NewSc2

(personal diary stuff… this isn’t gonna make sense to most of you, but it’s what I write in my personal diary)

Read Kierkegaard today, his “Either/Or”

Notes: Aesthetic (pleasurable, experience-sense) vs. Ethical (religious, pious, grounded).

I enjoyed this read, but after reading up on some analysis, it feels too religious driven. Given the time period, and how Kierkegaard ended up supporting Christianity and trying to explain it, I don’t think this philosophy applies. Moreso, I think most historical philosophers don’t have an applicable point anymore — the use of the internet and Wikipedia have changed humankind in ways they could only begin to imagine (talking to somebody across the world, without seeing them face to face? that’s sorcery).

After going over Either/Or, and reading further onto Kierkegaard’s life, I did take away a few things — Kierkegaard was kind of a tragic figure, always in love with Regine (his broken-off fiance), and wanted an almost divine intervention to bring her back to him. But he lived his life single and a little hermit-like, and was (by all accounts) just focused on his work. I wouldn’t mind that.

Regardless, I need to develop a strong personal philosophy and remember its tenets. Perhaps even use them in a musical sense, a la spoken word.

Ugh… head hurts. Spent most of the weekend watching music tutorial videos, reading jazz theory books, getting frustrated at myself, and finally biting the bullet to turn in a Deep House loop that I was marginally pleased with. (I’m taking a Deep House course online)

I also spent the weekend doing one of my bi-annual (or tri-annual? quad?) room rearrangements. Saw this post on Lifehacker and it inspired me to de-clutter my room, and lower my desk (it’d been adjusted too high). Shit hit the fan (toilet flooded, and laziness settled in), so I didn’t really get my desk back up till about 3am last night (Saturday), and I spent about half of the day today (Sunday) working on my music project. So my “office room” is currently in half-disaster mode, my bed has about 2 weeks worth of old clothes I don’t wear anymore — but! I have a very aesthetically pleasing desk:

which is what really matters. Now I can (hopefully) comfortably zone out in front of my own computer, and not have to deal with finding power outlets and uncomfortable coffee shop tables and chairs. If I could only do something about my internet addiction…

Damnit… where was I.. I always digress. Oh yeah.. remembering stuff (no, that aside wasn’t meant to be ironic).

With all this reading/studying/skill-acquiring I’ve been doing recently, I’ve found myself approaching my brain-enhancements differently. On one hand, I can easily skim through a book and not remember specific details. Hell, I do it with movies all the time — Up was a movie (SPOILER ALERT–SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH) about a boy who hitchhiked with an old man whose wife passed away, and whose dream was to visit a South American waterfall/jungle. Man meets childhood hero, who turns out to be bad, and along the way makes 2 animal friends (this is Disney, after all), and eventually becomes the hero.

Do I remember much beyond that? No, not really.

On the other hand, I never really review my written notes. It helps me remember things, but maybe just in the short-term? Like in college—you listen to the professor, you read, you take notes, you do homework, you take a final—then forget everything. Do you remember your high school foreign language as well as you should?

So I’m thinking I could glean a lot more in a shorter period of time by just skimming over the books and stopping on those “A-Ha!” moments.

… I don’t know where I was going with this, but I’ve been debating how to study recently and keep myself focused. Basically, at the end of a month of studying, I have absorbed some instinct, but it comes so incrementally. I’m better at music, I’m better at photography, I’m better at — whatever. But ever-so-slightly. I’m not sure if this is just the way things go, and I’d like to speed it up.

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I don’t have a sheet next to me of “Everything I’ve Ever Learned” written on it — I just… know things, and do them. Absorbing what you’ve learned into your mind is a very, very strange process.

Series of photos depicting China. Most are pretty depressing (child labor, overcrowded living, poverty), but give good perspective on life. This one isn’t depressing:

Street side tailor making an instant repair on a skirt.

Page 1 (Survival), Page 2 (Relationships), Page 3 (Desires)

I just spent at least an hour browsing ArtofManliness.com. Mesmerizing. Not that I needed any tips on being manly, of course.

The Kepler Telescope launched today. I’d been following up on it (like the nerd I am) for the past several days. Many giant gas planets have recently been discovered around relatively nearby stars, and the Kepler Telescope is equipped with specific instruments built to detect minute wobbles in star movement (due to the gravity pull of small rocky planets circling the star).

As this XKCD strip cleverly illustrates:

I ended up spending the past few hours researching the Rare Earth hypothesis, the Fermi Paradox, Fermi Problems, ion thrusters, the Cambrian Explosion, the Khardashev scale, and many other little sidetracks. (I’d already spent some time on the technological singularity, so most of these concepts were pretty familiar).

It’s times like these that I really appreciate the science education (physical and biological) I received (because I’m not using it much nowadays).

Anyway, the articles were very interesting, especially the arguments surrounding the Cambrian explosion and the Fermi Paradox. In a nutshell — the Cambrian explosion saw the first bloom of true animal organisms, evolving from multi-cellular microorganisms. Why this suddenly happened is unknown, and Darwin cited it as one of the main fallacies underlying his theory of natural selection. Proposed answers include the relative heating of Earth, and the emergence of a larger supply of oxygen, from large photosynthesizing plants. Oxygen is crucial to the existence of present-day large animals.

The Cambrian explosion is something our planet needed to undergo for complex life to exist today, and may be a very unique event, which would support the Rare Earth hypothesis.

Although the universe is vast, many unique events are needed for complex life to form. This is what the “Rare Earth” hypothesis is all about. Planets need to be a certain size and distance away from stars that are of the right age and temperature (white stars die too quickly, red dwarves require planets to be located much closer to the sun, and would lock the planet into a tidal orbit), the existence of a large moon (to create tides) may be necessary, a certain chemical makeup of a planet, a far distance away from the center of galaxies, etc.

The Fermi Paradox, coined by the Nobel laureate (and developer of the nuclear reactor) Ernico Fermi, relates to the Rare Earth hypothesis. Fermi, during a lunch, did some brief calculations and theorized that there should be thousands of intelligent civilizations, and we should have been contacted by aliens a long time ago, and many times over. Why this hasn’t happened is known as the Fermi Paradox.

The reasons behind the Fermi Paradox are complicated and purely philosophical. Theories like “It’s the nature of intelligent civilizations to destroy others” (they could see warring humans as a virus to their enlightened selves), or “Civilizations only broadcast detectable radio signals (a la SETI) for a brief period of time” (before they continue onto neutrino signals or develop stable wormholes) require a leap of thought to achieve.

I really liked the “They’ve reached a technological singularity” theory, where aliens have attained a posthuman character, and do not attempt to communicate with us, just as we wouldn’t attempt to talk to ants.

Regardless, cheers to the Kepler  Mission. Even though it won’t find life, its focus is to find habitable rocky planets. The developers have already related any potential findings to a statistical amount (i.e. if the telescope finds 2 after studying 1,000 sun-like stars, then 430 of those 1,000 stars contain rocky planets. Or something like that. My statistics is bad). Read up on the wiki to find out more.

Came across this letter in my casual Wikipedia researching (see post above).

It’s the letter Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt as World War II began, urging FDR to speed up research on the atomic bomb. This led to the creation of the Manhattan Project.

Does time slow down when memories are created?

If so, I wish I could bottle up more days like yesterday.

I woke up around 11am and found out my car was missing (my dad took it out). So I hit up Andre to ask for a ride to the bank and Subway. (5 dollar footloooong — goddamnit no, shut up, shut up)

Went for a solo, 3-mile run afterward at the usual stomping ground (Back Bay).

Realized my hair was getting too wild, so I got it cut around the corner. Picked up a Turkish Latte at Kean’s after that (my stylist, Back Bay, and Kean’s are all within a few blocks of each other), and read a few chapters of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

I got to Klosterman’s “23 questions I’d ask a girl to figure out if she’s my type” (or something like that), and came across this one:

You’re walking around downtown Chicago. A wizard stops you, and tells you he can make you more attractive — relative to a dollar amount that you’ll pay him. Of course, you don’t believe him. So he points at a man walking across the street, and says “I’ll make him one dollar more attractive,” and waves his wand. The man’s appearance doesn’t change, but somewhere deep inside you, you realize he’s a tiny bit more attractive. He’s undeniably a little sexier. Now there’s one catch — you can only pay the wizard once — you can’t go back to him after the deal’s done, and he will never bless your looks again. How much do you pay?

This was just one question among between twenty two others, but it stuck with me a little longer than most.

Just how much would I pay? I ended up settling on $400 — an amount I wouldn’t feel too bad losing if the wizard was BSing around. But a few hours later I realized that question had many other caveats. It never details how much money would raise your looks by, say, 1 point on the ubiquitous “Scale of 1-10″, so it breaks down your answer to: 1) how much disposable income you have, 2) how much you value physical appearances, 3) your trustworthiness of strangers, and 4) plastic/cosmetic surgery.

Anyway, I dwelled on this, and several other questions, for a good half hour or so, stopped by Hi-Time Wine Cellars (also only a couple blocks away), didn’t see anything interesting, and went back home.

There wasn’t much on TV, so I channel surfed and came across the beginning of a replay of Muhammed Ali vs. George Foreman (the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight in 1974). I’d never seen Ali box an entire match before, so I made some noodles and settled down. It was amazing, easily one of the best boxing matches I’d ever seen.

Ali vs. Frazier III, the “Thrilla in Manila” was next, so I hit up Will and Andre and asked them to come over for some drinks and TV. Will left around 11 (he had work the next day), Andrew Chang came on by, and Andre left for a couple hours, only to return to Silky’s later (that’s a whole ‘nother story, which I won’t get into here).

So Andrew and I walk to Silky’s, get a couple drinks, hang out there for about an hour, and Andre shows up at 1:26am. Seriously, exactly 4 minutes before closing time. So… omg… we need to get more alcohol –

Three Matadors, Ernesto!

Okay, now take our picture Ernesto:

Why is everybody dressed up in caballeros y vaqueros outfits? Oh, there’s a chili cookoff tomorrow. Hm, whose hat is this? Oh well, Andre — take a picture!

The two of us (Andrew and me) stumble back home, and Andre parks and joins us halfway. We end up sitting outside my house, indian-style, and talk… about… I forget. Andre has the video. Stan comes over (his car’s backing up in the picture), and by now the delicious matadors are settling down. We are all jibbering about something, and Andrew keeps making me laugh:

Now that Stan’s here, we go inside to play some Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.

SSF2THDR.

Andrew continues to be hilarious. We’d devolved into speaking Mandarin (wait, actually, just Andrew), so Andrew kept saying (in Chinese) — “I’m gonna kick-kick-kick-kick your head! Wait, how do you say “fierce” in Chinese? Oh, I remember. I’m going to kick you! I’m going to use my forceful kick! My leg is made of stone! See?! Kick-kick-kick! Aha I’m so strong!”

Okay, so that picture probably didn’t capture the emotion, but the exchange should be on video too.

3am rolls around, and tacos beckon. We stumble outside, and Andrew runs up to my lemon tree, grabs a lemon, and… just… bites it. “My mouth is so sour!!! Your oranges don’t taste good Tony… =(”

I think he ate the lemon peel:

And so we get to the last picture. March 1st, 2009, 3:16am, in Santa Ana, CA, on the corner of Harbor and Hazard, at the Taqueria de Anda. 3 lengua tacos (mine), various carnitas and carne asada tacos (Stan, Andre), and a Carne Asada burrito (half me, half Andre):

Total bill for the entire day? Not including the haircut or game, or the bottle of wine I dug out from the cellar: 1 Five… Five dollar… Five dollar footloooonnnggg…, 1 $3 cup of coffee, 1 round of drinks ($11 + $4 tip), and $6 at Taqueria. Not bad.

*PS — Thanks Andre, for sending over the pics~

Good read. [link]

Quote: “3. Put the hours in. Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina.“

I was listening to NPR today and the commentator was talking about American Idol. He didn’t watch the show to hear the beautiful voices — instead, he watched the show to see Simon Cowell’s scathing reviews. To him, the mediocre people who tried out for the show, thinking they were the best because their church or their family told them so, needed a harsh dose of reality.

Not everybody can be a Super Bowl MVP, and not everyone can reach their goals just because they say they can.

To the NPR host, artists and athletes always attributed their success to a fairy tale “I believed in myself — look at me now” story. But they were the minority — a gifted few who gave others false hope.

His main point was correct — only be a handful of kids today will become quarterbacks in the NFL. But if a kid doesn’t try (within reason) to pursue his dreams, the chance for him to become a professional football player is zero.

The cartoonist I linked to above would probably disagree with the radio host.

The cartoonist makes some really interesting, motivating, and sobering points. He cautions people to not give up their day job, and to not expect, or even desire, commercial success. But when it comes to judging art, I disagree with him. I mean, I’m not a successful artist, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I feel like he’s a little bit too me-me-me.

Like the cartoonist, I do believe it’s necessary for each person to find their own unique creative path. But even if we all have our inner artist, we also have our inner psycho. Pandering to the public gives us some foundation to distinguish one from the other. Good taste is important, and we rely on our society and culture for many things. I think a little feedback is important to keep yourself grounded and motivated.

There’s a balance between what pleases ourselves and what pleases others. It’s up to the artist to find their own personal harmony. But then again, I guess that’s what separates the Warhols out there from the Kinkades.

A few months ago, Bill Simmons commented on the current ESPN Ombudsman: - [link]

“Sad note: Two weeks ago, I joked that Buffalo’s coaching staff could have doubled as an all-male cast for a porn movie called “Lotion In the Basket.” Much to my delight, a few readers took a crack at photo-shopping the movie poster, including one reader who bemoaned, “Thanks, I wanted to make it as authentic as possible and ended up seeing some things that I can’t unsee.” The two best ones made me laugh out loud to the point that I started coughing.

Unfortunately, we can’t run them because I don’t want to offend our Ombudsman — not just because she’s my favorite ESPN.com columnist, but because I’m truly, legitimately, unequivocally terrified of her. Every time I check my e-mails, I fear seeing one from her with the subject heading, “Do you have time for a quick interview to tell your side?” She’s like a prison warden at this point — I don’t even want to make eye contact with her. So you’ll have to use your imagination for the “Lotion In the Basket” posters. As much as it kills me.”

I remember browsing over her articles then and yeah, they seemed good. They were better than the last ombudsman, George Solomon, whom I rarely paid attention to. Simmons’ comments stuck more because I imagined the ombudsman as a scary old lady; the part about her being his favorite ESPN columnist completely passed over me. I thought he was just trying to suck up to her.

I’m starting to fit the ESPN mold better (the Male, 24-39 demographic), so I’ve begun to actually write the Ombudsman with a few complaints, and paid attention to her more. Her recent article, criticizing ESPN for being the news, instead of reporting on it, was pretty enjoyable [link], so I started to seriously sift through her archives.

Turns out the Ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber, has a strong resume: she was the first female sports editor for a major newspaper (the NY Times in 1980), she was Tony Kornheiser’s boss back when he first started out at the Times, and has gone on to be an editor for other publications and has taught at Columbia’s graduate school of journalism. In the end, this doesn’t matter much — the former Ombudsman was qualified too, but he was boring.

Anyway, I decided to dig around and found a lot of good gems. Her writing style is very specific but casual and personable at the same time. Her first article praised ESPN for being the only commercial network with an ombudsman. But that’s where the praise stops — her next article was an immediate backlash, calling out Colin Cowherd for shutting down a site critical of ESPN, and criticizing ESPN’s response.

The piece after that, her first true report, was a sort of “state of ESPN” critique, calling out famous sportscasters for yelling too much and talking about stupid points with a general air of “certainty.”

If anything, this article is the one you have to read. She totally shuts down people like Jim Rome and Sean Salisbury with a quote: “Certainty is the place you stop [at] when you are tired of thinking.”

I mean, look at this absurdity:
“when I returned to the living room, two more heads were hollering. It was Jay Mariotti and Woody Paige mixing it up on “Around the Horn” about whether Colts quarterback Peyton Manning was going “to get the monkey off his back.” I would be hearing that phrase a lot over the next 2½ weeks, until the Super Bowl was over, and everybody finally agreed that the monkey was indeed off Peyton’s back. But on that first day, after watching Mariotti and Paige have a go at the monkey, I got to hear Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon take on the monkey on “Pardon the Interruption.”

And her genius rip on Sportscenter:
“Then, whooooosh, up came the roaring red powerball. It was time for the real sports news on “SportsCenter.” Who would the anchors be? Before I could figure that out, I heard yelling again. Highlights were being shown, and at first I presumed the audio was from the original announcer getting carried away in the thrill of the moment. But no, it was the as-yet-unidentified anchor, doing some rehearsed yelling.”

Schreiber makes some great points throughout, comparing PTI to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, and bashing Skip Bayless (easily one of the worst ESPN personalities) in favor of Chuck Klostermann, whom I love (read the HGH part of the article). I think she goes a bit far in her PTI vs. Around the Horn comparisons — personally I like Around the Horn more, because I like watching Michael Smith, Bill Plaschke, J.A. Adande, and Tim Cowlishaw more. But her points on Tony Reali scoring for entertainment’s sake were valid.

Regardless, the sports blogosphere loves her, and everyone seems to genuinely be a fan of her stance against ESPN. I enjoy her because she gives me a lucid view of my most-watched network and most-read website. I’m also trying to pick up on her writing style — I should refer to concepts more than individuals. Throughout this whole entry I’ve been using “I” and “her” too much; I should refer to statements as a third party in itself.

But I do have one last thing to say to Le Anne: Tune your radio to your local pop/hip-hop station. Tell me if you don’t hear the same loud, angry, and obnoxious vocals. It’s pretty much the culture of today.

I’m an unabashed fan of Bill Simmons. Ever since his Spelling Bee article I’ve been a steady fan, and with other golden articles like the Anchorman-NBA parallels, he’s become one of my favorite writers.

Simmons’ latest NFL Week 2 Predictions article was a pretty disjointed ramble (he even admits it to start), but there was a little gem in the Sports Gal’s Rant (Simmons’ wife writes a weekly entry during the NFL season):

Bill has a rare talent for illuminating issues that are sitting right there, only the average person never notices them. For example, Bill hates “The Hills” and thinks it’s scripted, but somehow ends up around the TV every time I’m watching it. Last week, I (we) was (were) watching the episode where LC and Audrina were arguing about their deteriorating relationship. So the Illuminator says, “The real problem here is that both of them are pursuers and not pursuees.”

Of course, he stole the pursuer/pursuee theory from me, but he was right. I have always said that female friends are “pursuers” or “pursuees.” I am a “pursuee.” You have to pursue me to be my friend. I don’t like planning things or calling people, I’m bad at returning e-mails and will absolutely let four months pass without you hearing from me. That’s why I usually stay in touch with “pursuers.” They are the ones who like to plan everything and be in charge. Pursuers plan Vegas weekends or baby showers; pursuees just show up. The problem is that two pursuees can’t be friends because neither of them ever calls the other one! Like, Bill always gets mad that I don’t hang out more with my friend Lynette (we both love music and we’re both easy-going), but she’s even harder to chase down than I am. I wish there was a Web service (pursuer.com?) that could organize lunches and buy concert tickets for us. Then I’d see her more!

The rant goes on a bit more, but the jist of it is there. Anyway, it got me thinking — am I a pursuer or a pursuee?

I think I was more of a pursuer when I was in high school — I took all those AP classes, set up SAT schooling myself and took on extra-curriculars because I could. Junior year was class from 6:15am-5pm (Newspaper, 5 AP’s and precalc, and Culinary Arts), SAT schooling on weekends, and KIWIN’s in whatever time I had free.

College? Not so much. Lazied out. Smoked too much, probably.

I’ve also acted like a pursuee in relationships.

Nowadays, I’m getting back into a pursuer groove, in certain areas. I’ve been picking up a lot of hobbies and reading and music, and also at work I’ve taken up more authority. I’ve been planning more get-togethers and going-outs with friends. 

Sometimes I’d feel like I was the only one planning and acting gung-ho about arranging trips… like I was the only one interested in going and everybody would just tag along. But I’ll chalk that up to pursuees now. I don’t like pushing people to do things, but if in the end they don’t mind and plans come through, maybe it’s for the better?

I’ve begun to realize progress comes in slow and steady chunks (learned that from working out consistently), and also in being very selective on what to pursue (picked that up from DJing). Not trying hard and stopping when results don’t come. Not settling for mediocrity.

We’ll see where this takes me.

Editor’s Note: What a horribly written post. I need to re-read a couple chapters in On Writing Well…