Friday, December 17, 2010
Final Final
All Right Po-Pho Final. It's just you and me. Time to dance (so to speak). The fact that I am talking to you anthropormorphically suggests you have some things going for you--like my lack of sleep. On the other hand, I am still sentient enough to use the word antorpormorphically (possibly even spelling it correctly) and I have used my time wisely and edifying-ly. It all comes down to this. It's like the final battle in Harry Pot...EXPELLIAMUS!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Objectives Subjectivity
Subjective perception is a deep part of reality. Something that makes life richer. But this one. This general anxiety. This just fits in as something to be rid of for the sake of other goals.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Observations
1. Flying Jet-Blue back to California, the airline forced us to watch a clip of Taylor Swift wishing Jet-Blue a 'happy birthday' and then to watch her music video for "Mine." It was, for me, a rare encounter with benevolent dictatorship.
2. Gatorade-purple-sun-set that colors the world, the ground, the bench, majestic.
3. In California, even when weather.com swears there will be a storm---it's still 60 degrees and sunny.
4. Were John Mill alive today, I'm guessing he would be a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist (reference: "On Liberty," particularly his thoughts on the nature of genius). Which would make us practically neighbors. Fifty-fifty chance we'd be fbf's (facebook friends forever).
5. This is my second post in a row that uses a list. That's some meta-BOL(D)ic information for you to digest.
2. Gatorade-purple-sun-set that colors the world, the ground, the bench, majestic.
3. In California, even when weather.com swears there will be a storm---it's still 60 degrees and sunny.
4. Were John Mill alive today, I'm guessing he would be a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist (reference: "On Liberty," particularly his thoughts on the nature of genius). Which would make us practically neighbors. Fifty-fifty chance we'd be fbf's (facebook friends forever).
5. This is my second post in a row that uses a list. That's some meta-BOL(D)ic information for you to digest.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Pillows
Things I Leaned About Pillows This Weekend
1. They make traveling much more restful.
2. Pillow-soft abs. They can absorb a punch or two.
3. No better way to avoid looking like a tourist than to carry a pillow around with you. You feel at home around the whole city!
4. I am undefeated in unilateral pillow fights.
5. This post is completely metaphorical and incredibly deep. You missed that!?
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Optimism
Well Hello, Hello! So it's been a long time, and while I can't pretend I've spent the entire hiatus ruminating deeply, I have thought and developed several opinions that might be interesting to post as blog posts--so I will try to have a long series of blog posts that I pen (type?) in the next weeks.
But, for the topic at hand, a clash of isms. Specifically, optimism and pessimism. So as some of you might know, I'm a very optimistic person. I don't mean that superficially. I'm that type of optimistic person who just. won't. stop. I'm an in-your-face optimist. You tell me you had a bad day, I'll think (if not say outloud) that you had a learning experience. I'll lose twenty dollars, and think that it is probably stimulating the economy. Hell, the Yankees will lose and I figure it will make them hungrier in the next series of games. Yeah, I'm that kind of optimist. In fact, I don't know if there is anyone more optimistic than I am. But being an optimist, I figure there probably is a whole lot of people just as optimistic as I am.
I've always been a fairly optimistic person--as I posted earlier in the "About Me" post with 20 facts about me, I don't remember the last time a song or a night's sleep didn't make things better. But things have gotten to a whole new level of optimism recently. It might have to due with my developing and strengthening "grassroots philosophy" view of the nature of life--in which individuals are largely free to define what has meaning in life. Equipped with such power, it is easy enough to assume that you are largely free to determine whether a given situation is happy or sad. I am not so arrogant or naive to think that my happiness and optimism is fully controllable by me and my thinking (I know biology and chemistry shaped by evolutionary processes greatly shape and limit the ability of my thinking--and I also know I don't have the faintest idea in exactly way the hard sciences do that), however, on a value-level, and thus for all intents and purposes for my conscious thinking, I've begun to think that life is life, situations are situations, and it is largely in my power to decide whether I will be optimistic or pessimistic regarding those situations and my life--and I nearly always choose optimism.
It has gotten to the point recently, however, where hearing pessimism frustrates me, angers me. Why don't people realize they can just be optimistic!? Today, I think I've realized the necessity of pessimism, and hope to be a more reasonable and tolerant optimist in the future.
See just as much as my "philosophy," has strengthened my optimism, I know the fortunate circumstances of my life, in which I have faced relatively very few hardships and tragedies, has insulated and fortified my optimism. But while I have had very little personal contact, it's important not to forget that deeply sad things exist in life. To be completely rigorous (or at least a little rigorous): while I still maintain that individuals can decide what has meaning and therefore to a large extent choose what is happy and sad, I know that there are things that are nearly impossible not to consider sad--because of the ingrained processes of our mind that compels them to be sad and because any value system in which life is valuable necessitates there to be deep sadness in life--simply because a part of life is death, not to mention sickness, poverty, inequity, crime, and heart-break. For all of my optimism, I've lost sight that sad things exist, and sometimes you don't need to try to--sometimes it's jarring to try to--make them positive. I'll end my post there--my first post, I believe, without some uplifting message at the end. How's that for ironic on a post titled optimism.
Word Up,
DK Says
But, for the topic at hand, a clash of isms. Specifically, optimism and pessimism. So as some of you might know, I'm a very optimistic person. I don't mean that superficially. I'm that type of optimistic person who just. won't. stop. I'm an in-your-face optimist. You tell me you had a bad day, I'll think (if not say outloud) that you had a learning experience. I'll lose twenty dollars, and think that it is probably stimulating the economy. Hell, the Yankees will lose and I figure it will make them hungrier in the next series of games. Yeah, I'm that kind of optimist. In fact, I don't know if there is anyone more optimistic than I am. But being an optimist, I figure there probably is a whole lot of people just as optimistic as I am.
I've always been a fairly optimistic person--as I posted earlier in the "About Me" post with 20 facts about me, I don't remember the last time a song or a night's sleep didn't make things better. But things have gotten to a whole new level of optimism recently. It might have to due with my developing and strengthening "grassroots philosophy" view of the nature of life--in which individuals are largely free to define what has meaning in life. Equipped with such power, it is easy enough to assume that you are largely free to determine whether a given situation is happy or sad. I am not so arrogant or naive to think that my happiness and optimism is fully controllable by me and my thinking (I know biology and chemistry shaped by evolutionary processes greatly shape and limit the ability of my thinking--and I also know I don't have the faintest idea in exactly way the hard sciences do that), however, on a value-level, and thus for all intents and purposes for my conscious thinking, I've begun to think that life is life, situations are situations, and it is largely in my power to decide whether I will be optimistic or pessimistic regarding those situations and my life--and I nearly always choose optimism.
It has gotten to the point recently, however, where hearing pessimism frustrates me, angers me. Why don't people realize they can just be optimistic!? Today, I think I've realized the necessity of pessimism, and hope to be a more reasonable and tolerant optimist in the future.
See just as much as my "philosophy," has strengthened my optimism, I know the fortunate circumstances of my life, in which I have faced relatively very few hardships and tragedies, has insulated and fortified my optimism. But while I have had very little personal contact, it's important not to forget that deeply sad things exist in life. To be completely rigorous (or at least a little rigorous): while I still maintain that individuals can decide what has meaning and therefore to a large extent choose what is happy and sad, I know that there are things that are nearly impossible not to consider sad--because of the ingrained processes of our mind that compels them to be sad and because any value system in which life is valuable necessitates there to be deep sadness in life--simply because a part of life is death, not to mention sickness, poverty, inequity, crime, and heart-break. For all of my optimism, I've lost sight that sad things exist, and sometimes you don't need to try to--sometimes it's jarring to try to--make them positive. I'll end my post there--my first post, I believe, without some uplifting message at the end. How's that for ironic on a post titled optimism.
Word Up,
DK Says
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Shades of Gray
At my house, laundry is a task performed on a grand scale. Laundry in college is to laundry at home as the Erie canal is to the Panamanian one. While in college I divide clothes into whites and colors (sometimes, if I haven't done laundry in a while, I go crazy and separate light colored clothes from dark colored clothes), at home there are many more baskets devoted to laundry, and those baskets are put to good use. Each basket houses a different shade or hue, and the color differentiation is impressive and daunting. I have to be honest, when I sort laundry from a hamper at home I always have clothes where I am not sure what basket they should go into. Is an olive green light green or is it a dark green that should go with tans? These types of decisions are very hard for me: its hard for me to just choose a basket and I often instead take shortcuts by leaving the clothes I am unsure about in the bottom of the hamper I am clearing out. Call me an unthinking, spineless perfectionist but I am going to say it like I prefer to see it: sometimes shades of gray are off-putting.
Post about Lack of Posts
Hello,
Sorry about the lack of posts. A lot of it during the academic school year has to do with just being busy, but during spring break I can't plead the homework excuse. Some of not posting has to do with being busy enjoying other things (but when a noticeable amount of time spent enjoying other things consists of surfing espn.com and facebook it might be more appropriate to call 'enjoying other things' 'being lazy'). This would actually be my preferred reason for why I have not posted very often, but to be honest, a lot of the times I just don't have anything to talk about in a blog post at the end of the day. This is a bit disappointing as I feel in any given day I should have learned or experienced enough to make a blog post. Maybe I can go on a hot streak, and put on a good run of posts. I'll start with a couple of tonight.
Peace,
Dksays.
Sorry about the lack of posts. A lot of it during the academic school year has to do with just being busy, but during spring break I can't plead the homework excuse. Some of not posting has to do with being busy enjoying other things (but when a noticeable amount of time spent enjoying other things consists of surfing espn.com and facebook it might be more appropriate to call 'enjoying other things' 'being lazy'). This would actually be my preferred reason for why I have not posted very often, but to be honest, a lot of the times I just don't have anything to talk about in a blog post at the end of the day. This is a bit disappointing as I feel in any given day I should have learned or experienced enough to make a blog post. Maybe I can go on a hot streak, and put on a good run of posts. I'll start with a couple of tonight.
Peace,
Dksays.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Observatins from Today
- As I was driving to a coffee meeting at 9:30 in the morning, my navigation system said "destination, ahead, 500 feet, on the left." I retorted: "Your Mom's on the left." My navigation system didn't respond.
- Kartik pointed out that retroviruses are 'oldschool.' Which is an ironic pun because HIV, the most famous of retroviruses, was not discovered in humans until very recently.
- I had my first encounter of knowing someone purely from a facebook photo...I was very sure the person next to me in coffee was in a picture with a facebook friend of mind. This was quite distracting, not to mention concerning in confirming of my overuse of facebook.
- We did not have any candles left, so we acted out candles for our Friday night Shabbat dinner by using the same hand gestures Stanford fans use when cheering on a player during free throws. The whole spirit fingers gesture thing. What a versatile hand gesture.
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