Category: Ponderings

I usually like to write about the things I’m thinking about. Those kinds of posts are often more serious in nature, bordering in academic sometimes. Writing about these things helps me think through them more effectively, but I welcome feedback on those thoughts too.

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Human Genesis: a definition

If I need a break from an desk-bound activity (say, grading exams), I sometimes hop on over to Youtube’s homepage just to see what they have featured. Within a minute or two I can usually find a video that is interesting enough to feel satisfied that I’ve relaxed and can go back to work. The feature tonight was Rube Goldberg machines:

Rube Goldberg was a genius, if only for the simple reason that he was clever enough to get his name attached to machines that would appear so clever as to forever link their designers with Rube Goldberg, in that the machine is genius enough to be associated with those genius machines Rube Goldberg created, or at least was clever enough to get his name forever attached to machines that would appear so clever as to forever… Feel free to repeat ad nauseam. Especially to friends who will think you clever for being able to rattle off such a gordian logic knot. Though I should warn you that if you try such a trick you very well might lose your friends unless a) your friends are actually amused, which would make them just the sort of person who would befriend a person who would read such a riddle and consider it something worth memorizing despite a rather snarky adjudication against the types of people who would memorize such a thing.

Of course, in that you ignore the warning, you exonerate its rather impolite perspective. A perspective which depends heavily on specification and generalization, to name a few, of the types of people who do certain things like read this blog. Or blogs in general, as a blog in specific is little more than a noted blog in general, as are its readers. Much like a reader of a book. An author, of course, certainly considers and crafts his creation to suit his audience, which is rather odd if you are writing a transformative self-help book. Forgive me—all books are intended to help selves, though which self is not necessarily publicly proclaimed and probably privately self referential and absurd. Which is a second reference in recent posts to such terminology (shameless self-promotion [pulled that out of the trite bloggy bag {like that? |yet another overused bloggerism—the direct appeal for comments ~though some of the blogging greats use such tactics ^shoutout!^~|}]). I think I just created a new emoticon.

…in a Rube Goldberg machine knockoff.

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To Blave

Starbucks doesn’t exactly top my proverbial list of forgotten glories. There are multiple reasons for this, including the present availability of coffee and coffee drinks, my historical habitative distance from Starbucks and my general preference of less corporate caffeine and ambience sources.

Starbucks still represents a deep part of me, though, and is a lifestyle/pastime/indulgence that I engage when available. It is, in some small way, a microcosm of America—that land that disregards my willful distancing of myself from it to core my cultural self-awareness. That’s why I seek it out when available. It’s the home I experienced a little of back home.

A little taste of American indulgenceThat’s what made this gift so special. It wasn’t that I craved Starbucks, I hadn’t dropped hints, I hadn’t declared my passion for the absented watering hole. No, this gift was motivated by awareness. I’ve received plenty of gifts since coming to China—mostly tassels, terra cotta and the knick-knacks I hoped to collect. I’m so expectant of being endowed with them I rarely bother to gather them myself. And they are predictably massing themselves on various shelves, ledges and walls in my room. I love them.

If my student had arrived in Beijing planning to buy a little something for some people she was interacting with, she would have left with a distinctly Chinese welcoming gift. And I would have felt welcome and appreciated and grateful. No, she experienced a little bit of America in Beijing, remembered at least one person who might be missing it and procured him a piece.

I considered saving it for a rainy day. I contemplated receiving it like Bethlehem water. I visualized it sitting in my refrigerator while I mulled the decision. I sat in my office and drank it because I felt like it and it was handy.

It provided everything America does best: sugar, comfort, indulgence, fat, ease, energy, relaxation.

I hope to give such gifts.

I’m told some people buy things simply because they want to buy something. It doesn’t matter what, as long as it’s relatively appropriate. I’ve never understood that. I only buy something when it convinces me I need it—usually a fairly difficult process, I happily report. I gift the same way. Unfortunately, I’m often as hard to convince in that situation too.

Those of you most familiar with me are most aware of my gifting malaise. There’s a reason—I despise intentional gifting, the sense that a gift is owed and is accordingly proffered. It’s not that I find it bad or wrong. I envy those of you good at it. Because I’m terrible at it. An object informs me it belongs with someone I know. I acquire and accommodate it. It’s a special moment—the hair rises on the back of my neck and lays down on the side of my head, colors saturate, planes sharpen, a withdrawal thrills me.

So when my gifts are lame, don’t blame me—blame the objects’ poor communication skills.

Or my ability to interpret them.

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Static v Clarity or Circumlocution

alize I should probably clean my bathroom floor. Except I feel I just cleaned it because I’d been planning to remake my bed after washing it last. I didn’t, though, because after I washed it last time, I had to finish washing the kitchen and life-room floors. When I finished washing the floors, I planned to wash my cleaning rags, but figured I should wait to do that until I had finished washing and drying the dishes so I could include the towels and dishcloth. Only, it was about dinner time, so I had to dirty some dishes to make food. I struggled a little with dinner because I couldn’t find my favorite spatula until I remembered I had used it to make an egg at lunch, so it was dirty. So I washed it—and a few other things while I waited for the rice to finish. staticI ate at my desk, like normal, while I wrote on a few Facebook walls. I had seen the generative messages on my wall a few days before, but I had been taking a break from grading to write a blog post at the time, so I didn’t want to stop and respond. My desk was still a little messy with the odds and ends I had set on it to get them out of the way while I dusted and swept, so I didn’t really feel bad leaving my bowl on the desk until I finished my messages. One of my students IMed me with a question about class, so I broke off Facebook to check what I’d assigned last week and remembered I needed to make copies for class the next day. I got back with my copies and realized I hadn’t stopped at the store as I had intended to, so I’d have to go to out between class and my SAC the next night. That was cool, though, ’cause it reduced my demand for dishes. Of course, when the SAC was over, I was too tired to do much more than read a few chapters before drifting off to sleep. Sleeping in was OK—to make up for getting to bed so late—since it was a class-less morning, a day to finish the odd jobs I’d been putting off. I washed up some dishes and called back my friend that had been trying to reach me when I had been at class and SAC, then realized I was hungry. Lacking food in the house, since I had forgotten to go to the store, I headed out to get some. Walking near the bookstore, I remembered the email I had promised to send a friend, so I took care of that as soon as I got back—even before putting away the groceries. I couldn’t really bring myself to dirty the dishes I’d just washed, though, so I ate an apple and planned on an early dinner. Of course, the apple was with the food I had shelved on my bed to write the email, so when it was consumed and the rest were put away, my bed needed straightening. It was about time to change the sheets, and I was in a cleaning mood, so I pulled off the old sheets and put on new, but realized I couldn’t wash the old ones because I had finished off the bleach last time I cleaned the bathroom. I’d just been to the store, though, and I wasn’t going back out to get bleach. Besides, it would be easier to pick that up when I restocked my cleaning supplies, but I usually did that at Walmart, which meant taking a few hours, and I’d probably want to get some of the less-locally-available foods when I was there anyway, and since I’d just bought food, I didn’t need to buy more at Walmart, so the sheets could wait with the cleaning rags to be washed. Anyway, my last trip to Walmart had reminded me that I should get a new ink cartridge, which required a trip downtown, so maybe I should make that trip this weekend. Which means moving lesson planning to a new time, as I had done this week’s lesson plans after my Walmart trip and that didn’t work so well. And shouldn’t I be establishing a regular time to do lesson plans by now? Don’t I know what a normal week looks like? Of course, my friends didn’t—I needed to message them about when we would meet next since the new EC time might conflict with our original plan. So I sent that message and realized I had been waiting on an email from another teacher, so I checked on that before heading out to dinner. Quick mirror check: looks OK, except the mirror is dirty. I should probably clean it. Of course, then again, the whole bathroom could stand another cleaning—especially the floor. I’ll do that as soo

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Of Rome and Rhetoric

A brief survey of world-wide power struggles could lead us to a sense that we are entering a golden age of reason and restraint. Consider the peaceful and hailed resolution to the election debacle in Kenya—powersharing. A similar truce resulted from the most recent Pakistani elections: two non-allied politicians have set aside differences to effect change, while their hated rival promises to work with them legally and in all good faith. Columbian, Venezuelan and Ecuadorian presidents stopped calling for each others’ physical and ideological dismemberment and resolved their differences in discussions that included both monetary remuneration and the highly unusual admission of wrongdoing. The official passage of power from Fidel to Raul went off without a single shadow of Cold-war era overt or covert ‘liberation tactics.’

Don’t buy it.

Allow me to remind you of the effectiveness of the longest-running peace talks in modern history. Israel’s ongoing discussions with her neighbors have accomplished approximately nothing. We’re talking multiple rockets launched across an arbitrarily placed and heavily fortified border into civilians. Daily. To say nothing of China’s relations with Tibet and Taiwan. Or the entire continent of Africa. And may I point out that half of the inhabited continents still admit regions controlled by self-styled ‘warlords’?

Lest you think the last paragraph a sulky reveling in unfinished business, I remind you that those regions not mentioned above are governed by politicians who, for example, play word games to pretend they are noble in their shameless power-grabbing or create new offices to work out of while their puppet holds temporal power.

And before you condemn this article as unnecessary schadenfreude, allow me to state the reasons for my nihilism. I recently finished reading (in audio form) Sir Winston Churchill’s History of the English Speaking People. I could find no point in the history of this great people—the founders of constitution-based government, the progenitors of modern democratic structure—in which political development was accomplished by disinterested parties. Indeed, that oft-cited paragon of the the recognition of the universal rights of mankind, the Magna Carta, was little more than the protection of a particular class’s rights signed and enforced only when that class had the physical strength to support it. Our great nation of liberties can be quite easily reduced to a list of the watershed interests that determined the governance of the moment.

Certainly there were selfless and far-sighted individuals—groups even—who acted out of a genuine desire to benefit mankind. Such individuals were quickly swallowed into or manipulated by systems highly efficient in heedless self-promotion.

It goes beyond government. This inability to survive as a society is deeply rooted in humanity and is patently obvious in our systems of education, religion, resource allocation and family structure. No thinking person really questions it, yet we can’t fix it. Think socialism. Think survival of the fittest. Think bread and circuses. Think Nash’s Equilibrium Theory. Think existentialism. Think nihilism.

And people call my faith a crutch.

Rome
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iRead

The great beyond—our future

Stop what you are doing and look out the window. Drink it in. Relax as the gentle rays of the spring sun pull your eyelids toward sleep or the ponderous silence of the night thrills you with expectancy. Go ahead, do it now. I’m not going anywhere.

Wasn’t that nice? Enjoy it while it lasts.

I’m not trying to scare you. I’m not trying to dig up some quack’s conspiracy theory or recruit you to my cave. I’m just reminding you that the earth might be swallowed by a scientist-spawned black hole.

You don’t believe me.

Fine, read it for yourself. Now take back those nasty things you thought about me. For those of you too lazy to read the article I found and linked for you or wise enough to know I was going to explain it anyway (I’ll assume the latter, of course), here is the summary: Some lab in Switzerland spent eight billion dollars to make a machine that supercharges protons and smashes them together. Something like the only use you and your friends could find for Matchbox cars, only on the atomic level. The thing is, no one knows what will happen when they do this.

They think everything will be fine. Probably. I mean, yes, there’s an outside chance that they might destroy the entire earth. But it’s not likely. It’s more likely that it will simulate an environment reminiscent of the ‘big bang’—the cosmic energy explosion scientists postulate could have created the universe. They think it might provide them a better understanding of the origins of the universe and, consequently, the workings thereof. But it might dissolve it and us into utter non-existence.

See, it seems that at some point, anti-matter (which might be what causes black holes) has been created. Probably some time around the creation of the universe, according to some theories. So, re-creating the universe just might re-create antimatter. Which just might swallow the earth, the solar system, or the entire universe. Genius of the generation Stephen Hawking wrote a paper in 1974 that said something about how any antimatter we might create would just evaporate. But that was back before anyone thought about making any. And black holes haven’t exactly evaporated.

Here’s the question no one has mentioned yet, but I find myself returning to rather frequently: Aren’t there some rather far-reaching moral and ethical implications to attempting to reenact the creation of a universe? Like, wouldn’t creating a universe disrupt the normal flow of things for the universe in which it was created? And isn’t the universe constantly expanding, as far as we know? I mean, even if two protons don’t immediately create a new universe, aren’t we guaranteeing our eventual demise? Or maybe a universe can be contained. That might be fun. It would sure beat a model solar system made out of foam and coat hangars.

But this is a grand moment in history. Two of the century’s most imaginative authors (Dan Brown and Douglas Adams) are being mashed together and tried in a Hawaiian court.

Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you how we are going to avoid this long-foreseen technological self-destruction—some dude in Hawaii sued them.

For the first time in its existence, CourtTV has a function. Far too ridiculous to merit legitimate networks’ coverage, this case would be the most amazing display of rhetorical logic imaginable. Imagine trying to argue this case for either side.

No, your honor, we can not present a single piece of evidence that would prove the danger of this experiment. Universe creation has only been accomplished once that we know of, and none of us were there to record its immediate effects.

In our defense, we would like to clearly state that we are attempting to perform an action for the express purpose of experiencing something unknown—indeed, unknowable—and earth-shattering, metaphorically speaking, of course. We hope. Yes, there is theoretical cause to suspect we may permanently annihilate the planet, but the potential to more fully understand quantum physics demands some risk-taking.

I was going to suggest at this point that the only way to fairly allow this experiment to continue would be to hold a world-wide vote. And wouldn’t a world-wide vote be fun? It would promote international unity and cooperation. After all, we all share vested interest in the item at risk here—existence. To make it fair, we would have to allow each country to determine how to cast their votes. So, dictatorships like Cuba could have a single representative cast a vote exactly equal to the population of that nation. We can expect vote-rigging in Kenya, with the probability of murderous riots regardless of the outcome. The Unites States will see countless hours of made-up arguments about which scientist is a racist and who will end the war most effectively, while the only people who really understand the issue make fun of everyone else on hilarious TV shows. And the election process will occur in twelve stages over a period of sixteen years.

I was going to suggest such an election, if only for the sixteen years it will buy us. Then I realized that the really extremely poor of the world will probably vote to go ahead with the experiment so that the eight billion that was not used to provide them with luxuries like food and water will actually be put to good use, and the vote will mandate the experiment.

And given that the experiment is going to occur anyway, I’d rather be eaten by a black hole than experience a sixteen-year US campaign.

Disclaimer: I usually wouldn’t try to discuss advanced scientific issues, given the fact that I’m relatively inept in the field (relative to the average third-grader pulling the legs off bugs). However, I made an exception in this case due to the fact that even the scientists wanting to do the experiment really don’t know what they’re doing, apparently. The complete lack of hard evidence and scientific explanation in this post doesn’t even have all that much to do with my inability to understand and re-communicate the issue. At least, I don’t think it does.