The Meaning of Life

      For some reason earlier today I found myself thinking, as I often do, about seemingly unconnected (not random) and somewhat unimportant things, at least in regards to school and such at hand. I’m pretty sure I was walking on my way to Shafer, so it was either after FI class around 2, or after my physics class around 8, but I want to say it was both. While walking along the streets to Shafer I noticed how ice had frozen onto the trees so that they glistened and somewhat sparkled, it was really quite pretty, I wish I’d had my camera. After glancing at the trees and taking that in for a moment I started thinking about what the meaning of life is. In this book I’m reading, Physics of the Impossible,  one part the author talks about is man’s increased brain capacity and how that relates to our success & civilization.
      I know this is nothing new nor a revolutionary thought, but I think that we (as a species) think too much (unintended pun, proving my point?). The actual meaning of life has to apply to all living creatures, not just ones with higher thought. That being said what could be the same about us and say…a slug? The answer isn’t some piece of esoteric knowledge, it’s pretty really simple. The point of it all is to just live, reproduce, and try to survive (perhaps even achieve happiness). Our species just makes things seem much more divine and purposeful, which is our gift. I sometimes wish our time was simpler where things weren’t so complicated and one could just follow a trade, and live out a nice life in a nice house with a family. Instead today we have the mass media and thousands of other things telling us what to do.

But it’s just a thought. A thought I thought I’d share.
I actually wonder if my FI teacher stills reads our blogs. I somehow doubt it.

 

By the way, the actual answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is actually 42.
How’s that for esoteric knowledge.

Questioning Morality.

      My Philosophy 201 class is pretty much an easy A for the semester, I hope, but it does make you think differently about things (at least in regard to morality). This last bit we had to read was by a guy named Kant, who basically believed that in order for your actions to have some moral worth you shouldn’t be concerned about the consequences or even necessarily feel good about it. He believes that people who are morally good to make themselves feel good only do it to avoid feeling bad, which isn’t very moral. In addition he believes that “good Christians” who say they believe in God and are good, etc, so they can go to Heaven also aren’t morally good. Because they’re doing something ‘good’ for a benefit or incentive that negates the ‘goodness’ of it, in a way.
       When you think about morality like that it really makes you question why you do some of the things you do and if those sparse acts of “good morality” are really infact moral if you get a little rush of goodness from it. Kant believes that there are certain duties that we have to do to be good moral people but if you’re following those duties to avoid something bad or for something good, instead of just doing them to do them, that adds nothing to your moral worth.
      While I don’t really believe in morality as defined by Kant, it is an interesting view of it. Do a lot of good people do good things so they can be good? Or do they do them to avoid something bad like self pity? It basically comes down to this- Doing something good, with either good or bad incentives, is not moral, because you should just want to do it.

Eh. I say that’s a little…picky. But to each their own.

Lack of blogism

So yeah I haven’t been blogging too much recently. There are a couple reasons but the main ones are that there hasn’t been much mind or thought provoking recently. Another is some personal stuff that’s pretty annoying and/or time consuming.

Don’t worry, I shall return. With more blogs. In the near future?

First time Snowboarding

      A couple of my roommates and I decided to go snowboarding this Friday after we all got out of class, which turned out to be around 3:30. After stopping to get food and snowpants we made it up to Wintergreen around 6 I think. Off topic really quick my mom asked if I could take care of the dog tonight because they were leaving and so was my brother. As it happens my brother was also going to Wintergreen, and while we were there, I actually ran into two of my cousins who were skiing. After finding the rental place and getting set up and being told how to turn and things we went out to the mountain.
      Because it was late there aren’t any lessons or anything going on and the ‘bunny slopes’ were closed, which meant that I couldnt really practice before going out. After finding a sense of balance I was doing pretty well for a beginner and I can turn right (I lead with my left foot) but turning left completely evaded me. Braking was also a problem. Being my first time I didn’t know how to stop to avoid hitting people or just to slow down (although they tried to explain the concept, which makes sense…I just never executed) I had to make myself fall alot to avoid hitting people who had fallen down on the slope.
      After an hour or so I felt like I was somewhat getting the hang of my balance and a little bit a steering, but still no braking. Around that time I had a pretty nasty wipeout that left a nasty abrasion on my right hip. A little while later we were going back to the building to take a break and I landed on my wrist and fucked it up, it still hurts. It’s not broken or anything but maybe strained? After that my ability steadily went down. I think I went down the trail another 2 or 3 times after that injury and in the process wiped out and got a bruise/cut on my left hip.
      While it definately wasn’t easy, it wasn’t so bad that it made me never want to do it again…I just need to get the basics down first. Like stopping. But it was still fun. In case you’ve been to Wintergreen before the trail we went down was the “potato patch.” I’m going to go lay down now..

Enjoy

 

By the way, this is NOT me.

Academic forecast for this semester

All in all, it looks like this will shape up to be a good semester.

     My philosophy class is interesting, although it looks like it could be dull at times. For example today we spent the whole class period talking about definitions and whatnot. Should be an easy A.
     My calculus class seems like it should be easy as well…but not completely sure as of yet. I’m still on the fence on the teacher’s approach…A or B
     Physics seems like it could be my most challenging class, but I enjoy physics, I think, so it should be fine.. A passing grade is expected, C with minimal effort, otherwise B or A.
     Engineering seems sadly boring this semester. It’s all computer graphs and visualization stuff, so until we get to 3D objects, it’s going to be dull.. Again..A hopefully?
     Focused Inquiry should be fine this semster as well. It’s still an interesting class so I should be fine in that.

This semester I’m trying to start out high as far as work ethic goes because it tends to drop off as the semester goes, although I’m going to try to avoid it. So I bought a mini notebook for homework and assignments and I’m trying to make use of my time, because for some reason, I want to get good grades.
I think that’s a good summary, on the whole.

Another case of Deja Vu, found in The Dew Breaker

     I’m reading The Dew Breaker for my FI class, and I’m almost at the end, around 20 pages from it. I find that towards the end of compelling books I read faster, trying to get to the resolution as fast as I can, to find out where the story finally goes.
     Anyways, I’m on page 228 and reading the last bit of “8″, which goes as follows:
“…she felt she was the only person alive in the entire city and that thought kept her running, and she would continue to run until something was able to stop her.”
     Being Deja Vu I immediately felt like I’d read this before, somewhere, in that exact phrasing. Perhaps it’s just a recollection of something similar I’ve read, or experienced, but I always get the feeling that it’s not, which makes it all the more unsettling.
     If I ever meet my ‘maker’ and have a chance to actually ask questions, Deja Vu will certainly be one of them….That’s actually an intriguing topic to write a future post on.

Note to self.

Quantum Physics and the Infinitely Improbability Drive

From time to time while browsing the internet for meaningless things or seemingly random (although far from it) articles, I get caught up in the research and loose track of time.

     Around 11:30 or so while getting ready for sleep, I remembered how my mom had mentioned early that The Secret, a self-help book, supposedly used quantum physics to explain how to better ones life. The gist of it was that by thinking and believing in good things, good things would happen, which I call karma and not anything scientific. Anyways, at that time it struck me to look up that belief and led into reading several articles related to quantum mechanics and other physics related things, one being how a recent study theorizes that the Earth’s core may in fact be two cores, which causes plate tectonics.
     After a while of that I began browsing Urbandictionary.com, a place I enjoy looking at if for no other reason than to laugh, and eventually came upon the definition of Earth in it. The highest rated definition was “Mostly harmless.” Recognizing that as an allusion to The Hitchhikers Guide to the GalaxyI went to Wikipedia and read some general things about that series.
     On a side note I find that I enjoy reading about fictional universes quite a bit. Reading something about a comic book character or story character can easily spending too much time reading about various facets of that particular universe, for some reason it just intrigues me, but anyways.
     After skimming some of that material, but not too much because I may read the rest of the books, I looked up the Infinitely Improbability Drive, to remember how it worked and for a kick or two which ironically and perhaps coincidentally also “uses” quantum mechanics.

I’m not fully sure that there was a point to this post, but must there be one?
I read somewhere, or one of my teachers once told me to never end on with a question. 

While not a picture of the actual Infinitely Improbabiliy Drive (laugh), I thought this was amusing.