Unsupervised Design

Category: Mind 🧠

  • the greatest thing I have probably seen ever.
    I ♥ math!

  • what are you afraid of?

    How often through a course of a day are we afraid?

    I think it might be more than we would really want to admit. Which in and of itself is odd, we are afraid of what other might think if we admit we are afraid.

    Last night on his show Rick Mercer did an excellent rant that very nicely summed up my feeling towards the whole flu situation and the way the media is handling it. Various news organizations, who claim to “serve” their viewers would be doing everyone a lot of good if they would just shut up and cover some actual news rather than inciting fear and panic in people over something as trivial as a sickness that everyone has had several times in their life and will have many more times before they die – and no this one isn’t any more likely to be the one that kills them then any other flu was.

    I think the only thing that makes me more upset than the media inspiring fear in people is people blindly following. Personally when I am trying to avoid illness I avoid large groups of people, I stay warm and don’t stand outside for hours. Apparently though people have been sent into such panic that they have left common sense somewhere else and will stand outside in line for hours to get a vaccine who’s affect may or may not do anything for you. I can guarantee that you are probably more likely to be sick now than you were before since you stood outside in the fall air for hours.

    Fear of course is not just the fault of the media or as a result of some new flu, this is just the most prevalent cause of fear at this moment. So then how do we overcome the fear? Or even why do we overcome the fear? Is being terrified really so bad?

  • chalk dust

    So this week I decided to update the visuals of my blog, this is not news of course as I have mentioned it before in a previous entry. What is new is that I used to have a very primitive set of analytics data built into my blog and as part of the refresh I took the opportunity to say ‘Hey! Lets make this more robust so I know even more about the people that come to my blog.’ Well that was all well and good but it just ended up creating hours of work attempting to get the site online and working. I eventually did and all was swell.

    That is until today when my friend Ryan linked to my blog and I said something about no comments. Hmmmm I thought, I am positive there were comments. The more robust solution I had resorted to was in fact an even greater hack to my blogging software than the previous one and it managed to take down the entire comments system along with all the lovely comments people have left.

    My instant reaction was ‘OH NO!’ But then I thought about it for 3.9824 seconds and realized that it really doesn’t matter at all. I often think, talk, write about how we shouldn’t cling to the past because then we aren’t present in our own lives and miss out. So after another 10 seconds of thought I realized exactly what the solution needs to be. I don’t need analytics about my site. If you feel that you want me to know that you were here or that I know you exist then you will make that clear, either in a comment or through some other means of communication. Anyone that has ever used analytics about a website knows just how addictive it can be, and for no reason other than ego. It is weird the affect that it has on people.

    So here we are with a clean start. Not in the traditional sense, what with all of my old entries still around, instead it is just a clean start in terms of what you my peers/readers/online stalkers want to say to me. Too often we hold on to things that are of an infinitesimally small value. Take the picture above. That is a stick figure batman that a coworker drew on the whiteboard on my door. It became a part of a year long running joke between us until one day someone erased him to leave — of all things — a note for me. We weren’t very impressed at first because so much had gone into the little guy. Was he important? At the time, probably. Later on? No not at all, in fact I had forgotten all about it until I found the picture I took.

    Do we need to purge things from our lives more often? Especially if we don’t want to?

  • time traveling

    So this past weekend I completed yet another lap around the sun and the above photo was the sweet gift I got from my brother. An original soundtrack for Back to the Future.

    Despite being older I felt no different in any significant manner so I decided it is time for some change. Thus the new look of my blog, it is possible that you may be thinking “My his blog looks a lot like the blog of Sir Johnson Pennyworth or <insert other preposterously made up name here>!” This would be since I just picked a theme that came packaged with iWeb. No customizing for me, thats what I do at work not at home.

    I often find that it is a fun exercise to think about what the future will think of our current culture. I think futurama always has done a good take on what people would think in a thousand years. Yesterday I came to the conclusion that they will think we are idiots and that we will tolerate anything. My basis for this is that while mattress shopping (Full sized bed, not air mattress or sleeping foam) I came across the following standard warnings:

    • Do not wash
    • Do not tumble dry.
    • Do not iron.
    • Do not dryclean.

    For a mattress!! Seriously though who has a washer or a dryer big enough to fit a double mattress? The thing that saddens me most is that someone must have tried to tumble dry a mattress and then claim their warranty…

  • the foundations of a promise

    I am a huge fan of crazy theories and doing the unexpected.

    So one day I got to thinking about promises. Those I make and that I see made. The ones that people believe are implied and those that people need outlined in every single detail.

    As I thought more about just how quick people are to promise things – I swear on my <insert important person>‘s grace, etc – and how in the long run most promises aren’t honored I realized something. What I realized was that, like a contract, a promise is generally required by party A from party B simply so that if/when party B fails to carry through with the agreement then party A will have justification for their anger/lack of forgiveness/guilt trip.

    This is of course not the general idea that people think of when considering the concept of promises. What is the big deal about this and why should this be something we are aware of? What the cultural perception of a promise is has huge ramifications on how people go about their day. If you need people to give you a promise every time you ask them to do something it reflects that you have little faith in the people you live/work with and clearly don&rsquo;t trust them overly.

    Promises are the Opposite of Trust.

    When it comes to matters of faith this becomes a big deal again. Christians everywhere look to “The Promises of God.” Of course how this effects your life comes down to your understanding of what a promise is. For example if we look at the Promise God gave to Abraham that he would father a great nation, blah blah blah, we see something that doesn’t at all reflect our cultural understanding of promises. If Abraham had our understanding of a promise I think the exchange would have gone something like:

    God: “Sacrifice the only son I just gave you”

    Abraham: “You realize you have made me a promise already, AND he is kind of neccesary for you to carry through on your word.”

    God: “I know I know, trust me I have it all under control”

    Abraham: “Really? Doesn’t seem like you really do, I am getting kind of old and I don’t see a second child coming any too soon. Just don’t forget that you promised. Or Else”

    Now this of course isn’t how it went. Instead Abraham TRUSTED God and went along with it and is later praised for his great faith.

    I would suggest that genuine promises can be fulfilled while respecting trust, but you don’t even know that it was a “promise” until you look back and reflect on it.

    I have seen too many people require promises of others instead of trusting. Too many christians judging others and requiring promises. Things likes promise rings or purity contracts are exactly the wrong thing for Churches and Christian groups to be pushing. They create environments of mistrust, judgement, and score keeping. All things that aren’t healthy or a part of showing love to someone else.

    A promise is not something to be made or requested. A promise is something that is done.

  • conviction tension

    So I spent some more time thinking about ideas of regret today and about some of the comments that people made in response to the last blog entry I made about regret. I didn’t really come up with anything new or earth shattering but I was left thinking about the roles of conviction and regret.

    Are they both sides of the same coin separated simply by tense? Seems to me that regret is an entirely reflective and thus not a terribly productive state of mind, in the same camp as worry. Whereas conviction would be a more momentary state of mind.

    Past. Present. Future.

    Regret. Conviction. Worry?

  • do i regret to inform you?

    Of late I have spent a lot of time thinking about truth, honesty, lies, liars, and living in general and I have come upon a topic that I want to hear the opinions of others on.

    That topic is regret.

    What does it mean to regret something?

    What does it mean to have no regrets?

    I am left wondering if it is part of the human experience to regret in life, or that if by believing that one is living a life of no regrets are they just deluding themselves? What things do our regrets get in the way of us experiencing or doing in our lives.

    Does regret stop love?

    I look forward to the questions, answers, and reactions of those that take the time to let the idea of regret ruminate for them.

  • saving the trees with email, but what about our sanity

    Now I am probably not your typical computer user, what with having a degree in computer science and all, but I think that there is a problem that we all deal with daily that most don’t even realize is a problem. Now I have somewhere in the ball park of 3 to 15 different email addresses, at any given moment sending an email to 10 of them may end up somewhere that I check and will respond. This is absolutely out of hand! Fear not though for I retain my sanity through the simple fact that my inbox is always empty. Yes Empty. About a year ago I listened to a talk given by a gentleman named Merlin Mann called Inbox Zero (Click here to listen, or watch the video below). I really suggest listening or watching, however if you are really lazy and don’t want to the gist of the talk is that if you don’t need it DELETE it, if it can be replied to in 3 sentences then use just 3 sentences, and finally learn the joy of search.
    Watch (or listen) Away!

  • food for thought

    Over my spring break I took some time to listen to the book “The Last Lecture” which was written by Randy Pausch and is based on the lecture he gave by the same title at Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. He was diagnosed with Cancer and used the lecture as an opportunity to pass on some advice to his children (who are small now) so he can influence them when they are older. The book was great and so is the talk. It is full of sound advice and also things that seem common sense at first but often we need to hear them again. I would encourage people to pick up the book or if you have some time to check out the video of his lecture below.

  • of life and perception

    So last night I decided that sleep would be for suckers and stayed up the entire night, returning home at 7:30 am after playing and refereeing broomball all night in an all night tournament. Honestly it was a blast but by 6 am this morning things were moving at a much slower pace across the board. I recommend the experience for anyone though.

    So now onto what one might refer to as the meat of this post. The other day I was killing some time reading a blog entry written by Dilbert Creator Scott Adams (Found Here) and it was good thought exercise I felt. For a long time I have spent time thinking about perception and what does it mean. Succinctly you could say that I stand firmly by the idea that perception is reality. When you take the time to recognize the ways in which you perceive the world around you I think that it opens up opportunities for a deeper understanding of who you are as a person and how you can have a greater impact on the world you are living in.

    This is why I found Scott Adams&rsquo; blog entry about perception of how we came to be very interesting and I recommend reading it. I am not suggesting that this is the case but rather that when considering this perception it helps you to greater understand your own perception of the world you live in. The following is the opening to his entry.

    Someday, when almost everyone is connected to almost everyone else via the Internet, I would argue that humans will have evolved into a single collective organism for all practical purposes. It would be much like the way individual cells of your body are united as one human.&nbsp;

    Sure, humans aren’t physically connected to each other, but neither are the atoms in your body if you shrink down to their level and take a look. You’d see more empty space in your body than matter. So proximity doesn’t seem to be relevant to the definition of a living entity. It has more to do with how the parts communicate and act in a generally shared purpose for survival. Thus, when humans are linked via a central nervous system called the Internet, we can call humanity a newly evolved creature.

    Humanity will eventually develop the scientific wherewithal to create new worlds, create new life, and manipulate existing life. And humanity will be immortal for all practical purposes, as long as it diversifies its parts across multiple planets, which seems likely.

    (Read more at Scott Adams Blog)