5/03/2007

intelligence remains overrated

or should i be more than the scientist? more than the mere observer?
ought i attempt to lead something or someone somewhere somehow?

'im from the internet!'

i want to ride my bike around late at night in keene in the summer. anyone want to join me?

as if it were by chance.

"The probable cause is a congenital malfunction in nerve signals in the trigeminal nerve nucleus. The fifth cranial nerve, called the trigeminal nerve, is apparently responsible for sneezes. Research suggests that some people have an association between this nerve and the nerve that transmits visual impulses to the brain. Overstimulation of the optic nerve triggers the trigeminal nerve, and this causes the photic sneeze reflex. Another theory suggests that tears leaking into the nose through the nasolacrimal duct are a cause of the photic sneeze reflex. The speed of the reflex seems to favour the first theory, as it happens much too quickly for tears to be generated and drain into the nose. In addition this sneeze reflex can be brought on by a sudden inhaling of cold air or a strong flavour such as a strong mint gum. This implies an overstimulation of any nerve close to the trigeminal nerve can cause the sneeze reflex."

you know, one of the arguments against drugs, (including alcohol, or really, mostly alcohol) is killing brain cells, or various other 'youll be dumb' reasons. did they ever consider that maybe i want to kill a lot of brain cells? that im hoping to become 'dumber' by their standards? did they ever consider that would be an attractive feature to anyone who has concluded that they think to much? no. they didnt. most human activity is unreasoned. and intelligence remains overrated.

the whole purpose of the doomsday device is to tell everyone about it. why didnt you tell anybody about it!!!

dear Jack Hanna, you have failed me for the last time!

"a production that never should have been made" production
by "we cant believe you paid to see this" studios.

"sara was short, boyish, and had eyebrows thicker than brad thought necessary"

it was that it was ridiculous to be at war with your own desires.
we want what we want, and theres not much we can do about it.
he wasnt afraid to try anything; trying new things made him feel... more alive.
he couldnt change the past. but the future, could be a different story. and it had to start somewhere.

how does one differentiate from the pursuit of desires worthy of fulfillment, versus the desires which ought to be abandoned?

we are finally learning how we think, who we are. what we are. not me or you or him or her or them or us, but humans, as a whole, are learning how we, as humans, think. finally.

menace

youd sacrifice a beautiful woman to save a moderately attractive monkey? you must have smoked some bad granola.




nope, nothing insightful. headache. tic. ill figure this out yet.

5/02/2007

somethings sweet

todays thoughts follow:

the reason i dont play games is the same reason i dont want to go to graduation, the same reason i didnt want to go to high school graduation, the same reason i hate patriotism and nationalism and sexism and racism and being called smart. same reason i find it so hard to believe that girls really like me a lot, despite repeated proof that they do. same reason i sit in the back of a classroom and rarely speak, unless i feel strongly that the benefits of my idea to the discussion for others outweighs the pain it causes me for people to think i am somehow special. how can i ever fall in love with someone when i abhor the idea that they think i am special?

i am the yrast.

i love my parents, i think theyre great, and that i personally benefitted greatly from having them as parents in my development (that is, growing up). but i dont feel attached to them. i never really have as far as i can remember. im sure i did when i was very little, but that time precedes my memory. ive never really felt all that attached to anyone other than girls that i am very close to, for a moment. then the moment fades, and i acclimate solitude. im not sure if that wording makes sense, but the idea should be clear. im not lonely, im alone. theres a difference. but sometimes that is a lie. sometimes i am lonely.

you either love all people equally, or you shut the fuck up. -Bill Hicks

i know everyone always talks about the dangers of yucca mountain's extremely long necessary life span, and how our containers are only 10,000 year certified, and lucky to reach that even. but why not just spend the money to watch it? i know we cant predict that we can watch it for the next 10,000 years, but face it, any event that is sufficient to dislodge the current government of the US will be either 1) so radically violent that radioactive waste will be low on humankind's priority list, or 2), so intelligently thought out that they will knowingly inherit the problem, rather than blindly. so either its consciously taken care of for all of time, or it becomes a lower threat on the threat list, which is a little hard to imagine, because right now its pretty high.

there is some sort of parallel between "the first day of the rest of your life" and the smallest member of an infinite set.

i hate it when people say, "nothings impossible!", because it is not true. there are plenty of impossible things. the difference is, its we should not state it that 'this here is impossible', instead we must state it, 'this here seems impossible, and barring any new, paradigm shifting evidence, this most likely is impossible.' but this has less to do with what is and is not possible, and more to do with the precise language demanded of reasonable statements concerning all of time.

it is too late to call this off? we could slip away, wouldnt that be better?

recycled bits: i think the central struggle in life is the ability to understand, accept (embrace?), and love change... constant change, in everything. and honestly, this is a philosophy i adhere to, but you can see it reflected in my thoughts about physics, as i often wonder how to abandon the ideas of constant things, such as distance, and replace them with their changing quantities, such as velocity. i figure we need to accept that there is no such thing as distance, there is only velocities, and velocities give rise to the concept distance, that we have invented to understand the world.
and: it is the 'misterium tremendum', in which people feel utterly insignificant, but, not personally alienated. the theologians call it the numinous, and i experience it whenever i feel insignificant. its why i enjoy feeling insignificant. does that make sense?

its not up to me. it never was.

okay, what most baffles me about our military prowess, when does it stop? okay, so these new binoculars, assuming they get made, put as at yet one more huge advantage of the enemy. at what point do you feel bad for your opponent? at what point do you begin to feel like you are taking candy from a baby? i suppose military personal dont think that way, and thats the whole idea, right? if youre going to be doing something like war, which involves things like people dying and things being destroyed, you dont want chaos, right? so to preserve order, you need everyone to follow directions, you dont want people thinking for themselves, thatd be bad. and once they are in that mindset, its not hard to tell them that what they are doing is for bigger reasons, that its not candy and your enemy is not a baby. but doesnt superior intelligence usually recognize when the game is no longer fun? grand chess masters do not view amateurs as much of a threat, why does the US run around screaming its head off, as the boy who cried terrorist or madman or weapons of mass destruction. this rant has devolved into incoherency and so now i will end it. gotta not get so fed up with this bullshit.


dear miss Jessica Moss,
i write this letter to confess my love to you. though i have only known of you for about twenty minutes, i have experienced a deep and profound sense of belonging when i have listened to music for which you have been involved. while i have only seen two small photos of you, your beauty is manifest; both physically and through your expressions as a musician. i have recently stolen your Black Ox Orkestar albums from my roommate, and proceeded to be consumed by them. yeah, okay, so this is over the top; its still fun to write like this to a perfect stranger with hopes that you might read it as fun and silly rather than creepy and bizarre... sorry if you experienced the second response.

yours truly,
cody cameron reisdorf


so i was trying to convince myself that it is possible that i might write something sweet in the letter, and i began to think, wouldnt there be talented people, writers, poets, artists, say, that are not aware of their talent? to whom talent was intrinsic? natural? wouldnt these be the greatest artists, as they would have the least ulterior motives driving them? (whereas a 'professional' artist may be looking to impress or woo). of course, im still convinced that i am no such talent.

why is it so much easier to think when i am in the bathroom doing something that i cannot write? like brushing my teeth, showering, or peeing. why do those ideas flee so quickly from my consciousness?

something i figured out last semester, is that i mostly teach myself, and as a result, i dont notice often when a teacher is not a good teacher; if they arent jerks to me (which is rare, because to begin with i am very quiet, invisible even, and after awhile i am usually seen to be a nice person, and the behavior is reciprocated), that was a long aside. if they arent jerks to me, then i dont have any problem with them. a while back, im not sure if i wrote about this, but sitting in number theory, i began to realize that i 'love' all of my math professors. and then i wondered, why do i feel that way? (it is, after all a feeling, not a logical conclusion that i constructed, it may have been discovered through logical reflection upon my own feelings, but that is different). i wondered, i know next to nothing about these people, other than they understand a lot of math, they have jobs to teach it, and they are willing to help me learn it. i know nothing of their personal interests or lives, why is it that i feel strong affection for them? now i am starting to understand, i am starting to see that my life is so centered around the subjects i take interest in, and so far removed from the social structure of the majority of the world, that i have largely lost the concept of personality, and personal interests.

i wrote not long ago that i believed myself to be exempt from Russell's insight that 'your friends know you better than you know yourself', and i reread what i wrote recently. and i need to add that, because i dont have a lot of human type qualities, and because in some sense, i reveal very little about myself (probably cause there isnt much to reveal?, i dont know, sometimes i reveal a lot too), that with revealing little, its difficult for my friends to know much about me, that i know about myself. in fact, it also relates to how little time i spend with friends, and how little i say and do when i am with them. on the other hand, Russell's statement probably still applies to more subconscious behavior, for which i am by definition less aware of, and my friends can more readily observe. of course, that assumes such behavior exists (although i DO assume i have much of this sort, i can imagine also having figured out how to repress and control such behavior, as that seems to be a pretty large part of my life).

topple the temple.

holy fuck.
so heres a question, if we spend more money on our military than all of our adversaries combined, why dont we buy our adversaries? we could save money, spend the rest to solve world hunger:
While the United States now spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined[citation needed], The U.S. Department of Defense argues that it's necessary to promote democracy around the world. Other groups, such as the Borgen Project have pointed out that much of that spending is wasted by contractors. The organization also points out that the U.S. gives more to its largest military contractor (Lockheed $22 billion a year) than is needed to end world hunger (World Bank estimates $19 billion a year).
also, those groups, like the EU, and NATO, and the SCO... those are groups of countries that have decided to bind together and protect their common interests and goals. now WHEN THE FUCK WILL THE WORLD REALIZE THAT MOST OF THE +6.5 BILLION EARTHLINGS ALL HAVE THE SAME FUCKING COMMON GOALS AND INTERESTS!!! and that they are essentially paying lots of money to themselves to protect themselves from themselves.

MAKE CLEAR WHAT YOU ARE ASSUMING AND HOW YOUR ARGUMENT IS PROCEEDING.

tonight i watched some guy tip over his third and fourth trash can. i thought about asking him what was wrong with him, (why does it feel good to destroy things? im not saying i dont like it, im not sure why i dont do it really, i suppose id feel bad about who had to clean it up). which brings me to my next point, later, i saw a man come along and pick up the trash, tip the trashcans back up, put it back together. restore order. its was somewhat inspiring, as i dont think he was an employee of the city or anything similar. he could have been me i think. he seemed somewhat disgusted with picking up trash in what looked like his normal clothes, and he seemed somewhat exhausted while tipping up what are apparently very heavy trash cans, saddened while looking around and putting the lid and trash back in its place. i considered talking to this man as well, asking him who he was, telling him thanks, expressing regret over not stopping or asking the previous man why. thinking about it, i suppose the second man probably gained some sense of satisfaction over having cleaned up the mess. i dont mean to imply he has any sort of holier-than-thou attitude, i genuinely believe he was a good person. but there is a certain satisfaction that comes with doing something to improve the world, whether it was intentionally done by someone else, inadvertently done by someone else, or just naturally some detrimental way previous. also, i do not wish to justify indulgence in the urge to destroy things simply because it lead to some satisfaction in some other area; although, perhaps these ideas are fermenting in my head, urging me to accept the idea that indulging in the urge to destroy is a more beneficial process to the first man than it is a detrimental process to the second. such things are too difficult to measure really, and i am really only procrastinating from studying for my number theory and intro to abstract exams tomorrow. thus, i am the scientist; a mere observer.






ha ha ha, "you need a garage to park the car."

5/01/2007

brain storm.

today i wrote a poem:

criminals we make.
our glaring contradictions.
dazzle me, dazzle you.
the shadows of clouds roll over my hills, roll over your positional probability distribution, roll through my head; storm through my head.
ive been recording the monumental bridges in every melody, hoarding supplies for a rainy day.
im looking out im looking up im looking over; im over looking.
do you see that your questions make just as much sense when i ask them?

this is definitive proof that i am not a poet.
although, was it Feynman who said, "for the poets do not write to be understood"? either way, someone understands me probably, and so i fail both in beauty and in obscurity. i also clearly dont have any concept of breaks or timing or meaning or whatever else it is that poets know about.

your heart, is not able.

elmer's glue builds character.

the war here, in america, is really about holding traditions sacred, or abandoning them. religion versus science, originalism versus reinterpretation of law, the war on drugs, all of these things are extensions of the idea that the old is important versus the old is not important.

glaring contradictions.

everyone always wants to go home... i dont really relate to that feeling. some people tell me they have no home, that the feel no place is home. i call my parents house home, but i dont think it makes a difference. if my parents ceased to exist, i would simply start calling my apartment home. i think the concept of 'home' eludes me. i guess it might seem that if you were to place me someplace ive never been, say, anchorage alaska, or los alamos new mexico, or oklahoma city oklahoma, that i wouldnt know anyone, and might feel out of place, but i doubt it. i dont know many people here. i dont go out or do much here. if i were suddenly there, i would still communicate with friends over the internet about the same amount, which means things wouldnt be that different. id still spend most of my time reading about math and science topics, philosophizing about life, being entertained by the world around me. the geography itself might become entertaining, seeing as how ive lived my whole life in this forest called new hampshire; other geography would be interesting to see. id probably spend the same amount of time and energy complaining about the weather, and other mundane things, even though such things would most likely occur in different quantities, itd still be easy to complain. its easy to be dissatisfied. im not all that dissatisfied, but when i want to be, its not hard.

if everyone in the whole world constituted a single brain, you and i, we would be the epileptic neurons. religious zealots would be cancer (it is after all). who would be the parts the beat the heart? who would be the pieces that keep us on our balance? who would be the fight or flight deciders? and who would ensure that we ate and drank what we needed? clearly, nobody is yet the concious part of a brain. it is my optimistic belief that someday, we will have such a part.

the computer's oblique strategy to my dilemma was, "what mistakes did you make last time?"
this advice is laughable: ive learned this many times, and continue to make the same mistakes.

clean up, dress up, and inquire about part time job at print shop.
call allison again: -ah ha, i did have another question! very rapidly: half full or half empty? urgently.

-Strangelove. What kind of a name is that? That ain't no kraut name, is it?
-He changed it when he became a citizen. It used to be Merkwürdigliebe.
-Hmm. A kraut, by any other name, huh?

---we must not have a mine shaft gap!
---mein furher! i can walk!
fluoridation jokes.


i want you to know that you dont gotta stay. if we're not gonna make it, its gotta be you that gets out. cause im not capable... ill deal with something being wrong for the rest of my life.

how do wormholes not cause theoretical problems with respect to potential energy?

everyone knows im a really nice person; i tend to meet people and assume they are wonderful, and it takes a lot of work for me to really not think much of them. i must admit, i have a biased towards people i find attractive. this applies both to girls, whom i am very often attracted to quite strongly (initially physically), as well as boys who i guess are just cool. ive never been attracted to any boys the way i am girls, but there are boys who i think are 'cooler' than others. i think most of this relates to people who think too. that ive met girls who i might find initially very physically attractive, but very quickly become not attracted to because of their inability to think, whereas ive also met girls whom i am not initially attracted to, but find to be very attractive as their intellect reveals itself.

why is it---how is it, that i have become so unconcerned with the world? im not worried about finals, im not concerned about getting accepted to grad school. im suddenly even thinking that a reasonably boring part time job will more than meet my financial needs. why is it that i am so confident that i am an intelligent mathematician? or an intelligent physicst? where does this confidence come from? is it deserved? is it adaquate? why do i seem to have more influence over people than i have ever sought? why dont i start abusing it already?