If you ascribe to god a multitude of seemingly inconsequential and unconnected events, belie your own common rational thinking by rendering unto them a collection of conclusive thoughts in quiet self-justification, then what is attained? Would it not be solely a dark veil between you and that of rational thought? Can one so lost be found again? Could the mere thought of such a meaning not be rationalized to that of superstitious folly? Is it not possible that your belief in the deceiving power of existentialist thought is meant only to deceive yourself? Failure to understand, no rather, failure to truly need and desire to understand is not failing only yourself but life in its beautiful entirety.
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It takes but a mere attentiveness to the world around us, in which we breath, we listen, we dream, we live, to perceive the most desirable pleasures we are sorely denied. Those most selfish pleasures of thoughts without influence, without subjugation to the whims and wants of those who shape our world. Through mediums both prevalent and minute, the permeation of control saturates our very existence. Free thought? A fanciful idea. However that pleasant notion of uninfluenced perception and unbiased opinions forever escapes our utopic fantasies. As masses we mold our minds to fit the perfect die already set, faults certainly cast away. Most accept this reality. Upon few dawns the enlightenment of our endless cycle, but nearly always after their time has set. Their struggles and defiance swiftly suppressed, extinguished into an oblivion. We hope endlessly for those even lesser precious few who can break through, alighting our world with renewed life and thought, procuring within us a spirit and passion that cannot be crushed. And so we wait, patiently acting as we are bidden, puppets to others as much as they are puppets to us.
If that’s true then I’ve just written an encyclopedia!
I’ve finally got my pictures from Greece uploaded and commented. You can check them out here or on the link on the right hand sidebar. I would suggest you actually open up the pictures rather than looking at the thumbnails as I’ve actually commented on the pictures in very large text above each image. I didn’t end up taking any pictures during our stay on Mykonos so no pictures from there unfortunately, but I do have a fun story to tell once I get some time to write about it.
Enjoy!
I just finished reading a book the other day while traveling here in Europe. It is probably one of the most incredible stories I’ve ever read. The book is entitled:
A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldierÂ
By: Ismael Beah
All I can say is wow…
Here’s the description from the official site:
A gripping story of a child’s journey through hell and back.
There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words.
In A LONG WAY GONE, Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a riveting story. At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope.
If I can recommend one book to you this year, it is this one.
I’m headed off to a cottage for the rest of this week and then hiking in Algonquin next week! So I’ll update once I get back, and hopefully with stories of me beating up a bear and then taking all his money!
Until then…
There’s been some pretty big news of late in the science community. Some astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date.
Using a the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile, they’ve discovered a world which could have running water on its surface. Located about 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra, it orbits the faint star Gliese 581 and has a predicted that it’s radius is only 1.5 times that of the Earth. What is most hopeful is that initial calculations and measurements have placed its mean surface temperature somewhere between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius.
Unfortunately due to its fair distance from us, I don’t think we’ll be traveling there any time soon, but it definitely provides us with focus with which to train new telescope technology!
What I find the most fascinating is the detection method, as they don’t actually just point the telescope at the planet and see it. They can’t do this because current telescope technology isn’t good enough, especially when the object of interest is in the glare of a star. So what they actually do is use a ridiculously sensitive instrument that measures the tiny changes in the velocity of a star as an orbiting planet pulls on it due to its gravitational field. Call me crazy but that’s pretty damn cool!
Why is this planet important? Well, one of the major goals of science right now is to find out if life has arisen and evolved elsewhere in the Universe. Up until 1995 we weren’t even sure if any other stars had planets! Now we know of hundreds, and as the technology gets better, we can find smaller and smaller ones. We’re right on the verge of being able to find ones just like Earth. And while of course we cannot know if this newly found planet has life or not, it’s our best bet yet!
[To ready the articles I stole all this information from go here and here]
I’m going to provide you with two different situations. Don’t try and nitpick at the details or try and find a way around the circumstances, just accept it and base your decision off that. My mother posited this to me over Easter a few weeks back and I still find myself reflecting on them on them once in a while.
Situation 1:
You’re the conductor of a train riding out in the country. You suddenly see five people walking on the track ahead. You won’t be able to stop in time, and you can’t warn them in any way. It is then you notice a fork in the track ahead, but the problem is that there is one person walking on the other track. So you have to decide, stay on the current course and kill five people, or take the fork and kill one. What do you choose?
Think about it before reading Situation 2.
Situation 2:
You’re a doctor in a hospital looking after critically injured patients. There are five patients that need organ transplants or they will die very soon, each needing a different organ. The nurse runs in quickly to inform you that there are no organ donors available for any of the patients and there won’t be any in time to save any of them. However, she then informs you that a perfectly healthy young person just walked into the hospital and that if you get him and harvest his organs before he leaves the hospital in a few minutes you would be able to save all five patients, and each resulting in a full recovery. The only problem is that the donor would die in the process. Note that you will not be punished for either decision. What do you do? Can you justify killing the one healthy person to save the other five?
Thoughts:
Chances are in the first situation you had no qualms about choosing the track with only one person on it. However, if in the 2nd situation you found much harder to decide or immediately said it wouldn’t be right to kill the healthy young person, don’t worry you’re not alone. In fact, in many cultures throughout the world, when presented with similar situations, many had a problem with the 2nd situation and said it would be wrong to kill the one healthy individual. You could say it’s an almost trans-cultural phenomenon.
Why is this? Wherein does the difference lie? In both situations you can choose to sacrifice one person to save five. Yet most find the obvious logical choice in the second situation abhorant. What are your thoughts?
Researchers unlock key to memory storage in brain from PhysOrg.com
Scientists know little about how the brain assigns cells to participate in encoding and storing memories. Now a UCLA/University of Toronto team has discovered that a protein called CREB controls the odds of a neuron playing a role in memory formation. The April 20 edition of Science reports the findings, which suggest a new approach for preserving memory in people suffering from Alzheimer’s or other brain injury. [...]
Today’s entry is about: How to put a chicken to sleep.
Here’s a quick FAQ for you.
Q: When will I use this?
A: Probably tomorrow.
Q: Why would I use this?
A: Because you now have this information so you will probably try it when you next get the chance (i.e. tomorrow).
Q: You keep saying tomorrow, is something happening tomorrow with chickens?
A: No. Well, unless you’re going to a farm. Your silly.
Q: Are you sure this isn’t harming the chicken?
A: I’m hungry, anyone want to grab me some food?
Q: Wait, why did you avoid that last question?
A: I agree, it is a beautiful day outside today!
Q: Hmm…you’re really weird, espeically since you’re really me, creating this FAQ pretending to be two different people, one asking and one answering questions in order to make this FAQ sound proper.
A: Say that again and I’ll have you hung!
Q: Uhhh, but then you’d be hanging yourself, dumbass…
A: That’s it! I’m getting the rope!
Q: We have to go now, I hope you enjoy the video.
A: Anyone know how to tie a proper hanging knot? Perhaps some sort of FAQ would help…
Q: *Smacks head with hand*
A: Oww!
How To Put A Chicken To Sleep – The best free videos are right here
