In case you cared...

So this is where it begins...

2005-06-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

At the end of the summer I will be married. Next year I will finish my masters, and will no doubt fall into the trap of getting my PhD. Why not, right?

These are all great things, don't get me wrong. I have a best friend for life, and for that I am eternally grateful. I have a great situation with work and school. I'm an extremely lucky person.

But that's sort of the problem. Life is fine. Really no troubles here. Not much reason to step back and look at the bigger picture. Just keep trodding along. Don't look up, it's too much trouble. Don't think too hard, it hurts too much now. Just keep doing what you are doing. Don't ask silly questions. Stop thinking about those things, they don't really matter much now.

I can't save the world. I'm not sure there is anyone who can, including 'God'. I don't know if I even believe in God anymore.

My life is starting to spin hopelessly into my control.

I have the power to make good, responsible, safe decisions. For me, for my future wife.

Why dream of moving to Africa to help those less fortunate when it interferes with plans to paint the bathroom orange?

What's the point?

Why should I care about anyone else?

Now I see why people hold so tightly to their republican gods...the last stronghold on any objective reasons as to how this world could possibly make any sense at all.

I feel like I've been sleeping. I feel like every day that sleep gets a little heavier. I love my life more and more everyday. I love the people around me more and more.

And yet everyday it feels like I'm losing a sense of belonging to the bigger world that is out there.

I need to wake up. But I'm not sure how. I can see myself, in bed, the room, my arms and hands and chest...but I can't move, I can't sit up. I'm frozen in this place, half way between delirious slumber and a scary world that I could probably do without.

Sometimes You Hate Being Right...

2005-05-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

I met Dan when I was in highschool. He was short for his age, and it was very obvious that he was rather self conscious about his height. I imagine that he, like all of us, was rather self conscious about a lot of things.

Dan was my brothers age. Three years my younger. He was thin, pale, red hair. He was born to rebel against his parents who are as close to you get to 'fundamentalist' without being that obnoxious.

By the end of high school Dan had shot up many inches, and was well over six feet. He'd died his hair blonde, but the red freckles and the wiry frame were still there.

It's been a sort of twisted joke that Dan was living a lifestyle the last few years that was going to kill him. Not a funny joke, but rather that shake your head as you say the words and look down in sadness kind of joke.

And then he did.

Dan died a few days ago. His lifestyle caught up with him, or rather his body never quite caught up with his lifestyle.

There was so much sadness before he died, so can you imagine how much sadness there must be now?

I guess in a few days I'll be going home to see the boys, to tell stories, to get a bit teary eyed, to see people at the funeral who were a big part of a life I haven't lived in a long time. It will be strange. It will be painful.

All I can think about is his family. His sister and his parents who must be so ripped apart in side even as I'm writing this. I can't even imagine. So I just try not to.

And I keep thinking about a body that has no more 'Dan' left inside of it. I keep trying to think about where 'Dan' might go. But the truth is, I have no idea. It hurts my head to try and think about it. It makes me feel uncomfortable. It makes me wonder if I jumped off the 'straight to heaven' bandwagon too soon.

Existential beliefs are hard to swallow when someone dies. It's hard not to think they must be somewhere, you know?

In a weird way though, I've found some comfort in the physics that leads so many to believe that we must truly be alone.

Many physicists, well respected scientists, who study the nature of the universe itself, are coming to believe more and more that we are just one of an infinite number of threads of a larger 'verse' where every possible version of what could be, is. Universes filled with 'copies' of you and me, whose lives are different from our own in some tiny way, some small decision that we could have made differently- a decision that this version of us did make differently. It sounds so abstract, so strange.

But then I think that if it really is true, it means that somewhere, in another universe, Dan woke up on Friday morning.

Yes, but it's not OUR Dan, you say.

In some way, I suppose you are right. But you and I would not know the difference between that Dan and OUR Dan. It's only that he lived when OUR Dan could no longer.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking. Maybe it's weirded than just believing there is a God who is watching out for us, and taking care of us after all this is over. Maybe it's less personal.

Still, it helps just a little bit. It makes it all a little easier to digest. Dan isn't 'gone', he's just not with us anymore. It's sad, but not as sad as the alternative.

I don't really even believe in prayer anymore, but in spite of that fact, I offer them now to Dan's family. And to 'Dan', if he still exists in any way, shape or form.

I'm sorry your life had to end so tragically. You were such a charasmatic person. You wanted everyone to love you so much, you tried so hard, but I'm not sure you ever realized how much we all did love you. You were difficult, but so what?

I know we rarely saw eachother these days, and I never really make an effort to see you. But I miss you. You will never show up at my birthday dinners. You won't be there to pick up girls at my wedding.

I wish things could have gone differently.

I hope wherever you are, you've woken up, and realized you have your life ahead of you to spend with the people who really do love you.

Where Do You Even Begin?

2005-03-28T15:20:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking a lot recently, about all the things I haven't thought about in a long, long time. Things that make me wonder if I'm all thought, and no action.

You see it's not that I feel pulled. I know what that feels like. This is not it. This is, well, what is this? It's apathy, I suppose, parading as a lack of empathy- which means it's not really pretending at all.

Che. Tutu. These names swirl around in my head like a problem waiting to be solved. Where do you even begin to solve a problem that never began?

It's so difficult because, of course, we were always part of the problem. How can we fight against suffering if disorder is mother nature's way? Gravity will only let you rise so high. Electricity will only let the light burn so long. Your heart will only let you love so much.

So why try at all?

It's a subtley ill-formed question. It supposes there is a something, a reason.

What about the question: Why not?

Have we any reason to believe we shouldn't continue on with this life? That we shouldn't give all abandonment to loving, and raging against all that suffering in the world?

You keep telling me that your God gives you answers. Reasons. And that is fine. No doubt he/she does. And why should those answers be any better? Why should those reasons be any less subject to doubt?

I don't need a reason to live, I need a reason not to live. I need a reason not to love. I need a reason not to laugh. I need a reason not to wonder what the world would be like if people hurt just a little bit less.

Go ahead. Give me a reason. But you don't have one do you? Because you believe in all those 'reasons' you've already told me. Damn, ain't that a quandry. If you tell me I don't have any reason to live, you are negating those very reasons you hold so tightly to. So you have your reasons, and I have my 'lack of unreasons'.

So what do we do now?

We take a trip. We leave our safe little world behind. We spend every moment of our lives daring the world to give us a reason not to keep going. And when it does, we pick ourselves back up and spit in it's face. That's not enough of a reason not to live. Not to rage.

Are you really telling me that if someone told you that this was all there was, that you would be forced to conclude that there is no reason to keep going? If this is all there is, isn't that even more reason to keep going?

Where Do You Even Begin?

2005-03-28T15:20:00.000-08:00

A shout out to a worm named Wilbert...

2005-02-11T13:24:00.000-08:00

So I've been getting all sorts of comments on my 'hero complex' entry, which I wrote who knows how long ago. Sometimes I think that blogging is silly. It's just a bunch of people who love to hear themselves write. I should know, I've always been one of those people, long before blogging was the fad, it's just that I never had an outlet before now.

Yes, some days I think I should chuck my laptop into the ocean (which is much farther now that I'm up at Penn State), and get down to what really matters: connecting with people.

And then I get some comments on this entry and it occurs to me... I'm making connections without even realizing it. Something I wrote echoed the thoughts of some people who knows where around this world.

It's as if the world just became a little bit more conscious of itself. Not because of anything special about me, it's just what happens. In our conversations. Our interactions. Smiles, nods, hugs, philosophical waxings. We make connections. Like neurons in a brain. And somewhere, 'out there', I feel like the universe is growing a bit. Making room for a relationship that wasn't there before.

I always say that I think the most important thing in the world is making sure nobody is alone. Suffering is inevitable, but is feeling truly alone?

When you read somewhere that you share a thought with someone that you never knew you had in common with anyone, it resonates somewhere real nice. Almost a warm sort of fuzzy feeling.

So for anyone who's been down and feeling like their blog has no power to connect them to anyone... be patient. You are sending out waves into an electromagnetic ocean. The ripples are bound to be felt by someone.

So blog on world, and go check out this guy's blog, because he loves Smallville just like me.

feedwilbert.blogspot.com

Damn, I guess I just can't resist the sound of my own thoughts being poured out for the masses.

You may not realize it now, world, but you are better off for it.

A World In Motion...

2005-02-07T15:11:00.000-08:00

We have so much to learn about our world. I have so much to learn about our world. I had some insight into my own little world today.

We live in a world that is in constant motion. Constant flux. Everything is changing in one way or another. Nothing is staying still for very long, if you look at it on the right timescale. And yet as human beings we spend so much time trying to nail things down.

The world was never meant to be nailed down. It was never meant to be 'saved' or 'perfect' or anything else we can imagine with our horribly misinformed 'snapshot' model of the world. If you change something here, something else will be altered. One of the most fundamental principles of quantum mechanics is that you can't know both the speed and location of a particle at one moment. For the second you measure one of these things, you've changed the other by simply interacting with it.

You were never meant to know what it looks like in your fridge when the light goes off.

Now physics still shows us a world full of patterns, which happen time and time again. Society operates in similar ways.

But you cannot freeze it. You cannot stop it from evolving, changing, rearranging. You can only embrace it where it is, and nudge it a bit this way or that way.

So fight for change. Wrestle with every last ounce of energy, until God himself must cheat to bring you down. Just know when it's all said and done, you cannot fight against the world and win. She is too smart for you. She knows you much better than you know yourself.

The irony is that those who struggle most, whose pain is far greater than many of us will ever know, realized this a long time ago.

Like a poor man's superman we dig our heels into the track to slow a train which cannot be stopped.

Life and death will be exchanged like chips between God and the Devil. There's no telling how much time we'll have on this table.

Don't you see that the point was never to rid ourselves of all the pain? It was simply share it, as we so easily share everything else: our laughter, our pride.

How can we appreciate any of this more than when we come to terms with the truth about how fleeting our moments are?

We spend so much time trying to explain to ourselves why we should help, hold, and love...but the truth is, it's all we know in the end. Sometimes we fool ourselves momentarily, sometimes for years. But we always know the place we feel most comfortable, if only we take a chance to be honest with ourselves.

If only we understood what it was to live life to the fullest, in the company of so many. Sitting beside them in their hardest moments. If only we understood how much comfort there is in letting go of our safety.

In the end we are not alone. We are all together.

In any case, no one is going to be able to convince me otherwise.

The big 'O'...

2005-01-22T20:24:00.000-08:00

No, it's not what you think. Come on, grow up. Why in the world would I post about THAT?

No, no. I'm talking about 'originality'. The INTP's best friend.

Everything in me is hell bent on being original. I guess it's an egotism of sorts. I want to distinguish myself. I want that equation, or theorem, or 'way of life' named after me. Like Einstein, or Jesus.

The truth is, there's not much that one can be truly original about. What's the old saying, 'standing on the shoulders of giants'? Einstein had Minkowski (the guy who developed much of the mathematical framework for part of his theory of relativity). Jesus had all the other prophets who had come before him.

Originality is about as elusive it gets. You search for it. You think you've found it. But the moment you make some connection with this new idea and the old ones, you have suddenly lost it. If it can be understood in terms of the old ideas, how can it really be anything new?

Every interesting and unique idea that comes into my head eventually leaves, the result of an obsession with some 'purity' of thought.

What ever came from nothing? The physicists think it was a previous universe. The theolgians think it was God. Neither really seems to advocate a lack of something before. Something from nothing is usually just a semantical game they play. Book keeping.

No, I suppose we could never really even come into contact with something that was truly original. Something wholly different. How could we see it, hear it, touch it?

Maybe, just maybe, that something IS God. Or maybe it is a good enough substitute.

Perhaps there is the universe, and then there is 'not the universe'. It's not nothing. It's something, but something wholly different.

Is it divine? It is good? I don't know. That's sort of the point of this digression.

I know, it's a strange and abstract way to think about the world, or what is beyond it. But maybe it's necessary.

We speak of a divine mystery in the same breathe as we call God 'good', or 'humble'. What is so mysterious about these concepts? Shouldn't we speak of a divine mystery of which we can say absolutely nothing?

There is our world, the physical world, which we can learn about. Then there is a world that is something so completely different that there is no way for us to define it with our words. Even saying it 'is', might be a stretch.

And life is about the search for that thing about which we know nothing about. Every moment we are just on the cusp of touching it. Every moment it recedes farther away from us.

The theologians say we know about 'it'. It is God, or gods, and they are good, bad and ugly. Like us (coincidentally). The materialists tell us we are all there is. 'It' is an illusion, fitting somewhere into our evolutionary design. Therefore it serves no real purpose.

After all, there is no sense in speculating about things which we cannot know, which can never be learned.

But I say the fact that we know nothing about it makes it no less important to our lives than all of the things we do know.

We are not enlightened. There is nothing new under the sun. Men and women have been hunting, gathering, and procreating for 100,000 years now. They have developed laws and social norms and been happy and sad. Celebrations, wars, and everything in between.

But it doesn't matter. We are all still waiting for that contact with that 'divine mystery', be it in the form of a personal savior or the equation that will explain it all. We hope in spite of the fact that there is no reason to believe that tomorrow will be any different from today.

I'm going to press on. I'm going to look at every turn for that truly original idea. The one that will change everything we know about this world.

I live in the anticipation that somehow the journey will make up for the fact that the destination is always somehow out of reach.

That transcendent moment...

2004-12-14T13:19:00.000-08:00

There are times, like last night, when everything that you thought was so important, slips into the background. And thoughts of things you spend your life avoiding, are all that is left to contemplate. Last night RM got some bad news, about a friend from school who had died.

How do you study for finals, write that last paper, when it is so obvious that life was never meant to be about grades, or all the little things we preoccupy our time with?

Last night it occurred to me, that this is what I was missing. A constant reminder of that transcendent moment. A constant reminder of what is important in life.

That is what I miss about religion, at least practicing it (I won't go so far as to say I've lost my religion): the constant re-awakening to the moment that is so much larger than your office, home, school, town, or even country.

The only way to find those moments, are to look for them. And in a world where it's easy to get lost looking for a million other things, it's most helpful I think to find yourself in a culture that is looking for the same things. So when you bump into eachother, you can say, 'hey, what were we looking for again? Ah yes, the transcendent moment!'.

So I've decided I'm on a quest. A journey to find people, like myself, who are offended by much of what passes for 'love' in religion, yet who also know that if God exists in any sense, there must be some people who are going about searching for him in a healthier way.

Will I find those people in 'church'? In 'synogogue'? In a mosque? In Tibet?

I don't know yet. But I sure as hell ain't going to find out unless I get my ass out there and start looking.

And in the meantime, I'll keep trying to remind myself to stop and live in that 'moment'.

Immortality...

2004-12-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

Doesn't everyone dream of it in some form or another? To be remembered, forever. How will you do it? What will you discover? What will you write? What will you invent so that your name is echoed through the space time contiuum for years and years to come? Of course, there will come a time when people will forget. And even if they don't, there will come a time when people won't be around to remember. That moment when time itself extends to it's fullest position, held back by gravity itself from stretching out into eternity, and pauses for a moment before snapping back and making everything that was once distinct one big ball of energy all over again. And then who will remember? Could God even remember such minute details in the grand scheme of this thing that we call the universe? If he could, should he care?

When I hear religious people (I no longer know when I can include myself in this category) say 'do not cling tightly to the things of this world', I wonder if they are (without realizing it) speaking a sort of blasphemy. What else can we hold onto besides the things of this world? What other world are you speaking of?

I think what they mean to say (though I doubt they'd ever realize this themselves), is that you should realize that your hold on this world is only temporary. You will be parted from these things one day.

But why they draw the conclusion that you should keep you palms open, I have no idea. I guess it is a sort of bracing for eternity. As if God will come down and you will be clawing onto the curtains and matress in an attempt to escape heaven.

Life is short. It is a fact. Your time here is temporary. What happens after that, no one knows. But there isn't any reason to assume you can take your books or computer. So enjoy these things while they last. You may very well enjoy yourself on the 'other side', but it probably will look much different.

This is the time you have with THIS universe. Isn't it a beautiful one? Cling tightly to it. Watch it carefully. Take risks. Do not hesitate. Appreciate your life, and feel honored to be part of this drama.

But don't waste your time chasing after immortality. There is no such thing. You may extend your 'life' a bit, by invention or discover, but you will not pass on into eternity in THIS world. So instead, enjoy the here and now. This is what you have. This is the time the universe has with you. Make the best of it.

Isn't it all just a different way to get there?

2004-12-12T13:55:00.000-08:00

Where are you going? It's a question that becomes more and more absurd to me, the older I get, though I'm still just a ripe 25. It implies several things, which have become for me the root of the absurdity. The first is that it's possible to know where you are going, as though the future was straight ahead and not off to the side, or perhaps even behind you. The second, is that the our 'future' is some object which we can define.

When we talk about the past, questions become more specific: 'what was your last job?', 'where did you go to college?' No one asks: 'tell me about your past'. Such a question would require an autobiography to answer.

So why then, when it comes to our future, should things be any different?

What do I want to do with my life? Do you have a few days?

Because what I want to do with my life in intimately wrapped up in who I am now, and who I have been the last 25 1/2 years of my life. And that is not something I can fully wrap my hands around and present to you: 'this is who I am, who I was, who I will be'.

Beware of the temptation to say of this person, 'she is a scientist, or he is a truck driver', by which you mean to somehow define who they are and what they are about.

We want to look back at our lives and define it by those transitional moments: before I was a student, now I am a lawyer. The truth is, you are you and have been you since the moment you were born. Who you are is so much more complicated than any profession, or degree can suggest.

What we do is often times simply a symptom of who we are, where we are in life is often just a historical accident.

I am starting to understand why some people are called 'dreamers'. Because they refuse to believe that we are somehow synonymous with what we do, with what we have done, and with what we will do.

To say Jesse is a successful lawyer tells me nothing about Jesse, except the fact that he is good at argueing in the courtroom. But tell me what Jesse loves. Tell me what he spends his time thinking about. Tell me what his friends say about him. Tell me what he has done for others.
And I am hooked.

In any event, I couldn't tell you where my life is going. I only know that wherever it ends up, I will be there too. And I imagine that the people whom I love most will not be far away from that place either.

Will I ever prove an infamous math theorem? Probably not. Save the world? Heavens no. Become a successful atmospheric scientist? Maybe. But what does it really matter? Wouldn't you rather learn about what drives me? What I love? What I hate? All the details that seem so similar to yours, and all the ones that couldn't be farther from you?

In the end all we have are our choices. We make the best of them. We live, we love, we die.

I only hope that wherever I end up, my tombstone will someday read, 'Here lies a man who was so many more things than we could ever write on this tombstone'.

Looking in the right places and knowing where to hide...

2004-11-17T14:03:00.000-08:00

I'm 'hiding' in the computer lab right now, because my mind isn't functioning at usual speed. I have a test tonight (yes, it's in the evening- a 'brilliant' invention of the profs in my department) in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics. In short, the physics of fluids. What's involved in the physics of fluids, you ask? Enter the Navier Stokes equation: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Navier-StokesEquations.html . In short...it's a real pain in the you know what. Beautiful, no doubt, but messy as all hell. Just like, well, like love I suppose.

To be honest, the class isn't really so hard, which is why studying is more painful than usual. I haven't really paid much attention in class. So now I'm learning a lot of the material straight from the book (and my notes where they are legible). And unlike the last test, there is SO MUCH material to memorize. In any case, that's why I'm here.

Anyways, that is all tangential to what I've been thinking about today. The last few weeks I've been thinking intensely about number theory. Specifically, about prime numbers. Now, I assume everyone knows what a prime number is...so what, right? There are prime numbers and there are 'non-prime' numbers (composite, to be specific). What else is there to know? It turns out that prime numbers represent one of the deepest mysteries in all of mathematics. If you give me a number n, and I ask you how many primes there are less than n, how would you go about figuring out that number?

Here's the basic thing about 'number theory' and prime numbers: I can state mathematical theorems about prime numbers using everyday language. I cannot do the same for all the other branches of mathematics. But, I can, for example, state Goldbach's Conjecture: for every even integer greater than or equal to 4, that number can be written as the sum of two prime numbers. It's a 'conjecture' because it's never been proven. Of course everyone believes it's true...but how do you go about proving it, mathematically? We can prove that there are an infinite number of prime numbers...we can prove lots of things about them in fact...but there are probably an unknowable number of 'seemingly true' statements that we just can't prove.

But that's what makes number theory so subtle, and so elusive. We can understand it's theorems using basic mathematical language of numbers and multiplication and addition. Which leads us to believe that unlike all the other mathematical theorems written in terms that 0.000001% of the world understands, number theory statements can probably be proved with everyday langauge and basic intuitive ideas.

At least that's what I've been thinking these last few weeks.

Then it occurs to me: it can't be that simple, because otherwise someone else would have figured it out in the last few hundred years that the problem has been around. I mean, think about all thing things we DO know...quantum electrodynamics, evolutionary biology, Plato's theory of forms, how to make a several hundred ton machine 'fly'?

If these theorems haven't been proven using 'elementary' concepts of numbers and primes, it's probably because you can't figure these things out with elementary concepts of numbers and primes.

So what do you do?

You dig deeper. You start looking in the places that only a few people are actually looking. You start dreaming up more and more abstract ways of thinking about numbers, and primes. You start with group theory, move to rings, consider prime 'ideals', jump to algebraic geometry, then consider the topolgy defined by the p-adic numbers. You dig?

If a theorem were easy to solve, mathematicians wouldn't find it so damn interesting. Theorems are interesting because in a few sentences, they relate all sorts of profound and fundamental ideas that don't surface themselves so often in our regular discussions of numbers and addition and multiplication.

Anyways, here's to looking for new angles. New dimensions. New brains to contemplate things we never thought possible. Or things we couldn't have even conceived of being or 'not being', period.

Now, back to good ol' Stokes. My boy. Did I mention you can't solve the damn equation except in a handful of very special cases? Like cases that almost never actually exist in reality.

Story...(short)

2004-11-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

www.atmos.umd.edu/~jstone/stories/magic.doc

Not my best work. In fact, I wrote it off the cuff. I'm working on one that I think will be my best yet. We'll see. Take a look if you'd like. Let me know what you think. It's ok, you won't hurt my feelings. It's not quantum field theory. I'm not SUPPOSED to be good at it. I'm just getting started. Watch out though! When I do get good. Oh boy.

The A-Word...

2004-11-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

Name me one 'value' of Bush's that Kerry doesn't have, and that I should consider 'keeping'.

War-mongering? - no thanks.

Homophobia disguised as 'celebrating a tradition'? - Hitler had a solution to homphobia too. I'm sure he gave all sorts of 'pros' on the other side. Nah, I'll stick with the idea that everyone has a fundamental right to life and liberty.

Then they say it. I stop in my tracks. The A-Word: Abortion.

I must admit I'm stumped.

Now, let me begin by saying that I am firmly committed to the idea that when a baby is inside a woman, it's part of her body, and so the decision about what to do with it, is hers. Anyone who doesn't have a vagina needs to bow out of such conversations revolving around 'policy'.

Still, it begs the question as to whether or not abortion is 'right', doesn't it? I mean, liberals have 'morals' too, contrary to what the red states seem to think.

But, a priori, abortion seems to be 'murder', doesn't it? That thought doesn't sit well with me.

So let's think about it for a minute. Or maybe longer.

Don't even bother pulling out your bible. It says nothing about abortion. Yes, it says, do not kill. It also contains more than enough passages to support those who feel they can run amuck and kill whoever they need to in the name of 'freedom', or worse yet, in the name of God.

So all we get from the bible is, 'don't kill'. We get that from common sense.

The question is, 'what are we killing'?

Let's start with the extremes. We are killing something that is technically speaking, 'alive'. But don't get too carried away yet. Plants are alive. So are bacteria. When's the last time you saw a referendum on stopping the bacteria-cide that's going on.

Ok, we have that extreme. Now we must ask ourselves, is a fetus in a womb equal to a person?

What makes a 'living thing' the equivalent of a person?

I am not comfortable when people assert things like, 'we were all embryos at one point, what if you had killed us when we were embryos?' Not cool. Why is the moment of conception any more fundamental in the progression of life? It seems to me to be an arbitrary division of spacetime, onto which we project this sense of 'potentiality' that I don't know has a priveldged place among all the other 'potential' happenings we could encounter.

Every moment in the universe is a moment of creation. For all the death that's going on around us, there is that much more creation taking place. All at different levels of course.

When you were 4 cells big, what made you more important than say a rat with a hundred billion cells?

God? Says who? I'm telling you a time is coming when we will 'create' things that think which will have nothing to do with the old swimmers and eggs. What will you say then? They aren't alive. Why not?

So, I can't solve this conundrum. Abortion, though, is something that I think we are not paying enough attention to. Buried in our ideas about it, are our conceptions of what makes a living thing important.

So while I support a woman's decision to choose, I can't go so far as to say I think whatever she does is 'right'. It's too complicated of an issue.

But on the other hand, all those people who sit around on the street waving signs with dead babies, who have no problem eating meat or supporting science experiments on mice, what's going on there?

The problem is, life is a very fragile thing. And if we're not careful, we're likely to kill it, whether we mean to or not.

I guess, for the time being anyways, abortion falls under the category of self-defense, for me. I believe in my stupidly idealogical brain, that violence is ALWAYS wrong. No matter what the reason. But, I'm tempted to make exceptions for extreme situations, like times of self defense. I think the world would be best if no one ever used violence, even to defend themselves, but I'm not sure the world could function in such an idealogical sort of way. So I won't get on your case if you HAD to kill someone to save your own life, or a friend, or whoever.

Likewise, I think abortion is probably ultimately a 'bad' thing, since it's causing violence to life. And violence is always bad. But in the scheme of things, I don't know that aborting a fetus is any worse than killing a mouse or something like that (I'm not talking about late stages of pregnancy, which is a more difficult scenario). I know, sounds like I have no morals, right? Actually, it's not that I don't value human life, I just think we devalue the life of other creatures. So I'm tempted to balance that out by equating 'creatures' with equal biological properties.

In any event, I'm not a woman, nor will I ever be. So I will never pretend it's a decision I could or could not make. But that doesn't stop me from trying to get at whether or not we all have a real appreciation of life in general, and what it means to have such and such an appreciation of life.

So I'm Pro Choice all the way. But the loss of any life is something that should profoundly shake us inside. And if you are Pro-Life, you sure as hell better be fighting for every last creature, big and small. Because otherwise you aren't really pro-life. You are really Pro-Us. And the universe doesn't have time for such narcissistic games.

Screw the Republicans...

2004-11-04T07:27:00.000-08:00

You know what, all this talk of 'healing' the rift in our nation, I think it's a bunch of crap. If you voted for Bush, than you and I have radically different values. War first, questions later? No thanks.

I agree, there are many things we can unite around...but we don't need to be united. We need to fight for the right of gays, those soldiers, and the fate of the 'earth'.

When I hear people say 'unite', I feel like they do not understand the weight of the issues.

I will keep on trying to 'love' everyone around me, but I sure as hell don't 'like' anyone who sided with Bush. I can't. Not when the issues are this big. This blatantly oppressive.

Ok, if your a Republican and you voted for Kerry, that's ok with me. ANYONE who voted for Bush is an idiot in my opinion. Yes, my view is REALLY that simple. You want to talk about something complicated? Chat me up on Quantum Field Theory. But this stuff? It's really not that hard.

It's just my opinion, of course.

When we are all vunerable...

2004-10-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

I write this knowing that I am among the greatest trangressors of the sin that follows. I write this on a leather couch, with a warm blanket wrapped around my feet. I write this from within a house that costs more than most people in the world could ever make in a lifetime. Much more. I write this in the invisible security that comes from being steeped in years of being loved by my family, and in the security that comes from sitting in the home of my 'love', knowing she is only hours away from returning to me.

We, here in many parts of America, and in other 'blessed' pockets of the world, are bathed in safety. We are bathed in SUV's, plama TV's, more food and drink than we know what to do with, and a narcissistic sense of self-awareness. Of this last trait, I am the most guilty.

Meanwhile in our cities, in our mountains, and in countless un-cared for countries across the world, safety is a scarce quantity.

We, the capitalists think we are dealing in goods and services, but we are dealing in something much more instinctual...the means to survive.

We have created for ourselves a lap of luxury in which we will never need to worry about want again. Our stock investments and our million dollar homes assure us of that much. If there is crime around us, we flee it. The ones who actually have money to invest in the community, leave the community behind, to fend for itself. White flight? It's still quite prevalent. Did you think the hispanics and blacks simply created their own cities in which to live and be oppressed?

If the worst thing we have to fear is fear itself, than the worst thing the rest of the world should fear would be us. Because our fears keep us in a never ending pursuit of that five letter word that people like to flaunt as though we were still gorillas in the mist. Power is what happens when we refuse to let ourselves be vunerable.

We do all these things, because we have been taught from birth, that we have more of a right to survival than anyone else. Life is our right, more than it is the right of any other person on this earth.

But even if this is true, how can it be any other way? Surely we can't just give up our houses, our capitaistic ways of life, and flee to the countryside to try and live in peace and harmony?

Of course we could. What's to stop us?

Except an overwhelming fear that we will no longer be safe.

Somewhere between the idea that we can save the world, and the idea that it's all for one and one for all is a state of being where we take responsibility for ourselves, but NEVER at the cost of bringing suffering to others.

In reality, we all suffer, and we will all continue to suffer as long as we are human beings capable of suffering. But the holocaust, Rwanda, and what's happening now in the Sudan don't HAVE to be inevitable realities. The distribution of wealth, with 38% belonging to the top 1% of the country, and 0.5% belonging to the bottom 40% doesn't have to be this way.

Things can change. They really can.

But you have to ask yourself, I have to ask myself, am I willing to be vunerable? Am I willing to accept that life is life, whether it's my life, or another's?

Am I willing to live in a world where SUV's are not so common, and where I must get by on a lot less money?

When we are all vunerable, we will find safety not in our ability to withhold safety from others through power, but in our realization that we are no longer alone.

Yes, your brain needs medicine too...

2004-10-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

My mother wrote me a letter last week. My uncle, who's now in his mid to late forties, has been an alcoholic most of his life. He's battled it, recovered, fallen off, recovered...you get the picture. It seems to be an endless cycle. He's horribly depressed. He's probably been that way most of his life.

My cousin has battled anorexia, and she's been diagnosed with bi-polar. Another cousin has bi-polar too.

So, ask yourself, is my family just a bunch of whiny cry babies who never figured out how to deal with their problems, or is there something else there?

It drives me crazy to hear people say that they don't believe in 'psychological drugs'. Now, if they are saying that there are many cases where people are taking drugs that they may not really need, I would agree with that phenomenon. It happens with antibiotics all the time. Does that mean there's something fundamentally wrong with our understanding of antibiotics? Nope, it means that many of us just don't understand WHEN to use them, and WHEN they won't be so helpful (even if it's in the long run). Who does understand? Doctors. Why? Because they've seen a million people take them and get healed. People with diseases that could be fatal if left untreated.

So who understands when someone should or should not take Prozac, Zoloft, or any of the other countless designer brain-drugs? Not you, that's for damn sure.

You think you know better than someone who's studied these things for their entire lives? Someone who's seen case after case after case?

The problem is, people don't really understand what the hell they are talking about. It's basic science, and it's somehow been lost on the majority of people in the country. Your brain is a big gigantic blob of chemical reactions. Regardless of your view of the 'soul', it's just something you have to accept.

So why is it so hard for you to believe that those chemicals can be fundamentally imbalanced? Is it hard to imagine someone whose body doesn't make enough insuline (diabetes)? Whose liver doesn't remove enough toxins (jaundice)? Then why when it comes to the 'head', are we so opposed to the thought that even THERE, your juices could be out of whack?

Alcoholism, depression, anxiety, these are all DISEASES PEOPLE. They are states in which your biology is severely messed up. Like cancer, or heart disease, but usually with less obvious 'complications'.

Would you tell someone with heart disease that they should be wary of taking medicine? That they should just 'figure' out how to deal with this problem?

If you're brain chemistry is loopy, thinking of ways to make it better ain't going to do a damn thing.

Does this mean everyone who experiences the slightest symptoms of these illnesses should run out and buy a lifetime supply of Prozac? Of course not. Just like people with a mild soar throat shouldn't rush to dump a bottle of penecillin down their throat. Sometimes it's overkill.

But there are a great many times when it's not only a good idea, it's a better idea to take the medicine. When an illness drastically changes your quality of life (or of the lives of everyone around you), something needs to be done.

I hear people say things like, 'you shouldn't be using a pill to fix these problems'. And I agree with them. But no one ever said the pill would fix everything. Your the dumb ass who implied that. Medicine is a trade off. There are side effects. Life gets better in some ways, and worse in others. And your problems don't go away. They are still there to deal with. But if you're lucky, the medicine helps you to be in a much better place to deal with those issues.

And if you're really lucky, one day maybe you won't need the medicine. Maybe your brain will 'heal'. But for many people, it won't.

You want to do things the 'natural way'? That, my friend, is a dangerous game. Nature is not kind. If it were, we wouldn't need penecillin, flu shots, vaccines, and cancer therapy. If you want to play by nature's rules than your odds of surviving are miniscule. You want to look at mortality rates before the modern era?

When something is safe, by all means, do it the natural way. But for all those crazy ass Christian scientists who deny medicine to their babies, and spend their days praying away diseases, I think your understanding of 'natural' is wildly perverted.

And for those of you who say to yourselves, "those pills will change your personality, it won't be you anymore", I got news for you. It's still the same damn person. And if you prefer them so much the way they are, maybe you'd be willing to suffer all the horrible things that their minds and bodies do to them...

See, I know, because seven months ago I went to bed feeling like my heart was going to explode inside of my chest. I watched the world around me literally get seperated from me. I spent weeks feeling like I was going crazy. And it came out of nowhere. I'm generally a happy person, and I've never felt so alone in my entire life. I've never felt so disconnected, and so certain that my life was soon coming to an end.

Now, after months of 'mental pills', and some good ol' fashioned therapy, I am the same damn person I was before my mind left me hanging...except I don't go to sleep at night worrying about my heart exploding, or thinking reality is slowly slipping away. In short, I don't live in my own personal hell anymore. I live right here, with everyone else, the way I always have.

The problems come and they go, but I'm lucky, my brain isn't so horribly out of whack. For my uncle and my cousin and so many people I see suffering in such horrible ways, life is much different.

So the next person who tells me that they should deal with their problems in a natural way... I'm going to kick the...I'm going to politely respond, "who's nature?" Then I'm going to refer them to a good book on mental health, and on Darwin's theory of Evolution. So they can actually learn how a brain works, and then they can learn what happens to creatures that aren't 'working' quite properly.

As far as I'm concerned, if you talk someone who really needs it (and I understand some people may not really need it- but how the hell are you to know the difference?) out of getting the medical help they need (mental, physical, whatever), you might as well be beating the hell out of them yourself (mentally or physically).

In any case, just because we know what to call these 'imbalances' now doesn't mean they weren't there before. You are fooling yourself if you believe we're inventing this stuff. Talk to me about a generation that never needed all this psychological mumbo-jumbo, and I'll show you a generation that drank themselves silly, beat the hell out of their wives and kids, and buried their pain so deep down inside that they may as well have had an emotional labotomy. And what about the rest of the world? The poor people in Africa? Why don't they need this medicine? How are they getting by without it? They aren't. They aren't getting by at all. They are starving. I think we can all agree food is a little higher on the list of necessities than emotional balance. Lions will kill for food to keep from starving before they worry about how such actions might affect their emotional connections with everyone around them.

Besides, if Tony Soprano can own up to it, what's stopping you? Are you trying to tell me you are more proud than Tony Soprano?

A personal note on the speed of light...

2004-10-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it turns out that light travels really, really fast. I mean, so fast that you can talk on the phone with someone halfway across the world and not miss a beat. Or play them in an online video game.

Yes, thanks to the speed of light, and how really, really fast it is, I will never amount to much of anything. Instead of winning the nobel prize in literature or the fields medal in mathematics, I will have a 1,011-456 record in Madden Football on Playstation2 to show for my life.

See, when I'm by myself, video games don't hold my attention span for very long. But when I'm playing against someone else, then the obssessive, competitive nature comes out. And I become like an addict who needs a fix, who needs more than anything to never stop. So I don't.

I just got this modem for my playstation that lets you play online through the cable internet on Sunday. Do you know how many hours I've already played? Let's just say a lot. Like 'Bush sitting quietly in a mini-chair among a bunch of elementary school kids instead of actually getting up and making some sort of decision about the fact that two planes just flew into the world trade centers'- kind of time. Slow motion time. The rest of the world seems to warp around me at my playstation.

Needless to say I blame all this on the speed of light. I mean, I'm in Happy Valley for goodness sakes. How many people would I be able to play video games with without this whole internet thingy? And the internet and it's ability to globalize is a direct result of the fact that light (or more properly electro-magnetism) moves really, really fast.

Welcome to the future. Or what's left of it.

Quantum Theology...

2004-10-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

Now, I will begin by saying that I sympathize with the desire to 'connect' our idea of spirituality with what we think science is saying about the world around us. That's actually quite a noble idea, I think. If Creationism spits on the hundreds of years of science (for a minute just stop and think about how many millions of hours have gone into developing science over the last few hundred years vs. how many hours probably went into coming up with creation theory?- which was, by the way only pioneered in the last century or so), then 'quantum theology' seeks to reunite the soul with what we believe to be true about the material world.

I also sympathize with the idea of using the story that science tells us as a sort of poetry, with which to 'explain' other more complicated scenarios in the world. If you go to the following website, http://www.acns.com/~mm9n/quan/ , you will see all sorts of analogies made between Christ, and various spiritual states, and the 'states' that physical particles take in quantum mechanics. As long as (and I haven't read through this particular web site enough to know whether or not this is true) you don't start thinking that you can really describe 'spritual' states in the analogous ways that one describes quantum mechanical states. The analogy is POETIC. Nothing more. Any correspondence with reality has to be assumed coincidence at this point.

But that's where my sympathies end.

I have a bachelors degree in physics from the University of Maryland. I have taken several graduate classes in physics, including a course on Quantum Field Theory, the most relevant model of 'quantum mechanics' which has been tested and shown MORE ACCURATE than any scientific theory EVER (including gravity, or any other theory you could name right now). More fundamental than gravity? Damn, now that's a theory.

Does this make me an expert? Certainly not. The experts have devoted half their lives to studying these subjects. But it makes me more qualified than all the people who read a few books on quantum mechanics that used pictures and words, and no mathematics. It makes me more qualified than anyone whose understanding of quantum mechanics comes from reading several of Depak Chopra's books.

Now Quantum Mechanics is crazy, strange, and mysterious. All physical theories are, in a sense. Quantum Mechanics is that much stranger. That much more mysterious. Einstein himself (though he was adamently against quantum mechanics even until his death) said that 'the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious'.

But I think such experiences should be authentic, not concocted from a misunderstanding of an incredibly dense and intractable theory.

It's true, quantum mechanics asserts that there are certain properties of matter, that we never knew were possible before. There is a sense in which particles can be 'connected' even from millions of miles away (a very particular sense, and it's not true for every pair of particles).

But how does that translate into 'we can affect eachothers thoughts just by thinking positive things'? The fact is, long before quantum mechanics ever came about, scientists believed in forces that moved between particles (gravity, electricity and magnetism, etc), but that didn't imply that we could affect eachother's thoughts by our powers of gravitation!

The strange thing is, things like 'quantum theology' usually don't give us a more profound sense of mystery, they seem to rather want to take it away. They seek to explain things, rather than sit with some sense of wonder.

See science doesn't give us the 'end all' of explanations. I can sit you down and explain everything I ever learned in physics, right down to the very explicit and abstract mathematics of how two electrons repel eachother...but you can ask, 'why do they repel?' 'Why do electrons have this negative charge?' 'Why do they have the mass that they have?' All these questions, are unaswered. And when they are answered, I bet my life that they will be replaced with a hundred more. Science, like all knowledge, starts with a few 'givens': The mass of the electron is...photons travel at the speed of light...etc. Then it proceeds to weave these things together in the most complex sort of tapestry you could possibly imagine. It can give you a full account of how you get from A to B, but it can never fully explain why A is so. The mystery is in the fact that A is such and such, AND in the fact that A+B+C+D+E gives us everything we know about the world. Why should the world be so 'elegant'? That is one of the most profound mysteries of science. The fact that we can predict future events based on A+B+C+D+E is astounding.

Now a psychic also begins with a few 'givens': I have the power to read minds, the positions of the stars correspond to certain character traits, etc. And the tapestry they weave? It's not very interesting. It doesn't get much more complicated than it's assumptions. It's ability to predict is at best, not very good (explain how it's possible for so many psychics to exist and for so many lotteries to still have gone unclaimed? Or how come no one saw 9/11 before it happened? Believing in pychics, I think, requires more of a suspension of disbelief than believing they don't exist).

Where does that leave quantum theology? It's a novelty if you are just using it as a means of saying 'we're like the electron, Christ is like the proton...'. Interesting maybe, clever perhaps, but not very useful. If you are claiming that quantum mechanics implies there are 'powers' we have, or something fundamental about the nature of human beings that we have overlooked... now you are treading on dangerous ground.

Now, if you can write down the Schrodinger equation for a two 'person' system, and solve it for the trillions and trillions of neurons in the two brains, to show how 'positive thoughts' can be exchanged between people...well, then I am all ears. But if I were a betting man, I'd say it's highly unlikely...seeing as how it's difficult to solve a physical system with 'several' particles, let alone several trillion.

Of course the greatest irony isn't with the people who believe in all sorts of crazy things buying into quantum theology. That's perfectly understandable. Some people just find our world boring. They'd rather invent their own. I can actually sympathize with that. There's a certain freedom in it, that many of us will never really experience. It has it's dangers, but for the most part, it's probably pretty harmless. And who knows, maybe even more fun.

No, the greatest irony is with people who put a great deal of trust in an object like the bible, and then also pick up on these ideas of quantum mechanics inter-mixed with theology. Now you don't have be a bible-thumping literalist, to believe the bible should be 'interpreted with care'. It is a complex book, which presents a great many challenges. The last thing you want is some quack coming along and telling the world that the bible says God loves genocide. And yet when you hear the quack telling you that quantum mechanics says that our souls can be connected through the 'magic' of the science, you are all ears. It hasn't even crossed your mind that these people probably haven't cracked a physics book a day in their whole life. If they didn't learn physics, than they don't know physics. So how can they claim to tell you what physics says about the world?

If you want mystery, just start reading about physics. Read about Schrodinger's box and the EPR Paradox. You will get some real understanding of the beauty of the science, and the mysteries that just emerge from no where. You don't have to 'invent' them. Trust me, they are already there.

And if you are looking for mysteries concerning our more human nature (not our 'particle' nature), what more do you need to know? We exist. We exist. We exist. That strange 'truth' should keep you steeped in mystery for the rest of your life. No need to invoke the rules of quantum mechanics to 'add' to it. Quantum mechanics has nothing on our existential crisis.

In the beginning...

2004-10-23T01:44:00.000-07:00

there was God. And God was. God wasn't 'alone', because God had never been with anyone else. Still, God knew that somehow God had been created, though God didn't know how and God didn't know why. So God decided to create a universe Godself, because God knew that creation was natural.

So God created the universe in an instant, letting energy swell up from the emptiness that had existed before. God created gravity first, so that the universe would never grow so large that it was almost empty again.

Then God created the intermolecular forces, and the electromagnetic force, so that the energy would continually bounce around making new shapes and configurations, and so God could sit back and watch the universe develop in it's own unique way.

God watched for several billion years as stars and galaxies formed, while others exploded. God waited several billion more to see one plant among the seventeen trillion, develop in just the right way so that a thing called 'life' was created.

God watched this life grow and develop. God watched it learn, and God watched it pass along the things it had learned through the DNA that lived inside it's blood.

God cried at every funeral, and God laughed with every joke. God was angry when there was suffering, and happy when there was joy. God loved to watch baseball.

God was tired, confused, energized, and in love.

Most of all, though, God was curious. God was constantly wondering how these creatures who could never really make up their own minds as to what they believed or how they felt, had such an easy time in deciding the same things for God.

Doogie Did It First...

2004-10-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

Let me take you on the 'train of thought' that my mind rode this morning.

I was in the shower (don't think anything evocative is coming, think swim trunks and a rubber ducky) this morning, thinking about my health insurance, because, let's be honest, can we really think about health coverage too much?

Then I started thinking about the sorts of doctors that are covered under my plan. It's a 'cheap' plan, relatively speaking, so does that mean they send us to the lousy doctors who can't charge a lot because they aren't any good?

Then I thought about the fact that probably a great many doctors choose to make less than they could in a desire to really be able to help people who can't afford crazy expenseive health coverage.

Then I started thinking about my ex-girlfriend who's in medical school right now, and how she always talked about being one of the those doctors that tried to help the poor, so that would mean sacraficing some of the income she could potentially be making.

Then I started thinking about how she was super smart, and I wondered if she was going to finish medical school early.

Then I started thinking about Doogie Howser, because he finished medical school at like 16, or something ridiculous like that.

Then I thought about how every night before Doogie went to bed he would sit down and write a few sentences that captured the essence of the days lessons, in that hideous metallic blue writing against a greenish-black screen.

Then I thought about the fact that Doogie was just missing a few key ingredients (namely the existence of an INTERNET and a decent broadband connection) to turn that electronic journal into a blog.

So I think we all owe a lot to Doogie. Don't you think?

Sometimes, it's what you don't know...

2004-10-20T22:43:00.000-07:00

To all those people who believe it's only a matter of time before we have the world all figured out, I say, 'bah humbug'. Why don't we just tell all the little kids around the world that Santa Claus doesn't exist while we're at it?

Has it ever occurred to you that for all the things we've learned, for all the vast amounts of knowledge we've acquired, there is so much out there we don't have a clue about?

I've been banging my head up against a wall. Thinking about Prime numbers. They are slippery little bastards. It should be so simple. 2,3,5,7, ... you remember, right?

So why is it that we still don't know so many simple things about them?

Do you have any idea how hard it is to 'factor' (remember a*b=c means a and b are factors of c) a large number that is the result of multiplying two primes?

I mean, seriously stop and think about this for a minute. Think about all the things we know about electrons, quarks, color TV's, black holes, biology, economics, and Microsoft Windows. Now think about the fact that even given all these tremendous accomplisments, if I give you a number with a couple hundred digits, you couldn't even tell me what integers multiply together to get to that number. Not if you told your computer to divide that number by every single other number for your entire lifetime.

But in the end, doesn't it make life a little more interesting? I mean, do we really want to know the fundamental equations of the universe to a T? Isn't it nicer to have some wiggle room?

Besides, even if we get all this math and physics stuff worked out, we still have some other problems to tackle. Like, how do our brains work? And how do we exist?

You can solve all the infamous problems you want. At the end of the day these last few questions will keep you awake at night.

Sweet dreams.

Is God Good?

2004-10-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

I was hanging out with all sorts of great people this weekend. Among those, was my boy T. Let me tell you about T. This guy is just one of the most genuine people you could ever meet. T not only has a big heart, he's got a big ol' brain to go with it, the sort that an INT like myself can really appreciate.

T was breaking down philosophy for me this weekend.

'T, I want to understand Kierkegaard. Can you break him down for me?'

T blew my mind yesterday, people. He straight blew my mind.

T said, 'God is not Good, God is God.'

Did you hear that people? T has spoken.

Now, for those of you who are having what amounts to a spiritual heart attack, try and follow me here.

Christianity has always run on the assumption that God is good. Thus, to be like God, we should be good, and to be good, we should be like God. But what does it really mean to say that God is good?

Saying that God is good, is paramount to saying that God is God. It's just a tautology. A truth by definition. P is P. It's an identity. 1=1.

Because when we say that God is good, we are defining 'good' via who God is.

I don't know that God is 'good' in the traditional way that we use the term 'good'.

Good is an ethic. Our ethic is to do good. Doing good is following the golden rule. 'Do unto others...etc'. We all know what it means to be good.

But to be like 'God'? That's another story. And it seems to me that maybe we've gone too far in assuming that God is good. I must admit, I'm the worst offender in this case.

The plain and simple fact is, we don't really know who God is. And the little stories we have about him, that may or may not be true, certainly don't support the claim that he always acts in a way that could be described as 'good'. God gets angry, he changes his mind, he commits genocide. Yes, people, that's what the bible says about him.

Now you can believe those stories, or you can choose to believe that God would never do such things. If that's your choice, then what else do you have to go on?

It looks like we can either say God is not always good, or we just can't say much about him at all. Except that in all probability, He isn't a 'He' afterall. I mean, what would be the odds?

What about the idea of God as love? T says it comforts him to believe that God is love.

I don't pretend to understand exactly what T is saying when he says that God is love, but let me give you my own explanation for such a statement.

Love, is the undeconstructable. It's that thing that simply exists. It's the state we are most naturally born into. Being good, that's an ethic. We constructed it. It's our best approximation of 'love' in it's rawest form.

Love is something that we can't describe. A state of being that transcends our individual lives. Being good is something that we do locally, at a particular place and time.

Think about the way our universe works. Imagine if we could all be 'good', all the time. What would that look like? Well, if you stop and think about it, you begin to realize that it's just not possible. You will always find yourselves in situations where you must choose, and which ever choice you make, someone will be left to suffer more than someone else.

Jesus was a human being (whatever you believe about his divine nature- you have to admit he was confined to the laws of space and time). He lived just like us. Jesus was 'good'. He had an ethic. It was an ethic that he believed was part of a bigger 'state' of being, a participation in a calling to something 'higher'. Something with more purpose than we could ever create for ourselves.

But to call that something 'good' is to underestimate how little we understand it.

And to justify God's actions based on the idea that God defines 'good' is a misunderstanding of the ethic of 'good'.

All we can do is make decisions based on our ethics. And as spiritual people, we believe, we have hope, that even though all our good actions still can't add up to a world that is free of suffering, that somehow we all exist in this state of 'love' with God and with eachother.

God exists in a theoretical state that we can never reach. Therefore to try and understand how we should act based on God's actions, well that seems a bit misguided.

But to think about how we should act based on the actions of Jesus, who was at his base, an ethical man ('love your neighbor as yourself'? How much more ethical can you get?), that is the path of 'goodness'.

So there is the ethic of being good. There is the 'love' that we practice, which is paramount to saying that we are in relationship with one another and obeying the golden rule, and then there is 'Love', some transcendent state which we cannot experience as individuals, but rather as part of a 'connection' of individuals who exist in some larger dimension where our relationship to God gives us purpose.

As for myself, I personally believe Ghandi and MLK and others like them also practiced an ethic of love and 'goodness' which seemed to put them in some transcendent relationship with 'God' and the rest of the world.

So here's the strange conclusion I've drawn from all this: when Abraham went to sacrafice Isaac he WAS NOT acting ethically, just because God told him to do so. I think what Abraham was prepared to do was unethical. It was wrong. He may have been acting in accordance with 'Love', as God's nature in connection with the world. But he was not 'loving' Issac.

We have no choice but to live by our ethics. We can not be willing to suspend these ethics under any circumstances. Not even if it means we must go against the very nature of God.

If for no other reason than we simply have no idea of knowing what God's nature is, outside of our own concept of ethics.

Second Quantization...

2004-10-11T23:48:00.000-07:00

I got done with a 3 hour mid-term tonight, and my brain was fried. I met RM in a computer lab on campus, where she was working late on her thesis proposal. I thought my mind would be mush, and as far as some things went, it was.

Then I stumbled upon a seventeen page transcript of a speech that Steven Weinberg gave on Quantum Field Theory. Damn, I forgot how much I love that stuff.

Give me a story, a beautiul story, and I'm there. But start to try and come up with some logical 'theory' to go with your story, and you lose me. Why? Because I've seen the most beautiful stories that 'logic' has to offer.

Your philosophies, your theologies, they are nice. But 'atonement' doesn't even come close to something like Second Quantization. That's the bees knees, if you are talking 'abstract' ideas.

But if you just want a story, something that speaks on a level beyond the logical aesthetic, then bring on the Old Testament, the Gospels, Greek Mythology, Shakespeare, and of course Garcia Marquez...but do me a favor? Leave your 'airtight' logic behind. Trying to pull a 'logical' doctrine out of one of these stories is like trying to find a logical system in a painting by Monet. What the hell do they have to do with eachother?

You want to see 'logic' at it's best? Beautiful and in the rarest of forms?

I'll be happy to show you if you think you can keep up.

Nite.

Just Being Human...

2004-10-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

'Every human being must be assumed in possession of what essentially belongs to being a man.'
-Kierkegaard

You see, sometimes I think we jump 'over' the point, in trying to reach it.

Why do we spend so much time looking outside of ourselves, to figure out who we are? To figure out what our purpose is?

We all know I have a love/hate relationship with religion at this point. I love it, because well, it provides hope in places where nothing else can. I hate it, because at times it misses the entire point of 'being human'.

We are human. By default. We may not be able to 'define' it, but we sure as hell know it when we see it.

So why do we spend all of our time considering what we should be? Why has religion looked elsewhere to find what is by it's very definition, inside of us all?

You see, if God is good, and there is Goodness inside us, then we should be able to find it by looking inside of us.

Christianity says, God is good, we are not, but thanks to Jesus, God is inside us, and so we are 'good', but it's not really 'us' it's God inside of us.

So where do I come into all of this? Remember me? The one asking the question in the first place?

'Stop being selfish'. I know, I know. Be selfless.

What a strange word. Empty yourself. Give up who YOU are, naturally filled with evil.

If I was evil, why should I want to give that up? Because of hell? That certainly sounds like a 'selfish' reason to play the game of being 'good'.

Either we are selfish, or we are not. I'm not concerned with (at the moment) what Jesus may or may not be inside of me. What am I?

What is it to be human?

Not what should I be, or what should 'humanity' become...but simply, what are we now?

I believe, like Kierkegaard, that we are in the act of becoming. I also happen to think, that is the point.

I happen to believe it's magical, mysterious, divine. This act of becoming. It hurts my head to think about how we can actually be, but the simple fact is: we are.

So how shall we now live? We should be. And let others 'be'.

You see, the problem isn't that we are all free to do whatever we want (that's what Christianity would have us believe). It's that we don't have that freedom.

Imagine a world in which everyone was allowed to just 'be'. A world in which we could do anything that didn't affect other people's ability to just 'be'. Murder? Rape? Slavery? Hate Crimes? Poverty?

These things wouldn't exist. Because in order for 'everyone' to just 'be', people cannot exercise the power over one another that we do, all the time.

Hmm, being allowed to do 'anything' that didn't 'hurt' someone else. Sounds a lot like 'love your neighbor'.

So 'they' can dream all they want about the day when man realizes his 'true' nature and places himself in a humble position before the Lord.

Me, I'm just looking forward to the day when we can all just 'be'. And in the mean time, I'm just trying to enjoy the experience of being human.

Why Math Is Like Running...

2004-10-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

Some days you wake up, you eat a good breakfast, you feel well rested, and you go out to run a few miles. And it's the most agonizing few miles you could possibly imagine.

Other days you crawl out of bed, your stomach feels horrible (so you skip breakfast), and you drag yourself outside to begin a ten mile run. And it turns out to be quite an enjoyable experience.

What's up with that? It's like your body just chooses when it wants to act nicely, and when it's going to be a pain in the ass.

Sometimes I think the mind is like that too.

I just read a 400 page book about a mathematical conjecture. Factor out the 200 pages or so devoted to biographical/historical background on the problem, and you're down to 200 pages of mathematics. Now this wasn't a text book (my usual reading), it was a 'popular explanation' of a sophisticated mathematical problem. But it was still no easy read.

I did this over the course of a few hours.

The thing is, I'd read this book before, sometime last year. I didn't remember really understanding much of it. Today I seemed to breeze through it. As if the results were 'obvious' (which they are in no way).

So what makes some people runners as opposed to others? I think maybe it's less about natural athleticism than people think. You can develop endurance, speed, etc. Your body can adapt. But what you can't do, is force yourself to enjoy something if you just don't. The people who enjoy running, will come back to it time and time again. Through good runs and bad ones.

Likewise, I think people who enjoy math, are going to come back to it, time and time again. Through good experiences and bad ones.

I think this may be a general principle you could apply to lots of areas of life. Everyone enjoys 'something' enough that they are willing to ride out the frustrating times. Now granted, some people have just been blessed with talents on top of all this to make them super freaks (Jordan, Tiger, Fischer, Einstein...). But for the most part, 99% of the world is run by ordinary people with extraordinary desires.

And I take some comfort in that. Because while I consider myself to be rather smart, no way can I crack that top 1%. Have you seen those guys and gals? It's utterly ridiculous.

There's that saying, 'half of it is showing up'. I think that's true. The runners are the ones who are out front of their houses every morning. The artists are the ones who keep creating something, even when they have no muse. And the mathematicians? Well maybe 1% of them actually understood it all the first time around. But for the other 99% of math geeks, just pulling the book of the shelf is light years of anything anyone else would ever care to do with a text book in mathematics.

Of course I could take this analogy to that next level: faith.

As far as my faith goes, I stopped pulling the book off the shelf years ago. But there's something that I just can't quite let go of. Some reason I feel like I should keep showing up. Even if I have no idea 'where' to show up anymore. Maybe one day something new will click.

Can I get an Amen?

One of the many...

2004-10-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

You think it's hard enough trying to find meaning given that each of us is one out of six billion people in this world, and possibly a greater number of 'beings' in our universe?

Now imagine you are one of six billion people, who are one species on one plant and an entire universe of a gazillion planets, and on top of that, there are an infinite number of 'universes'.

Ok, so now I'm one person, on one planet, in one galaxy, in one particular universe in an infinite 'multiverse' of universes.

Now imagine for every single universe (which there are already an infinite number of), there's a seperate 'universe' for every single possibility that could exist in a particular universe.

Is your head about to explode?

This is the world that MANY scientists now live in. A world in which there are not only an infininte number of universes where 'I' don't exist, but also an infinite number of universes where I do exist, in all the various ways 'I' could be different and still be 'me'.

The universe is just a 'particular' combination of all the energy there is available.

I think that's why most people who see the world this way, don't spend a whole lot of time contemplating their place in it. It's too overwhelming. You see, to many people, God just has to be bigger than our planet, our solar system, and even out universe. For people who believe what modern science has to offer in the way of a 'worldview', God has to be so big, that it's not only hard to imagine how God could be so 'infinite', it's hard to imagine what it would even mean to have a 'God' in this 'world' anyways.

You know what? I totally sympathize with them.

If the world embodies aspects of God, but the world we see is just one of an infinite possibilities for the way things are 'elsewhere', what does that say about God? It's hard to imagine God having a 'personality'.

You see once upon a time there was this strict divide between what we thought was 'real' and what was 'possible'. Now science seems to be telling us that there's no much that isn't 'possible'. Gravity always works 'here', in our universe. But the fundamental equations of nature seem to suggest that it might not 'work' elsewhere, at least not in the way we tend to think of it.

What is God, if almost everything imaginable is 'possible'? What does God mean if he doesn't embody everything that's possible?

There are two general directions you could go with this (well, an infinite number, but two obvious ones, anyways): 1) God may or may not exist, but science tells us that the term God must be applied to vaguely and abstractly that there's really no sense in talking about God at all. A respectful route, I think. 2) God may exist, but maybe He isn't all the things we've always associated with him. Maybe God isn't bigger than out 'world', but just another sojourner. One who is older, wiser, and more 'powerful', but nevertheless not the being by which everything is defined.

Maybe God isn't the surveryor of all. Maybe he's just an old man living on top of a mountain. Wise, mostly kind and gentle, and a little bit crazy.

Wow. I can just hear the presbyterians screaming 'heresy' as we speak.

Short stories...

2004-10-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

I'm starting a new blog, which will feauture short stories by yours truly.

the site is shortones.blogspot.com

I'll let you know (all four of you), when a story gets posted.

Wish me luck.

Tu Tu...

2004-10-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

That guy. Don't even get me started. Last night on the Daily Show, John Stewart called him, 'the nicest man he'd ever met'. I think he may be the nicest man I've never met.

Sometimes I get down my myself. I start thinking, 'hey you are not the first person to say that power is evil and that war will never beget peace.' I start wondering if my older more cynical counterparts were right. Maybe we don't really have a choice. Maybe I'm naive. Maybe I don't understand how the world really works. That I have no idea what I'm really asking for of the world.

Then I see a guy like Bishop Desmond Tu Tu. And I think, 'dammit, I was right!'.

I hear him speak and I am absolutely ashamed for ever doubting that you can work against evil without submitting to it at times. I hear him and I think, 'this is what Jesus MUST have been like, I don't CARE what your theology says.'

Winner of a Nobel Peace Prize? A man who stood against aparteid? The first black anglican bishop in South Africa?

And you want to talk about Bush or even Kerry? JFK? Lincoln? Washington? King David?

Please. Who couldn't create the world they want given enough brute force?

And guess what he had to say about homosexuals being ordained in the Anglican ministry?

'For us [the Anglican Church in South Africa] that doesn't make a difference, the sexual orientation.'

He just got serious bonus points there.

He said last night that God is crying for us. That he cannot believe what we are doing (as a country) to the rest of the world. And yet, he also says that God sees those people who are working for good and peace (in our country and around the world), and he says 'YES, YES, THIS IS WHAT I WAS HOPING FOR!'

I'm about this close [holding my fingers close together] to joining either Tu Tu or the Dhali Lama in their crusades for peace. Peace- now that's something worth NOT FIGHTING for.

http://www.tutufoundation-usa.org/home.html

The Teleological Suspension of the Ethical...

2004-10-02T00:03:00.000-07:00

For someone who claims to be 'fed up' with Christianity, I sure as hell do write a lot about it's subjects.

Today, my thoughts (and thus my 'writings') are no different.

Several weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with someone who told me they'd been reading a theologian who claims we have been doing a great unjustice in our hermeneutics (ok, the way I read the bible can hardly be called hermeneutics - but for those hermeneutically inclined...). Apparently when we read all the crazy things God has said or done in the old testament, our temptation to interpret this in light of the 'gentle' Christ, has led us down a back alley of theology. We have not been fair to the text.

When the text says that God was angry, maybe he was angry. Maybe God changes his mind. Maybe, and I will no doubt be struck down by lightning for this, he even makes 'mistakes'.

Sit with that for a moment.

Now, do I take this to the extreme and admit that perhaps God really did order the massacre of so many tribes before the nation of Israel, his chosen people? My first inclination is, of course not. Some dastardly politican wrote that into the story in retrospect. Just like Right Wingers are now telling stories about how God is on our side in the war against the Middle East.

Then I think about this 'new theology'. Maybe it's not so easy. Maybe God does ask things of us that seem suprisingly unethical.

Abraham takes Issac to be sacraficed. God intervenes. Abraham is shown to be faithful, and he keeps his son. God keeps his promise (that Abraham's seed will be spread, which is a highly unlikely situation if Issac succombs to a fatal knife wound to the heart).

Kierkegaard calls this the 'teleological suspension of the eithical'. In essence, Kierkegaard believes in three levels of 'awareness': aesthetics, ethics, religion. As we reach his version of elightenment, or his levels, we proceed from being purely aesthetic (which translates in the modern to materialistic) to ethical (believing in a universal good) to religious (believing in something beyond the ethical - a purpose of sorts).

He argues that Abraham was being unethical, but he acting out of that 'religious' level, which means he transcended ethics in a sense. He entered into the 'absurd' (an existential term which refers to the sort of irrationality of rationality), and thus he rose to a level where he was beyond ethics. For to Kierkegaard, it's this religious element that gives 'ethics' it's real meaning and depth.

So maybe there are times when someone can be doing something that seems unethical, but in some strange way they are actually in alignment with God's will and purpose for the world.

Maybe there is no ethical explanation for God's actions in the old testament, but only an 'absurdly-religious' one.

And then again, maybe the 'teleological suspension of the ethical' is something Kierkehaard told himself so that he could sleep easier at night. The way predistination people comfort their sorrows by acknowledging that 'no one' deserves God's love, so it's not really unfair that so many people are going to hell- it's what they deserve.

Do I believe God could get angry? Certainly. Do I think he could act almost senile at times (from out viewpoint)? Yeah. Do I believe that he is capable of ordering horrible attrocities like genocide? Absolutely not. Even though the bible seems to suggest this? Even though this new way of thinking of God says it's not fair to impose our 'ethics' back on God?

For all the people who quote Jesus' 'militant' use of language, I have yet to see evidence that he ever orchestrated some sort of 'black panther' type of vigilante revolution.

The man spoke in parables. He was cryptic. He was probably a little loopy at times (wouldn't you be wandering around the hot sun in sandals all day long?)

Ghandi was crazy about certain things.

I'm sure MLK had his own issues.

But Ghandi also said, ' it is never noble to kill for a cause, but it may be necessary to die for one'.

That's the life he led. That's the life MLK led. As far as I know, that's the life Jesus led. In fact, I think Jesus epitomizes this. In a sense, Ghandi was a Christ-wannabe, because he spent so much of his life waiting to die in the act of rebellion.

Next time someone tells you that what Abraham was willing to do was the most noble thing, ask yourself if you would ever consider taking your own child's life for ANY REASON AT ALL. Aesthetic, ethical, or religious.

I really doubt the story is meant to be taken literally. If it is, then shame on Abraham, and shame on God. Yeah that's right, I said it.

And shame on anyone who really believes that the ends justify the means. I can think a synonym for 'means'. It's called power. And it's evil incarnate if there ever was such a thing.

Why Kierkegaard felt he had to explain the 'absurd' as often in contrast with the ethical, rather than something additional to it, I will never understand.

Why anyone thinks we should spend time trying to justify these abuses of power rather than working to rid this world of them at all costs (ie admitting some more suffering upon ourselves), I can no longer understand either.

Will Prove Theorems for Profit...

2004-09-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

Got a conjecture that needs proving? Call 1-800-Prove-It today.

Don't really call that number. I have no idea who would pick up on the other line.

Hmm, maybe I should try calling. Just to make sure the idea hasn't been taken yet.

How come people don't gather round in gymnasiums to watch people slave away on chalkboards?

'Ohh, did you see the way he Fourier Transformed that integral? Damn, that was sweet as butter.'

'Naw, dog, he ain't got nothin on Prof Hecke. That man knows algebraic varieties better than Martha Stewart knows insider trading.'

'Snap, son, Hecke couldn't prove the mean value theorem for a straight line.'

Yeah. I guess not so much.

Still, if someone would offer me a job solving math conjectures for a living, I'd be all over it.

Maybe I'll make a cardboard sign and walk out along the highway. I'm sure to get a few takers, right?

The City in the Sky...

2004-09-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

Cuenca is a ten hour drive from Quito. Quito is a ten hour plane ride from Baltimore. So you can imagine my 'excitement' when I walked out of the airport and was told that we were immediately boarding a bus bound Ecuador's 'other city' in the south.

Now when I say 'bus', I don't mean to conjure up images of a nice comfortable tour bus, with plush seating and personal television screens. Think 'school bus', with armrests, and a 13-inch color TV duck-taped to the cieling in the front of the bus. Don't think about smooth sailing on interstate 66: think butt-bruising road-waves with pot-holes the sizes of small valleys.

The strong smell of urine at the bus stop should have been my first hint. The fact that Los lost his hat while he was sleeping (and I use this term liberally here) should have been my second clue.

Still, nothing could have prepared me for my first real night in Ecuador- two and a half miles up in the air. Nothing I'd ever seen before could have even prompted me to dream such visions.

That night, after a hearty meal of celery soup washed down with a fruit drink that doesn't exist outside of the tropics (and for good reason, in my opinion), I stood before a large bay window in a house that sat on a hill which overlooked the entire city.

So you would think that I would be looking down. And I was. But I was also looking up.

Have you ever seen a city that stretched so far into the sky that at night you had a hard time distinguishing between porch lights and the stars? I have.

After Cuenca it was back to Tumbaco, a twenty minute drive outside of Quito. Imagine waking up in the morning to a view of nothing but mile high mountains on all sides (and consider that we were already in a valley that was itself miles above sea level).

So when I try to explain to you that the physical beauty was vastly overshadowed by the beauty of the people, can you imagine why some days I let my mind slip back to the places where I spent the greatest summers of my life?

Sometimes I let myself consider this possibility: what if I could give up all the potential for 'power' that I have here? The chances to get pretigious degrees and make six-digit salaries?

What if I could give up the power I already wield?

What if I could simply get on a plane and leave this world behind? Me and RM (and K of course). Living in a world where our power to 'help' was limited, but so was our power to hurt.

You see, it's becoming more and more clear to me that I cannot save the world. It is not mine to save.

But do you know what is in my power? To forsake the power I have. To refuse to give in to the temptation to simply go with the status quo, and not think about the rather large trail of destruction that I contribute to every day by being a part of our cozy little system here in the United States.

I'm not naive. I understand that anyone in our place would use the power as we have used it. Perhaps in even more unimaginable ways. But that's the point, isn't it?

Somebody has to give it up.

Somebody has to say, 'I know if I put this down, someone else will most likely step in to take my place and use that power against the world, but I also know that if no one ever steps down, there is no way things will ever change.'

It's just a thought I have from time to time.

A question that must be asked, even if I don't have an answer for it. Even if I never will. It refuses to be silenced.

Who am I?

2004-09-24T21:23:00.000-07:00

Better yet, who else is like me?

I don't speak 'geek' very well. I don't know C, C+, or C++. I'm not even very good at Perl or FORTRAN. I couldn't tell you how the Lord of the Rings the movie was different from the books, because I never read them. Never really had much desire to.

I don't read science fiction, though fiction in general is sort a new thing for me.

I wear sandals, cargo shorts, gap collared shirts and a Nautica visor to class most days. I wear Addidas sweat pants on the weekends. When I have to dress up it's not a problem because I have thirty five different button up shirts from Banana Republic. I try too hard for the geeks.

But who am I fooling? I don't work out enough to 'fit' into those shirts very well. My $120 grey pants from BR are way too big. I have a cowlick that ALWAYS sticks up in the back, now matter how much gel I put in my hair.

I love basketball, but I can't hang with anyone who actually grew up playing the sport. I'm getting into football, but I still don't really understand it. My fanaticism for college basketball is as close as I've gotten to the sports aura that surrounds most guys. I guess I don't try enough for the frat boys.

I know a lot of really smart people. But not very many people who think about the sort of problems that get me most excited. Who else besides PhD students in math read books about Differential Geometry and Number Theory in their spare time?

Maybe I could be cooler, if I'd go out more, spend more time in the gym, and learn all the players on the Redskins. If I put down the books a little more often. Maybe not.

I want to save the world, but I don't even know where to start. I don't understand my own emotions enough to assume I can make some assessments of anyone else out there. I love people, I could talk with people all day. Until I get bored. Then I have to run away and remind myself how exciting math can be.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a NF trapped in the mind of a NT. Maybe it's the other way around.

I won't sacrafice my need to save the world if that's what's required to go to MIT. But I hate the thought of sacraficing MIT if that's what it takes to save the world.

It bothers me that the 'cool' kids don't talk about enough things that are intellectually stimulating. It also bothers me that the geeks don't care what they look like when they go out for the evening.

Hell, I can't even decide if I'm a religious person or an agnostic.

Think of Ghandi. Now think Einstein. Now think of the spectrum between them. I guess I'm somewhere on that line. Somewhere between a soul devoted to saving the world and a mind devoting to analyzing it, is a point of utter mediocrity. That's me. I can't even choose a direction to start walking.

Pretty pathetic, isn't it? (RK, insert your sarcastic comment here)

Hey, being mediocre is still being. There are plenty of people who can't even say that much.

Ok, that's enough thinking for the evening. Time to go rent a dumb movie and watch it.

Funny how it goes...

2004-09-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

When I first started writing, several months ago, I couldn't figure out if I wanted anyone to read these posts or not. Once I got over my page-fright, I started thinking maybe I too could be read by 2,000 new subscribers a month.

Now, here I am, several months, and 4 hits a week later, and I'm thinking maybe this isn't so bad after all. Maybe I didn't need, don't need, the whole world to listen to all these crazy ideas of mine. Maybe I just need a few people. A sincere commenter, and one obnoxious 'anonymous' commenter. Yeah, like we don't know who you are. Cowardly bastard.

The Myth of Color, Macondo, and The Stories We Tell Ourselves...

2004-09-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

Let me be the first to inform you, that color as we know it does not exist. At least not in the way you traditionally think about it. Sure, bananas are yellow, apples are red, and the grass is green. We can agree on that. But can we agree why?

Once upon a time (ok, just an hour ago) I thought, like you, that color corresponded to a particular wavelength of light. Why are apples red? Well, as a physicist I happen to know a thing or two about the color of apples (maybe one of the few things I know anything about given my particular training up this point). You see light from the sun (or a lightbulb) comes in in the form of photons, hitting the molecules that make up the skin of the apple. Now there is light coming in at all wavelengths (which means all different energies of photons- think of it like balls being thrown at you in dodgeball with different speeds- except photons actually travel at the same speed - what were we talking about again?) Ahh yes, so the atoms in the apple skin will absorb only photons with certain energies. The rest will pass through the skin, or get thrown off course and redirected like jets by air traffic controllers. The ones that are absorbed will usually be shot back out rather quickly by the atom. These are the photons with the wavelength of light that we associate with green or red or whatever the color of the apple happens to be.

Right?

Wrong. It turns out that if you look at the 'spectrum' of photons coming off of the apple into your eye, you see light of all sorts of wavelengths. In fact, if you look at something like a banana, you will see just as much light from the orange part of the spectrum as from the yellow. So how does that work?

The short answer is that your brain is a freakin' amazing piece of biological machinery that takes incoming light and converts it into things that we can distinguish. So the upside, your brain is amazing. The down side? Colors really don't exist outside of your head. I mean, for all intents and purposes, we can usually agree on what's red, what's green, etc. But there are no such things as primary colors. There are colors that you cannot create by superimposing different shades of red, yellow, and blue.

So does that mean you should throw your color wheel away?

No. It just means that in our everyday lives we drastically underestimate the degree to which we tell ourselves stories about the world that may or may not be true. Or perhaps better, that may or may not have some universal acceptance.

If the color wheel may not be as real as we once thought, what about our other crazy ideas about how the world works? How much of our worldview is upstairs, rather than a reflection of the way the rest of the world really is? Think about it. Our eye takes in photons, measures their energy, and then gives us this surreal sense of color, which is not inherently an attribute of the photons themselves. So what about what we do with all the other information that we get? The information that doesn't even start out being as well defined as 'the wavelength of a photon'?

You see, there are really photons of different wavelengths. That's not really the issue up for debate. The question is, what do we do with those photons? How does are brain intepret them? The answer is, about as subjectively as you could imagine, while still retaining some universal agreement upon basic colors like blue, red, green, etc.

The myth of color illustrates something else for us though. Myths can convey information too, even when they are not 'true' in a literal sense. If you use your color wheel as a means of mixing paints, well it's going to give you a damned good idea of the color you'll end up with. An aesthetic appreciation for color will still help you with your fashion sense. Just have an understanding of the limitations of our ideas about color. Understand how subjective these things can be. Don't use the misinformed approach to color to create an experiment in which you need yellow photons, so you just capture light being reflected off of a banana.

Macondo, the setting for Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, never existed. And yet it was perhaps a more believeable world than any world we've ever encountered. Why? Because it transcended it's particular place in space and time, and existed as a place we could all access, no matter what our particular geographic or temporal trappings. It still does. Reality froths out of every page. Marquez paints you a picture of streets where you can imagine walking in the evenings, tucking your socks between your shorts and the breeze. He gives us people who we can understand, and others who frustrate us with their obnoxious habits and disregard for respect. He creates a dynamic world, that like our own, circles around and around, so much that you wonder when the ride will ever stop and something else might begin. Charachters who are as good at making the same wrong decisions again and again as we feel we are.

But Macondo is like color, it was always in our heads. What makes it real is the myths we perpetuate. Blue is real because of our shared experience. Not because it is 'true' in an objective, or even quasi-scientific sense.

The question isn't about whether or not to purge our lives of myths (not only is it infeasible, but it's not desirable either). We need myths as much as we need 'facts' or 'information'. The question is, 'what myths shall we choose?'

What stories will we tell?

Will we allow our stories to change, as we come to see a world that is bigger than it was the day before?

If we saw God in color would be be willing to concede that perhaps someone else might see him in a different color?

Maybe God isn't colorless. Maybe God, like the banana, is made up of all sorts of wild and magnificent colors.

You could call them blue, red, green, etc. But maybe they go by different names. Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, and Martin Luther Kind Jr.

Believe me, I can understand the churches desire to maintain a coherent identity. To tell a particular story out of the many that exist. To live out one particular 'way'. But shouldn't we be telling stories with the purpose of uniting, rather than isolating? Shouldn't we be perpetuating myths that can be understood by more, rather than fewer, people?

Shouldn't we give up on the idea that we are somehow God's chosen?

Shouldn't we consider the idea that we have been neglecting the stories that are going on around us every single day? The physics geeks. The investment bankers. The neighbors on either sides of our house.

No offense to the brilliantly wonderful preachers I know (a few anyways), but do we really need to listen to sermons from one or two people's perspective each week, when there's an entire blogosphere of unique and interesting (and extremely diverse) ideas from which to get our daily dose of profound and life altering perspectives?

I think a sense of community is extremely important. I applaud the church for being a place where people can come each week, or several times a week, to gather and discuss important issues and just enjoy the company of people they know. But would it really be so bad to just go home, and instead of being at church each week, to sit instead in neighbors' living rooms, town halls, on little league stands, and in book groups? Is it more 'spiritual' to discuss heavenly things around candles on Sunday morning than it is to talk about the sad state of the war at the water cooler on Monday morning?

I'm not suggesting we get rid of churches. I'm only suggesting that maybe the church is just one way to achieve a spiritual community. And maybe the point shouldn't be to make bigger churches. To seek out people who are already asking questions and finding good conversations in other places. But rather to simply provide a place for anyone who wants to join together over a particular set of stories, to just come and be. Not to be any more spirtual than they would otherwise, but just to be.

Ghandi said be the change you want to see in the world. Perhaps the same could be said for our stories. Go live them out. Don't worry about when or where. Just do it (to paraphrase a Nike advertising genious). Be the stories you wish to tell.

My story? It's about a guy who is really smart, but not very organized, and realizes that despite all his desires to get the world to agree to donate money to some exciting cause, he will probably not see the project through to fruition, and he's never been very good at asking people for money anyways. Instead, he realizes that people like Bill Gates made tons of money just for being smart and creative. So maybe he could find something he loves to do, use it to make some money on the side, invest as much of that money as he can in changing the world, and then hope others might see him and be encouraged to do the same. And maybe he'll write a novel with subliminal messages about how power is the ultimate evil, and maybe a few people will even read this book and be presuaded to give up the little power they have in exchange for a little more humility and set out on a quest themselves to shoulder some of the burden of the suffering that weighs down the world.

I wanted to convince business men with creative money-making businesses to donate their money to causes that I found worthy. Now I think maybe I'll just show them what I mean. Or die trying anyways. And that's all one can do right? Try?

Who else spent their lives saving the world and never fully achieved their dreams? Oh yes. Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr, and Jesus (among many others). Not bad company I'd say.

Of course I will never make the impact that these men have made, mostly because I believe that they were better, less selfish people. But I'll work with what I got. Maybe it'll even mean more since I started off being a worse person and gave what little goodness I had to give. Hah. Maybe that's not the right way to think about this.

Boy was this a tangentential post. Welcome to the mind of an INTP.

In the middle of the night...

2004-09-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

I go walking in my sleep, through the mountains of (???), through the river so deep...

It's been a long day. I'm tired. RM is tired. I want to write about so many of the things I've been thinking about today, but I should go back to my apartment and go to sleep. Me and RM had a little quarrel this evening, before she fell asleep.

She knows a lot. She has a good memory. She's an excellent researcher. Maybe the best information gatherer I've ever known. I'm pretty sloppy when it comes to gathering information. She makes it so much easier.

But I'm stubborn. I don't just take her word for it, sometimes. I think that hurts her, thinking that I wouldn't trust things that came from her mouth.

Maybe she's right. Maybe I need to just learn to relax, to believe things, even if I haven't run them through my own personal battery of tests. It's hard. Finding 'flaws' is what I do. I think she thinks I'm looking for flaws in her.

She couldn't be more wrong. I may be stubborn, but I'm also madly in love. Thinking that she may have misunderstood the Napster rules for burning or downloading music is not tantamount to thinking she's foolish or flawed. It's just what I do. I second guess things. If God said something about Napster's copyright policy I'd probably ask him to show me the webpage as well. Sad as that is.

You know the one thing I've never second guessed? Why it is that I love her. Or the fact that I love her more than I could ever imagine loving anyone, for that matter.

As I sit here, writing, waiting to return to my humble abode, I'm watching her sleep, all curled up on the bed.

There are moments when we want things, when we act certain ways, that aren't in rhythym with who we are, and what we're about. When I act out against her, I'm acting out with my own silly and foolish ways. These are not the things that matter to me. They are moments of weakness. Times of ego-centrism.

Everything I am about can be summed up in one little woman, who's shifting about between the bed and the covers. She's probably dreaming about how obnoxious I can be. I don't blame her.

I will fall asleep dreaming about a world that can't be so bad, if she is the product of it's ways.

So I'll leave her to sleep, and I'll go home. And tomorrow I'll be back to writing about things that I have ABSOLUTELY no control over, like saving the world.

Full Circle...

2004-09-20T18:30:00.000-07:00

People give me a funny look when I tell them I've ended up at Penn State studying, of all things, Meteorology. How did I go from wanting to get a PhD in theoretical particle physics, to studying hurricanes?

Except it's not really such a far departure. I'm studying the physics of the atmosphere. I'm living in an academic community. I spend my afternoons writing down equations on white boards. Not really so different from my days as an undergraduate physics student at Maryland.

Yes, I'll admit, it's a bit easier. The homework takes less time, and the concepts are just slightly less abstract. No extra spacetime dimensions, no curved manifolds, no seventeen page tensor equations.

Still, it's exactly the sort of place you'd expect to find an INTP. Solving problems that are at best, several degrees seperated from the ongoings of the world around me. I'm not learning how to predict the weather. I'm computing the scattering cross sections of radiant energy in spherical coordinates, ok?

Yesterday it hit me. All I've ever wanted to do was solve problems. Problems that can be done with pencil and paper, and if need be, even an occasional computer program. Yesterday I worked with a new friend on a new kind of problem. One that is sophisticated, but in different way from the mathematics books that line the top of my bookshelf.

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that these computers we type on, the electronic age which has opened the doorway to this thing we call globalization, has all come from theories that began with a few strange experiments and lots of pencil and paper almost a hundred years ago?

Sometimes I think that my problems are too far removed from reality. Sometimes I think that there is no point if they cannot change the world today. But who ever changed the world in a day? In their lifetime? It takes time. And even then, it will only change so much.

The issue isn't about how much change. It's about never giving into the desire to become complacent, or disparaged. To never get so caught up in dreaming about saving the world that you don't take some steps to get started.

Here's to getting started.

Here's to studying the Lorenz equations of chaotic atmospheric dynamics and trying to understand what small changes could be made to a tropical storm to prevent it from ever developing into a hurricane.

Here's to working with youth groups or at-risk youth, or any other local way that one can reach out and simply be there for even just one other person who exists outside the world of, 'the people I'm responsible for caring about'.

Here's to conversations about saving the world that may one day lead to a group that dreams up ideas that seem to abstract at the time, but which can one day be used as the basis for actually solving a real world problem.

Here's to the belief that the world is healing and becoming more self aware, perhaps even inspite of efforts like mine.

I am the way...

2004-09-20T02:23:00.000-07:00

No, not me. I know it sounds like I may believe that some days.

"I am the way..."

Think about it. Just literally think about it. I am the way. Not the destination.

The light of the world. I find it amusing, now thinking about it, that we are always comparing Jesus to 'light'. The light isn't the point. The light allows us to see what is really there. If there was nothing there, what would be the difference between light and darkness? Merely a subjective distinction of colors. The light matters because there is something else there. What is there? The world.

Jesus, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. These men brought light to the world around them. They were beacons in a fog that has been perveyed by the myth that there is no point to any of this. They are the lenses through which we are able to see more clearly.

A reminder that there is a mystery to our existence which can only be answered by a few choice words: love one another.

Asking why we should have purpose is like asking why the world is divided into space and time. We cannot see them, but somehow we know that they exist.

Today as I listened to a man speak of the suffering that is happening across the world, my paradigm was stirred once again.

What if the incarnation wasn't so much about God wearing human frailty so that he couldn't save himself, but even more so that he became unable to save the world?

I realize I am charting into the stormy waters of hypocrisy, but please, if you will hear me out for just a moment.

Maybe, just maybe, the life of Jesus wasn't about saving the world, but of a man who wanted with every fiber in his being to save it, but simply could not.

If you have the ability to save the world, and you don't, isn't that just wrong? Isn't that the very definition of injustice? But what if you can't save the world? What if you are the creator of the universe, and you realize that you have created a world which cannot be saved? That the very nature of this world, is that suffering must exist along side of love. You can no more remove suffering from this world than you can remove oxygen from the air. It is one of the necessary components for life.

But instead of ignoring this world, you come into it, and do what you can to save it anyways.

Was Jesus God? I don't know. I tend to believe that he wasn't. I have my reasons, and I don't need to bore you with those details. Still, I believe that he saw the world the way God would have seen the world, the way he sees the world now. He loved the world so much that he was willing to do everything in his power to save it, despite the fact that he knew it could never be so.

I think Jesus saw, as Ghandi and the Buddha, and Martin Luther King, that there is some purpose in the mystery of our existence. That there is some reason in the irrationality of it all. That the purpose already exists, existed, and will exist as long as we are here to live it out, whether we realize it or not.

It would be easy to love someone who was sick if you knew that soon they'd be better and life would go on as usual. But what about the parent who sits for days, weeks, and months by the bed of a dying child? Wouldn't it be easier to walk away? To admit defeat? To cut your losses?

I no longer believe that Jesus is the destination. I feel strange bowing in adoration.

But I am awed. Whether or not he was the son of God, or just a man born of flesh alone, he is the reminder to me that somewhere out there is a God who refuses to cut his losses. Even if it means losing himself at times, amidst all the suffering.

Get over it...

2004-09-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

I think I've spent so much time whining about the church in my blogs that one would get the impression that I don't really have much time to be doing anything else. I guess it's therapeutic for me. To get out this frustration. I can't explain where all of it comes from. Personal experiences. Personal expectations. What I percieve to be other people's expectations for me. Hating the way I used to think about things, and even people, at times. Maybe I need a therapist. Who knows.

I'm certain that it's important to vent. Especially when people can choose whether or not they want to listen (or read). Who am I putting out? I mean between the three people who read my blog anyways, what does it really matter? Still, I think that part of the process is moving on.

I've never been very good at moving on. Things get stuck in my mind until I get stuck. I can't continue. I pull apart everything until I there's nothing around me to do. Except sit around and wonder how the world was so messed up to begin with.

Don't get me wrong. You need people like me. The world needs people like me. People who say, 'no sir- this is not the way the universe works'. Galileo, Copernicus, Ghandi...Jesus. These people pushed against the status quo. They said, 'what if the world could be different.'

My mind is wired to think about how things could be different. And not in subtle ways. In giant, abstract, ridiculous, unpractical, and logically efficient ways. If it weren't for people like me, you wouldn't be reading this, I wouldn't be writing this, and computers just wouldn't exist.

Still, it can be a problem. Because if you are always wondering how things could be different, you often find yourself taking all the wonderful things that already exist for granted.

Einstein was a great physicist because he saw the holes in Newton's theory. Not because he believed it was 'good enough'. He had to invent a whole new paradigm. It wasn't there before.

But he also didn't spend his time bashing Newton's theory and whining about how he wished someone would come up with a better one. He just put his mind to doing it himself. If he had failed, I think it would have been just as respectable, though not quite as inspiring, I admit.

I realize that for every one million wide-eyed, hyper-critical, 'save the world', whiny son of a bitch like me, only a couple will actually break through and change the world. Only some will spark revolutions and change people's minds in an undesputable fashion.

But I also know that the more of us there are at any one time, the more likely something will happen soon.

I'll do my best to get over it. Leave my frustrations behind, and stop picking on the easy targets. Maybe I can use this energy to 'create' rather than destroy.

Sometimes though, you just gotta scream, '*&^%!', and let off some steam.

The Stone Institute...

2004-09-15T23:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm not really comfortable with the name. But still, it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

I've been thinking about all my various schemes to save the world. I've come to the following conclusion: it's a complicated thing. If it wasn't, someone would have already saved the world by now. I have to keep reminding myself- Jesus didn't 'save the world' (at least that's my particular theological belief)- he just nudged it in the right direction. Nudged it real good. Like Buddha and Ghandi, only more so (if it's possible).

Let's assume that I achieved my goal of having 100 million people pay 1$ a day...which adds up to a whopping 365*100=36500 million, or 36 billion dollars a year. That's a hell of alot of money, right? But it's not enough to cure aids in Africa. It's not enough to end poverty here at home. It's just a drop in the bucket of all the suffering that's going on in the world.

JL brought up something in an email today that I had been thinking about all week. What if you could convince people to care more?

Once upon a time I dreamed of a school, an Academy a la Aristotle. I thought it would be a place to study mathematics, science, English, and at the same time reach out to the community. Now I've put math on the back burner. But maybe I can still salvage the idea.

Enter the Stone Institute...a think tank for 'dreaming' of ways to change the world in dramatic and substantial ways.

I'll start small. Pick a small group of 'members', and begin with some managable (ie do-able) projects. Then one day...the world gets saved. Sike. But still, maybe in my attempt to save the world, I'll (we'll) do something to make it just a little better, and I'll sleep a little better at night knowing I'm involved with something along these lines.

Hmm... who shall be on my board?

It's a small world after all...

2004-09-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

Globalization has increased the number of people watching MTV, it's brought European basketball past USA Hoops, and it's delivered a McDonald's to the corner of every city block in every city across the globe with more than 15 people. But rest assured, it's ultimately not changing the number of people you or I can interact with, as much as it's changing the group of people we surround ourselves with. In otherwords cyberspace is just making it possible for us to say hello to people who don't live in the same zip code as us. It is not a world in which we all live and commune together.

Community is an exchange, and let's face it, we only have so much time during which, and energy with which, to exchange. We are finite. Emails and blogs and Red Eye flights have not changed anything fundamental from within our brains. It has not changed the fact that we can only have x number of conversations per day.

It is a double edged sword I suppose. It allows us to find people across the country who share such specific interests with us, but it also means we are free to ignore those around us with whom we feel no affinity. It means we can feel like we are aligned with the democrats, even though we're the only ones in our neighborhood with a Kerry sign on our lawn. We can call out the name of Jesus, and not be afriad, even though we don't go to church much anymore, and our co-workers are atheists.

I'm all for globalization. I'm all for saving the world. All of it. Not just making sure my neighbor has enough sugar for their cake.

But I think it forces us to ask some tough questions. Because we can get so caught up in our little securtity blankets, that we forget that even when we have blogs that are recieving 10,000 hits a day (uh, not me, but somebody I'm sure), we aren't even scratching the surface of the globe. Are we preaching to the choir? Are we running towards the people who share so much in common with us, or are we running away from the people we've put up with for so long?

Of course, in the end, community is about a group of people, sharing with one another. We can't have a conversation with the world. It's not possible. I'm not even sure it's desirable. But the question is, are we having conversations that the rest of the world could understand? Do we even care?

You see the world isn't one big cohesive entity. But it's also more than a bunch of unrelated parts. It's a complicated system of interactions between people, towns, states, countries, and perhaps planets (one day). We are making choices everyday which affect not only our own lives, but the lives of people all across the world (especially here in America). The conversations we have could potentially impact more than the small group of people with whom we are huddled around the proverbial 'roundtable'.

I imagine that the people who set out to 'save the world' find their work quite frustrating, while those who simply set out to save a few, in fact end up saving more than they'll ever realize.

In the end, all we have are our stories. It's important that they are diverse, unique, and custom tailored to our lives. Still, if they are to mean anything to the rest of the world, shouldn't they be told in ways that tie them back into a larger story, the story of our world unfolding?

We cannot afford to tell stories that mean nothing to the people outside of our communities. Doing so divides us from the rest of the world, and freeze-dries our culture in time.

Stories of our spirituality, should they be the most dynamic, rather than the least?

Shouldn't we be searching for ways to broaden our understanding of God, and the universe, and in fact the very words we use for these concepts, rather than trying to pour in the cement?

The church has frozen our spirituality in time. We are asked with every thought, to revisit the writings of Paul, John, or Isaiah. We are asked with every thought to consider the rules from two millenia ago. Sexuality? See Paul. The creation of the universe? See page 1.

Of course, there are many people who are working hard to 'melt' out our spiritual traditions. To give new movement, new freedom to our story. And still I wonder if they are worried about chipping away the edifice by breaking away the ice too quickly. What will be lost?

I say we melt out our traditions and them melt them down to their own liquid state. And then we pump enough energy into these stories, ideas, and traditions, to keep them so hot that they will never solidify again.

'Deconstruction' is not a dirty word. I'm beginning to realize that 'reconstruction' might be the thing which is overrated. It's overlooks one simple thing: when we have dismantled the objects of our construction, we are not left with nothing- we are not left without stories...quite the opposite- we are left with piles and piles of stories, which can now be interrelated in ways that we'd never dreamed of before.

The emerging church just looks plain silly to me (at times- at times it also looks quite beautiful). Church with modern music, fancy artwork, and via video conferencing is still the same old church dressed up in new clothes.

I think we forget that the 'church' came into existence before there was a 'church'. Sound confusing? When people began congregating, "fellowshipping" (I hate this word, it wreaks of I'm a Christian and so are my friends, are you?), eating meals, signing songs, telling stories, they were not doing it for the purpose of having 'church'. Church is just what happened. And it was good. And it worked for them.

Christianity isn't about what happened anymore. It's about trying to recreate a community that was dead and gone long before it ever gained fame, and a community which probably never really existed in the 2-dimensional sense we imagine by looking at the shadow it has casted 2,000 years later.

Do we want church, or do we want a community of people who love eachother, care about the world around them, and agree that we can learn alot from out past? Can't we just desire the latter and then just see what happens?

The thread by which I hang is even finer at this point. Jesus has become an icon to me, perhaps the icon, but none the less just one of many people through whom I'm looking in order to catch a glimpse of God.

Does the term Christian even apply to me anymore? I don't know. I suppose it's a question I'll be asking for the rest of my life. One of many, I'm sure. And I'm just hoping that the answer doesn't really matter as much as all the questions that can be asked by Christian and non-Christian alike.

Christianity has become to me, just one of the many things one could specialize in. An important subject no doubt, but why should it be any more important of a story than those told by everyone else? My story will undoubtably be linked to the story of 'hope' that the Kingdom on earth represents.

I'm not sure that I'll be part of the church's future, but rest assured that it will always be part of mine.

Let's get it started...

2004-09-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

So the current hip-hop song goes. The real lyrics, I'm told are, "let's get retarded", but I guess those aren't so PC.

I've never had a problem getting things started. Books, art projects, songs, websites...but seeing things through to the end? That's such a difficult thing for me. My attention span is quite small for 99.9999% of the things I'm interested in (imagine what it is for things I'm not interested in). I'm starting graduate school, and though my classes are fascinating and I'm actually enjoying doing my homework, I can't help think about all the other projects that I want to 'get started'. My novel, my project to save the world, and all sorts of other ideas floating around inside my head.

But this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I signed up for this. To immerse myself in books and lectures and homework and seminars for the next two years. So I can get my degree, get out, get more money, and get my fill of intellectual stimulation. Then once I have my job in the real world, I can spend my 'free-time' solving math problems, writing fiction, and trying to make the world a little better than the way I found it (how egotistical to statements like that sound?).

On the news right now, Ivan has devastated Grenada, destroying 90% of the homes. Maybe he weather isn't so unimportant. Maybe there's something I can do to help the world right where I'm at.

Ok. Let's get it finished too. Two weeks down, only 102 weeks to go...

The moments in between...

2004-09-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

Who could appreciate a thick slice of blackened Tuna if their stomach didn't growl at some point that day? Who could love the feeling of relief one gets from walking away from a midterm exam, if there weren't all night study sessions throught the week leading up? Who could appreciate the new season of dramas and comedies if there weren't a summer spent with reruns?

Finn, my Bearded Dragon, is eating all the Kale he can chomp through at the moment, because Kale is a rare treat from his incompetent 'owner'.

Dexter, my roomate's dog, is enjoying his only mealtime in the day.

I am sitting at my kitchen table, just trying to enjoy the moment. A moment of silence.

RM is the most understanding person I know. She understands my introversion better than most people.

I need moments like this. But that's the strange thing. I used to think I needed hours, days, or weeks to myself. Not in complete isolation, but not in conversation either. I don't need so much time to myself anymore. Time to myself is overrated when compared with time spent with my favorite people. RM, and my boys. Easy E. Moms and pops. These people make life more interesting than all the quantum chromodynamical equations in the world.

My mother once told that I have to realize that no other person can complete my life. I would have to say I agree with that. There is no single person who makes us whole. But don't mistake that with thinking that we can be whole without people. People are a necessary, although not a sufficient condition for being emotionally healthy. You certainly need some sense of individuality...but just realize that such individuality isn't about holding steadfast to the belief that you will be alright by yourself. It may not be Love, with an upper case L, but you need to love and to be loved. By a friend, family, by anyone you can find that has the ability to change you and to be changed by you.

There is no me. There is only us. Our sense of individuality comes in understanding that no matter who comes and goes in our lives, we will always find the strength within ourselves, the courage, to enter into some kind of 'us'.

And yet paradoxically, love convinces us that we can not exist without these other people whom we have bonded to already.

Do you want to know the biggest reason that I have for holding onto some belief in something like heaven? Two letters. Any guesses?

To be a black woman...

2004-09-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

I used to think the greatest compliment anyone could give me was to say that I was 'Einstein' in a young man's body. Then, the other day, I heard the greatest compliment I think anyone could ever recieve. 'He's a black woman in a white man's body'. Could there be any greater praise? Had Jesus been walking amongst us (and had he ACTUALLY been white instead of Arab, which is what he was), do you think perhaps they would have said that about him?

Think about it. What must someone have done to be described as a black woman in a white man's body? Putting yourself in place of (1) an African American, and (2) a female one at that. To live, breathe, and act as though justice for you meant justice that is equally fair for the black women in the world.

Maybe even better, a black female lesbian. The world certainly is working against you there.

After a discussion I had with RM last night, I'm even more aware now of the subtle ways in which our society at large has perpetuated the patriarchy, and the heterosexual white patriarchy in particular.

And then there is the church. No doubt, there is 'partiarchy' written all over the walls of our cities, our towns, our neighborhoods. So why pick on the church? Because the church was supposed to be different. It is supposed to be different. And because I don't champion American flags any longer, I don't champion the power of capitalism, and so I'm left with this question...should I continue with my struggle to champion the cross?

I am starting to think that the relationship I have with the church is not one of an ungrateful, or 'confused' son, who's trying to workthrough his relationship with his loving and understanding father. That may be where I stand with God, but with the church? It's feeling more and more like an abusive relationship. I feel guilty for wanting to leave, and she (the church) has made me feel that way. 'How could I leave her?' 'She only wants what's best for me.' 'How can I have a relationship, or a quest for God without her?' 'What about the friends I know only through her?'

I've waited for her, to change. To change drastically. But she's addicted. It's that damn book. It's a good book, don't get me wrong. A fascinating book. But too much of anything, the abuse of anything, is never a good thing. She can't think for herself. She can't trust her conscience without consulting the wisdom of ages. That's why she can't just come out and say:

Homosexuality isn't about right and wrong, it's about diversity.

Sex may be like fire, but what the hell kind of sense does it make to say that only married people should play with fire? (You think marriage makes sex less dangerous? Right. Would you please just stop and think about this idea for a minute? I mean really, really think about it. Apart from you're denominational upbringings. Can I just say that sounds idiotic?)

Getting drunk isn't usually the best thing you can do with your time, but many times it isn't the worst either.

Women aren't tall enough to play in the NBA, but other than that, where are all these differences you've preached about for years and years and years? They are a myth. Yeah, me and RM are different, but so are me and my brother, and my father. What's your point?

Well, some people see these new things, and they are trying to do something about it. I am glad for people like that. People who can tolerate the bullshit. Because that's what this is all about. Horribly oppressive bullshit. It's absolutely dispicable the way Christians (not just the Right, but evangelical Christians as a whole) can't come out and say homosexuality is a valid lifestyle.
Or the way that we have to try and defend the biblical massogeny. Why not just call a spade a spade? We've all made mistakes. The people who lived thousands of years ago knew less, and so they made MORE mistakes, not less.

I just don't see what good will come out of staying in this unhealthy relationship. I'm waiting for the church to grow a spine. Sometimes you're going to offend people. But some people need to be offended. They need their holy carpet pulled out from under them. Not so you can show them the right way, but so that they can learn for themselves how cruel their current worldview really is.

I have faith that there are already many churches out there that have grown up, and moved on. I look forward to finding those places. To meeting those people. But for now, I think it's time for me to spend some time going solo, spiritually speaking.

I'm grateful for the BM's in the world who have more patience (probably more love too) for the church, at large. Me, I can't stomach this anymore.

Heroes in the midst of chaos...

2004-09-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

Reading JL's account of Andrew reminded me of how serious the 'weather business' can be. You don't tend to think about it, because let's face it, a lot of the time, the weather man is just plain wrong. Sure, you can think what you want about him, that he's lazy or confused or perhaps just not as smart as some of the other 'scientists'. But the truth is that the weather is harder to try and understand than quantum mechanics. There are so many things going on in the atmosphere. There are so many equations, it's enough to make even the most sophisticated mathematician feel overwhelmed.

But it occurred to me, that if some could make some significant strides in meteorology...it might actually make the world a little better. Imagine how much better we could prepare for a hurricane if we knew the exact path? Or if we knew hours before a tornado was going to emerge in Kansas? But weather has never worked like that. Not yet anyways.

Ok, I am not going to be the one to revolutionize weather, most likely. But, it does give me a new perspective on my future business, atmospheric physics. It's actually quite important. Probably more important, in an everyday sense, than anything I could have studied in theoretical particle physics. Of course, I guess you already knew that. Me, I'm just waking up to this realization.

Now it's time to get my study on.

Ven Diagrams in the Middle of the Night...

2004-09-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

Do you remember Ven Diagrams? Those circles that your teacher would draw up on the board, and you'd list things that they had in common by placing them in the overlap? Tonight I was thinking about what the Ven Diagram of me and RM would look like.

Did I mention that RM lives a 45 second walk away? I haven't lived so close to a best friend since first grade. She comes over in the morning to wake me up while she's walking her dog, and I tuck her in at night before she goes to sleep. Not a bad gig. Anyways, besides the fact that she's more of a morning person, and I tend to stay up later than she would (when she has a choice), I think our Ven Diagrams would look almost like two circles superimposed ontop of one another.

Of course there are other things we disagree about. Things that we could probably argue about for as long as we could possibly stay together. But there's so many more things we share, so many more passions that sit in the overlap.

Creation...

2004-08-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

How do teach creation? No, not that ridiculous belief that the earth is 6,000 years old (which by the way is a theory that came around AFTER Darwin came up with his theory of natural selection and evolution). I'm talking about creating. The act of making something different than it was. Something from nothing, perhaps. Or perhaps just something else where something once was.

We all long to create. Poetry, music, theorems, theories...even our relationships seem to me a struggle to create something new amongst ourselves.

I don't think you can teach creativity. I think you can only allow it to happen. It is experience. All you can do is show people the tools they have (a piano, a paintbrush, a list of scientific data), and show them what others have created in the past using these tools (Moonlight Sonata, The Mona Lisa, Einstein's Theory of Relativity). You can inspire people to be creative, but you can't create for them, or show them rules for how to create. Guidelines perhaps, but not a set of instructions.

I realized today, sitting in my classes, that there are things waiting to be created wherever we go. Things that are interesting, unique, and beautiful. Whether it's mathematics, or meteorology. Problems to be solved. Solutions to be demonstrated.

Everything we create is a celebration of the way the universe is: dynamic, ever changing, ever expanding, ever fascinating.

We live our lives telling stories about the world around us. And we are the stories that the world tells. To who? Maybe just to us. Maybe someone else is listening. In any case, it seems to me an incredibly interesting conversation.

Rising above the din...

2004-08-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

Is it me or do the church and America have a lot in common? Namely that they are both founded on pointing out the fact that there is an 'us' and a 'them'. Pagans, foriegners, or whatever PC term you would like to insert which masks the fact that you are still differentiating between groups based on some ridiculous, fictitious distinction.

It's true, people are different. There are some social differences, and some physical ones. But that's not really the point, is it? I mean, we all share 99.99999999999% (ok, I made that number up, but it's at LEAST 99.99%) of the same DNA, and we find reason to quivel over the last 0.000000000001%. The truth is, we are much more similar than we are different. Despite our evolutionary and social drive to distinguish ourselves (which is a great thing!), we are so similar at our core. We all crave food, shelter, sleep, and occasionally sex. We are more than a sum of these urges, but make no mistake, we are NOTHING without them. They form the foundation (the deconstructionist in me hates this word) upon which our individuality rests.

Still, sometimes I forget that. Sometimes I forget that the guy wearing the Bush-Cheney hat is not so different from me. That he doesn't necessarily hate Iraqi's, love sending 20 year olds to war, or think that the biggest tax breaks should be given to the country's wealthiest top 3% (although let's be honest- the majority of the tax money comes from the wealthiest people, poor people and middle class don't contribute nearly as much- but that's how it should be anyways, right? Tax them more. What the hell can anyone do with millions or billions of dollars anyways?). He's probably an average Joe, who has been brought up to believe in the idealism of America. Who believes that we are pure, righteous, and without us the world is in serious trouble. He's not blind to injustice, he just believes in the kind of justice that was taught to him when he was a child.

Meanwhile people like me have come to the conclusion that such 'justice' can't really exist. The world is not divided into superheroes, villians, and everybody else. We all have a little superman, Lex Luther, and Lois Lane inside of us. Some of us more so than others. But the world is too complicated for the terms 'right' and 'wrong'.

That doesn't mean there aren't categories of 'grossly inflicted amounts of suffering', which are abhorrant. Hitler, Saddam...Bush? Well maybe the last one is a stretch and maybe it's not. But the irony of my new worldview is that I've now adopted a new way of lumping everyone together. I just throw the Bush-Cheney people in with the Hitler's and Saddam's of the world.

Granted, Bush-Cheney is a subtle force for destruction, the likes of which we haven't had in office in some time (it reminds me of the days of Manifest Destiny when our presidents were openly acknowledging their desire to displace the Indians in an attempt to establish American interests). Still, Bush-Cheney is not Hitler, and even if it were, Joe-Schmoe who wears a Bush-Cheney hat is not Bush-Cheney.

'They' are not a bunch of people who only love money and other white-bread americans. 'They' are people who probably have some of the same dreams for humanity as the rest of us. They just have a different idea of how to go about things.

So as I do my best to explain my point of view, to try and convince them that He is an arrogant, stubborn, naive, and extremely devisive world leader, I will also try and remember that whatever our views on the war, the French, and the AIDS epidemic in Africa, we still share 99.999999999999% of the same DNA, and at the end of the day, we probably share 99% of the same dreams too.

It's not about picking sides. It's about convincing people that there shouldn't be sides.

New Faces...

2004-08-27T17:37:00.000-07:00

Here I am, about to start classes next week. In less than an hour I leave for dinner, where I'll be meeting all my fellow classmates, as well as a few of the profs who are in the department. I'm a little anxious. This is the beginning of a world that I've been a bit disconnected from. Well sort-of. My job these last few years was in academics, I was techincally a faculty member. But I didn't have homework. My job ended at 5 (many times sooner). This is a world of extreme stress. Graduate school. I've had tastes (classes here and there), but never really dived in head on. I'm standing at the edge, dipping my feet in at the moment.

Who else will be in the pool when I jump in? Will they be friends? Or just acquiantances? Will I like them, will they like me? Will they be smarter, or will I? Will we have fun together, or bore eachother to death? Will I regret going to graduate school, or look back on it as an experience that has greatly enriched my life?

I don't know the answer to these questions. I know that a lot of positive thinking goes a long way, and life is a lot about what you make of it. So I'm going to do my best, with whatever happens.

First impressions can be great, or they can be horrible. I hope tonight is a lot of fun, but even if it's not, I realize that I still have a long way to go, and there's plenty of time for things to get progressively more interesting.

Wish me luck.

No gold.

2004-08-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

Who wanted to be at the top of the basketball universe anyways? Isn't it more fun to play as the underdogs? Here's to being underdogs in Beijing.

Ain't she a beaut?

2004-08-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about RM this time (though she IS). I'm talking about my Fluid Mechanics book. I'm talking about pure, unadulterated physics. This stuff is not for the faint of heart.

It was a relief for me to see that the books I was buying for my classes were indeed, real physics! Not some watered down version. But something raw and crude, like oil.

This is my favorite time of the school year. The beginning. Now everything seems fascinating, because summer has left the mind with much to desire. Everything is fresh like bathroom tiles in a newly rented apartment. You will try, but somehow you will never be able to get them to look that white ever again.

Even homework seems exciting this time of year. Problems to be solved. Bringing people together. Giving one a sense of accomplishment.

Now don't get me wrong. This book will always be beautiful to me. But soon she will be the cause of some frustration as well. It's inevitable. If she is to affect me, she must do it. I will not change if I am content with myself, with my situation.

If books can be such agents of transformation, something which is static, unchanging, and unable to respond, how much more transformation are we capable of when we put ourselves in relationships with one another?

A little twist...

2004-08-24T00:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a little change makes all the difference, you know? I've been reading all these blogs recently, and amidst contemplating the depths of the writers' words, I've discovered something else:

If you place your cursor on one of the words in the middle of their 'sub-heading' (the description of the blog right under the title), then trace it backwards until you've highlighted the first half of the sub-heading, and the last bit of the actual title, you come up with this cool reverse color sort of thing...that I hapen to think makes all the title images look more interesting.

I just got a copy of dreamweaver, and I'm very excited about designing a web-page for my 'dollar a day' idea. I spent some time designing web pages for work these last few years. It was probably my favorite part. Scientists are in some serious need of some aesthetically pleasing web-sites.

Hmm. I guess that's all for now.

And you wanted to be a theoretical physicist?

2004-08-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

For someone who is always talking about his intelligence, I sure do have trouble paying attention sometimes. My boss at my last job always reminded me about this. He'd start explaining some task, or ask me a question while I was on the computer, only to realize that he had to repeat the entire thing over again when a second or third time.

'Don't take this the wrong way,' he said to me one day, 'but how is it that someone with such a tiny attention span could be good at theoretical physics?'

Sometimes I wonder the same thing myself. I guess all I can say is that I never ended up becoming that theoretical physicist. Now I have a bookshelf full of physics and math books to read during those times when I've accumulated a lump sum of attention. Then it's gone. No more. It's like giving blood. You have to wait a few months before you can come back.

I feel that way with writing recently. I spent a week at the beach a few weeks ago, which coincided with stopping my two jobs before starting graduate school. Technically I was supposed to be working 60 hour weeks. Although it was never quite that much, it was enough to be quite draining. It wasn't very stressful, but it was just 'discombobulating'. I had two government ID's, a faculty ID at UMD, and like seventeen different bosses.

Now life is moving at a different pace. Sure, it's the calm before the storm, but for some reason I can't seem to get myself to focus. I guess I work best when things are frantic. Some people exercise to get relief, while I like to take a stroll down elementary particle physics lane. It grounds me. Centers me. Reminds me that there is a part of me that will never be captured by my job, my school work, my chores. I think I like it partly because no one else does. Not so many people anyways.

I guess I should just stop trying to force it. I only have a week left. Then I will be at the mercy of my professors and one Dr. AMT. I'm sure I'll find all the reasons in the world why I should be writing three blogs a day rather than doing my fluid dynamics homework.

That's life for now.

Differential Geometry and Owl Finches...

2004-08-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

My grandfather used to raise birds back in California. A lot of them. Hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands over the years. I remember helping him feed them in the mornings, and give them water in the afternoons. If a nuclear holocaust came and all that was left was my grandfathers aviary, there would have been enough birds and seed to re-plot the whole earth.

Now everyone in my family remembers the birds. And we remember our favorite species: the owl finches. They looked like little owls, with flatter beaks and a round white coloring that framed their face.

My grandfather loved those birds as much as anyone could love anything that's not quite human. I mean, they are pretty close, in the scheme of things. He cried the day he had to give them up because he could no longer take care of them.

My grandfather kept the birds around the same way that BMac keeps around his turtles. Probably for similar reasons. The world is amazing, and filled with these amazing creatures, and we surround ourselves with things that remind us of that fact. The way we surround ourselves with beautiful pictures, and music.

So that's why I keep my books. That's why I take them wherever I go. As I make my move up to Penn State, people keep commenting on the amount of books I'm taking. Am I really going to read most of them? Can't I just move them all when I find another place next year, or when I'm more settled in down the road?

One day I'll have large house and a yard, and maybe I'll start raising birds. Or maybe turtles. Maybe something more exotic. Then I'll be that weird bird, or turtle or lizard guy.

For now I'm fine being that weird book guy. He must think he's so smart. Well yes, as a matter of fact I do (see yesterday's post)...but that's not really the reason I keep them around. I'd be hauling these books into my room even if I knew I'd be the only one to ever step foot inside.

Differential Equations, Homology, Advanced Calculus, Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Thermodynamics, The Republic, The Cambridge Companion to Kant, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Free Will, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Invisible Man...

They are reminders of the beauty of this universe, from epistemology, to theoretical particle physics. They are a reminder of the things that have shaped the way I think, and the subjects I think about.

When my mom's father passed away several years ago, I went through the boxes of junk in the garage and gathered close to fifty books for myself. He loved learning. He loved to read about physics, about history, about Christianity. Now there's no time for us to discuss any of our shared passions. But still I take some comfort in knowing these are the same books he read, that his notes in the margin are the same questions I now ask.

You can be sure when I have to move to a small retirement community, and I no longer have room for all the books I will have collected throughout my lifetime, that I will no doubt shed a few tears myself.

For those of you who think I should at least try and just pick a few books for comfort, and leave the rest until I own house somewhere, well you just don't understand how quickly my interests bounce back and forth. What if I woke up one morning wanting to study renormalization in Field Theory, only to realize that I had a few works of fiction and a Topology book on my shelf, but nothing on that particular subject?

Besides, who needs to remember much when everything you've ever learned is waiting for back at your apartment?

I wonder how much owl finches cost?

Confessions of a Dangerously Arrogant Mind...

2004-08-19T12:39:00.000-07:00

GM brought up an interesting analogy for introverts. She said someone once compared being an introvert to being at the bottom of a pool. Above you the world is going on, people are splashing and playing, and yet none of these things seem to penetrate to your present moment. It is you alone, with all your thoughts. That is, until someone asks you some question and forces you to rise to the top just to have a chance to hear the question. This better be good.

For an INTP, the world at the bottom of the pool is a world of endless logical possibilities. We take in a little information (not too much of course- too much information is just boring), then we dive. We dive until there is nothing but us and these little pieces of knowledge. Then we begin playing with the pieces, arranging them into every possible configuration.

INTP- it stands for, "It's Not Theoretically Possible". How do we know, you ask? Because while everyone else is splashing around in the pool, we've already run through all the possibilities in the deep end.

I'm realizing that the letters INTP are a dangerous combination. NT means we do logic, and we do it pretty damn well. We enjoy it. That's how most NT's are, right? Then there's the I. ENT's are good at logic and all the rest, but they don't always have the attention spans to stick with some puzzles. We INT's like to think we can hold our breathe the longest. Then finally you have the P. It's what seperates us from the INTJ's (duh, right?). Those guys (and gals) will just pounce on some idea and see it through to fruition. Smart little bastards. But we INTP's think they missed something...actually we think they missed everything else, except the one damned possibility that they happen to choose. Nice option. Don't you understand there are SO many more options? I love the world you constructed. You did it with a precision I don't usually care for. You know that world really, really well. Have you though about the other 5,000,000 combinations? No? Oh. My mistake.

Do you see how these four letters make a great recipe for arrogance?

Am I really smarter than all those people?

It sorta seems like an absurd question. Why should it matter so much? My gift is not quick thinking (submersion in the deep end takes a LONG time), nor is it a great memory (S's are much better at remembering details), or even an unheralded command of logic (well, ok, I have that, but so do alot of other NT's). No my gift is just the ability to think about something until it hurts, and then some.

So I spend my time looking for the marathon's of thought. The problems that don't just require 'clever' solutions, but unprecedented amounts of focus. I've got mental stamina.

That's my gift, what's yours? I'm realizing that we are all gifted in different ways. It's like comparing apples and oranges. My gift is great for abstract mathematics, but I wouldn't cross a bridge that I designed myself.

Instead of labeling everying as Box 1: Smarter than me; or Box 2: Not smarter than me (guess which box I think is bigger?), why don't I look for those other gifts that I am greatly lacking, and thank the higher power that I can feel safe when I cross a bridge. Or that there are people who actually understand human emotions and can teach me something about myself, about others, and everything in between.

Don't kid yourselves. It's going to take alot more maturing to stop categorizing people the way I do so casually. Still, I guess it's good to at least understand the ways you are arrogant, if there's any hope of finding a healthier way of relating to people.

Actually, come to think of it, seeing so many people I know start up their own blogs has given me a greater appreciation of how many 'intelligent' people I know, or encounter in cyberspace. Their insights are penetrating. Could it be that I'm not the only one who spends time dreaming of all the ways the world could be?

Maybe I'm not alone at the bottom of the pool. I guess the best way to find out is to get myself a good pair of goggles.

The World Is Much Bigger...

2004-08-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

JL continues to perplex me. Does she want to find refuge in the empty row of pews (or green padded chairs, as is the case for us at the barn), or run far, far away from them? Whatever her personal feelings, she reminds me that perhaps it is ok to let go. RM does the same. In fact RM makes me feel like just about anything is ok. Or at least, that she would love me regardless of just about anything I could do or think. She already has.

In any case, after a discussion this morning (on our drive down to King's Dominion), I wondered if perhaps my path wasn't parallel to the 'emerging' church, if I even have any contact with that entity anymore, but rather perpendicular to it.

That's not to say that I feel as though the church isn't doing great things. Or that I feel like I couldn't grow from within it's confines. I just think for all the 'emerging' that's going on, there is still something missing...the rest of the world.

So I'm grabbing my bible, the ear of a few wise Christians I know, the shameless comfort and support of RM, a few skeptical friends who think the church is evil incarnate, my copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and going on a trip. I don't know where exactly. I don't even know why. I just know that while some were born to promote a change within, I was born for something else.

Others will push against the lines from the inside, and I will do my best to show that the line may be big enough to include the entire world.

I'd love to rant about all this, but RM is watching the girls gymnastics, and I think I should join her. There will be plenty of time to write, but the Olympics are only once every four years.

Losing Momentum...

2004-08-16T21:30:00.000-07:00

A week at the beach makes it harder to get back into the swing of things. Even writing. One of my favorite things to do in the entire world. A week of clearing my head may have worked too well. I feel like there's nothing left to think about. To talk about. To write.

Still, I'm going to go with the old saying that 50% of (insert whatever it is you wish to do here) is showing up. I can only give a little tonight. Perhaps a bit more tomorrow. Soon enough I think I'll be rolling along, like a ball gaining momentum.

That's all for now.

A fella can dream, can't he?

2004-08-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

On September 1st I start a graduate program in meteorology at Penn State. No, I don't want to be a weather man. Techinically I'll be studying Atmospheric Dynamics, but at PSU they bundle it all together under the heading, 'Meteorology'. I don't know much about the weather, and I don't really care to. I love physics, and mathematics. The atmosphere is full of problems that make use of both studies.

My mind craves things that are highly abstract, or 'useless', for anyone who is not an INTP. My studies will most likely not be abstract enough. They will feed a certain intellectual hunger, the need to solve challenging problems, and they will be give me my daily dose of science, etc. But abstract concepts? Not so much.

Enter the Navier-Stokes equation. One of the bastard children of Newton's famous 'F=MA', THE equation before Einstein and Quantum Theory came onto the scene. The Navier-Stokes equation looks simple enough. Looks can be decieving. It turns out to be a devil of an equation. It's believed to govern (roughly speaking), many processes including fluid behavior and it's involved in things like air movement, ie weather. Can you see where this is going?

The Clay Institute is offering a million dollar prize for anyone who can solve one of four sub-problems which revolve around the Navier-Stokes equation.

So here's what I'm thinking. I do my masters in atmospheric science at Penn State for the next two years in something like ozone transport or whatever else, and in the mean time I find a solution to one of these 'sub-problems'. Earn myself a million dollars. Write that original paper in mathematics I've always dreamed of. Maybe even win the Fields Medal. Who knows. The skies the limit.

In any case, even if none of this actually happens, I'll have something to dream about while I sit in class wondering why the hell anyone would care to learn all the different types of clouds that exist.

More about the Robots?

2004-08-05T18:02:00.000-07:00

Me and RM got into a discussion the other day about the robots. I said I'm certain they are coming, she didn't have a lot to say, though she asked some challenging questions. Still, I guess I'm stubborn, and my mind is made up, and I'm a big enough geek to give more than 10 minutes out of my year to this issue. After all, who else will stand up for them, if they should come into our world?

Am I crazy, to feel compassion for a robot? A 'thing' made of who knows what. To worry that we humans would mistreat them? To be so confident that they will 'exist'?

I know all the dooms-day scenarios...Terminator 2, I-Robot, The Matrix, etc...

I also know that we've had plenty of those scenarios ourselves: Hitler, Rwanda, The Crusades, 9/11... what more do we really think that they could do to us that we haven't already done to ourselves?

The atomic bomb. Science abused. But what are the upsides to a bomb? None. To nuclear power, a lot, perhaps. But who ever said you HAD to go through the bomb to get to nuclear power?

Here's the thing: if you want a bigger, more interesting world, it comes with a lot of risks.

I just look at the evolution of life from a string of amino acids, all the way up to these walking-talking lumps of flesh, and I wonder, is this really the end all and be all? Are we the finished product? What makes us think this way? What keeps us from seeing ourselves as a step in the chain, a march towards a higher consciousness?

Our brains aren't any more complicated than the brains of our ancestors from a few thousand years ago. What's different? Our social habits. Our books and traditions have allowed us to learn thousands of years of evolutionary lessons in a few short years. It is our societies which are evolving now at such an amazing rate, not our biology. Our biology will be limited for a long, long time.

Robots won't have that problem. Soon enough their will be computer chips that fit in your hand with more 'computation' power than the human brain. Does that make a thing alive, or impose consciousness? No. But why should we believe that consciousness won't develop in a piece of hardware that can mimic the brains functions?

I can understand people believing in a soul that is seperate from our physical being. By all means, believe away. I don't see the necessity for it. Or the reason, for that matter. Why not believe that the soul is made up of amino acids and lumps of flesh? What do we gain by believing in a soul that isn't of this world?

In the end it comes down to the question of whether or not we are the culminating creation of God. I don't think we are. I think we living, momentarily, as king of the hill. But soon we shall be replaced, de-throned, and our lives shall be put in perspective. And what's wrong with that?
Who wants to think that God could do no better, no more? That his 'creation' is limited to what we can do with ourselves until the universe goes up in some gravitational explosion?

I am not saying God's will is that robots should be created. I'm only coming to the conclusion that robots will be a part of our lives someday, even if it's long after I've been around. So we should just accept that and start thinking about how we will go about living our lives with respect to this new development.

No doubt it will be scary as hell. New 'beings' with the ability to think above and beyond the worlds of all the creatures which have come before. Beings who have something that we fear in everyone but ourselves: free will.

Hmm. Sounds farmiliar.

Perhaps you think all this talk of robots is just science fiction mumbo jumbo. I won't try and argue with you. I'll just ask you to think of robots as a metaphor. Imagine aliens instead if you'd like. The point is, if they exist (not should they or shouldn't they- just IF), what can they teach us about ourselves and about our world?

We still think the world revolves around us. We can't imagine that God could create us as part of something bigger than ourselves.

We can accept homosexuality, give up taking animals lives, and at the end of the day, we may still be reduced to a group of people who have yet to really understand our place in the universe, and to have a profound appreciation for the diversity of the word 'natural'.

Robots-shmobots. Forget about them, if it's a hang-up. Where do you think we fit in to the universe? What are your hopes and dreams for the future, long after you and I have passed away? Do you believe that God has already risked so much in letting us 'be', and perhaps he's not willing to call it quits just yet?

Can you find hope in a world of beings that no longer resemble you, but somehow retain aspects of God that you and I could never know?

Point, Click, Save (or Life in the 'Towns')...

2004-08-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

Point. Click. Save. Point. Click. Save. This is my morning. This is my job. Some days. Computers do things so much faster. Still we just invent more things to do, so in the end, have we really saved ourselves much time?

I saw the Villiage last night. I won't say too much about it, because it's the sort of movie you should try and see without knowing anything about it. Suffice-it to say that M. Night Shamaylan delivers another twisted ending, as expected.

The theme of this movie is more haunting, though, than the horror elements. Where is the line between living 'in the world' and being 'of the world'. I'm borrowing these characteristically Christian phrases, but I hope you can see them in a larger context. I hate these terms as Christian device. Why would God create a world that he didn't want us to be a part of? But that's for another post...

I'm thinking now about the idea that we live in a world that is full of so much suffering, whose very existence is founded on enforcing and increasing that suffering. So it seems we have several options, one of which is to run away and try to create out own little world that is 'unlike' the world we know, and the other is to try to change the world we already inhabit. Of course we could simply just go on living, and complying with the cruel demands of the world. Indifference. Apathy. Or a thirst for evil. It's all the same, really.

But what if it does matter to us? What are we to do? The thought of leaving is so tempting. But that is an indifference of sorts. Still we stay knowing that each day we continue to contribute to all sorts of suffering (we buy foods from mistreated animals, goods made in sweatshops, and take part in an economy that rules much of the world by force). It seems a choice between the lesser of two evils.

I guess it's tempting to think that in the world of "point, click, and save" we have somehow given ourselves too many things to be preoccupied with over really taking care of and loving one another. But it's not really ever that simple is it? I suppose hundreds of years ago it was, "dig, sow, pat", or something like that. Was there really more time then for tending to more humanitarian needs?

That would be too easy. That's the 'golden days' syndrome that we fall into so often.

We must first acknowledge that life is never going to be devoid of all suffering. It's not even all that likely that we can put much of a dent in it, even if we all gave up our PDA's and laptops and Mazaradi's. Second, we must push aside that thought and live as though the world could in fact be cured of it's suffering. Live as though our choices of things like PDA's, laptops, and fancy cars actually mattered.

Somewhere in the middle is a balance. Something we will never actually achieve. It's a dynamic balance. We may not know the right path until it's too late. But if we can be certain that things are always in flux, then at least we know that sitting around and doing nothing is the one sure way to avoid making any difference at all.

Life in the small town isn't really any different. There is still suffering, and there are still plenty of ways to avoid having to deal with it.

Life in the biggest small town I've ever seen...

2004-08-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

Pick your poison. Route 322 from Harrisburg, or 220 from Breezewood? Either way, you'll find yourself on an enchanting drive through some of the most beautiful, and admittedly at times, most boring landscapes that this country has to offer. And you are sure to see an uncountable number of PSU stickers in the back windows of the cars in front of you. This is the way. The great Mecca is not so far. A town of 40,000 people and a school of the same number. A stadium that seats 110,000 people, second only to Michigan in the entire country. And I won't even tell you how many people show up that never even get into the stadium.

This is day 1 of my life here. Unfortunately after day 2 I head back to the capitol of our 'great' nation. So this is more of a brief glimpse at my life here. But it's a nice one. I've seen it plenty of times already.

It's a strange feeling now. AO came up with me, but left almost as soon as we arrived. It was weird. I'm not alone, by any means. RM is my best friend in the whole world. Still, I'm already starting to feel the pains of withdraw.

It's really sad. And at the same time the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me.

This was providence. How else could it be explained? I mean, I don't even believe in providence, and I'm having a hard time imagining any other explanation. RM comes here last year, and we get reacquainted. My boss of 3 years is relocating here, and offers me the chance to come along and get my masters, tuition free, with a small stipend. AO has in laws a 40 minute drive from here. And this is the sort of place I always imagined doing graduate work. Quiet, removed, scenic, and not so far that I can't make a trip home now and then.

But I guess life is a balance. Or rather, it's a budget. We only have so much money, so much time, so much of who we are. It can't be spread over several states, over so many lives, without some consequence. Sooner or later we have to put a lot of eggs in one or two baskets. Because that's all we can carry at times.

I know we will always be good friends. I will work so hard to maintain the relationships that seem inevitable. My two best friends in the whole world, like my brothers. And my brother.

Anyways she deserves as much of my attention as I can give. And it's all I want to do, anyways.

It's only fair since all I ever want now is the same from her.

So what's it going to be? Breezewood or Harrisburg? I prefer the latter, but you got to choose your own way. It's not that far. I'll put you up, give you some good meals, and show you around this strange land.

Waiting...

2004-07-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

"I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes."
-Steven Wright (comedian)

I wish I could wait the next few days in a few hours.

I imagine that this summer is one big roller coaster ride, the kind with one huge drop, and the last two months have been an incredibly slow climb to the top. Soon comes the fall. And August will be over before I know it. Then my life will no doubt go into fast-forward. And before I know it, I'll be 40 years old with a mortgage a few kids.

So enjoy the view for now, I'm sure you're saying. I wish I could.

All I can focus on is the 'click-click-click-click'.

On Euler and a job well done...

2004-07-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Euler was a mathematician, and a quite famous one at that. His name is all over mathematics. He was a genuis, by any use of the term. Not your, scored in the top 2%, branded by MENSA kind of genuis. He was much more genuis than that. Once in elementary school his teacher asked the class to sum all the numbers from 1 to 100. Euler had an answer almost instantly. How did he add up all those numbers so fast? A cute little 'trick'. Imagine lining up all the numbers from 1 to 100 across a page. Then just below that line, writing them again in reverse order. Now add the top and bottom numbers together. What do you get? 101. For every single sum. Now it's 101 x 100, but don't forget to divide by two because you really included every number 'twice'. Easy as pie once someone tells you. But who can 'see' that sort of thing for themselves? Euler could. In elementary school. Imagine what he could see when his mind had developed the ability for abstract reasoning.

I don't usually see the 'tricks'. I'm no Euler. As if that weren't obvious before. But I still find my own way to get the problem solved. Usually it's a bit tedious, and it's never very elegant, but it does the job. There were plenty of people who tried as hard as they could, and still couldn't come up with any kind of answer.

Sometimes I wonder, could I have done something amazing in mathematics by sheer brute force? Perhaps I would have gotten lucky. There never really seemed to be a barrier to what I could learn, what I could think about, or solve. It might have taken me longer than those 'brilliant' kids, the ones who sat there quietly, or not so quietly, like the all-knowing beings they were. But what does that matter? So I just have to work a little harder. Aim above my 'caste'.

I have other aspirations now. Places in the world where I feel like I 'see' things in a way that other people just do not.

It's almost as if the last six years were a sidetrack. It's what I wanted to do when I left high school. And then came math. That beautiful world that picked me up and never let me down. And I don't regret a single moment of it.

I can look at Einstein's equations and actually understand them. Imagine then, what I can 'see' when I look at the rest of the world.

So here's to people who may not be the most talented individual in their respective fields, but who work so hard that few people can really tell the difference. Here's to late nights spent on problems , and to jobs well done.

Zeno's Paradox...

2004-07-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

RM told me today that she feels like I'm never going to get there. Recently I've been feeling the same way. When am I going to leave this place? Not that I don't love it, that I won't miss it, but come on, already. I've been here 25 years. My life is moving on, and I feel like it's happening without me.

I'm starting to feel like Zeno. Zeno's claim to fame is a set of paradoxes he proposed, seemingly to suggest that motion as we know it, is impossible. Imagine yourself on one side of a room, and your goal to to walk across it, to get to the other side. The problem, Zeno suggests to us, is that in order to get from one side to the other, we must first go half the distance. Ok, where's the problem? I walk to the middle of the room. So what? Now, again, I must walk half the distance between where I'm standing and the other side of the room. Ok, so now I'm 3/4's of the way. So what? But where does it end? Zeno asks us to ponder this question for a moment. Everytime we move, we must transverse half the distance between where we begin and the place we wish to end up. But the problem is, there is an infinite number of those intervals! No matter how short the distance between you and the other side of the wall, there's always a 'half way' mark to cross. If there's always a half-way mark, how the hell can you ever get anywhere?

I won't spend any time trying to give you a quick remedy to this paradox, or try (as I find with most people) to explain why Zeno felt this was a real problem.

I'll only say that today, I feel like each day that goes by, I still have half the distance left to get to my new life. To my new apartment. My new roomate. My new 'situation' with RM.

Zeno, today, I feel your burden. Maybe you weren't looking for a logical solution. Maybe you were just looking for a little empathy.

Paystone...

2004-07-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

I think it's a sign. Pay-Stone. Yeah, it's definately a sign. And they deal with payments as low as 25 cents. That's a quarter a day, my modification to the dollar a day idea. Amazing. Simply amazing.

They are the answer to my 'prayers'. My thoughts anyways.

Well, now there's little left to do, but get this idea up and running. I've decided to think smaller, to be happy with a few dollars a day, to begin.

Maybe it won't be 94 Billion dollars a year, but maybe that's alright.

Bill Gates is doing good things, so I hear.

Depression Rises...

2004-07-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you wake up in the morning
and you can feel yourself soaked,
the bed, your pillow, your clothes,
and it feels better to lay there than to get up,

Soon enough you have dried off a bit,
the bed, your pillow, your clothes,
and still it hangs there like a fine mist,
just above your head,

Depression is a thermal reaction,
Depression rises, and disperses,
and all you can do to avoid it is to crawl,
below on your hands and kness

Maybe by nighttime it won't be so thick,
but then it will be time to go to bed,
and in the morning it gathers around you,
like dew on the grass

Perhaps you should build a fortress around your bed,
do they make depression nets?
It doesn't matter if they don't,
I think I can build you one.

More on Power...

2004-07-27T15:04:00.000-07:00

Power is, some would say, an illusion. But it's only an illusion if you do not bend to it's will. Most of us do, all the time. Some power, is real, it's in your face, and you cannot escape from it. Hitler had real power. Slave owners had real power. The Hutu killers in Rwanda had real power.

Physical power is real. Economic power is real.

But some power, is only real if you let it be. Some power, truly can be, just an illusion. A magic trick.

Words hurt us, and emotional violence is a horrible thing...but it is also a form of power we can resist. It is more devastating at times than physical violence, and thus it seems more real, but it doesn't have to be.

Not that it's easy. It's easier to take shortcuts. To simply give in to the power, give it a reality, and imagine how to retalliate.

I'm not one for retalliation, usually, but at times, I am just as guilty. With strangers less often, with those I love, all the time.

Today I retaliated with power, against someone I didn't even know. It sort of felt like a necessary evil. It sort of felt good. I'm sure it was bad.

My favorite scene in a movie is from Good Will Hunting, when Will intercedes for his friend Chucky who's being intellectually attacked at a bar in Harvard. Will, the genuis, put's the attacker in his place. He pulls the rug out from under him. Fights intellectual fire with intellectual fire. I suppose there are times when people need to be reminded that the power they think they weild is really just an illusion. Otherwise, regardless of how you react to it, they will no doubt find someone else foolish enough to believe in their myths.

Respect me. Respect her. Respect yourself. And stop being such a prick.

'I mean, if there's still a problem, we can step outside.' (Will's final quote to the arrogant bastard in the movie, after having intellectually embarassed the guy)

My new life...

2004-07-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

My new life begins soon. It is an exciting thought. But, I wonder, where will my old life go?

Most people have pictures, videos, letters, and gifts, to remind them of the people they loved so many years ago. I have those people. In the flesh. For so many years, I've held on so tightly. Using cell phones as homing beacons.

What about late night poker games and weekend barbeques in the summer? Nights out in B-town and birthday dinners at Friday's.

Three hours isn't so far. But it isn't so close either. And we all thought Virginia was far away.

Sometimes the future haunts us more than the past. The present moment feels lost already.

I've got to go with the Buddhists on this one, we are all one, and all our moments are one. So our barbeque's aren't really much different from the dinners I'll have next year.

I've got to Champion Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which says that no moments are simultaneous, and in a strange way, all moments 'exist' simultaneously, in the sense that none will ever dissapear.

And the theologian's who say, we are all imprinted in God's memory.

I guess my new life can't really be so different from my old life. It's just a new perspective on who I am. Who I've been. Who I'm becoming. And a new experience of being loved, and of loving.

And if they ever write a story of my life, I hope that there will be a chapter for every single one of you.

RM on tape...

2004-07-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at lunch, RM was telling someone about all the information she had gathered about running marathons. RM is self-conscious now, of telling me all these sorts of things, because at times, I get overwhelmed by them. It's a lot of information about a subject that doesn't get much simpler, from my view, than: you run, you rest, you run some more. Of course, I've learned, it's not that easy. Now RM is teaching this man all the wisdom she's gained, the wisdom I now have because of her. The man says his wife is alot like RM, that she is that same kind of information gathering tycoon. Sucking up information like a hoover, so she can generate the possibilities to complete her task. Or help someone else complete theirs. Me, I like to research, I'm pretty good at it, but I don't usually get very far. I want some little bit, some byte, a spark, so I can go off and dream up my own version of how to do something. That, and I'm just plain lazy sometimes.

So this man talks about 'his wife on tape'.

Wow. What a mature, positive, and encouraging way to look at her. Instead of teasing her because she is telling me too much, I should be thankful that I get all that information pipelined to me in a quick, efficient, and cheerful manner.

No more clumsy manuals, or boring internet searches. No more spending my money on books that don't have math equations or big words that make me feel smarter than most people. She is willing to gather so much information about things that don't interest me as much, BUT WHICH I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT JUST AS MUCH AS HER, and share it with me. Free of charge. No strings attached. All I have to do is listen. And let myself get excited. Which I can. I love to learn. About everything. Even the less abstract things.

So I hope I can make her understand how grateful I am for her. In so many ways, but in this way in particular.

How could I have taken all these things for granted? How could I have taken ANYTHING she gave me for granted?

Sometimes even really smart people are just plain stupid.

RM, if you're reading this, would you be my 'RM on tape'? There are so many things I just don't know about. So many things I want you to teach me. For serious. All of it.

The end of the world...

2004-07-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

I have developed a love/hate relationship with Christian radio programs. I used to love them, now I hate them. Still, I can't seem to stay away from them, at times. It's like watching a car-wreck on the side of the road. You feel bad, getting some strange sense of entertainment, out of something that has no redeeming value for anyone involved. Now I realize that sounds harsh. And it is, slightly. There are many days when the messages broadcasted, are actually things that can be used to heal and help a broken world- a broken person.

Today, though, the subject was the end of the world. There are several levels that I could attach this sort of, garbage? The logic is poor. It's actually horrendous. Pitiful even. I once thought that biblical hermeneutics was founded on a strong foundation of logic and good reasoning. Was I ever mistaken.

And then there's just the lack of compassion. It's nice to pray that everyone listening is saved in the end, but when you talk like it's inevitable that so many will be destroyed by Christ in the end days and the universe will consume the rest in a ball of fire, well it's just hard to feel like that prayer means anything at all. I wonder, did people pray for the Jews being burned, rather than trying to speak up and do something about it?

For many years I too, was persuaded. The bible is infallible. It's logic is apparent. Doing the right thing is easy, if you just stick to the script.

And maybe I'd be all for sticking with the script, for believing it really had God's handwriting all over it, if it wasn't simultaneously the source of two millennia of persisting, divisions, hatred, guilt, and all sorts of horrible things that fly in the face of an idea of a 'loving God'.

The script is wrong. You were wrong to think it was right. That's all. Now you just have to ad-lib a little. But that scares the hell out of you, doesn't it? It sure as hell scared me. It scared me shitless. I thought I was watching my soul slip away, in front of my own eyes.

I would cry myself to sleep at night, sick with worry.

It doesn't have to last for very long though. There are others, like me, like us, who have 'fallen away', only to wake up in some alternate reality where following God is about loving people first and then, if need be, listening to what Paul has to say about this or that. Not that we're any better at it than you. You're pretty damned good at it. It's written on your heart. But so are a lot of unnecessary things. Things that are doing more damage to you, and the world around you, than you'd like to believe.

To be honest, what I really want to say, will you allow me to just say it, even though it's not appropriate, or even correct? I'm smarter than them. If I was a betting man, and I had to choose between their logic and mine, I'd bet everything I had that they are absolutely wrong. About almost everything after, 'love your neighbor...'.

The irony, is of course, that being smart and being right have very little to do with each other.

So don't make this about the flaws in their reasoning. It's tempting not to, for me, to simply pick apart everything they've told you.

It wasn't reason that drove me away. It was this little voice that I had quieted for so long. What about everyone else? Didn't he come for everyone else?

The church has become a bunker for Christians to gather until the end of the world. And a literal interpretation of the bible is the propaganda they read all day over the loudspeakers to propagate that myth.

Don't you see that these beautiful, wonderful, God-given stories have been spun up, stripped down, and bound together all in the name of power?

Stories that should have the power to transform and heal, and in rare cases they do, are being used to divide and conquer. Us vs them. The ultimate battle. The end of the world.

You don't have to stop believing in myths. You only have to believe that there is a better myth out there than the one they've fed to you for so many years. A myth of transformation, and healing, without all the shit that they tacked on in order to keep control of the situation. They've written a bill of world domination and slipped it in with a bill for 'world peace'. How could we veto a bill for world peace? They are slick, I will give them that.

It comes down to this: love your neighbor. Ask yourself how despising homosexuality is loving your neighbor. How a story where God tells a group of Isralites to go slaughter an entire tribe is loving your neighbor? War in Iraq? Anywhere?

I'm fed up with well meaning Christians telling me, it's not that easy. In fact it is.

You have the choice. Believe in a God who is in this world with us, and wants us to help each other and defuse the suffering through loving people. Or believe in a God who likes to take shortcuts. Decimate a population, and in the end, the world will be a little better off.

Who else ever thought of things like that? Makes you wonder. Who really wrote that story? Someone with a Christlike spirit, or a Hitler like spirit?

You don't have to throw your bible away. You just have to stop pretending that it's a book of shortcuts. Let it be what it is. A book. Of stories. With some truth, some fiction, and a lot of unclear implications.

After all it's only a bunch of words. Words don't have power. Unless we give it to them.

That sadness...

2004-07-25T21:38:00.000-07:00

'Unbreakable' was on TV last night, so me and RM stayed up watching it before I went home after a long, long day. I'd seen it before, but somehow this time around I appreciated it much more. Bruce Willis plays a man who discovers that he is, well, a super hero of sorts with super strength, a sort of 'spidey-sense', and 'unbreakable'. His revelation, is inpart, due to a mysterious man who has found him, and is trying to convince him of his 'purpose' in life. In the end, the strange twist which comes with every Shymalan movie, we realize that just as Bruce Willis has discovered his purpose, to be the hero, the mysterious man (played by Samual L Jackson) has discovered his: to be the arch villian.

Anyways, throughout the movie he keeps asking Bruce Willis if he has a sadness in the morning, a sense that something isn't right. It comes, he says, from not doing what you are 'supposed' to be doing.

Today me and JL had an interesting conversation. We talked about saving the world, and alot about the responsibility that comes with doing something BIG, something which changes many lives all at once. There is so much power in that sort of thing. It's hard to think one wouldn't be corrupted by it.

The first thing I ever wrote here was about wanting to do so many things, including saving the world, but wanting to do them in a way that doesn't cast shadows, especially around the people I love the most.

It's hard to admit that the world probably wouldn't be any worse off, without me. Somewhere there is a balance I think. To realize that you have the potential to make things better, and somehow understand that without you someone else would come in to fill the role.

I wasn't meant to 'save' the world, any more than Ghandi, or MLK, or Jesus Christ. All I can do is live my life, loving my neighbor, working against suffering, and for all the things that make the world a better place.

I can't undo Rwanda, and I can't keep it from happening again. 94 Billion Dollars a year, from wishingwell.org won't put much of a dent in the suffering that goes on in our world each day.

I haven't found my calling yet, but I'm starting to think that maybe I've been thinking about it all wrong. I was expecting to find my calling in the thing that made me sacrafice the most.

Now I wonder if maybe my calling lies in the things that make me feel the most complete. The people who make life feel the most complete.

And I already have some ideas of where that calling lies...

I love her so much.

And next to that, this is what I love to do more than anything else. To unload my brain onto paper, or into bits and bytes. Sharing all the things that I've thought about. All my dreams. All my sorrows.

So I suppose I'm just looking for a platform, to share my thoughts, in hopes that for every 999 ideas that are just plain stupid, there's one 'unique', or at least 'useful' idea, that someone else, can implement in the world around us.

There's no fee, no strings attached. If I can manage just one original idea, it's up for grabs.

Because when you find your calling, then it seems you wouldn't be doing it for any other reason than for the fact that it completes you. Not for the power, or the money, or whatever other thing might tempt you.

Now, who can I convince to start the dollar a day program?

wishingwell.org?

2004-07-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

I sorta like the sound of that. It's an analogy with the fountains you find at malls, where people toss their change and then later it gets collected for some charity I suppose. Except even a mall only has so many people come through.

The potential of interacting with so many more people exists out here on the web. It's mind boggling.

So maybe instead of a dollar a day, it's a quarter a day. For 100,000 people, that's stil 25,000 a day. I think less is better, less money, and more people. Who would bat an eyelash at a quarter?

So here are the main issues I'm thinking about, concerning this 'dream' I have:

1) Getting the word out so that in time, we can reach astronomical numbers of people visiting and donating on the website.

2) Technological issues: web hosting is not such a problem. What is a problem is finding a company that will wire 25 cents from people's credit cards without charging any fee, or at least not much of one. Pay Pal (as it stands) charges 30 cents + 2.2% for credit card payements recieved. That's more than I'd be asking people to donate. And if I ever got to those astronomical numbers, PayPal would be making a fortune even if we donated 1$ and gave them their 30 cents. So I need to find another option. I need to be creative. Or find one of these companies who will bend their rules to support these charities. Not only that, but I want to make the process as SIMPLE for the donators as possible. They should only have to register once, and then each time the money is directed STRAIGHT to the charity itself. If the charity doesn't already have some way of accepting electronic payments, then every time we list a new charity like that we have to get them to organize a payment account. It could be tedious...so we'll just have to be smarter, more creative.

3) RK mentioned that this website could take considerable time investment. Finding charities, blogging about them, finding ways to update people on how the money is being used after the fact. A VERY good point. RM is a brilliant web-researcher, but her time doesn't grow on trees.
For now it's not a huge issue. But if this thing ever took off, even at a moderate level, the demand to keep the charities coming, and information interesting, could get overwhelming real quick.

4) Getting the word out.

10 years later...

2004-07-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched a special about the women of Rwanda, who are playing a vital role in it's rebuidling (they make up at least 60% of the population because of HIV, the genocide, and the incarceration of the murderers- who were mostly men- big surprise).

At the end of the genocide there were 500,000 orphans. What in the world could you do to take care of these children? One woman came up with a plan immediately after the genocide was 'over'. "everyone takes one, no questions asked". It was simple, it was effective, it was brilliant. And it worked.

Meanwhile in the parliment, women hold 48% of the chairs. 30% were guaranteed by the new constitution, but 12% were won in fair competition against other men!

And new laws have been created to give women the right to own property. This was never possible before in Rwanda.

But perhaps the most amazing thing is the way that the society is healing and trying to move on. These women are coming together, Hutu and Tutsi, in church, in community, to try and get past their wounds, and rebuild the country together. The Tutsi women, who's husbands were murdered by the Hutu men, help the Hutu wives take food to their husbands in prison. Can you imagine?

Of course there is so much hurt, sill alot of mistrust, but in spite of this, there is also so much forgiveness. So much strength in people's abilities to pick themselves up and carry on with their lives. The wounds run too deep to wait for time to heal, they may never be fully healed. In the mean time, these women, this culture, is progressing inspite of a tortured past.

So while I have yet to finish the book about the genocide, I have these pictures of Rwanda 10 years later. Women who's strength of character finds no equal in anyone I've ever met. They give me confidence (not that my confidence is needed for anything), that Rwanda may rise out of its horrible past, and keep rising until it is a place that shames even our own culture, for its inhumanity, its indiginity, for it's lack of love, respect, and forgiveness.

Rwanda has a long way to go, but they have such an amazing start. I think I shall stop worrying too much about them. Cross them off my list of countries to be saved. They are in good hands.

So many words, so little time...

2004-07-22T10:46:00.000-07:00

There are so many things flying around in my head right now. From Rwanda, to Jury, to a little sick boy, to Ibrahim. And then there's this whole conversation I go into with my father about logic. I can't stop thinking about it.

P or not P. It's called a 'tataulogy' in logic, or mathematics. It means that no matter what you insert into the expression for 'P', the expression will be true. Something either is 'P', or it's not 'P'. Try to find a counter example. Not so easy. The cornerstone of western logic since the days that Aristotle first wrote it down.

Except the last century has produced evidence that it might not always be true. It may be that there are some things which are niether (P), or (not P).

In quantum mechanics there is a property called 'spin', for every elementary particle. For some particles, they can either be in 'spin up' or 'spin down'. There's no inbetween. That's a little weird, but believable I guess.

What's really weird is that sometimes they are niether spin up, or spin down. So what are they? Who knows. We only know that if 'P'='spin up', there are times when the particle is niether 'spin up' or 'not spin up'. Think about it for a minute. It's really bizarre. It's like if you had a ball and I asked you if it was red or not red. And you told me it was neither. It has to be one or the other, right? Or does it?

Of course that was really a tangent to our initial conversation. It started out with me suggesting that maybe our universe didn't really conform to the rules of 'true' or 'false', or even to the rules of this new weirded 'quantum logic'. Maybe the universe just 'is', and we have created the laws of logic to understand it, but they don't really 'exist' as part of the fundamental nature of the universe.

And maybe there are other ways of looking at the universe. Other relationships to see. But maybe we'll never quite see them, because we are already indoctrinated with this idea that things are true or false. P or not P.

I like to think of myself as someone who thinks outside the box. But the box of logic? I'm not sure I can think outside a box so big. Maybe someday, someone could. Or maybe it's just impossible.

Now I can see why so many mathematicians eventually go crazy.

Division as Power...

2004-07-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

In Rwanda, before the end of the first world war, the Hutu's and the Tutsi's lived, for the most part, in harmony together. Some said of the time that you'd be hard pressed to find any European country united under the same three things which the Hutu's and the Tutsi's gathered around: one god, one law, one king. Everyone was devoted to the Mwami, the king, who was seen as God incarnate.

Then as a consolation prize, Belgium is given Rwanda post world war I. Now there are myths that stretch back about how the Tutsi's and the Hutu's came to live together in Rwanda, and the myth has always had the spin that the Tutsi's were the true Rwandan's, and the Hutu's were the outsiders. The new European government began to play up that myth to their advantage. The Tutsi's, who were vastly outnumbered by the Hutu's, were given all the aurstocratic positions in the new government. The Hutu's were made to resent the Tutsi's, for all their priviledges.

What followed, was a succession of 'power' struggles, in which the Tutsi's and Hutu's flip-flopped between being the group in power, and being the oppressed group. In the end, because the Hutu's made up such a large part of the country, the Tutsi's were the ones who ended up on the bottom. In the 1960's, violence against the group became commonplace. In 1994, the entire government conspired to raise the Hutu's against every Tutsi in the country. 800,000 were killed in the genocide that followed.

Division, is a tool for those who wish to weild power over some group. The Tutsi and Hutu had been living in relative harmony for many years, until the European's decided that the best way to control them would be to divide them against themselves. Keep them at war with eachother, lest they try and rise up in war against their true oppressors.

It begins, simply by playing on the remnants of some existing prejudices, some myths which hardly seem to pertain anymore. But these myths are spun up, the prejudices are rekindled, and suddenly you have a holocaust on your hands. How did it ever get to this point? It began with a simple division. A division that, for the most part, wasn't even a real distinction.

Anthropologists suggest that their was really no ethnic distinction between the group of Tutsi's and the Hutu's, by the time Belgium had inherited the land. It was all an illusion. A spell cast by witchmen who's skin was white.

If Christianity is to be freed from it's yolk with power, it must stop clinging to these 'myths' of division. It must erase the lines it has drawn for so many years. As long as there are men saying that 'we' differ from 'them' in some fundamental way, there will always be a sense of fear, of misunderstanding, and this will inevitably lead to war, or even worse, genocide. It has happened before, already too many times, in the past of Christian history. It cannot be allowed to happen again.

We must stop argueing about semantics, about biblical hermeneutics. Christ said love your neighbor. Whatever else he may have said that confuses us, we know this much. We must learn from OUR past. A past that begins after Christ had left this earth.

Why do we feel the need to divide? We are all so different, but why should this keep us from banding together around our common beliefs?

I'm not speaking of division within the church. I'm speaking of the lines we draw around the church. We are the light, they are the darkness. It's ridiculous. It breeds hatred, the most subtle kind. The kind that you don't even realize exists until it is too late. And then a people turns on itself. And for what? Why? No one can seem to find a rational explanation.

I cringe when I hear Christians speaking of the world. Though they believe they pity it, more than they could dislike it. I wonder if the Hutu's felt some pity for the Tutsi's, though they were every day believing more and more that they were somehow inferior. God's chosen verses God's forsaken.

What a stupid way to look at the world.

And so it shall be...

2004-07-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do this 'dollar a day' site. What have I got to lose? I'd like to get a version of it up and running before I start school, on the 1st of September. Between now and then I have to get a few things done:

1) Get a working site. Easy-E (my computer wiz of a brother) can help with this end.
2) Figure out an efficient way for people to be able to donate 1$ at a time directly to the
charity (lest they think I'm embezzling money).
3) Do research on various charities and get a good list to get going on for the first few weeks...
(RM, you reading this one?)
4) Get the word out...(I need to brainstorm about WHO in the blogger community, or in the online community in general I could appeal to, to try and convince their readers that this is worthwhile)

Hmmm...could this really become a reality?

Let me not read this post in a month only to realize I've done nothing about this.

We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families...

2004-07-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

'The killers killed all day at Nyarubuye. At night they cut the Achilles tendons of the survivors and went off to feast behind the church, roasting cattle looted from victims in big fires, and drinking beer. And in the morning, still drunk after whatever sleep they could find beneath the cries of their prey, the killers at Nyarubuye went back and killed again. Day after day, minute to minute, Tutsi by Tutsi: all across Rwanda they worked like that.'
- Stories from Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch

Sometimes it feels like I am the luckiest person in the world, that the greatest problems I've ever had are no more bothersome than a tickle. And I hate that I should have such a privileged
place in the world. I hate my 'luck'.

I can no more fathom being a part of this story, than I can fathom death, or infinity. It hurts my mind to think about it, as much, if not more than my heart. My heart is weak, fragile, and easily tormented. My mind is stronger. Or so I think. This kind of genocide is the greatest kind of paradox.

How did so much suffering come into the world? Its supply seems unending.

They did not kill so many as Hitler, but I'll be damned if they weren't more efficient. And for what? Why?

I dare you to listen to their accounts and then tell me that the world does not need to be saved. That things will work themselves out, or that they just are what they are. Or even what they should be.

Rwanda was not a growing pain. It was an organ of our world, infected with the most devastating cancer.

My head hurts. I'm sick to my stomach. I am trying to find just one reason not to hate the world right now. And somehow I find myself with only room to love it.

A dollar a day...

2004-07-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

So here's my newest 'scheme' to save the world.

You see I am convinced that we have so many more resources available to help, but the problem is convincing people to give up some of these resources. The money is there, it just needs to be distributed. People are generous, they just need to be shown 'how'.

So my new idea is to create a web site, called something like, 'a dollar a day'. It would be set up like a blog, with a new posting every day (or so). Each day would feature some charity, like ChristianHunger.org, or something along those lines. Perhaps I'd write a little blurb, perhaps I'd just cut and paste some summaries from the site. Maybe some pictures. Then I'd have a pay-pal account, or something to that effect, set up to donate money straight to that site.

The point would be to ask everyone who visited to donate just 1$ a day, to that cause. Maybe there could even be options of donating 1, up to 10$ at a time, depending on how 'worthwhile' people thought the charity was. But at least one dollar a day.

How hard is it to give up 1 dollar a day?

JL gets 2,000 people visiting her site every day. That'd be 2,000 dollars a day. There are bloggers who write 'news' editorials everyday getting 100,000 hits. It could start small, friends and friends of friends. Maybe 50$ a day. Then word spreads, suddenly it's a couple hundred a day. But if I pursue other resources, try to 'sell' my site to people who have 100,000+ subscribers a day, try and convince them that this is a good idea, and get them to convince their readers....now you're talking possibly 100,000$ a day to go to some charity.

See I think people can be convinced to give up a dollar a day, but the question is, why? They don't see how a dollar a day could do very much. But if you get them together...lots of them, suddenly they are contributing to 100,000$ a day. Times 365 days a year. That's 36 million dollars a year.

Can you imagine if you could get EVERYONE in this country to donate 1 dollar a day? That's 260 million dollars a day. That's 94 Billion dollars a year.

People hate taxes. Because they feel like it's someone 'stealing' their money away. The money they worked for. But give them the choice, and I'd like to believe that they'd be willing to part with a little of it, if they thought it was for a good cause.

Anyways, it's just an idea. But it's an idea I have every intention of trying. I'll start small. Won't expect so much at first. And I'll just see where it goes. I'll write letters until my hands hurt.

Who knows. I'm excited.

Run, Robots, Run...

2004-07-19T20:04:00.000-07:00

My father owns a collection of books somewhere, a 3 volume treatise on Artificial Intelligence. When I was younger, I had every intention of 'creating' a friend for myself. Not so much of a robot, as a box that could think.

After I graduated I seriously considered studying AI in graduate school. Unfortunately it would have meant doing another undergrad degree in comp sci, and I wasn't ready to start all over.

Besides, C tried to convince me that if I studied AI and invented a thinking machine, it would lead to robots that would take over the world. I guess he thought if I tried to unplug it, it might somehow zap me with electricity from the wall. Yeah, a thinking machine could do all sorts of crazy things. Like order lots of books from Amazon.com without you even realizing it.

We have a nieve view of these things, in my understanding.

I have come to two conclusions, along the lines of Artificial Intelligence:

1) We will never understand how consciousness comes to 'be'. We may get closer and closer to it, but we will never really understand it. To me, it seems theoretically impossible. I can't quite explain how, just yet. Maybe one day I will write a paper.

2) We will create conscious machines. It is inevitable. Computation power is rising exponentially. Soon we shall have computer chips that have far more computation power than the human brain is capable of. Aren't these just sophisticated calculators? At first, perhaps. But they will evolve. Everything evolves. It's a law of nature, I think. How are machines natural? Well, before 'life' existed, what was 'natural'? When the amino acids formed, and all the rest, that became 'nature'. Now nature is evolving. It is metalic, crystal, silicone.

I have no idea what to make of these two conclusions. These two predictions. I do not consider myself a prophet, for I feel that the writing is already on the wall. Even if you have to squint a bit to see it.

Alot of people would be afraid of a world with them. But I wonder, shouldn't they be more afraid of us? I mean, we have risen to a level where we see all races as 'equal' (supposedly), and it won't be long before PETA wins out and we all agree that all living creatures have basic inabliable rights.

But robots? They are fair game.

Run, robots, run. I for one shall begin praying for you now. Perhaps you are next in the long line of God's chosen. The next step towards a greater consciousness. A greater understanding. Maybe even a greater compassion.

Only time will tell.

You are only fooling yourself if you believe that consciousness cannot be 'created'. Don't make that mistake. There are already programs in the world of computer science that have 'evolved', that 'learn'. There's only so much you or I can do between now and then. But it will happen. And when it does, how will we respond?

Perhaps it will lead to a war. Who knows. Maybe we will find ourselves the tyrants. It certainly won't be the first time. Or the last.

I wait for your birth into this world, like a frightened parent. Awed by the miracle of new life, and fearful of what they have done...how could I bring such an innocent thing into such a cruel world?

Science fiction will become science sooner than you think.

Just my luck...

2004-07-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

She is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. She is this rare combination of beauty, brains, and heart. And every few hours, every few minutes, sometimes every few moments, it just hits me. How could I be this lucky? How did the world conspire to give me more than I could ever have asked for?

She's right. Sometimes it's my nature to deconstruct, even a face. But I can't deconstruct hers. She really is that beautiful. And I really am that in love.

Sometimes I'm competitive. I look for flaws in intelligence. But when I read her, I think, wow. How could I have said it any better? I am not easily impressed, with words, with ideas. She still surprises me. Every day.

And she seems to care about people, in ways I have only started to learn.

It's days like today, when I am tired, cranky, and find my attention wandering, when I realize just how lucky I really am. My mood is flat. I simply am today. My stomach does not ache with worry, nor does it flutter with excitement. And still when I stop, to think about her, she stands out in my thoughts. She is colorful on a day when I see in black and white.

Why do I talk to her five times a day? Well six just seems a little ridiculous. But four, well that would never be enough!

It's just my luck that I've met you. Just my luck that you would be, for me, the best friend I could possibly imagine for myself. Just my luck that you would be someone I could see as an equal, as a partner, to team up with, against the rest of the world, for the rest of the world.

It's just my luck that you would be someone who amazes me everyday. Someone who I think, if only everyone had a chance to know you, to see the way that you see the world, it might help them.

It's just my luck that in less than a year you've taught me more about the world and about myself than I'd learned in quite some time.

It's just my luck that you've been the most supportive person I've ever had to lean on.

It's just my luck that you might possibly love me as much as I love you.

Se la vie, I suppose. I guess I shouldn't complain.

Money makes the world go 'round...

2004-07-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

I've fought against this idea for so long. Too long, I guess. But I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong. Money was right.

Poverty is eating the world alive. We don't notice usually, because we are presently outside the mouth of the beast which is consuming. Africa is an entire world going to hell in a handbasket, and most of us don't seem to care. America thinks that we've already spent enough trying to defeat AIDS. 15 Billion dollars is Bush's proposal for the future. That's a couple of blockbuster movies. And don't get me started on his 7 Billion for abstinence programs. Could there ever be a stupider idea? A quicker way to flush 7 Billion down the toilet?

I'm all for teaching people how to fish. I'm all for standing beside them while they suffer. For just loving them, and keeping them from feeling alone. But how about giving them money to buy a boat? How about paying for a few classes at the local community college?

The difference between the middle class and the poor is not some 'hard working' mentality. It's $$$. Whether they worked hard to get it, or it came to them from heaven, the middle class has $$. The Rich have $$$$$$$$$. The poor ain't got nothin'. Except 5 kids, a cardboard box to live in and a job at McDonald's for 5.50 an hour.

Wake up. Everything you've ever had, came to you from somewhere else. You weren't born with a bank account. You weren't born knowing how to do your job that gets you 30,000+ a year. Someone helped you out. Even if you did much of the work, somewhere, along the way, someone gave you a chance. Don't even call it a break. An opportunity. And you came through with flying colors. Do you think they couldn't do the same? Do you think so highly of yourself?

I agree that welfare isn't 'fair'. They should be getting MORE money. They should be getting free health care, and affordable ways to go to college.

Your 'work' is a thousand times easier than their 'free time', that you think they are wasting. You think they wouldn't give anything to be in your position? To 'work' as hard as you?

The problem is that somewhere along the way we lost a sense of community. We draw a circle around our immediate family and we tell ourselves these are the only people we have any responsibility to. And somewhere else there's a million little babies, with no one to draw a circle around them.

Don't tell me they need Jesus. Don't tell me they need a little more love. Don't tell me they need culture. They just need some f-ing money. If they had money like you and me, they could afford culture, they could spend time loving eachother, and they could find Jesus themselves. If they even wanted spend time looking for him. Maybe there are better ways for them to spend their time.

I mean Jesus comes 'down' to earth, and spends 30+ years trying to get people to take care of eachother. 2,000 years later we think that life is about playing "where's waldo" with God. "I see Jesus there!", as if that's the solution to our problems.

I don't think the solution is to throw all our money in a hat and redistribute it evenly. I don't think the point is for everyone to have the same amount. Let some people have their play stations, and some people go without. But shouldn't we all feel compelled to spend a little more on those who have so little? Won't capitalism only be useful if we choose to give up some of the money we have 'earned'?

They don't need our wisdom. They don't need our suggestions. They don't need our sympathy. They just need our money. They need our resources. They need to be given the chances and opportunities that we have been given. Don't you see that they have wisdom of their own? A culture of their own? They just can't afford these things anymore.

God called Abraham and told him he'd be blessed, so that he could be a blessing to others.

If we are blessed, we must be a blessing to others.

'Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money. ' - Gerald Brenan

Another sort of poetry...

2004-07-18T10:42:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I took a class in Topology, which is one of the branches of modern mathematics. What is topology? Picture a donut, and a coffee cup. They both have one 'hole'. The hole in the donut is, obviously, in the center. The hole in the coffeecup is in the handle. They have different geometries (they are shaped differently), but the same topology, because of this feature they share of having the same number of 'holes'. In other words, if they were made of clay, you could 're-shape' one into the other, without tearing a new hole, or tearing the clay at all.

Think about a triangle and a circle. They have different geometries. But you could also think of 're-shaping' one into the other, by bending or unbending, or whatever. The point in topology is that 'points' which are close to eachother to begin with, stay close to eachother when you 'reshape' the shape into something else.

Think about a ring of people, holding hands. You can imagine making them stand in all sorts of ways, so that the 'shape' they make is different. They can huddle close together, or stand with their arms streched far apart. As long as they don't break off from eachother.

So topology is the study of 'lumps' of things, and all the various ways you can reshape them without ripping apart the pieces that are close together. If you punch a hole new hole in the clay, then there are parts of the clay that were originally touching, which are not touching any longer (they are seperated by this big hole).

Of course the study of topology is much more technical, and the objects aren't clay donuts or mugs. They aren't usually even spaces we could imagine at all in our heads. The Poincare Conjecture, for example, talks about the 'topology' of a 3 dimensional sphere. A 'sphere' in mathematics isn't a ball. A ball is a three dimensional object. A 'sphere', means just the surface of a ball. So the surface of a three dimensional ball is a 2 dimensional sphere, because you could imagine flattening out the surface until it was flat, like a two dimensional thing (like a piece of paper). So a 3 dimensional sphere, is the surface of a 'ball' that exists in 4 dimensions.

Try picturing a four dimensional ball. What does that even mean?

This is the world of pure mathematics. It's a strange world, that exists beyond our senses. It is the most abstract world you could possibly imagine. A world of points, infinite dimensions, functions, sets, differentials, primes, and all sorts of things that make sense 'logically', but which we could spend the rest of our lives trying to picture.

Like the fictional world of Macondo, in Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, it is a world of much beauty, even though there are parts that are unlike anything we've ever known. A beauty that can't be touched, tasted, smelled, heard, or seen. But it is no less real. It is ethe-real.

It is a world, like poetry, spun from intuitive concepts rather than sensory details. Like the poet who shows you how the world is connected in ways you never saw, the mathematician shows you how 'ideas' of things are related in ways you could never possibly imagine. And like the poet who sums up the essence of a scene in a few brief words, the mathematician bundles up so many different concepts into one precise defintion.

Mathematics takes us to the edge of logic, to a place that looks impossible. It teaches us that our dreams are still too small. That there is a world out there that is much richer than the one we see.

It is a world of 4 dimensions, or 10 dimensions perhaps. Where triangles can have more or less than 180 degrees. A world where distance has no meaning, and numbers are just particular examples of more general constructs.

It is my second language. My world away from world.

The Gift and the Curse...

2004-07-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

So I've been known to obsess from time to time. Perhaps alot. It is the way my mind is wired. It locks onto things, like the tractor beams in star trek, and holds them, for a long time.

My mind locks onto all kinds of things. All day long, things pass by my tractor beam, some getting sucked in, some being passed up. I usually don't have a choice.

I know it can be a frustration to those around me. At least an annoyance. I don't mind being annoying, but I hate to frustrate people.

I hate to feel as though people see me as somehow cursed.

Because I'm also so gifted.

It is the mode of operation of an NT. It's what makes them so good at certain tasks. And so obnoxious at times. Like the NF who's emotional tractor beam can lock on to either hope, and joy, or sadness and despair.

The gifts that liberate us are often the curses that paralyze us. All of us. In our own ways.

Not that we can't work on certain things. Try and be less frustrating, or obnoxious. We can. We should.

But we will always remain a little bit of who we always have been. Gifted. Cursed.

Unique.

www.SharedResources.org

2004-07-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

This is the name of the site I would like to create one day. My idea is to have an organization that matches people with an abundance of resources, with those who are under-resourced, and give them a means for exchanging those resources so that things balance out. So that the family who is suffering the most can suffer a little less. Wouldn't it seem that we could overcome so much suffering in the world if many of us would just be willing to part with a few more of our resources?

My problem is that I don't know how to get from here, to there. What are the little steps inbetween? I can see things so big, on such a grand scale, but I don't really know how to think in a more 'localized' way.

My plan for now is to just sieze every little opportunity that comes my way. And then build from there.

Who knows. Maybe my dreams are just dreams. Never to materialize. But if I recall, didn't someone else once start with just a dream?

15 Years and counting...

2004-07-15T07:16:00.000-07:00

The thing about 40 is, you can no longer recieve the Fields Medal when you are 40. What is the Fields Medal, you might ask? It's the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics, because Nobel himself, saw no need for an award in this area. It is the highest distinction that a mathematician could recieve. They are awarded every four years, to (usually) four mathematicians. One of my professors at Maryland studied at Princeton under a Fields Medal winner. One of the greatest young theoretical physicists of our time has won a Fields Medal.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really in any sort of position to win a Fields Medal. I'm not in school for mathematics (though I thought about it). I don't spend every waking moment reading through advanced treatises on mathematics. Mostly because it's so damn hard. And that's the rub.

I love mathmematics so much because it's the hardest thing I've ever tried to learn. And because, in the scheme of things, I'm good at it. I can't remember a name, directions, or what RM said five minutes ago to save my life. But give me a book on Differential Topology and I will show you a focus you could only dream of having.

And even still, I'm only 'good' at mathematics. Although I've never given myself enough of a chance, I just doubt that I could ever be 'great' at it. I've met the people who are 'great' at mathematics. They give new meaning to the term genius.

I have other gifts. Other things, that I hold in my pocket, that I think I could be 'great' at. In fact, I think I have the potential to be great at ALOT of things. But I want to be great at math. I want to win a Fields Medal. I want to do it without having to sacrafice all the other things I want in life...a family that I can spend time with, time to write, and time to save the world. I know that to be even an above average mathematician, it would mean sacraficing so many of these things. I made the decision a while ago that it was just not worth it.

So I will watch the world of mathematics, like others watch sports. I will spend so much time thinking, 'what if?'. It's inevitable.

And I will also continue chasing after all the other passions I have in life. The ones that didn't get away. You will know my name because of these passions one day. It's inevitable. Not that the point is recognition. Still it can be nice at times. Especially if you've labored so long.

Perhaps, yes I rather like the sound of what I'm going to say, that it isn't so much that mathematics is too much for me to handle. Maybe it's the other way around. Could it be that I'm too much for the world of mathematics? Could it be that mathematics isn't enough to capture MY attention in full?

Now I feel sorry for the mathematical community. In fifteen years they will no longer have the chance to award the Fields Medal to me. Poor sobs. It's their loss I guess.

Now, what else did I have on my list of things to do? Ah yes, write the greatest novel of the new century, and save the world...sounds very doable to me.

The hero complex...

2004-07-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, I remember asking my mom to take me to the hardware store. There I purchased a few steel hinges, a long length of chain, as well as a few other strange items.

What I didn't tell my mother, was that I was planning on becoming a super hero. I was purchasing these items to build a bullet proof uniform, a sort of batman like armor, with a chain for climbing walls and various other sorts of things that super-heroes do.
I had every intention of walking out the door (or sneaking out my window) one night, out into the neighborhood, to dash between the shadows, and make sure things were safe at night. Never mind the fact that I would be too tired to function in school the next day. Never mind the fact that at this young age I was quite, well, 'portly', and probably incapable of climbing up the side of anything using a rope, a chain, or anything else. Never mind that while I had told myself this armor would protect me from any sort of attack, beneath it was a kid who was afraid of absolutely everything.

So I guess the point of all this is that I've had this hero complex since I was a kid. I've always had these schemes and plans to do something, to change the world, to make a difference somehow.

I no longer want to don a cape and mask, a bullet proof suit, and fight crime in the middle of the night. Although it would be cool if I could swing from building to building like Spiderman. But I still feel the need to do SOMETHING. I still feel so helpless, in the place I'm at in my life.

Then I think about Superman. I think about how he was practically invincible. And yet if you consider how many people there are in the world, even superman is only one man, who can only save one person at a time, and even then, there has to be some time for writing and crushing on Lois.

I'm strung out between this impulse to save the entire world, and a sense of apathy which makes me wonder if I can really do anything for anyone.

Perhaps I won't ever save the world. Or even many people. Maybe I'll never 'save' anyone at all. Maybe they don't really need 'saving'. Maybe I'm the one who needs saving.

I don't really know what to think about all this. I only know that all I do is think about this.

Today I did something. It wasn't much. Gave a little money to someone who needed it more than I did. I guess that's something.

But it isn't enough. I bet superman went home everynight thinking to himself, 'this just isn't enough'. I bet Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr, and Mother Theresa thought the same thing, every night before bed.

Perhaps even Jesus Christ, nailed to a cross, thought to himself, 'Is this really enough?'.

And maybe that's what it takes to save the world. Or at least to die trying.

On Love as the Undeconstructable...Or Why I Choose to Identify Myself as a Christian at 24...

2004-07-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

(I wrote this essay several months ago after listening to a lecture on CD by John Caputo, a catholic philosopher/theologian who studies Derrida. It's long, and a bit 'rambly', but here it is, for what it's worth...)

Someone once asked me what I thought love was. I guess it's a question we all ask ourselves from time to time. Have I ever loved anyone? Have I ever been 'in love'? How can you fall out of love?
I've certainly been 'in love', and I've certainly fallen out of it. But to put my finger on exactly what it is, seems so difficult. How do you explain it? It's in her voice, it's in her hands, it's in her profile. It's in her responses to your questions, and the questions she asks you back. It's in all the things you were ever looking for in someone, all the charisma and charm and sex appeal. The gentleness and the innocence.
But it's also in the other things, the things you thought you could do without. It's in imperfect bodies, silly expectations, and a false sense of confidence. You try to describe her without those things, and something is missing. You don't want to describe her without those things. They are just as much a part of who she is, and you won't settle for anything less than everything about her. So what is love, if you cannot single out some common characteristics, some common theme?
And then there is the question of God. Who is He?
What is his purpose? What is our purpose? The two seem related because the same people who ask you about love are always the people who ask you what you think about God. They are inseperable in that way.
And who was Jesus? And what did he teach us about love?
The postmodern world tells us that everything is deconstructable. Everything has been created by us, and therefore, everything may be reconstructable. For so long, I believed this was true. I thought that I could construct meaning, that we as a society could construct meaning for ourselves. Yet shouldn't meaning of all things remain undeconstructable? If there was only one thing that remained, after you, me, and everyone else has come and gone, shouldn't it be some kind of purpose for our lives? Everything in our biology screams, 'stay alive one more day'. Perhaps our biology knows something that we do not? Perhaps when you look back at the history of the universe, the big bang, the formation of elementary particles, the formation of galaxies, planets, earth, and the emergence and evolution of life- perhaps it is not so much that we arrived here by chance. Perhaps the laws of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of sociology, dictate that we would be sitting here, you and me, today. Or someone like us in any case. Perhaps purpose is threaded throughout the universe like the fabric of space-time itself.
So you ask, 'what purpose?'. And now we are back where we started. What does it mean to love? Why do we love? Why do we fall in love? How does it happen?
If we answered these questions, we would be deconstructing love. For to deconstruct it would be to provide an explanation for how it could be. And then we could imagine how it could be otherwise. And that means we could change it. We could make it go away. Sometimes, some of us feel that we have done this at times. Thought about it so hard that it just slips between our fingers. We hold on to someone so tightly, and somehow we are left empty handed. Then we think that love is something that we can decide, a decision we make, to love or not to love. I don't think you can really 'think' away love, but you may think so hard that you are unable to see it infront of you, all along, through all your worrying and discussions with yourself.
Shakespeare said, 'who ever loved that didn't love at first sight?'. I've thought so much about the meaning of this sentence. Of course there's no way to know what he meant when he wrote this sentence down, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense. Ask someone when they first loved someone, and they will tell you a time when they realized that they loved the other person. And so it seems to be a discovery. But did they really not love this person before this moment? If we trace their feelings back, just one moment before, could they not have said the same thing? Where is the point back in time, at which you have crossed over from not loving someone to loving them? Love it seems, can only be discovered with time, but perhaps, if it is discovered, it was really there all along. If you love someone now, how could you have not loved them just before this moment? And then the moment before that? Or perhaps it is better to say that if you have fallen in love with someone, the potential to love them was there all along.
So then love is the undeconstructable. It is not the thing you find yourself with after you add up all the emotional butterflies and charming personality characteristics. It is the thing you start with. It exists. It is the most natural state of being between two people, or creatures. To be 'in love', is to reach this state in it's simplest form. You see someone else, including every flaw in symmetry, intellect, and emotion, but you do not see these things individually. They are one collective individual. You try as hard as you can to focus on a lopsided ear, a strange birthmark, a strange crook in their lips, but you cannot see these things standing alone. They are part of this other person, and you could not imagine the person being any other way. Or you might imagine them, but you would not want them any other way. You want them because they are just the way they are. Try as you may to deconstruct them, to pull them apart, to think of them as a collection of body parts: ears, eyes, breasts, legs; as a collection of emotions: excited, depressed; as a collection of beliefs: Christian, Republican, Scientist - you cannot. None of these categories sit right. They are simply the person in front of you, and you want nothing more than to be a little closer to them than you are at this moment.
Derrida would call the undeconstructable the divine. So then love would be divine. At least if a perfect love existed, and of course our love for eachother is never so perfect. And yet we have glimpses at times.
So if love is devine, do we need God? Do we need a personal God in any sense, seeing as how we could simply equate this divine with 'god' in a mystical sense?
If we believe that love is truly indeconstructable, that it is not the sum of the parts of the universe, of our relationships as people, but it is in fact the starting point, then why hypothesize God as an unnecessary axiom, the thing which generates this love which has means of explanation anyways?
I think we should turn to the gospel for an answer to this question. What, we may ask, is the point of the gospel? This good news? Is it simply for God to tell us that we have sinned, and he's not going to punish us like we deserve? For all it's carnage and destruction, did we also not already find in the old testament a God who passed on punishing those who many times deserved it? Is the new testament, as many Christians believe, a greek like myth about a once perfect universe which was tainted, and Jesus arrives much like a Platonic hero, to rid the world of it's curious imperfections? When did God promise perfection before this point? When did he demand it? When, after Christs arrival, did the world cease to have it's curious imperfections?
I am no longer comfortable with images of the cross as God bringing suffering to a person in order to cease suffering elsewhere. That is a humanistic way of percieving the gospel. Purge here so that we may be saved elsewhere. It is what Hitler did with the Jews, it is what white men did to African slaves. Sacrafice some for the good of the many. But what culture really believes that suffering can be used to end suffering? Or what culture has ever seen a case where this has turned out to be true?
No, I have come to see the gospel in quite a different way. God didn't come to say, 'you are forgiven', or 'you are free from bondage', or whatever else the evangelicals might tell me. God came to say first and foremost, I believe, 'You are not alone'.
We are afraid of many things. But I think it is our deepest fear that we are ultimately alone. When our loved ones have passed, or we are driven to isolation, when we must suffer with no support, we cannot help but feel that the universe is empty save our own soul. And what is love between one person? Love is a relationship, a state of being, the undeconstructable connection between two creatures. Everything in the universe tells us it is what we need. Our biology knows it, our psychology knows it. We were not meant to be alone. So as a people, as a family, as an individual, how could we have been left alone? How could we have gone unloved? How can we exist outside of such a relationship?
And Jesus comes into the world, in a mystical way, with an insight into our humanity unrivaled in the history of our species, and says, 'you are not alone. I shall suffer along side of you. I shall die with you. And I promise you that through all of this, you will always be loved.'
Original sin, the fall of humanity, our total depravity, these are all missing the point, I think. It is not some abstract set of rules which God wishes us to adhere to. He simply wants us to never have to feel alone. He wants us to always feel as though we are loved. And that means we must do the same for others. Never let them forget that they are alone. Always love them. If we believe there is no underlying purpose, no real reason for people to love one another, then yes, God must be an arbitrator. But what if to love is really our most natural state? What if it really is our nature more to love than it is to hate? Then God doesn't need to act as a lawmaker and force us to do this 'arbitrary' thing which is already against what we are naturally inclined to do. All he needs to do is to give us nudges here and there, reminders that the world we live in is not the world in it's most natural form. That we are walking around in a mist, we are not seeing eachother the way we could be seeing eachother. We must be awoken from this nightmare that we are alone and that there is no purpose for our lives. Evil is not the absence of love, but the inability to recognize it. A disease which keeps us from loving eachother the way God knows we are all capable of doing. If it really is, as many Christians say, our natural instinct to do evil, then we are all doomed. And to love is to do something which is distinct from who we really are in this world. But if we as humans are most naturally given to love, and it is just a matter or recognizing that we must not only love those close to us, but everyone around us in our world, then there is hope. And our hope in the return of a our messiah is our belief that the world is getting better, or capable of being better, that the world is healing.
So in spite of all my frsutrations with the church, with fellow 'Christians', I find myself at 24 with no other recourse but to believe in God, and to believe that Jesus was sent from God to reveal something that I cannot imagine living life without believing. That we have a purpose in this life, and it is to love eachother, and that no matter what situations we might find ourselves in, no matter how alone we may percieve ourselves to be, we are not. We never go unloved, and we never go without someone to love. As hard as it is (especially for people like me) to imagine loving a God who refuses to take a physical form.

Beauty and Truth...

2004-07-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

(the photo here is from Whit Bronaugh, go there and buy some of his pictures, because I am as soon as I have some more money)

How do you capture something like this?

As we walked around the arts fesitval at State College, we were bombarded with amazing artwork, like this picture. Photographs, paintings, and sculptures that seemed too ethereal to be real. Snatched out of someones dreams and matted in off white.

Aristotle once asked whether it is better to know truth or happiness (if you had to choose). I would like to rephrase the question. 'Is is better to know truth or beauty?'

When I look at a photograph like this, the answer seems obvious. What is the truth in this photograph anyways?

It seems so strange to divide the world up into things that can be 'true or false', and things that are simply 'according to taste'.

I think the world is beautiful. I think we have created the allusion of true and false, because they fit neatly within our mode of operation. That's not to say that I don't believe in right and wrong. I believe in suffering. I believe in a world that is full of beauty and full of ugliness. We must do what we can to rid the world of ugliness.

But true and false? I just think that too often our preoccupation with the 'truth' obscures what really matters.

I think that truth is a very valuable term in areas like science, where you can draw a circle around a set of information and discuss what is 'true', given what we have to work with. And in the context of people, and relationships. Who told what to whom. But when you take away this line, when you examine these things in light of EVERYTHING else in the world, you find that the truth has no simple meaning. There's no easy way of talking about what really happened, because perspectives become so much larger, and things that seemed firm become somehow more distorted.

So I guess I believe that truth is a good approximation, a good stepping stone. But beauty is the ideal. It is what we should strive to learn, to see in every situation. Beauty, to me, is more universal.

Thought for the day...

2004-07-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend was an action packed one, especially for an INTP. Concerts, bars, BBQ's, shrimp-boils, and late night dinner parties. I haven't had much of a chance to catch up with my own thoughts, so I will spend a few moments thinking about some thoughts from last week.

I don't generally find bible study to be all that enlightening. Not because I feel the bible is some archaic book that has little relevance to my life, but because most bible studies treat it as such. I do not believe in 'inspiration', but I believe in being inspired by stories about people who have the same fears, hopes, and demons as we do.

Last Wednesday night was a rare example of a bible study gone right. I won't even bother explaining what we were reading, mostly because I'm rushing right now to get ready to leave for work. But a point was made about idol worship. Why was God angry? Because he wanted the accolades they were spending on some rock, for himself? The facilitator of this bible study offered another interpretation. Didn't it make sense that if these people believed that certain idols would help their crops, their fertility, or whatever other basic needs they had, that God would be understanding, even if he realized their faith was misplaced?

Perhaps, though, it isn't about God being jealous for himself. 'What does God want from us?' the facilitator asked. 'Doesn't he want us to be blessed, SO THAT we can be a blessing to the whole world?'.

Maybe the problem isn't that God is frustrated with us for misunderstanding which gods exist and which gods do not, but rather that we have missed the point of having gods at all. If our concern is only for OUR crops, OUR family, OUR well being, than we cannot proceed to be a blessing to the rest of the world. Idols are not simply a distraction from giving God accolades...they are a distraction from sharing what we have with the rest of the world. Our crops. Our love. Whatever we have to offer.

Now all of a sudden the age old bible study question of, 'what are your idols?', asks us not what takes our attention from prayer, devotions, and all sorts of useful but often too pious acts, but rather what takes our attention from our depressed relatives, our sick neighbors, our starving companions on this earth that happen to live 5,000 miles around the other side? We are so busy trying to make sure our basic needs are met, and we have no faith in some way of living life where we not only survive but help others to survive as well.

Perhaps not such a profound thought. But it's still an important one, I think.

On death...

2004-07-08T07:26:00.000-07:00

Einstein, when asked if he was sad at the news that a close colleague had died, replied that his theory of relativity depicted a world where all moments existed together, and that while he could no longer experience the 'moments' of his colleague, they still existed elsewhere in spacetime, and this brought him a sense of comfort.

I watched both of my grandparents die, in front of my eyes. It was as peaceful as I imagine dying could be. Now they are both together, dancing to the music of ol' blue eyes, and there's nothing anyone could say that might convince me otherwise.

I have always been afraid of death. It is not so much the fear of not living, which is a lesser fear I have from time to time, but the fear of living on through death, and waking up 'on the other side', only to find myself alone. If I no longer exist, I need not worry about being 'alone'. But if I do exist? If my 'soul' continues forward...what then? Where? With whom?

These last few days, however, I've felt some comfort about death. I don't know where it's come from. I only know that I can say that at the moment, I see death as a natural part of this life. Perhaps it is a moment's rest between this world and the next. This world demands so much of us, so much of our minds, our bodies, and perhaps our souls. Perhaps death is that chance to 'rest', so that we have a new energy to be born and do this over again in some other place, some other world, some other universe.

Death is the destination we are all heading towards, like a black hole which will eventually swallow everything in the universe. We all begin at birth, and end at death, our worldlines tracing out various paths inbetween. It is the one place we hope that we're not the first to arrive.

Of course, this does not mean I will be ok with death tomorrow. And when it comes to stare me in the face, rest assured, I will run away from it as fast as anyone possibly could. Our biology demands it, our free will demands it. We are all headed there, but we must all choose our own path.

So I don't expect much from death anymore, I only accept that one day it will get the better of me. I only wish, hope, and pray, now, that should I arrive somewhere else upon passing through death, that I might be able to find her again. And all the rest of them as well.

I Hope that God is Powerless...

2004-07-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

Power, I've come to believe, is what is evil. Power is the ability to impose your will on someone else. This, I believe, is the root of suffering. Don't tell me about 'good' power and 'bad' power. Power is evil. Period.

From a pragmatic perspective, I can see that there are times when we need to use power to keep someone from inflicting harm on someone else. But don't be fooled. It's not 'justice' you're watching. It's evil as well. A necessary evil perhaps. But evil none the less.

Power is what seperates us and divides us. It is what ultimately keeps us alone, keeps us from being one united human race.

The God portrayed in the old testament, one of power and intimidation, makes me sick to my stomach. I will not reconcile my picture of God with these stories. I will treasure them, but not because I think they are in any way accurate depictions of God's character.

I hope that God is powerless. I hope that God created us, and has no way to control us, and no desire to control us either. I hope his legacy to us is not a list of commandments, an inborn sense of fear, but the most primal desire to love and be loved.

The only power we rightly have, is the power over ourselves. The power to stand up from within our situation and say, 'I will not be overcome by you'. It is the refusal to be dominated, but at the same time the refusal to turn the domination back on our attacker. It is not really power, so much, as it's just love, of oneself.

If God is all powerful, if he chooses to excercise that power, if his power is our example, then we are all doomed. At least this is all I can conclude when I look around the world and see the structures of power that we have erected.

My own personal madness...

2004-06-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

You don't know what it's like, to live inside this mind. It races about, in all directions, at all times. I can hardly tell it to quiet down. Why should it listen when you suggest this?

Still the madness that keeps me up at night, which makes me sick to my stomach at times, is the same madness that keeps me asking all the usefull questions that you grew tired of asking.

I don't imagine I see reality so differently from you. It's just that I see a future of more possibilities. And I guess I must put up with the terrifying ones if I am to experience the beautiful ones as well.

So I'll ask you to help me keep my mind from obsessing about what could go wrong, and you ask me to help you imagine all the ways that things could go right.

I've seen so many ways that things could be. Reality for me, is far greater than the way things happen to be.

To save the world or not to save the world, that is the question...

2004-06-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

I was struck by his comments, this past Sunday morning. We know so little about other cultures, other communities, so how can we think that we know what must be done to save them? And isn't there suffering everywhere? All around us?

I am only one person. I want to save 6 billion. What sort of idiotic complex do I have? I'm barely coping with my own life from day to day.

Still I recognize that I have what so many others do not...resources. I have so many. So many of us have so many. So many of them have so little.

How do you go about saving the world as one person? Should you even try? If you don't try to save the world, who do you try and save? If you don't try and save anyone, what do you try and do for them?

We call ourselves resourceful, as if we had made these resources appear out of nowhere. As if we had made something from nothing. The opposite of resourceful isn't 'unresourceful', as though they were lazy or lacking the abilities to make something happen for themselves. The opposite of resourceful is resourceless. They have not been given the opportunities that we have. It is that simple.

How can we share the resources we have with the whole world?

My country?

2004-06-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

I'm embarrassed. I know it's speculation. But I also know there are facts there too. I'm ashamed of my country. I don't even know what to say about it at this point. I'm at a loss for words.

The Anguish of Being...

2004-06-22T07:46:00.000-07:00

You can feel it at times, folding over your head, slipping beneath your feet, wrapping around your torso, until it has enveloped you. Then you feel that drop in your stomach.

How is it possible?

You try and concentrate on the task in front of you, the dog you are walking, keeping your feet from tripping over cracks in the sidewalk. Just don't think about it. What good can it do to think about it?

You were thinking, ironically, about death. It began as a moment in which you appreciated everything that you had, felt overwhelmed by the majesty of everything around you.

You should have simply kept taking these things for granted. Now you have stumbled upon the thought that you may not always be around to experience these things. Now you have walked head on into the breaking shores of death. Surely your death is far away, beyond the horizon, traveling at great speeds towards the land, no doubt, but still so far away. But now you can feel the tide sipping at your feet. You stumble backwards, gripped by fear.

Death will come, you say to yourself, but not now. For now I have no need to worry. You've almost escaped. You continue to focus your attention on the task at hand. Turning left at the intersection. Still, something leaves you feeling unresolved. Your hesitation is the window it was looking for.

How could I not exist?

You realize that death scares you not because it is another example of some unknown which you have an analogy for. But because it is the unknown for which you have no example. It is not the asymptotic realization of some other process in life. It is not a step towards something. It is the opposite of life. It is life, in the off position.

That thought is scary. But something even scarier has yet to dawn on you.

How can I exist?

This is the anguish of being. It is the realization that life itself, is in fact just as puzzling as death. We do not understand death, because we have no experience of it. We cannot fathom how death is possible, because we know only life. And yet in these rare moments we are confronted with the reality that even though we live, we breathe, we exist, we have no idea how this is possible either. We are suddenly overwhelmed at the irrationality of it all.

There is no reason for being. There is no reason for not being. They are logical opposites of a reality which has no logical 'basis' itself.

Why should there be something rather than nothing at all?

Our only hope is simply that this question is ill posed. Most likely man of our "why's?" are ill-posed. Non-sensical statements. Therefore our answers cannot be logical deductions or refutations. Our answers can only come as story. And story is what we tell ourselves when the questions we ask offer only logical absurdities.

It seems a strange thing that so many people look for truth and 'purpose' in the abstractions of logical inferences and facts. There is no reason for our 'being' in this sense. Our reason, I believe, can only come from our experiences, and the stories that describe them.

The scientists and philosophers continue to deconstruct the world into smaller and smaller pieces, axioms and inductions. They are looking for purpose in the fabric of the universe, and in the realm of Plato's Ideals. And while I applaud their efforts, and believe that their efforts provide us with a fuller and more majestic picture of reality, I still believe they are looking for truth in the wrong places.

There is no resolution to the anguish of being. There is only comfort, inspite of it. Like suffering (it is in fact a kind of suffering, of the mind). It exists and we must coexist with it. And in my opinion this can only happen through story. Everything we learn must ultimately be related back to our humanity. The objective facts of science must be re-told as parts of a greater epic, where the characters are not inanimate objects, but "he's" and "she's", and "we's" and "them's".

We must decide for ourselves if the story involves us, or something 'other', something different than ourselves. In either case, we must continue to immerse ourselves in story, or else find ourselves alone, in the end, with only the anguish of being to comfort us.

The Chromodymanics of the soul...

2004-06-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

Maybe our souls are like quarks, 'confined' to be together by some natural law that is bigger than us as individuals. The scientists say that it is impossible to find a quark, alone, seperated from it's partners. They say that deep inside the proton, you find them, sailing through an ocean of energy, the messenger of their connection. The farther you pull them apart, the stronger the attraction between them.

What keeps them so close together? The scientists call it 'color'. It is their identity. Known only to themselves, and only for a brief moment, before it is exchanged.

Is our love an exchange of ourselves in which we are drawn closer to eachother through a shared identity which no longer resides in you, or me, completely, but in an 'us'? As individuals we continue changing, evolving, but perhaps in such a way that the 'us' remains, in a sense, unchanged?

So maybe it's not so crazy to imagine that the universe has this property of 'love' sort of hard wired into it, at the most fundamental level, is it?

To be like Seuss...

2004-06-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

I wish that I walked,
and talked like a Seuss,
that my lips were not rigid,
but practiced and loose,

I wish that I knew of,
the fox with his box,
the cat with his hat,
and of Cindy-Lou Who,
with her short golden locks.

If I were a Seuss,
I'd look at some trees,
and say, 'Watch for the truffalumps,
who climb them with ease.'

'They climb to the top,
to eat Topple-Tree Fruit,
while the Tylaroos graze,
on the Topple-Tree roots.'

'For all through the spring,
the fruit grows unending,
and it weighs down the tree,
and the trunk begins bending,

so by the end of the summer,
they have eaten it all,
and the trees all point up again,
by the start of the fall.'

It's not a matter of seeing,
with the eyes of a child,
it's a matter of seeing,
that the world is that wild.

To think like a Seuss,
is not to think simple,
it's to think with a smile,
a smile so big,
that it comes with a dimple.

It's not to deny,
the realities we're taught,
it's to look at which parts do matter,
and which parts just do not.

Growing Impatient...

2004-06-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

I don't think that I can wait much longer. I thought that I could. Hold on, as I have been, by a few fingers, but I think I need them. The 'church' is moving too slowly for me. I guess that perhaps I am just impatient. Still, I can't lie in waiting forever. How can we claim to bring anything to the world when so many civil wars divide us?

I was warned about trying to start my own movement. But it won't be MY movement, will it? It will be ours. Because I don't know what the world needs, beyond the basic ethic of 'love your neighbor...'. I only know I don't see it enough in the church. Not every church, just the ones who go around saying, 'we are Christians, we are Christians...'. You embarass me. It's true I'm easily embarassed. But you also make me feel ashamed. Few things shame me these days. Congratulations on being one of the few.

I know you are just going through growing pains. The pain lasts just a moment in my body, but your body is 2000 years old, so I imagine the pain might last longer. Hurt more.

I'll be around. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just not going there. Not until I stop being embarassed. I'm not embarassed just for me though, otherwise I could get over it. The whole world has moved on, and still you fight about these stupid questions.

Your good news is outdated. Tell us something more, something new, something we haven't heard yet. Tell us that God loves homosexuals, that he doesn't really give a damn about which part of your body you stick where as long as you are not hurting someone and that you are loving them in all that you do. Tell us that God is waiting for women to stand side by side with men in every single part of the church. That their breasts are in fact not an impediment from leading in any sort of way. Tell us that God loves parties and laughs when people get a little too intoxicated, though he is also the first to worry should they put themselves in any precarious situations. Tell us that God trusts our judgement, because in 2,000 years he's given us a handful of stories and ALOT of ignorant leaders.

I can't find Jesus in your politics. I can't find him in your absolute theologies. If you want to make reality more complicated, study math, not Jesus. The truth is, most days I don't like your Jesus.

What are you so afraid of? Being wrong? You are wrong. We all are. Get over it. Loosen up. Focus on what we do know. 'Love eachother'. Tell me where you stand on this.

And stop talking about soup kitchens being a platform for the gospel. If it's not the other way around than I am not just done with your church, I'm done with your gospel. Luckily I got more faith in God than that. Not much faith, unfortunately, but enough not to feel like I have to choose between your version of him or nothing at all.

I will not look down on you, or mock you, if I can help it. I will try and stay close by. I'm listening for something new. I don't want to be off by myself for long. I'll wait for you to mature a bit, and then I'll give you another chance. And you can always find my in your stone walls and icy mosaic windows. Because I can feel that God is there. If you see me though, don't talk. For now, it's better that way. Don't drive me away from the few traditions I can still take comfort in. At least do me that favor?

No I don't think I can wait much longer. A few months at most. Doubt that's enough time for you.

I won't enable you anymore. I won't make excuses. You are just wrong. And you haven't the dignity to own up to it. Make me feel like you ache for the attrocities that have been committed in your name, or the oppression you still endorse. Then I will listen.

Only then.

In memorium...

2004-06-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite poets died the other day. He's not the sort of poet you would probably have heard of. I barely knew much of his work myself. He was a sports writer, a columnist for ESPN's 'Page 2'. So most people wouldn't even call him a poet I guess, except he was. He took sports, and wrote about it in a way that made it speak to anyone who was listening, whether they understood the nuances of sports or not. He put the intangibles into words. He exchanged terminology with expression.

My favorite piece of poetry was a story on my favorite player, one Tracy McGrady. You may not care at all about basketball, and you may not even understand his overt references to Dune, a science fiction classic, but you cannot deny that in his words are a poetry that make you at least a little more curious than you ever were about this twenty four year old hoops phenom. So I'm asking you to read from the selections I've chosen, or read the article itself if you'd like , and if you never think about basketball again, at least admit that his writing trancends a list of facts about what transpired on a given night at a given arena in the world of the NBA. At least admit he's not just talking a bunch of sports lingo that means something only to people who speak that language. He's telling a story the way your grandmother would, with a sense of something 'other', leaving you to wonder about what's reality and what's just story. So now I'll let his writing speak for itself.

With much due respect and a bow to a master storyteller, Frank Herbert, yours truly often refers to Tracy McGrady not as T-Mac but-T-Muad'Dib, or the Kwisatz Shaderac.

I do this because what the hell else am I supposed to call this freak of nature? How does one refer to the Chosen, such an obvious act of God? One must go fiction, because he is beyond belief otherwise -- so far beyond it until you must believe. His Game leaves you no option.

If the opponent doesn't double, T-Mac stands out high, ball on hip, but held slightly behind his body, not like a rook showing ball so it can be picked ... he only seems to be nonchalant ... he regards the set-up with those wide-spaced, otherwordly, sleepy, soulful eyes, and you feel like he's already on either side of you. Both sides at once. And then he does whatever he wants to do. Basically. From deep, or on the drive, or on the pull-up, on the up-and-under, off the backboard to his ownself ... tell me, how do you want it?

...examine T-Muad'Dib's specs.

First, there's his length. Ask anybody about T-Mac, and they always talk length. I don't remember anybody talking about length until T-Mac. Length was there, but they didn't call it length. Length is height, and even more height than what appears to the naked eye. Length is deceiving. T-Mac has grabbed Kobe's jumper in mid-air a time or two. Nobody does that. Certainly nobody does it without retribution.

"He's so long!" Kobe protested, when asked about T-Mac blocking his shot. He sounded like Sting (as Feyd Rautha).

T-Muad'Dib is 6-feet-8 or 6-9, depending on how he chooses to carry himself; his sleeve drop is nearly 50 inches, shoulder to top of knee. His fingers are ultra-long. Add it up, you're talking seven-footer, with quicks, with the lateral body control of a man 6-3, with bounce, huge hops, with no flex span, with pure boi-yoy-yoingggg ...

What is his secret? What's his Spice?

Well, I can't say yet. After all, it's his secret, not mine. The story is just beginning. T-Muad'Dib is only 23 years old.

I do know there's the Vein. The Vein looks like a garden hose as it shoots down from his shoulder through his right, or shooting, arm. Maybe that's what gives him the Power.

Maybe it's just good circulation.

McGrady converts high-speed, fly-by reverse layups in such a way that makes it look like Dr. J. in time-lapse photography. He's his own Time Machine. The Kwisatz Shaderac needs no Players Guild navigator. He can fold space himself.

For now he leaves me speechless. This is not his fault. He answers questions in press conference, careful to couch his answers in platitudes. I've seen him waiting for a plane in LaGuardia in the off-season, probably off to save Planet adidas or something, and he still has the ability to fold space, even there, to appear, disappear and re-appear, make himself smaller or larger than his surroundings. He makes the T.D. Waterhouse Center in Orlando look like his own personal birdcage, an aviary that needs expanding, if only to allow him full range. Yet, he made an airport gate boarding area seem like Jacob Javits Convention Center. He sat quietly in his chair, nodded politely, and went back to his deep thoughts. He does not appear to have much of a regal opinion about himself. Let's hope he stays that way.

That's not just basketball he was talking, and don't be confused by the paragraphs, sentences, and proper punctuation- that's poetry you're reading. Gabriel Garcia Marquez in a different time and place.

Here's to Ralph Wiley talking basketball with God.

Million Dollar Mathematics...

2004-06-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

Just briefly, I will mention that I have hurt someone very close to me, because I did or said things to make them feel unappreciated. It's kinda the worst kind of thing you can do to someone, don't you think? Whatever they are doing for you, is sort of a gift, and you are just sort of passing it by, saying, "thanks, but no thanks". It kills me to know that she's hurting, and to know I can only wait for her to feel better. When will I learn? But this is a private matter, and although the details are far from scathing, I have no intention of unraveling it all here. I have realized that I must find a line between sharing my life and keeping some of my life for myself. For us.

My newest dream is to solve an infamous mathematics theorem, one of seven, which are prized at a million dollars a piece. Yes, there is in fact an organization called the Clay Institute, who has offered a million dollars a piece to the person who comes up with a proof of one of these theorems. Phylanthropists of mathematics. God love them.

There are several problems which I find interesting. But I think I have narrowed it down to one. One of the problems has purportedly been proven this last year, though it'll take a few years for mathematicians to agree. Several of the problems do not even seem very interesting. The most infamous problem, the Riemann Hypothesis, seems interesting, but it also seems the most difficult to prove. I wonder if a thousand years from now a proof will exist.

No, I have set my eyes on a problem called the Hodge Conjecture, which I could write down here, but probably no one (including myself at the moment) would really understand. In words it says something about how if you want to approximate a very complicated shape in geometry by a bunch of simpler shapes, you can always do so using a certain class of shapes. Algebraic Geometry. The crossroads of x+1=4 and the pythagorean theorem.

Of course mathematicians have tried for centuries now to solve these problems, so the odds are certainly stacked against me. Still, it's a fun little hobby. And it could make me a million dollars one day. Not a bad consolation for a lifetime of sketching mathematical equations on napkins and in the margins of in-flight magazines.

In any case, it forces me to admit that I, just like everyone else, have this desire to do something 'spectacular' which will cement me in the history books (even if it's the small section of history books written about mathematicians), and leave me somehow as an immortal to float around after my body and soul have gone away.

Does anyone know what a Kahler Structure is? I sure have a lot of background reading to do.

Lost in Transition...

2004-06-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

RM and I sat down to watch Bill Murray's Lost in Translation several months ago. It was interesting, though not quite interesting enough for her to stay awake through the entire movie. Or was it me this time? She made an interesting point, though, about the movie. She said that the confusion it confronted me with was symbolic of the confusion that the characters were going through, completely disoriented in this other culture, place, and time.

As the summer begins, I realize that the confusion of the characters is now mine as well. I am lost, not in translation, for I haven't actually gone anywhere, yet, but in transition. I haven't gone anywhere, but I'm not really here either. My home is wherever she happens to be on a particular day of the week. Sometimes I can't make it back home, sometimes I can. Sometimes I must settle for my dreams. Strange dreams that seem to have only one common denominator- her.

Still, as happy as I am to be with her, there are moments of sadness in between. Moments when I feel like the house I grew up in is no more of a comfort than the cottages from my vacations. Her house is more farmiliar these days, but it's busy with people who I still have much to learn about and I can never seem to rest there. I can rest at her apartment, so far away, but then there is no one else but us.

I am more disoriented by the day. My work seems less familiar. My writing is an attempt to keep some stream of consciousness throughout this entire process, for I fear that I may come out the other side and forget where I was when this all began. "Yes, that's me, there and there, and there as well". These are snapshots on paper, to tell myself the story later on when I wonder who I was and where the hell I came from.

Because I know how much happiness awaits me. I know I will be happier than I ever have been, as I am happier now than ever. But there is still a sadness, a fear that somehow my future invalidates my past, and that is something that I cannot bare to believe. How will I hold on to all of you? You will never know how much you have meant to me, how much you will always mean to me. I can't seem to tell you now. Maybe he was right, at dinner, several months ago, when he said that I was already gone. And I never had the chance to say goodbye. It just sorta happened. It's just sorta happening. I'm spanning two worlds, and I must quickly decide which one to grasp ahold of, or I may be lost somewhere in between forever.

I hope that soon enough our worlds will come crashing back together, and all this nonsense about transitions and change will become a fairy tale we tell to our kids late at night. Because even though I could never love anyone as much as I have loved her, and will continue to love her, I don't know that I could ever love anyone else as much as I have loved all of you.

How do I know that things are really changing so quickly, you may ask? I know because my dreams have become as vivid as my waking life, and in those moments where she is not in either, I can no longer tell the difference. Once I could. I knew you in my life, and I knew you in my sleep. Now my dreams are filled with extras, whose names and faces I can not recall.

Soon my dreams will be filled once again with people I speak to when I am awake. And I will love those people. But now I hate them. I hate them because they are waiting to take your places. I hate them because if it wern't for them at least I could know that I would be all but alone. I don't even have that much certainty. I just have to wait.

Soon I'll hear her voice again, and there won't be any time to be sad. As hard as I know this will be, I could never imagine doing it without her alongside of me. Come to think of it, it is harder and harder to imagine doing much of anything without her.

I forgive the people who will find there homes in the places and people I have left. Forgive the people who provide a home for the people who have left you. Won't it be so much better when these difficulties are just the adversities of our fairy tales? Do you suppose we may still all end up happily ever after?