I feel like blogging today.
Blog, blog, blog.
Dribble.
Tweet! Tweet!
[Note: I was going to title this "Hmm" but then I realized I wanted more "mph" to it.]
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
Fantasy
I have this fantasy.
The fantasy is nothing special; it's just about real life -- the boring kind, the stuff Ernest Hemingway novels are made of. But I find myself fantasizing about that kind of life anyway because for some reason, I think that if I move to a small, seaside town and take a menial job somewhere that will throw me in the paths of people often, I will somehow learn something really big and important about life and human nature -- and to be perfectly honest, that sounds rather exciting.
Plus, for whatever reason, I suspect that there is some sort of simple beauty in a life like that -- in the certainty -- not unlike the path of the sun across the sky -- and in the rhythmic pulse of the ocean along the shore.
And then maybe, I'd write it all down. It would be a slow moving novel, the kind with painful amounts of character development. It would be like one of those boring seafaring novels, except it won't be as boring or..seafaring, for that matter.
I'm thinking that in one of the summers between years of college -- and it will be many, many years -- I'll move to a random seaside town in northwestern United States -- a town with a tiny, tiny population. Maybe 200 people.
I don't know how I can reconcile this fantasy with my desire to live in NYC.
I am a walking contradiction?
The theme song to Cheers just popped into my head.
The fantasy is nothing special; it's just about real life -- the boring kind, the stuff Ernest Hemingway novels are made of. But I find myself fantasizing about that kind of life anyway because for some reason, I think that if I move to a small, seaside town and take a menial job somewhere that will throw me in the paths of people often, I will somehow learn something really big and important about life and human nature -- and to be perfectly honest, that sounds rather exciting.
Plus, for whatever reason, I suspect that there is some sort of simple beauty in a life like that -- in the certainty -- not unlike the path of the sun across the sky -- and in the rhythmic pulse of the ocean along the shore.
And then maybe, I'd write it all down. It would be a slow moving novel, the kind with painful amounts of character development. It would be like one of those boring seafaring novels, except it won't be as boring or..seafaring, for that matter.
I'm thinking that in one of the summers between years of college -- and it will be many, many years -- I'll move to a random seaside town in northwestern United States -- a town with a tiny, tiny population. Maybe 200 people.
I don't know how I can reconcile this fantasy with my desire to live in NYC.
I am a walking contradiction?
The theme song to Cheers just popped into my head.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Black Trenchcoat
Spotted: wandering through the mall, a man impeccably dressed. He hardly notices the people around him. He checks his Blackberry from time to time. Waiting. Wandering with a purpose? Perhaps. His walk suggests he isn't from around here -- such causal grace could not have been cultivated in this deadened city and in fact, it is out of place, even now. He wanders into Spencer's Gifts. He wanders into the bookstore. A small smile, a kind of quiet amusement, plays upon his lips.
I'm intrigued as hell.
I'm intrigued as hell.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Imagine.
I don't know if I should start off my blog with this particular topic, but it is something I've been thinking about lately. By lately, I mean my whole life -- but most recently, 8th period study hall this past Friday.
Sorry if what follows seems a bit formal -- that's just how my writing sounds when I'm not writing for any conceivable audience (I wrote most of this in that soul-sucking study hall).
I believe that I can logically come to the conclusion that God exists. I believe that, in making this conclusion, I am not making a leap of faith, but rather, a firm strong-footed step of logic. There are basic lines of reasoning that logically follow to the existence of God. One is the apparent design of the universe, in all things great and small -- from the structure of DNA to the structure of the universe. Of course, the answer to this is that all things are governed by physical laws that have brought the world to the structure it is today. However, it is those very physical laws that I am calling "design." God, in my conception, is programming code and creating algorithms, not sculpting the universe in a meticulous and tedious fashion.
In the second line of reasoning, we see that science commits the same fallacy it so often accuses of religion. The argument that God has always been is often scoffed -- however, in removing the creator, science proposes that the universe has always been -- or that at first there was nothing, and then there was something, which exploded. However, science, by suggesting this, violates one of its own rules -- "matter can neither be created nor destroyed." We can write this off as a special case, or we can examine an alternative.
God, however, is not limited by physical laws; if there is a God, it is plausible that physical laws are his design. God, as creator, is not limited by his own design. While there is a logical error in saying that the universe or matter always was (given our understanding of matter and the physical laws that govern it), there is no apparent logical flaw in presuming that God always was because that is the very nature of God -- what makes God, God.
The difficulty in accepting an idea as "always was" does not necessarily stem from an error in logic, but rather in our inability to understand a concept such as infinity.
At this point, most people -- myself included until recently -- would say, well isn't that convenient. An all-powerful being that always was. But perhaps, such convenience does not indicate a slight on logic.
Let us consider imaginary numbers.
This is my favorite part of this argument because as a generally skeptical person, I find the design bit somewhat weak (at least, relative to this).
If contemporary science is in any way correct, it more or less proposes that at first, there was nothing and then there was a whole lot of something (I am simplifying a bit, I suppose). Science, however, cannot solve the problem of how things came into being. "God" is offered as a solution to that problem. Some scoff because "God" by definition is what this missing variable is -- yet we have i, an imaginary number which is accepted because it allows equations, which we know to be true, to work. If we are willing to accept i, then why not God?
Most people find the use of imaginary numbers acceptable -- and yet, in what sense do imaginary numbers exist? i is used in higher-level physics and engineering; it is universally accepted by both mathematical and scientific communities. Though it does not exist on the "real number" line, it exists on the number line in a higher dimension. Ahh, the analogy is perfect.
I have always held the view that the equations of physics that explain our world have a sort of simple beauty that stems from the stark truth it represents.
In the fields that have long striven to understand the world, both infinity and imaginary numbers are very real and very essential.
The gist of this argument is that the problem of how everything came into being seems to seek some sort of unknown value or input -- a value such as what i was to engineering and physics.
Does this argument validate God or invalidate imaginary numbers?
I will venture to say the argument does not invalidate imaginary numbers -- if it did, most of our buildings and bridges would have collapsed by now.
I exaggerate slightly.
...But no, really.
Sorry if what follows seems a bit formal -- that's just how my writing sounds when I'm not writing for any conceivable audience (I wrote most of this in that soul-sucking study hall).
I believe that I can logically come to the conclusion that God exists. I believe that, in making this conclusion, I am not making a leap of faith, but rather, a firm strong-footed step of logic. There are basic lines of reasoning that logically follow to the existence of God. One is the apparent design of the universe, in all things great and small -- from the structure of DNA to the structure of the universe. Of course, the answer to this is that all things are governed by physical laws that have brought the world to the structure it is today. However, it is those very physical laws that I am calling "design." God, in my conception, is programming code and creating algorithms, not sculpting the universe in a meticulous and tedious fashion.
In the second line of reasoning, we see that science commits the same fallacy it so often accuses of religion. The argument that God has always been is often scoffed -- however, in removing the creator, science proposes that the universe has always been -- or that at first there was nothing, and then there was something, which exploded. However, science, by suggesting this, violates one of its own rules -- "matter can neither be created nor destroyed." We can write this off as a special case, or we can examine an alternative.
God, however, is not limited by physical laws; if there is a God, it is plausible that physical laws are his design. God, as creator, is not limited by his own design. While there is a logical error in saying that the universe or matter always was (given our understanding of matter and the physical laws that govern it), there is no apparent logical flaw in presuming that God always was because that is the very nature of God -- what makes God, God.
The difficulty in accepting an idea as "always was" does not necessarily stem from an error in logic, but rather in our inability to understand a concept such as infinity.
At this point, most people -- myself included until recently -- would say, well isn't that convenient. An all-powerful being that always was. But perhaps, such convenience does not indicate a slight on logic.
Let us consider imaginary numbers.
This is my favorite part of this argument because as a generally skeptical person, I find the design bit somewhat weak (at least, relative to this).
If contemporary science is in any way correct, it more or less proposes that at first, there was nothing and then there was a whole lot of something (I am simplifying a bit, I suppose). Science, however, cannot solve the problem of how things came into being. "God" is offered as a solution to that problem. Some scoff because "God" by definition is what this missing variable is -- yet we have i, an imaginary number which is accepted because it allows equations, which we know to be true, to work. If we are willing to accept i, then why not God?
Most people find the use of imaginary numbers acceptable -- and yet, in what sense do imaginary numbers exist? i is used in higher-level physics and engineering; it is universally accepted by both mathematical and scientific communities. Though it does not exist on the "real number" line, it exists on the number line in a higher dimension. Ahh, the analogy is perfect.
I have always held the view that the equations of physics that explain our world have a sort of simple beauty that stems from the stark truth it represents.
In the fields that have long striven to understand the world, both infinity and imaginary numbers are very real and very essential.
The gist of this argument is that the problem of how everything came into being seems to seek some sort of unknown value or input -- a value such as what i was to engineering and physics.
Does this argument validate God or invalidate imaginary numbers?
I will venture to say the argument does not invalidate imaginary numbers -- if it did, most of our buildings and bridges would have collapsed by now.
I exaggerate slightly.
...But no, really.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
