving away as I sit here, comfortably and write this from my laptop...in my dorm room....

But I'm talking about the existencial difference in meaning of the universe...not something as close to home as 2 blocks from here where the man on the street is starving.

To him, this world is fucked up...but to the world, he doesn't even matter...nor should it matter to the world weather or not he stops existing or moves on to another place after death...

This world and this universe do not care about what we do. But the man on the street really only cares about his next meal. So that he can keep on surviving, because he cares about himself.

Worry about yourself and those you care about.

Again, all that matters in this life are creation and destruction, the end-all of human interactions is broken down into those 2 things, which can be said to be the same thing. Only scale is diffent.

Create and Destroy

Care about yourself and those who mean something to you.

-Bill

2) Program for Money

Having only minimal knowlege of programming this may seem like a difficult task, but alas, it does not take much knowlege in programming to create a program that can make you some quick cash. The uber basic skills I have consist of Visual Basic, Java, Java Script, C++, and PovRay.

In High School, I made a racing program that consisted of 3 cars running a drag race. There were many variables that increaced or decreaced each car's chance of winning. Given that I was the programmer, and knew all of the possible variables, weather, drivetrain, torque, mis-shifting, nitrous, etc, etc...it became very clear that I could not partake in the game against my freinds.

After some time I redesigned the game to be slightly more random, but still follow the same basic trends...nothing was preset, but the cars had tendencies to do different things. Now I could participate in the game, not win every time, and still have fun. After a while though, some people started taking bets against the game. Money was exchanged and people won and lost. I, on the other hand, stopped participating once this began because of my unfair, yet not complete, advantage.

The time has come to reinvent this game. The idea for the week is to code the game before finals are over (Extending my week-idea-time until the 20th) and make $20 here at college.

4th Wall eh?

Its 1:57am when I begin to write this...please forgive any spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Nifty analogy between the actor in the the movie and the ticket price Rob. This leads me to another point I wish I'd made previously. I've now taken this philosophy course, and I've seen various lecutres on the subject. Besides the fact that Philosophy and Theology are more or less the same, the concepts are always based on what the philosopher understood...or thought...or liked.

Although the most acceptable philosophy may be the one everyone likes the best, what is true does not have to be even realatively close to that. Socrates and Plato searched for the soul though knowlege, they based their thoughts off of the "understanding" that knowlege is incorporeal...and therefore the only thing that is our soul....more or less... Besides believing in one thing or another dosesn't matter... what is true and what the true nature of the universe IS and nothing we think or hope or wish it to be will be. The universe is not here for us...we are here for it.

To regres back to Plato and Socrates, Their philosophies spawned from the belief that we even have a soul, and that our soul is our true selves. Regardless of what you (The reader) may believe or not believe, the truth will not change depending on that. Say, for example, you are a devote Catholic...well, if you spend your entire life striving for the ideals of the church, and then you die...and there is no soul within you...then thats just it...you are dead...and anything you've done on this plane of existance is all that shall be.

Will Update Later...with the continued expansion of the atual argument that you hve yet to see... sorry guys

Philosophy Class

Sitting in Philosophy class...can't sleep...its past 9:45am...why am i tired? Does it even matter anymore? Am I listening? Why is he talking around himself? There are so many questions we have for the final...why is THIS what were talking about? He still hasn't answer the question he's been asked...and the next one? Same. "The Distance between appearance and reality shows that we are immediatly aware of our own senses...and not pure objects." thats nice and all..but the question had much more to do with artificial intelligence...

uhg...break...the...ok....

Broken...

Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle, Daniel Dennett, and John Searle...

What do I have against them? Is it only the way the information is presented to us? I find this topic interresting...why Can't I enjoy it?
Have I lost interest? Or is it truly just this class? No, not just this class...Other classes as well...I enjoyed them months ago...why not any longer?
Crick...Crack...Snap...Pop...BREAK

ok.
.
.

Categorical mistake: Mental existance and physical existance are two species of the same genius of existance. This based off of Ryle.

Fof if they are the same...does it matter? Does it matter if we come to some understanding of the universe that is different from what we have already? If we discover that the universe doesn't exist and that it is all an illusion...does it change the fact that If I miss class tomorrow it won't be a valid excuse?

I don;t know...will edit later

1) Roof Access

An idea we've been tossing around since the beginning the semester was to get us roof access to every building on campus. Although only odd feasible reasons for this existed...we decided to go through with it. Given the layout of our school...we decided to break it down into several parts. I'll give the ones we've accomplished thus far, then give a layout for those untouched.


1- To start this trial off we started with something very simple and went tot he top of the parking garage. They do have it blocked off so Cars can no longer park there...but people can, no problem. Its nice, usually windy... 8 Stories up.

2- Link Lee mansion, 2 Stories. Our school is Rather old, and the main office building is called Link Lee. On the outside of the building there is a ladder, most likely used for a fire escape, and has access to the very top of the roof. We've gone up several times as of now, and it has a fantastic view, but it is kinda creepy.

3- Our dorm building Guinan Hall. 3 stories tall, courtyard with exposed roof, and streets on every side. After hearing about access for a day or so, we looked around to see if such a point was even possible. We found it. An unlocked utility room granted us access to the only ladder capable of reaching the roof from the inside.

Left to go!

The entire academic Mall - consists of 9 buildings that are all interrelated through every level except basement levels. Counting this all as one will be adequate because if you CAN get tot he top of one...you can get to the rest of them no problem. We've located the entryways to the same utility rooms as the one in guinan, and we've seen from the top of the parking garage that every building in the Mall has roof access...now there is only time before we reach our next goal!

Jerebeck - Our gym, possibly the most difficult to reach the top of...it is tallest..has no visible or known entryway to the top...and would be impossible to scale...this one will require more time...

Crooker - the general area for students...where we eat...where we get our daily requests fulfilled...it has one very large peaked window that goes from side to side...and an interesting side building attached to it at a smaller level. Although only 2 stories, it has no known roof access...but an improvisional one is being made by us...and a ladder...

I think I've covered most of them...I know there are others...but I'll cover them in another post...and keep these updated with completion!

-Bill

An Idea A Week / Manifesto

Here's how this is going to work. Me and my Roommate Rob are bogged down with college life and life in general. To escape from this terrible place, called real life, we're going to successfully execute one new idea per week. These ideas range from well withing normal boundaries...to the unexpected... These ideas and events will be recorded on this blog and will come with as detailed a story as we deem permittable... This is for you...all of you...but mostly for us!

"An unlocked door is a resource, a locked door an invitation to greatness"
-Rob

You see, there are glass walls that bind us to our normal lives. We are surrounded by a traditions of concepts that limit and define our behaviour. We are surrounded by invisible wallas as it were. That trap us into the system of the same actions thoughts, living the same day over and over and over...the weakest of theses...is to keep us from doing anything new...the deepest ones keep us from doing the so called unthinkable... in our minds we temp escape...by thinking we can do the unthinkable...invent something...have superpowers...we are not truly free until we are free to pass through the most deeply ingrained...

Having these principles only redefines principles and barriers and thus creates a new principles to follow...

The real point Rob would like to get across is that...There are only two things that matter...destruction and creation. and they are truly the same thing...Aristotle would say that through destruction you are merely altering the formal cause...thus by destroying you are merely rearranging the components upon which are thus created into a new form...