Skills I would like to learn:

1. Sailing
2. Calligraphy
3. Violin

Things I vehemently oppose:

1. Xenophobia
2. Ethanol as a fuel source
3. Indoctrination

Role models:

1. Mister Rogers. Tom Junod, in Esquire:

   Mister Rogers went onstage to accept the award — and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence.

   And then he lifted his wrist, looked at the audience, looked at his watch, and said, ‘I’ll watch the time.” There was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn’t kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch, but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked. And so they did. One second, two seconds, seven seconds — and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier. And Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said softly, “May God be with you,” to all his vanquished children.

2. Su Song. From Wikipedia:

   Su Song was most famous for his hydraulic-powered astronomical clock tower, crowned with a mechanically-driven armillary sphere, which was erected in the capital city of Kaifeng in the year 1088. His clock tower employed the escapement mechanism two centuries before it was applied in clocks of Europe; the tower also featured the earliest known endless power-transmitting chain drive in the world, as outlined in his horological treatise of 1092.

3. Gottfried Leibniz. Paul du Bois-Reymond, in a biography about Leibniz:

   As is well known, the theory of the maxima and minima of functions was indebted to [Leibniz] for the greatest progress through the discovery of the method of tangents. Well, he conceives God in the creation of the world like a mathematician who is solving a minimum problem, or rather, in our modern phraseology, a problem in the calculus of variations — the question being to determine among an infinite number of possible worlds, that for which the sum of necessary evil is a minimum.

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Confucius say: “Man who run behind car get exhausted, but man who run in front of car get tired.”

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In the past five years or so, I have experienced a recurrent and surprisingly urgent need to “figure it out.” It must be that the changing scenery and conditions of my young life cause me to attempt to assure myself I’m on the “right” path. As a result, I’ve taken a simultaneous keen yet shallow interest in philosophy: as if a cursory overview of the topic would yield the viewpoint for which I search. The Weepies sing that, perhaps, “this is not your year.” However, if I was to take guidance on life from media, it would not be that particular song (great though it may be). I would, in fact, take inspiration from the most profound (and, incidentally, most existential) comic I have ever read. That would be this strip of Zippy the Pinhead published on my Mom’s birthday, the 16th of September:

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A recent book called Devices of the Soul by Steve Talbott argues how the preponderance of technology that claims to make life easier seems to, in a fundamental sense, make life harder. That, admittedly, is a rather poor exposition of the thesis… but you need know only the general idea here. Incidentally, this book is predated by a rather more famous example of a similar philosophical exploration called The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. Basically, both works discuss the implications of “technology.” Don’t think of technology as simply computers, however. Here’s a helpful comment from the Amazon page selling The Technological Society (emphasis mine):

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I suddenly began humming and whistling “New York, New York” in biochem lab today, which in and of itself is not all that interesting (and a bit embarassing, as I am embarassed by most things that I do). However, when I got back to my room - amazingly - there were round-trip plane tickets to New York slid under my door! No, no there were not. That was a lie. A fib. A stretcher. In truth, I returned to my dorm room and promptly looked up the lyrics to said song.

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Panopticon - When researching that previous link, I ran across the panopticon, a prison designed by a philosopher (sounds interesting already) that would: “allow an observer to observe all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a ‘sentiment of an invisible omniscience’.”

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Reading Plato’s Republic, I called Mykala over to share a passage with her about Plato saying “But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.” I never got there because the “him” was Thrasymachus. Now, while reading the passage, I went with the pronunciation Thrassy-maykuss, which caused both of us to halt a minute or two later. “What?” Mykala asked, genuinely puzzled by my pronunciation. “I was just trying to read through it and get to the point,” I replied. Mykala took one glance at the page and said, “Oh, Thrasimakiss.” Stunned silence from both sides.

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There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

— Logan Pearsall Smith

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The surprise Shayla one day before Shayla’s birthday went off well. Although we ended up not at the house we had intended and the surprise part was rather difficult. I would say it went off with a hitch. Good lord we had a lot of fun with the balloons, though. Did you know you can play music with balloons when correctly struck? Oh, and in addition they make excellent insulators of body heat - quite remarkable if you ask me. But that was a solid party for the birthday. I hear a second surprise took place as well later this past weekend. I should clarify; surprise occurred at UWRF as well. Cake batter ice cream with graham cracker mix-in! Oh yes it’s that good.

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