Per aspera ad astra

On Thursday, I was at another of those CEO talks here at Cal. The CEO had a decent success story – bought his company for $1 million in the 1970s, sold it for $ 4.3 billion in 2003 – but one of the things he said really struck me.

Lesson number two: the joy of life is in the struggle

Its certainly something to remember, as I spend those lonely nights (and mornings) finishing problem sets and wondering why I can’t seem to be happy. I’m leaving for my Spring Break holiday soon, and hopefully I’ll return ready to live more, do more, love more.

I leave you with this beautiful poem he shared. Every word burned into my weary heart. ”The Palace” by Rudyard Kipling.

When I was a King and a Mason-a master proven and skilled-
I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.

I decreed and cut down to my levels, and presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

There was no worth in the fashion-there was no wit in the plan-
Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran-
Masonry, brute, mishandled; but carven on every stone:
“After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I, too, have known.”

Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew,
I tumbled his quoins and ashlars, and cut and reset them anew.
Lime I milled of his marbles ; burned it, slacked it and spread;
Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.

Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet as we wrenched them apart,
I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder’s heart.
As though he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand
The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.

When I was King and a Mason-in the open noon of my pride,
They sent me a Word from the Darkness-They whispered and called me aside.
They said-”The end is forbidden.” They said-”Thy use is fulfilled,
“And thy Palace shall stand as that other’s-the spoil of a King who shall build. “

I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves and my sheers.
All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years.
Only I cut on the timber-only I carved on the stone:
“After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I, too, have known.”

For Unreason

As an engineering student, there’s much that I appreciate about the laws of science. With, say , I have time-invariant knowledge to completely describe any elastic material under simple stress. Under the stipulated conditions, this relation will always be true – and people can build on it unconcerned. This mechanical certainty can be brought to biological systems as well. If we model the ear as a series of spring-mass-damper systems, we can reasonably describe all of its reactions to stimuli.

Can we extend this deterministic endeavor further beyond the boundaries of traditional science? Can we accurately model the decision process of a human being?

Human motivations are fairly simple, so I would answer in the affirmative. Everyday, through our observations of people, we refine of our models of them, in order to construct an understanding of the normal and abnormal. Through this, we approximate a handwavy deterministic model.

Knowing that we watch, and that we are being watched, how should we react? Should we view the other as a teammate and cooperate in building a database on ourself, or should we view the other as an antagonist and hold our cards close to our chests?

Given how closely society is meshed together, a certain degree of cooperation with this modelling is necessary. Absolutes will not win – a few rounds of Prisoner’s Dilemma should teach you as much. Associates will require that your person be decent, and investors that your actions be judicious. However, not all observers will seek to build on your success; some will seek to undermine it. How do you hedge your bets?

You may have heard me say before:

If I can render the world predictable, I win.

In this way, a person can approximate God; to have knowledge of a person is to have power over said person. But, knowledge of others is not freely given out. More often than not, we must exchange passage into our inner sanctums for passage into those of others. No one can arrive at a God-like scenario, where your knowledge of others is significant, and the knowledge of others on you is infinitesimal. One can only hope that one emerges with a beneficial ratio after multiple iterations of such trades.

I presume you familiar with the immortal words of Macchiavelli:

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot have both.

Love does not thrive without knowledge. The most demanding step is in extending your understanding of self to include the ones you love. And then, knowledge can be shared without restraint. Hedging your bets in this case would mean to ensure that you are loved as much as you love. To ensure that their bond is as constricting as yours.

You will likely not extend the bonds of love to everyone. Yet, knowledge must be shared, lest a Sarah Palin rally your foes, asking who you really are. But never be predictable. The greatest struggle is in inspiring confidence without divulging knowledge. Do not make bets you cannot recover from, but do not employ a staid formula to break up acceptable ties. People tell me that I’m random, and I chuckle. My spontaneity is measured, calculating, and it is real.

Have others predict that you, while not foolhardy, will be unpredictable.

(I will rework this at some later date. Also, I need to pick up game theory.)

Water, water, everywhere

Coming to America, I was taken aback by how much its citizens consumed bottled water. In Malaysia, you’d purchase bottled water if you were about an needed something to quench your thirst, but here, my peers would lug back cartons of Arrowhead for use as their drinking water supply.

Perhaps the cleanliness of the water was an issue? I was certainly no stranger to an obsession with pure water; after all, my home had a reverse osmosis filtration system installed. The vastly more expensive San Pellegrino that you drink must be better for you, right?

I probed a little, and it turns out that this is not always the case, according to a recent New York Times article and Elizabeth Royte’s Bottlemania. Before I proceed, allow me to clarify that in my discussion of bottled water, I am focusing on bottled mineral waters. Bottled purified water, such as Coca-cola’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina, are as reliable, and boring, as the reverse osmosis water I drink at home.

The quality of tap water is generally not suspect. I concede that in less affluent communities, the pertinent infrastructure might not have been properly maintained, but that is in no way descriptive of the Bay Area. On the other hand, the article reports the Environmental Working Group

[finding] fertilizer residue, pain medication and other chemicals in some major brands

and Royte reports that

in 1994, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment tested eighty brands of bottled water and found that at least 15 percent contained phthalates, a softening agent used in plastics, in amounts that exceeded federal standards; more than half contained the disinfection by-product chloroform, and slightly less than half contained bromodichloromethane – also a disinfection by-product. Twenty-five contained arsenic, fifteen contained lead, and nineteen has selenium.

I’m not attempting to be a fear-monger here. The amount of chemicals in your bottled water will likely not harm you. The point I’m making is that the mineral water you purchase is no cleaner than tap water. If the purity of your tap water remains an issue, use some filtration system.

If you consume bottled water for its taste, I urge you to consider that bottle’s carbon footprint. When Fiji tells you

the label says Fiji because its not bottled in Cleveland

it means that you have just paid to that bottle of water shipped to the US. (Fiji has since wizened up to that line of attack and is investing in green efforts in order to go carbon neutral.) Ultimately, its consumption we don’t need.

Water, water, everywhere

Nor any drop to drink.

I See Dead Squirrels

It seems that no college is complete without its host of adorable squirrels. I’m a third year now, and for two of those years, I never saw a single dead one. However, I’ve seen at least four lie broken and bloody this semester. It pains me somewhat. Perhaps I feel that my cherished image of carefree squirrels, scampering about adorably, should not be sullied by the vile hand of death.

How much greater our anguish at the loss of our cherished ones.

And so, human society has devised, over millennia, elaborate rituals for coping with loss. The more expansive and poignant, the more conducive they are to catharsis. In my discussion, I will not approach these funeral rites directly, but instead, will direct your attention towards our understanding of death and how we allow it to affect us.

(Before I present my ideas proper, let me clarify that time constraints dictate that I will limit discussion to the world views of the modern secularist and the monotheist (think Jew/Christian/Muslim).)

Funerals are for the living. It is foolish to delude ourselves into thinking that funerals are wished for by the dead. For the secularist, death brings the onset of nothingness. For the monotheist, death brings entrance to a better place. The dead could not or would not care. Perhaps, while living, wracked by human neediness, they might have entertained the fantasy of having majestic mausoleums and being mourned and remembered by the masses, but I posit that dying would have changed their minds.

How then should we approach death? I believe too few people have pondered this. It is unfortunate that many of us will be so unprepared for something that has certainty beyond all other contingencies we insure ourselves against.

I was conversing with a friend over dinner, and he told me about cases where people who used to lie comatose but later regained consciousness exhibited memories and reasoning that was exactly the same as
when they first lost consciousness, and how they showed the direct connection between “consciousness” and the physical, and that the concept of the afterlife was but a comforting fairy tale. There is fear then, because death is the end. Of everything. I choose the Stoic approach of submitting to universal reason. We are unhappy because we have forgotten how nature works. All returns to ashes and that is it. Fear and sadness then can be conceived to be destructive emotions to be disregarded through force of will.

For the monotheist, death should be a cause for celebration, as the soul departs to meet the heavenly one. In Christianity after all, it is said that “to live is Christ, to die is gain.” Hence, I have always found monotheistic
mourning utterly perplexing. I do not deny the sadness felt from missing the departed. However, one would not mourn a friend ascending to a good station. Every tear shed is thus a metric showing how much more you value yourself over the one you have been called to mourn.

Ultimately, I have been trying to convince you that funerals are unnecessary. They do little harm, and allow the living catharsis. However, because they obfuscate the purposes of mourning, people cannot pursue more effective ways of coping with loss. In fact, I would suggest that a more complete understanding of reality allows for a certain imperviousness towards the pain of loss.

p.s. When I die I want my body donated to science – to a be cadaver in some anatomy lab, or to be donated to the needy, or used as fuel. An elaborate coffin would do nothing.

Hear the Voices

A good video. The cleavage is quite unnecessary though. Also, I like how ‘boyscouts’ is a tag for it.

Also, Obama should be running this ad more.

I’m going to sit down and write a proper post soon. I’m to incensed however, to contain myself right now.

I have nothing against people with beliefs per se. Nothing against people making changes based on their beliefs too. I’m totally behind legislature banning plastic bags. But, people out there, examine the harm principle again. What has homosexuality ever done to you? What has abortion done to you?

Its horrible what fundamentalism does to people. I’m going off on a tangent here, but allow me to get this off my chest – every time I read about glorified kill counts in the Bible, (e.g. Saul has killed his thousands, David has killed his tens of thousands), I want to jump up and scream, “Are you proud of this? Are you fucking proud of this?!”

More on Crackergate

*Update: YouTube has blocked fsmdude*

I’ve been following Crackergate for a while now. The controversy has set many on warpaths, from Bill Donohue to fsmdude,who has posted videos of the Eucharist being desecrated in numerous ways. (Check out his profile for more links on the chronological unfolding of Crackergate.)

Crackergate started off as, in my opinion, sound argument against stern action being taken on Webster Cook. An argument for freedom of expression, perhaps. Certainly, to scream bloody murder over a college student stealing some communion wafers would be a return to the medieval church killing Jews for allegedly desecrating said wafers. Apparently the wafers had been shrieking from being subjected to their torture.

All rather inane. I maintain that if your god is a frackin’ cracker, he better be able to take care of Himself.

Hate follows hate. After PZ Myers desecrated a wafer himself, irate Christians dared him to desecrate the Koran. Why? Perhaps they were jealous that their religion had to put up with so much, while Muslims around the world could riot over some silly caricatures of their Prophet. Perhaps the malice in their hearts wished that angered Muslims would do the deed that they chose not to dirty their hands with. (Sorry guys, “unconditional forgiveness” is not going away anytime soon. Also, PZ eventually desecrated the Koran.)

Has fsmdude gone too far? One can only wonder why he continues to upload video after video. Is he some lonely individual craving attention? Is he mocking the Catholic god’s inability to act against him?

Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.

He’s certainly baiting the Catholics. Well, even in America, there are limits to free speech. (He’s Canadian though.) This is approximating a hate crime. A more militant approach would be to consider religion itself an abomination (read Sam Harris) and strip it off its protection i.e. deal with it as communism was dealt with. For the most part, I could hardly care less what my neighbors believe. It might be a belief that the moon is made out of green cheese, or something similarly absurd, but they’re entitled to it. I discriminate based on thought process however.

Of Countries and Identities

I thought I’d get some words in before the chaos that will surround September 16 descends.

Racially-tinged demagoguery has reared its ugly head in Malaysia again, in my hometown of Penang no less. The UMNO politician, Ahmad Ismail, who allegedly deemed the Malaysian Chinese “immigrants squatting in this country” during the Permatang Pauh campaign period and resisted furious calls for apology after, has upped the ante by lashing out at the Chinese for being American Jews (reviled for seeking great power in the country’s economic and political scenes despite being an ethnic minority).

Add to that Malaysian antagonism towards Israelis for their injustices against the Palestinian people. Also, Americans are hated worldwide for fairly obvious reasons. It is quite a slur. I wonder if Ahmad made those statements primarily for political capital, or if those were his overflowing thoughts on Malaysia’s socio-political history and on the Chinese diaspora.

I believe that race, gender, and arguably, sexuality, among other things, are no reasons to discriminate, if only because the person in question had no role in determining them. (In more anomalous situations where human influence played a role, I would still argue that discrimination is despicable; however, that is an argument that will be advanced elsewhere.) After all, race confers primarily only physical differences, and potentially nothing towards the person himself.

Of course, realistically, it is culture that matters. (I have enough faith that people can accept others who do resemble clones of themselves.) Here I will argue that races and nations (in times of old, the two would have not differed) are but communities established by social pacts.

Looking back to when our predecessors fanned out from the plains of Africa, one can imagine them eventually settling down and mating in a specific place, developing practices and language. Eventually, norms, customs and culture. When such differentiating aspects were sufficiently advanced, another human with alien norms could be categorized as part of the “other.” What made these people stay together? Through agreeing to behave the same way, to speak the same language, they gained for themselves a buffer against rougher times. Through the years, a joint history is established. Sometimes notions of exceptionalism, conjured out of thin air, begin discouraging inter-racial breeding.

Communities become villages, villages become towns, and towns become nations. Somewhere along the way, the subscribers to this social pact, originally constructed for convenience, have begun to posit importance upon the cultural quirks of their race.

Such too are countries – societies that you join (apply for citizenship) and offer you benefits (protection, healthcare etc.) in return for dues (taxes, military service etc.). Patriotism becomes really silly in this light. Also, the concepts of “home” and “belonging” are lies.

I still wish the whole world were existentialist.

The Jesus Shot

If you’re into gaming, you might have known that a while ago, a gamer going by the somewhat less than original moniker Levinator25, showcased what he deemed to be the Jesus Shot, a glitch in Electronic Art’s Tiger Woods ‘08. (See embedded video after the break.)

A Future of Type

My mouse cursor has too often hovered over the “Add to Shopping Cart” button on the Amazon Kindle’s page. I count it an act of mercy that Amazon forces you to sign in (again) to enable 1-Click Ordering.

Linking daisy chains

I must point you towards this letter responding to a library patron’s request that a children’s book referencing homosexuality be removed. Do read it – the grace and thoughtfulness it contains is refreshing, particularly in an age of impact-filled sound bites that take no prisoners.