Around the World
I wrote the following when I was on the wrong end of the Internet a little bit ago (Thanksgiving weekend); I post it here now. This is an unusual thing, my lack of writing and my poor timing; I won't let it happen again. Also, the thoughts are not complete, and I keep thinking about it, so expect to see it again in the future.
November 26, 2006
18h16
According to the Rolling Stones, you can't always get what you want. When you learn to deal with that, I guess you can be happy. The problem is similar to many conditions of convergence testing, though—does it mean that you're guaranteed to be happy, or is there the possibility that you'll despair? Also, when you realize it, is the reaction immediate, or could it take some time (days, weeks, months, years)? Happiness is, I'm sure, guaranteed if you can settle with settling for less, but is that always the reaction? The Rolling Stones always remind me of Mr. Porter. Is he happy? He doesn't always get what he wants (he had to deal with us), and he seems happy, so there's hope for everyone below the “rich” caste. India still has castes, defined ones, not sort of ambiguous transient statuses like we have here. Sahil is pretty high up on the food chain, and he thinks nothing of it. He's no humanitarian, but I'll put up with it until he's ready for an induced enlightenment. We'll see how that turns out. I've said that to a lot of people recently. Mostly as a quick little catchphrase to bring closure to a conversational issue. So there are a lot of things to write about, and I'm going to fit them all into this freewrite, and then post it as the next blog entry, because I have things to share. I wonder how many people will read any of it; I wonder how many people will read all of it. I guess I can say at least one, since having written it I've at least read it once, unless I don't watch what I'm writing. There are so many things to write about, though! Anyways, let's take everything one paragraph at a time. I've got plenty of time on my ride back home to college.
I watched the kids' movie Cars with my little brothers and a bunch of kids on Thanksgiving evening. There's still some meaning in the movie, even though it's shallow like all the other Disney movies. There was one part that really got to me, though. I actually had to swallow an emotional lump in my throat, which is odd for movies. The only movies to do such things have been Forest Gump and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the latter of which forced me to fight back tears. It's probably the best movies I've ever seen, since it was both hilarious and whatever word describes that other feeling. Steve Martin and John Candy; what a team. Anyways, in Cars there was this one scene where Mater tells Lightning that he knew he made the right choice, and the latter responds by asking what choice, and Mater tells him that he chose Lightning for his best friend. And Lightning smiles, and Mater smiles back. Mater put a lot out on the line there. His pal could have just shot him down right there to clear up any misunderstanding; after all, he's a big shot—he's “kind of a big deal”. But he doesn't, so everything was fine. Mater saying that, though, made me do a good deal of thinking. Then Lightning's crush comes over and tells him to be careful, because Mater trusts him, and Lightning appears at a loss for what to do with that. Trust. Mater trusted him enough to expose a significant portion of himself. I'm not sure if I could ever do that. This all goes back to what I'm not compelled to do despite my friends' better collective judgment. Should I do it? I really don't think I can, not just because of the consequences, but for the very reason it was brave of Mater and Chris to do what they did. Maybe someday I'll work up the courage. It usually takes about a week to do so once I've started the process, and it's easy to quit at any point during the process... but I can't do it. I'm scared to death of doing it. My synapses don't like the thought of this.
I've been thinking plenty recently about music. I was listening to Dire Straits, and I love their music partially because every song is completely fluid, but it has a very defined structure to it. It flows, like a stream of consciousness, and often the lyrics are description of an image (viz., “Sultans of Swing”). That's one reason I was skeptical when my English teacher (Amy? Ms. Dickinson? I have no idea how to address her.) told the class about a band her friend is in called Gay Beast. Let's ignore the name for now. The interesting part was that the music had no structure; it had complicated rhythms and continually changed. No one was creative enough to write lyrics for this sort of music, so they left that part out. See, that changes the very part of music that I really enjoy. I'm not sure if that's even music, or how anyone could enjoy listening to it. Rap isn't music, I'll tell you right now—it barely even has that structure part, and it's definitely not fluid. This “Gay Beast” music is fluid, but spontaneous, keeping no pattern but the presence of a rhythm. Perhaps it is music, but it's too much like modern art, with no purpose or structure, to satisfy me. The only modern art that's really interesting is the stuff where the artist does something like tying paint brushes to branches on a tree and leaves a canvas there. That's just plain cool. Fractals are the best, though, and photographs. Fractals are great because they're so simple, and yet they create something so complex—infinitely complex, too. Music should be a structured analog, which is a characteristic of some classical and most rock and all blues music.
Zeno's Paradoxes are related. For some reason I got interested in them recently, and the Wikipedia article followed the logical extension of the subject. For those who don't know, Zeno's Paradoxes (which are mostly the same) attempt to prove that all change is an illusion. This was one school of thought back in ancient Greece. Mathematically, the paradox can be disproved by showing that the sum of an infinite number of infinitesimal quantities sometimes converges to a finite value. This was widely accepted as the solution to the paradox, but most don't consider the possibility of a finite number of subintervals in the physical universe (i.e., a lower limit exists such that one cannot move a lesser distance than this limit, and the universe does have, in essence, a “frame rate”). Then some idiot went and proved that this is indeed the case, and turned my world upside down. I did most of my thinking on a boring ride home after dropping Sahil off. It wasn't boring while thinking of this, though; this was a real brain twister. See, the human experience is completely fluid (by fluid here, I'm referring to analog information—a stream of consciousness, essentially; ignore the obvious fallacy of the analogy, that fluids are composed of finite numbers of discrete molecules), although it's structured (self-reference; I apologize). The natural conclusion is that the universe operates this way, and discreet entities are merely intervals on the continuous function. On top of this low level of discretion (abstract form of “discreet”, if I'm not mistaken), humanity can only observe, naturally, the continuous, albeit in patterns (we can't see these molecules). No one thinks that there's a minimum distance physics will allow you to move, or a minimum time for a cycle. It solves Zeno's paradox, though, in a very unsettling manner (disproving a postulate). The former hierarchy of analog and discreet entities for, say, a tree, goes something like this: the discreet entity “tree” is composed of several smaller components, such as “leaves” and “branches” and the “trunk”, which all have definite beginnings and endings; these are all composed of cells, which consist of molecules, which consist of atoms, all the way down to the lowest level: the subatomic particles. These particles, though, are free to move as much or little as the existence and dynamics of the tree require. That's the traditional model. Space, though, apparently consists of a finite conglomerate (over a finite interval, anyways) of placeholders for the subatomic particles. Furthermore, time is also divided like this, and presumably every dimension that might exist (talk to the string theorists about this). What? What? That makes no sense! Anyways, that's not the end, but another obligation draws me away. Expect more of this.
November 26, 2006
18h16
According to the Rolling Stones, you can't always get what you want. When you learn to deal with that, I guess you can be happy. The problem is similar to many conditions of convergence testing, though—does it mean that you're guaranteed to be happy, or is there the possibility that you'll despair? Also, when you realize it, is the reaction immediate, or could it take some time (days, weeks, months, years)? Happiness is, I'm sure, guaranteed if you can settle with settling for less, but is that always the reaction? The Rolling Stones always remind me of Mr. Porter. Is he happy? He doesn't always get what he wants (he had to deal with us), and he seems happy, so there's hope for everyone below the “rich” caste. India still has castes, defined ones, not sort of ambiguous transient statuses like we have here. Sahil is pretty high up on the food chain, and he thinks nothing of it. He's no humanitarian, but I'll put up with it until he's ready for an induced enlightenment. We'll see how that turns out. I've said that to a lot of people recently. Mostly as a quick little catchphrase to bring closure to a conversational issue. So there are a lot of things to write about, and I'm going to fit them all into this freewrite, and then post it as the next blog entry, because I have things to share. I wonder how many people will read any of it; I wonder how many people will read all of it. I guess I can say at least one, since having written it I've at least read it once, unless I don't watch what I'm writing. There are so many things to write about, though! Anyways, let's take everything one paragraph at a time. I've got plenty of time on my ride back home to college.
I watched the kids' movie Cars with my little brothers and a bunch of kids on Thanksgiving evening. There's still some meaning in the movie, even though it's shallow like all the other Disney movies. There was one part that really got to me, though. I actually had to swallow an emotional lump in my throat, which is odd for movies. The only movies to do such things have been Forest Gump and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the latter of which forced me to fight back tears. It's probably the best movies I've ever seen, since it was both hilarious and whatever word describes that other feeling. Steve Martin and John Candy; what a team. Anyways, in Cars there was this one scene where Mater tells Lightning that he knew he made the right choice, and the latter responds by asking what choice, and Mater tells him that he chose Lightning for his best friend. And Lightning smiles, and Mater smiles back. Mater put a lot out on the line there. His pal could have just shot him down right there to clear up any misunderstanding; after all, he's a big shot—he's “kind of a big deal”. But he doesn't, so everything was fine. Mater saying that, though, made me do a good deal of thinking. Then Lightning's crush comes over and tells him to be careful, because Mater trusts him, and Lightning appears at a loss for what to do with that. Trust. Mater trusted him enough to expose a significant portion of himself. I'm not sure if I could ever do that. This all goes back to what I'm not compelled to do despite my friends' better collective judgment. Should I do it? I really don't think I can, not just because of the consequences, but for the very reason it was brave of Mater and Chris to do what they did. Maybe someday I'll work up the courage. It usually takes about a week to do so once I've started the process, and it's easy to quit at any point during the process... but I can't do it. I'm scared to death of doing it. My synapses don't like the thought of this.
I've been thinking plenty recently about music. I was listening to Dire Straits, and I love their music partially because every song is completely fluid, but it has a very defined structure to it. It flows, like a stream of consciousness, and often the lyrics are description of an image (viz., “Sultans of Swing”). That's one reason I was skeptical when my English teacher (Amy? Ms. Dickinson? I have no idea how to address her.) told the class about a band her friend is in called Gay Beast. Let's ignore the name for now. The interesting part was that the music had no structure; it had complicated rhythms and continually changed. No one was creative enough to write lyrics for this sort of music, so they left that part out. See, that changes the very part of music that I really enjoy. I'm not sure if that's even music, or how anyone could enjoy listening to it. Rap isn't music, I'll tell you right now—it barely even has that structure part, and it's definitely not fluid. This “Gay Beast” music is fluid, but spontaneous, keeping no pattern but the presence of a rhythm. Perhaps it is music, but it's too much like modern art, with no purpose or structure, to satisfy me. The only modern art that's really interesting is the stuff where the artist does something like tying paint brushes to branches on a tree and leaves a canvas there. That's just plain cool. Fractals are the best, though, and photographs. Fractals are great because they're so simple, and yet they create something so complex—infinitely complex, too. Music should be a structured analog, which is a characteristic of some classical and most rock and all blues music.
Zeno's Paradoxes are related. For some reason I got interested in them recently, and the Wikipedia article followed the logical extension of the subject. For those who don't know, Zeno's Paradoxes (which are mostly the same) attempt to prove that all change is an illusion. This was one school of thought back in ancient Greece. Mathematically, the paradox can be disproved by showing that the sum of an infinite number of infinitesimal quantities sometimes converges to a finite value. This was widely accepted as the solution to the paradox, but most don't consider the possibility of a finite number of subintervals in the physical universe (i.e., a lower limit exists such that one cannot move a lesser distance than this limit, and the universe does have, in essence, a “frame rate”). Then some idiot went and proved that this is indeed the case, and turned my world upside down. I did most of my thinking on a boring ride home after dropping Sahil off. It wasn't boring while thinking of this, though; this was a real brain twister. See, the human experience is completely fluid (by fluid here, I'm referring to analog information—a stream of consciousness, essentially; ignore the obvious fallacy of the analogy, that fluids are composed of finite numbers of discrete molecules), although it's structured (self-reference; I apologize). The natural conclusion is that the universe operates this way, and discreet entities are merely intervals on the continuous function. On top of this low level of discretion (abstract form of “discreet”, if I'm not mistaken), humanity can only observe, naturally, the continuous, albeit in patterns (we can't see these molecules). No one thinks that there's a minimum distance physics will allow you to move, or a minimum time for a cycle. It solves Zeno's paradox, though, in a very unsettling manner (disproving a postulate). The former hierarchy of analog and discreet entities for, say, a tree, goes something like this: the discreet entity “tree” is composed of several smaller components, such as “leaves” and “branches” and the “trunk”, which all have definite beginnings and endings; these are all composed of cells, which consist of molecules, which consist of atoms, all the way down to the lowest level: the subatomic particles. These particles, though, are free to move as much or little as the existence and dynamics of the tree require. That's the traditional model. Space, though, apparently consists of a finite conglomerate (over a finite interval, anyways) of placeholders for the subatomic particles. Furthermore, time is also divided like this, and presumably every dimension that might exist (talk to the string theorists about this). What? What? That makes no sense! Anyways, that's not the end, but another obligation draws me away. Expect more of this.
posted by Andrew Hills at 1:41 AM
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