I haven't written anything for a while and just got a sudden urge.
School has started up and is going great. Everything is extremely busy, and most of it is extremely fun. I constantly have social and academic things to do, something I've never really had in my life. For the first time I want to spend a little time to just sit back and take it easy, rather than constantly sitting back and taking it easy, wondering when I am going to do something. The days are filled with classes and projects, and the evenings are filled with spending time with the Sigma Nu's or my room mates. Hardly a month in to school and so much has happened, I am starting to understand why so many people look back on college as such a wonderful experience.
So overall, thanks to everyone who has already made this a wonderful year!
Here are a few of the things that have added to the fun at the end of the summer / beginning of the year (in alphabetical order of course):
Absinthe
Attempting to Play Drums
B-Team
Banjo
Beer Pong
Catch-Phrase
The Comedy Warehouse
The Dark Knight
Digereydoo
"Grey Goose"
Hook-Ups
Musicians
The Pantless Revolution
Projects Due at Midnight
Reel Big Fish
Sigma Nu
Texas Hold-Em
Tropical Storms
TSO
Ultimate Frisbee
Wal-Mart
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Life, Love, Death, Repeat.
Today was a very interesting day. I essentially woke up to my mom telling me that we needed to go bury a friend's dog. The dog was young, but had epileptic seizures throughout its life, and this time it was just too much. We went with the lady (my mom's friend) to the vet where they brought the dog in to the room and euthanized her on the lady's lap. It was odd seeing the life snuffed out of a creature in a matter of seconds... the pulsing of the seizures just faded away... the breathing just halted... and the heart just gave up. A nurse then came and wrapped the dog up in her blanket and the lady held the lifeless carcass as we drove back to her house. We dug the grave, lowered the dog in, said a little prayer, and just laid the dirt back over.
I have thankfully never had to deal with death in my family. I have obviously had family members die, but they have always been geographically and personally far from me. Oddly enough I have only really been around death twice now and I have barely or not known either person / dog. It is weird how we are so afraid of death, we do everything we can to stop it, we make people who probably don't want to or aren't even capable of wanting to live stay with us to make us feel better. But in the end, death is the most natural part of the life cycle, it is the only part that is guaranteed and shared by every life form.
Realizing this brings light to a lot of life's situations. When something is gone, remember the good parts about it, don't hold on to it until all you remember is the pain of loss. I have made that mistake and have faced a lot of unneeded pain because if it. I suppose the good thing about death is that it has either happened or it hasn't, where as many of the similar cases in life aren't so easy, such as relationships.
In the end, I have decided that life is too short to hold on to the dead dogs, somehow we just have to grieve and move past and not let too much of the rest of the world pass us by.
I have thankfully never had to deal with death in my family. I have obviously had family members die, but they have always been geographically and personally far from me. Oddly enough I have only really been around death twice now and I have barely or not known either person / dog. It is weird how we are so afraid of death, we do everything we can to stop it, we make people who probably don't want to or aren't even capable of wanting to live stay with us to make us feel better. But in the end, death is the most natural part of the life cycle, it is the only part that is guaranteed and shared by every life form.
Realizing this brings light to a lot of life's situations. When something is gone, remember the good parts about it, don't hold on to it until all you remember is the pain of loss. I have made that mistake and have faced a lot of unneeded pain because if it. I suppose the good thing about death is that it has either happened or it hasn't, where as many of the similar cases in life aren't so easy, such as relationships.
In the end, I have decided that life is too short to hold on to the dead dogs, somehow we just have to grieve and move past and not let too much of the rest of the world pass us by.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Something...
So I didn't really have any ramblings going on in my head that I wanted to spew about, but I figured I should try and write something as it has been a few days.
So I played some live poker tonight and lost like normal... One would think that the math major that claims to be good at reading people would actually be good at poker, but it seems to be just the opposite. I am starting to pick up on some of the strategies and naturally just counting out odds, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet. I play in freeroll tournaments almost everyday online (which are basically tournaments that are free to play in, but have small pots) and am slowly getting better but still can't seem to pull it off. Anyway, enough rambling about that as I just thought about something real to philosophize about: luck.
Could luck really be something that someone can have? Can people really have an invisible umbrella following them around on a rainy day? I think this all comes down to a couple key flaws in human nature. The first of which is the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side. People take for granted what they actually have and always see other people's things as better than theirs even if they are essentially the same. Perhaps it is just part of the human condition, the same drive that causes humans to be so curious, but people are never happy with what they have. What this comes down to is that people tend to ignore the good things that they have and exaggerate the good things that other people have.
I think another key element to the illusion of luck is that people tend to hide their failures and only flaunt their successes, especially if that success was against great odds. There is nothing inherently wrong with this beyond that people are in a sense lying to themselves and everyone else by trying to misinterpreter themselves, but everyone does it. So as people only express their successes to other people and those people see other people's successes as greater than their own, the people will see everyone else as having luck.
To me actually believing in and banking on good luck charms is one of the stupidest things you can do. I think that looking for some item or person for comfort or solace or help is a great thing, but believing that different items have some inherent property of good luck is just plain stupid, right up there with astrology.
Everyone has even luck, equal probabilities will mean equal or close to equal outcomes in the long term, it is the basis of statistics. Just because people want to explain away their mistakes, shortcomings, and bad hands with some sort of mystical idea, we shouldn't lower ourselves to that level. We should just face life head on and realize that if something doesn't go our way, either we should have worked harder or maybe the cards weren't right.
So I played some live poker tonight and lost like normal... One would think that the math major that claims to be good at reading people would actually be good at poker, but it seems to be just the opposite. I am starting to pick up on some of the strategies and naturally just counting out odds, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet. I play in freeroll tournaments almost everyday online (which are basically tournaments that are free to play in, but have small pots) and am slowly getting better but still can't seem to pull it off. Anyway, enough rambling about that as I just thought about something real to philosophize about: luck.
Could luck really be something that someone can have? Can people really have an invisible umbrella following them around on a rainy day? I think this all comes down to a couple key flaws in human nature. The first of which is the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side. People take for granted what they actually have and always see other people's things as better than theirs even if they are essentially the same. Perhaps it is just part of the human condition, the same drive that causes humans to be so curious, but people are never happy with what they have. What this comes down to is that people tend to ignore the good things that they have and exaggerate the good things that other people have.
I think another key element to the illusion of luck is that people tend to hide their failures and only flaunt their successes, especially if that success was against great odds. There is nothing inherently wrong with this beyond that people are in a sense lying to themselves and everyone else by trying to misinterpreter themselves, but everyone does it. So as people only express their successes to other people and those people see other people's successes as greater than their own, the people will see everyone else as having luck.
To me actually believing in and banking on good luck charms is one of the stupidest things you can do. I think that looking for some item or person for comfort or solace or help is a great thing, but believing that different items have some inherent property of good luck is just plain stupid, right up there with astrology.
Everyone has even luck, equal probabilities will mean equal or close to equal outcomes in the long term, it is the basis of statistics. Just because people want to explain away their mistakes, shortcomings, and bad hands with some sort of mystical idea, we shouldn't lower ourselves to that level. We should just face life head on and realize that if something doesn't go our way, either we should have worked harder or maybe the cards weren't right.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Life's Cycle
Life is an interesting game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes its fun, and sometimes it hurts. It cycles up, down, and all around. As one aspect gets better another one could be getting worse, better, or staying constant. As I describe life like this, I am thinking of it as a set of function to define the progression of a person moving through the world, but maybe this isn't the clearest way to view life. Perhaps life should be viewed as a movie, progressing one frame at a time, but always moving forward and always changing in one way or another. But even this, my mind tends to process as if it were in some mathematical form. I know that some people, perhaps the majority, think and philosophize about life not thinking in these terms, but I suppose I just can't shed my way of thinking.
I also find it odd that I think of life in such logical mathematical terms, thinking of everything as a set of continuous functions or statistics, but I am so prone to the influences of emotion. I think about every move I make in life, all of my decisions are calculated, yet when I look back I realize that many of my choices would have been made differently. Obviously, truly understanding the full outcome of choices that are made influences how you would make that choice again, but I put myself back in to the same situation and pretend I don't know the outcome and realize that I would have made a different choice. It is almost as if the slightest emotion is some form of intoxication, impairing my judgment and keeping me from going where I want in life.
What is even more ironic about the whole situation is that one bad choice due to emotion simply leads to more emotion and more bad choices. And thus, life is once again seen as a cycle, one giant recursive function with a chaotic nature. Before you know it, your life is out of control because whatever decision you make seems like the wrong one and it all becomes a giant series of worse and worse wrong decisions.
I suppose we occasionally get lucky though, I know I have. I have had memories, experiences, relationships, and any other form of life encapsulation, which can only be explained by luck. Statistical outliers, where we just happen to follow the right path and things seem to go our way. Sometime it makes me start to think there might actually be a higher power running the show, but even these outliers can be explained by the sciences, and in fact form much of the philosophical basis of quantum physics. Still, it is nice to think every once and a while that everything has a point, but this need for purpose is one of the greatest forces of the human condition. And with this need and its repercussions we are right back to talking about emotion.
Once again, around the cycle goes...
I also find it odd that I think of life in such logical mathematical terms, thinking of everything as a set of continuous functions or statistics, but I am so prone to the influences of emotion. I think about every move I make in life, all of my decisions are calculated, yet when I look back I realize that many of my choices would have been made differently. Obviously, truly understanding the full outcome of choices that are made influences how you would make that choice again, but I put myself back in to the same situation and pretend I don't know the outcome and realize that I would have made a different choice. It is almost as if the slightest emotion is some form of intoxication, impairing my judgment and keeping me from going where I want in life.
What is even more ironic about the whole situation is that one bad choice due to emotion simply leads to more emotion and more bad choices. And thus, life is once again seen as a cycle, one giant recursive function with a chaotic nature. Before you know it, your life is out of control because whatever decision you make seems like the wrong one and it all becomes a giant series of worse and worse wrong decisions.
I suppose we occasionally get lucky though, I know I have. I have had memories, experiences, relationships, and any other form of life encapsulation, which can only be explained by luck. Statistical outliers, where we just happen to follow the right path and things seem to go our way. Sometime it makes me start to think there might actually be a higher power running the show, but even these outliers can be explained by the sciences, and in fact form much of the philosophical basis of quantum physics. Still, it is nice to think every once and a while that everything has a point, but this need for purpose is one of the greatest forces of the human condition. And with this need and its repercussions we are right back to talking about emotion.
Once again, around the cycle goes...
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