Not much to say today, except that I hate babysitting. I don’t get why people think little kids are that great. More on that tomorrow.
May ends today, so that means tomorrow is a new month. I know I mentioned my comic earlier, but I’ll mention The Perfect Villain again, because they reset the votes for each new month. So, please vote. Advertisement is the easy way out when I’m tired and don’t want to type much.
Winner: “They took away my [trombone] bucket mute because they thought there was a bomb in it.” One of my fellow trombonists at Moreau put his metronome in his bucket mute, and left it in his locker. Somehow, the metronome went on, and some idiots thought it was a bomb. Haha! So they confiscated the bucket mute and wouldn’t give it back because it allegedly scared some people. We trombonists are oppressed peoples.
Runner-up: “Over here on the next page, we have some cleavage.” Only runner-up because it was not actually uttered. Just a thought when studying for the AP Bio test. Cleavage, AP Bio? What? Ah, cleavage is a stage in development when the zygote undergoes rapid cell divisions.
This next quote is only funny in context. “No one in my class would ever do something that stupid.” That was uttered by my AP Bio teacher, Ms. Gee. Let me give the backstory: My friend, Ryan, (yeah I’m giving names, so what) stuck a pin in an electrical socket. Then, he stuck another pin in the other socket, shocking himself at some point in the process. Then, he takes a metal probe (with a wooden handle) and presses it against both pins, completing the circuit. Big sparks! And he and his lab partner get a 0 on the lab and a Saturday detention. I believe he blew out a circuit breaker. He’s in the regular bio class (not because he’s stupid, but because he’s lazy). What makes what she said funny is the someone in her class did do that. (Now, I’m not naming names yet. Okay… Richard Philbin.) Richard stuck two probes in the electrical socket and then dropped the scissors on top of them. It sparked helluva high. I saw this; he was at the table behind mine. (Surprisingly enough, he’s not the first one to do this in that same class. Jason Fix also did it, but he used a different method.) Unlike Ryan, Richard did not get caught. Ms. Gee was just doing work at her desk, not noticing a thing. So, Richard relates the story to Ryan one day at lunch (along with his other adventures with electricity), and Ryan says that he has to try it. As you now know, he got in trouble. Oh, oblivious Ms. Gee, how I laugh at thee.
09/09/04 – EDIT: Originally, I didn’t have any names except for Ryan’s because he had already been caught. I figured it was safe now to put the names up.
I had big plans for my video project, but I’m running short on time, and it’s not coming out the way I had wanted it to. Before posting it on this site, I’m going to redo most of it, so the stop-motion looks better. I also need to get some other people to do voices because I did them all. Anyway, I’m just focusing on getting it done for tomorrow’s class.
When I have too much work, I hope for an earthquake, so that I don’t have to go to school. Well, every time I wish for an earthquake, the earthquake comes after I need it. Just today, there was a small quake after school. Oh well, none of the earthquakes are ever big enough for school to be cancelled anyway.
Someone left a comment under a very early entry titled, Homework Load, saying how it was useful in a debate. I’d like to say that I’m just a weblogger, and not a real authority on anything.
I keep bouncing around these ideas for movies with my friends, and we never follow up with any of them. First we were going to do a movie-length comedy, then a drama, then a comedy again, then a musical, and then a short film. I don’t know when or if we’ll ever get any of this done. I like the musical idea the best.
Right now, my comic, The Perfect Villain, is ranked #46 on the buzzComix top 100 list. The percentage of comics above mine that are pretty bad is most likely somewhere above 90%. (I could do a real check, later, when I’m not so tired.) Out of the sprite comics listed (with the button below the comic name), TPV is #10. I’m asking people to look through all the other sprite comics and tell me if any are better than mine. I doubt that many, if any, are better than my comic.
How can this problem be fixed? By going to TPV and clicking the vote button on the side. You can vote once a day. However, I’d just like it if people voted on Fridays, when I actually update the comic.
Yeah, so this is entry is basically one big advertisement for TPV. An entry on how the overwhelming majority of webcomics out there are crap is coming later.
As the year winds down this quarter (date-wise — work-wise it’s speeding up), my grades have actually been going up. Many people struggle to stay on task to keep grades up. I, on the other hand, don’t struggle with this. No, I’m not immune to the effects of laziness and procrastination. I don’t struggle because I am lazy. I’ve been doing less work and putting in less effort. I’ve gotten progressively less organized. Beginning of the year, I had separate subject binders with dividers. Now, I don’t use any dividers. The papers are lucky if they even get into the rings. In some classes, my book is my binder. I just stuff all the papers in the front. I’m becoming less of a so-called good student, but, on the whole, my grades are getting better!
For AP Bio, we have these crap study guides. I used to fret over these, especially when answers were nowhere to be found in our book. Now, I put less time into them and just put my best guess if I can’t figure it out and that’s the end of that. I was getting B’s on them for a while, and now I’m getting A’s. In English, I had the rough draft for a research paper due. I went into timed-write mode and got the thing done within a couple of hours. We were supposed to have four body paragraphs, but I couldn’t think what to put in a fourth body paragraph, so I cut it out. My teacher once-overed all our first drafts, and he didn’t find any big problems in mine. Hah! He said it looked good, and didn’t want me to tell him if I hardly spent any time on it. I laughed a little, but didn’t tell him.
Also in AP Biology, I used to study for tests the night before and pre-read the chapter before we went over it in class. My second-to-last test, I didn’t even read the chapter and I received an A. My latest test, I studied during lunch and I still got a B. Let’s see… should I a) study a bit and get a B… or b) study during the last minutes of lunch and still get a B… I’m going with choice b). Or, I suppose I could study a lot and get an A. Sure, like I’d put that much effort into it.
I’ve got theology HW due tomorrow but I’m not going to do it. I have a little thing called a late pass. The year is close to ending, so I figure, Why not use it now? The only thing I’m putting effort into is a certain theology project. But that’s a video project, and I’m having fun doing it. I’m using Legos and doing some stop-motion animation. I’ve got Jar Jar Binks in it, and a man-eating flying shark.
So, the moral of today’s blog is: Do less work. Get more lazy. Reap the benefits.
The site’s small redesign is finished.
This was coming sooner or later… the entry on hypocrisy.
I’ve called hypocrisy the ultimate form of stupidity. (At least, I think I did.) Is it really? Actually, there are two different types of hypocrisy. One type arises from ignorance and the other is intentional.
People are good at ignoring themselves. They never take a step back and observe themselves. Thus, they can have blatant faults which they never realize. So, hypocrisy comes in when they say they oppose something, but are actually doing the very thing they oppose. An example would be a chronic liar who says that s/he hates people who are always lying. Hm, maybe I should take a look at myself before going around criticizing hypocrites.
Why would someone be intentionally hypocritical? For personal gain. Society encourages people to be honest, so that it’s easier to live together. Now, a person can lie and cheat the system, ending up on top (case in point, certain politicians). However, if everyone were to lie, it wouldn’t work. Everyone would be suspicious of each other and one wouldn’t gain too much from lying. So, I could tell people not to lie, when I’m lying myself, so I can gain from lying, but I don’t have to worry about others lying to me. Another example would be between two siblings and one computer. Sibling A could tell Sibling B that Sibling B uses the computer too much. Sibling A does this to discourage Sibling B from using the computer. This allows Sibling A to use up that free time that Sibling B used to take up. (No, this isn’t me disguising names. I have too many computers, and all of them are networked, in my house to fight over one.)
I’d say the second type is not stupidity, but intelligence — a pragmatic intelligence with no moral considerations. Hypocrisy, of the first sort, seems to be only one type of stupidity that arises from human nature. It’s not the “ultimate form of stupidity.” The definition of hypocrisy would make it seem so, but it’s only a form of “lack of information.” I’d say, there is no ultimate form of stupidity.
Changed the colors a little bit, and some formatting all around to make this blog a little more personalized. I’ve got it almost the way I want it; there’s still a little bit of messing around I have to do with the archive pages.
Going with a little shades of grey theme here… It could be symbolic. Shades of grey. Grey area in philosophy. I don’t know. I just think it looks rather nice.
After this, and once summer starts, I’ll be working on the design for agnoiology.com, which is not up yet.
School is making people sick — literally.
Kids are encouraged not to miss school. I’ve even heard teachers and administrators tell students to go to school even if just a little sick, especially during testing periods. According to my school handbook, a student can miss no more than 7 days per semester for any one class, otherwise the student will receive no credit for that class. Granted, being on an alternating day schedule makes that a little more bearable, but still… This applies to excused absences. Band activities during the school day count for this. Thus, kids that are sick are coming to school. And they are transmitting the disease to other students. Everyone gets sick! Hooray!
Okay, that’s a pretty weak argument, but I’ve got a (somewhat) better one… Schools are not that happy of a place. They give a lot of work and that creates a lot of stress. I’ve noticed that a bunch of tests, projects, etcetera are always assigned at the same time by every class, with a lull in between these busy times. Since the biggest assignments are assigned at the same time, students are very busy. This unnecessary busyness (unnecessary because it seems teachers intentionally assign all projects at the same time) creates a lot of stress. Stress weakens the immune system, making them more prone to getting sick from all those kids who should have stayed home, but couldn’t. (Maybe that argument wasn’t better.)
Okay, I think I am just too sick of school figuratively, so I have to make up a whole bunch of junk describing how schools makes kids sick literally.
This is actually the first time I’ve missed updating for two days in a row. I’m still rather tired, so I’m only going to talk about the meaning of life today.
Quite simply, according to my worldview, there is no meaning of life. Life is just a natural product of the universe. It serves no superior purpose.
One could make an argument that the purpose of life is to reproduce. That’s what evolution has programmed us to do. However, I don’t view that as a purpose. It’s a natural happening that occured because it allows life to continue. It’s almost like saying that the purpose of life is to live.
Maybe the meaning of life being to live is not so ridiculous a statement. Even the religious can agree with this. Christians think that life is precious because it is God’s creation. So would the meaning of life be to live in order to use the most precious gift?
Still, I want to go deeper than this semi-circular meaning. Why do I want to continue to live? Once death occurs, I can’t do anything anymore. So, I want to continue living in order to experience things. What sort of things? Everything, perhaps.
If you had to choose only one emotion to experience for the rest of your life, what would you choose? Chances are, you chose happiness. There are some more creative answers, such as surprise or comfort, but these are derivatives of happiness. And those who chose surprise (or who are now thinking it’s a cool choice) should be more specific. Embarrased surprise, angry surprise (such as that of discovery a spouse cheating), or maybe… happy surprise? Could someone possibly choose to be sad or angry for the rest of their lives?
What’s the point of living if you’re not happy? Going back to what I said earlier about experiencing everything, I think experiencing other emotions allows you to appreciate happiness more, just as tragedies can teach us to value human lives more.
Thus, I think the meaning of life is to be happy. Now it’s only a question of what makes people happy.
Throughout my life, I’ve contemplated what I would do with power: good or evil. Would I make everyone prosper, or suffer? From a strictly moral viewpoint, it would seem that good would be the obvious choice. Some think that the difficultly arises only once one has power and can no longer resist evil intentions..
The reason power tends to lead to greater evil is that with greater power comes less punishment. There’s less of a chance of retribution. Morality is based on justice. If there’s no chance of justice being brought to you, then you simply won’t care.
But, still, what would be the reason to commit evil? Just because you can? That doesn’t seem like good enough of an answer. Perhaps it arises from the need for more power. One way to “gain” power is to make it so everyone else has less power. The more people suffering then, the more power it seems like you have. This is only reinforced by what is mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Some could argue that you would get more power by having everyone prosper. As others prosper, the actions reciprocate. Which country had more money, the US, or the USSR?
In a very finite amount of time (life is a finite amount of time), I think both can produce the same results in the mind. It comes to a preference within the person before attaining power. Which goal do they want beforehand? They’ll go for the choice which will make it seem as if they are getting more power.
Which one would I choose? Evil. I feel as if more power lies in the so-called evil path. With good, you’re still a slave to everyone. With evil, they’re a slave to you. If I ever get a great deal of power, I’ll probably abuse it. But by then, you’ll have forgotten about this little weblog entry. Maybe you’ll wish you had remembered.
I wonder if anyone else would openly admit that they’d choose the “evil” path. I think this makes me worse than most people. It’s said that even the most evil people think that they’re doing good, from their point of view. I, on the other hand, have openly chosen a path that I know would only benefit me.
Or am I better, because I’m one of the few truly being honest with myself?
Not talking about hypocrisy today, but I will sometime next week. I started driving today, but that’s not the inelegant problem — I’ll relate that experience tomorrow, perhaps.
The inelegant problem is 12-year-old AOLer fans. Yes, I officially got my first stereotypical 12-year-old AOLer fan of my website, psycho-ward.org, very recently. He sent an e-mail going a little something like this:
Antitin said:
“Theres this anoying kid at my skool and i hate him! can to tell him hes gay and has no freinds.
PS: we call him tinny cuz he lives in a trailor”
Aren’t kids horrible these days? He even IMed me. A screen name like “eatcatpoop0123” is a dead give away to a person’s age. If not that, then the mixed caps and mispellings in the conversation would have given it away.
If that person ends up reading this, then I say, “Enjoy my site and keep those kinds of comments to yourself.”
On to the other part of the entry’s title: elegant solution. I have posted a different screen name on my website. I don’t want my screen name swamped by young kids who don’t know how to type. I’m solving the problem before I become some kind of internet semi-celebrity (if ever). I mean, I like people IMing me and telling me that my website is cool, but I don’t like people IMing me and telling me, “OMG U R WEBSEIT iS Da kEWLeST!!11!!!”
But if I put I different screen name on, how do any “good” fans IM me? Simple, I use an AIM cloner. Yet, I find cloning a hassle, especially since my computer is a little bit short of memory, and space on the C: drive. Thus, on the denizens page, I put that I’m usually online between 4 and 6pm PST. Now, I only have the cloner on for a limited time. As a bonus, it’ll be easier if fans want to find me. And yes, I do actually have good fans.
I find it’s easier to graph if I only use two points (for linear equations) and an appropriate scale on my graph. However, that doesn’t make it any less crappiful (ooh, new word).
I sent in an application for a TA job for ATDP this summer. Now, I wait and see what happens.
Tonight, I am tired from trombone lessons, fencing, and my illness. Tomorrow, I will write about hypocrisy and its relation to stupidity, thus ending this slew of short updates.
Graphing by hand is for losers. It is dumb. I hate graphing. I must speak to my math teacher about this. Why did I buy a graphing calculator if I do this by hand?
So, AP Bio test was completed owned by me, even though the announcements came on during our test. Damn bastards. They’re reporting it to the AP Board (they have to). If those idiots make me retake the test… I hope it doesn’t come to that. It wasn’t a big incident, or that long, so they should ignore it.
Soon, I should be back into the swing of things with more substantial updates.
Sleep helps long-term memory formation. I think I read that in Discover magazine at one point. Relevance? I must get enough sleep for that test.
Next time you’re sleeping in class just say that you’re helping build your long-term memory capacity.
I hate AP Biology. I feel as if there’s just enough stuff to memorize that I can’t quite memorize it all. I’ll restate that too much emphasis on memorization is bad for learning. Let’s see how much I actually remember at the end of summer.
Having never 100% recovered from my previous illness, I now am beginning to feel the onset of another illness. Hopefully, it’ll go away this weekend, so as not to add to the misery of studying for my AP Biology Exam. Updates will be less than substantial because of this studying/cramming.
Try out this version of 20 Questions. A computer AI gives you questions and tries to guess what object you’re thinking of. You can get some pretty funny results, even when you answer truthfully.
For example, I was thinking of a nightstick and it asked if police used this and I said yes. Later on, it asks if it would be found on a farm. Have fun with this. If I get any hilarious results tomorrow, I’ll post it.
People walk in step with each other. It’s funny. When I think about it, it makes sense logically. How else are people supposed to keep talking with each other when walking? Despite having different heights, people keep this up. Just scan people next time you’re looking out into space and see it with your own eyes.
Whenever obstacles are encountered, or the route is curved, then the in step motion is discontinued. My next goal is to see if people who aren’t talking to each other walk in step. Then, I must see if people further apart still walk in step.
Very small children are an exception. They sort of walk in step, but their little legs cause them to gradually fall behind. As a result, every so often they did this quick little run. It’s hard to explain, but you’ll know it when you see it.
The reason this is funny is because people naturally walk in step with each other, but when we have to march (as in marching band) it takes us forever to be able to do this. As to how it relates to agnoiology… it’s because many of us have failed to notice such a simple observation.
Remember when I posted about school vs. video games? Here’s Quad’s perspective on the issue. (Quad was one of my teachers at ATDP last year.) I thought it was interesting how we came up with similar points independently.
So, the war has been stated to be “officially” over. I had criticized the number of troops in the region, but they still got the job done okay. The public was too impatient. However, I still stand by my statement that they should have brought more troops because it would have increased the confidence of the public.
How difficult is the rebuilding going to be? It actually doesn’t seem to be going so badly. There is a certain catch-22 the US is in. There are some who want the US out right away. Yet, if the US gets out before a government is formed, an Islamic fundamentalist government will most likely form, and others will be repressed.
I know I was in support of the war but others saying that those troops were “fighting to protect our freedom” isn’t quite true. It’s a nice piece of propaganda, but not true. Those in the US weren’t in immediate danger.
Links to al-Qaeda are being found. Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me. With those, we don’t even have to find any WMD.
I was playing piano and I heard the doorbell ring. Figuring it was my parents, I opened the door. I instantly see the suit and I know it has got to be some religious bloke. At least he was rather polite, and he wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness. I think he was opening up a new church and was trying to recruit people. I know I’ve probably changed some of the details and left things out, but here’s a recount of the short conversation:
“Are your parents home?”
“No, they’re not.”
[hands me something, gives a quick introduction of himself, blah blah]
I don’t know what impelled me to, but I say, “Actually, I’m an atheist.”
“Oh, how old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Do you think you’re old enough to make a decision to be an atheist?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Did you know it takes more faith to be an atheist than being a Christian?”
“No, because atheism is the default position, you don’t start out believing, you don’t have to know anything really…”
“So, you’re saying you don’t know anything.”
[Okay, that was my mistake. I meant this: Animals don’t believe in a god. Babies, when born, don’t believe in anything. They’re born atheists. I lose the point there.]
“Well, not exactly.”
“That’s what you said. Do you go to a church?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Have you ever gone to one?”
“No, I have not.”
“What about your parents?”
“I don’t know. But, at my school, I’ve taken religious classes, so I think I’m rather informed.” [I go to a catholic school.]
“Learned all about all the religions.” [emphasis mine. I think he may have been thinking something about the whole ‘equal’ treatment of all religions thing.]
“Well, no, but I’m planning on taking a major religions of the world course.” [which I actually am going to, already signed up]
“Tell me, what happens when you die?”
“I decompose.” [easily my best line. I say this calmly. If I was unsure, he would have attacked. Instead, it seems as if I’m sure and resigned to this fact.]
“That’s very interesting.” [he tells me about the back of the handout, tells me to read it. We shake hands.]
[exit, door closes]
I wish I was a quicker thinker than I already am, but then again, I didn’t want to be rude. I don’t believe I came across as a teenage smart-ass.
Actually, remembering another event is why I said it, now that I’m reviewing my motives here. My family and I were at a restaurant and some guy comes up to us. He says that we must be a good Christian family because we were really nice-looking and quiet, etc. We aren’t Christian, but none of us really say much. He can infer it, but we’re not overly contrary to him. So, I guess this was something of a second chance for me.
The guy was nice, and he didn’t try to uber-proselytize. He just wanted people to know about his new church and wanted to give them an opportunity to join. I think he was the pastor. I don’t remember because I threw away the sheet.
Well, I thought it was a bit interesting. This is the first real event that inspired a thoughtful weblog entry.
I’m doing a research paper on violence in video games. Unfortunately, we can only use data from 6 papers. At least we chose those 6 ourselves. When we have completed this paper, I will post mine on this weblog. After I’m done, I may take it upon myself to add data from other sources and write a new version (not for school, just for here).
The quick statement I wanted to make was about people thinking video games teaches people how to kill, even going so far as to say it improves one’s accuracy with a gun. Their statements’ accuracies are far from good. Can moving a mouse or joystick to make the cursor move from one side of the screen to the other really improve your accuracy with a real gun? Even with gun-shaped controllers, the distance from the screen is very small. I’ve played duckhunt using a projector and even then I couldn’t have been further than 5 yards away. And one tries not to shoot at the screen from an angle. Using a controller that looks more like a sci-fi laser gun is really far from using a real gun. Aiming is different, the way you hold them is different, and there’s no recoil. It just doesn’t seem to work.