Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortably as possible? What should a story seek to emulate? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip?
[The Fault in Our Stars, John Green]
Before you write, before you speak, before you even think: you must establish one point of context. That is, abstraction. When you’re truly free to think as logically, as broadly and imaginatively as your endowed mind enables you to, there should be no boundaries, nothing irreverent or sacred above scrutiny. That is the naive but understandable way in which the rationalist and the realist perceive reasoning. But following this, all meaningful inquiry digresses into futile fundamentals—the point to it all. It is because of this that the… more →
Tell me, every time there is new technology, are there not always people who oppose change? They said television would distort reality. They said mass communication would saturate and destroy our minds. They said transportation would make us provincial and narrow-minded. And they keep saying it and fighting it, completely disregarding that centuries of change have on average improved our standard of living. I suppose it makes little sense to the rationalist how some people can continue fear mongering nonsensically when scientific progress is only the continuation of what has been occurring for millenia. On the other hand, technology is used in weapons for warfare. It is abused and used to avoid human contact, to connect the world in a most asocial, secluded, and apathetic display of conceit. These two sides of technology1 obscure its true nature and breed haughty ethical arguments… more →
Is it good? That’s a common question when picking a place to eat. It has become an idiom, almost. But the question is really moronic if you think about it. Why on earth would you ask if a restaurant is good? That’s like asking a student if he’s smart, or an employee if he’s competent. This sort of dogma is built into our language and culture, and it takes a clever mind to avoid them, which is why most of us don’t bother. But what if we did? Could we build a world where the ingenious reassessment of cultural idiosyncrasies would be an indicator of class, where the comments on my final grade calculator1 would be an unacceptable embarrassment to all society? You know, when I read about global consciousness and existentialism and models of utopia, they start building on… more →
When my sister and I were little, we made a pact not to tell on each other, like ever. It’s not like we went out doing bad things. The extent of our transgressions was playing on the computer and television after 9:00. Later on, we agreed that the standard response for covering for each other was “I don’t know”. It wasn’t always smooth. We argued about matters of great consequence, things that reasonable adults would never understand. And it soon became obvious to both of us that threatening to break the pact quickly shut either of us up. Neither of us ever did, well most of the time anyways. I don’t know if she remembers it at all, but this pact was a powerful foundation for siblings and a great teacher for cooperation. It sure was important to me. The… more →
When I first saw the term gaslighting1, I thought it referred to igniting one’s farts, which made absolutely no sense at all in context. So I did the logical thing and copied it into Google, which actually meant I wanted a Wikipedia article. Gaslighting is actually a form of psychological torture where you trick someone into doubting their memories. Click* click, and before long, it was 1:30AM and I had 4 tabs of Wikipedia articles about psychological torture open in Chromium. I don’t know about you, but staying up till post-midnight just creeps me out. I’ve got this circle of light coming from the desk lamp while through the window outside, it feels like everyone is dead. Nonetheless, there is no better time to think than during the silence of the night when everything else is muted.
Look at this here.… more →
I don’t teach very well. When I’m explaining logic, my mind skips a couple of steps, and I expect the listener to make the same mental jumps as I do. In a chain of logic, I’ll only explain the linchpin leap of logic and expect that the rest is common knowledge1. Then, my sentences just come out in short phrases that, out of context, don’t really make any sense. I supposed that some people are better teachers than others.
I used to think that mental ability was an overall measure of competency in everything. It made sense that, if you were smart in school, you could do leadership and counseling and everything just by applying logic and inductive reasoning to whatever situation. But then there are things like compassion and empathy that apparently require a great deal more reasoning than just… more →
Perhaps this is unique to China, where the sheer number of other persons drowns out your cries of individualism. But I sense that there exists a prevailing trend of anti-collaboration that has only recently subsided. I don’t say competition, because that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the generally-accepted notion that, if you go sharing your success secrets with others, you’ll be at a disadvantage, and because of this, you shouldn’t cooperate with anyone.
I mean, it does make sense. That is, if you dehumanize people into little nodes of information. But because of this reasoning, there is a lot of anti-collaborative hostility beneath the surface. It makes certain social situations very tense, especially the ones involving direct competition for some limited opportunity1. Of course, it’s a big problem if everyone starts thinking this way.
Maybe it’s not our fault. Maybe… more →
I like to think I have a lot of patience. In fact, most people think that way too, whether they do or not. See, we typically don’t push our patience very much. All the problems and obstacles we get in school are planned and artificial, and therefore aren’t very informative. Another C-? Meh, move on. Nothing puts us back too far and everything’s alright.
Ahh, for a couple days I’ve been trying some very low-level languages. Not ASM-level, but some easy C, yes, and it is absolutely horrifying. Everything I thought I knew how to do suddenly became a huge mess. I say this because low-level languages don’t have the fancy schmancy interpreted conventions that high-level languages do. The down and dirty work that’s much closer to the machine’s heart really puts things in perspective. I’ve melted all over the beauty… more →
I’ve been considering what RogerHub is still doing up online. Blogging is a great experience and all, unforgettable really, but I just had to find a more definite mission. And here’s what I’ve got: Think about the role of the Internet in your life. When you’re brainstorming ideas for great programs and summer projects, you always hit this one wall: How do I get people addicted and coming back? And then you see it. The evil trap! It’s so easy to fall into. Every industry related to gaming or technology or internet, how can I get these dolts to pay me for my crap? Usually, you never consider the ethical implications when it comes to science. Science right? Fuck yeah. If those guys want to stand in the way of progress, well it’s as if science doesn’t have enough problems already. You… more →
It’s friday night and I really didn’t plan to get anything done until tomorrow. But it’s not that there’s anything special about this Friday. It’s been downtime for as long as I remember. It is also undoubtedly the most productive few hours I get per week. Because I’ve got nothing planned, getting any amount of work done is already exceeding expectations. And even if I don’t do anything, that’s fine, which opens up time for some guilt-free programming.
I made a CSS framework tonight, something that I’ve been drawing about in Spanish notes for a while now. It’s done, code’s on Github. I feel better that I can put out something so succinctly elegant. I called it Mast. I really don’t know what that means, but masthead sounds cool and masts remind me of old sailboats. Maybe I’ll start working now and get my… more →
How’s this? If you got a chance to defy reality and change your situation with a wish, just a wish, what could you even do? Cliché, cliché, but looking past the social stigma of trespassing onto this guard-patrolled fort of a forbidden subject, there’s a lot to be considered. First, we can accept that cartoonists (read: propagandists) had purpose in sticking this plot twist in every possible situation in our movies and books. They present it as pure fiction: plot, not a cause-effect precedent that should forever bind in your head. Most of the time, it involves greedy people doing their greedy things only to regret it always, and really, this is only a basic form of the idea. Then, there are rules: guidelines that correct for the faults created by the ambiguity of language, or perhaps that the idiomatic phrase… more →
What’s with all these songs that talk about living like there’s no tomorrow? How could someone possibly advocate this message seriously? I thought the goal was to get kids away from present-hedonism. The whole education paradigm is centered around be-bored-now-but-invest-in-your-future-or-it’s-gonna-suck-for-you-one-day. It makes no sense that these songs apparently are all about combating this. Like what the hell? Propagandists, get your act together. Either you can screw kids up and turn them all into depressed reckless pleasure-oriented backward-thinking furiously-procreative druggies, or you can go back to crafting your conformant close-minded unfaltering unquestioning clones for the benefit of mankind and the progression of some arbitrary measure of standard of living. Hey, either way is fine for me. Just don’t go like halfway. I’m getting mixed signals here.
