Now, a little about my extremely unpredictable life. Over the course of the summer, I have somehow managed to acquire a girlfriend, 2 jobs (1 I quit, the other I got fired from :D), and a major amount of crazy shit. I am writing my exam (deferred from the normal school year) in two days. At the same time, we have recently discovered mold growing in our house (hopefully not toxic or I will have brain damage), which probably means I will have to move out into a different house for the summer. Every time I think I have something under control it slips away. This has led me to completely stop expecting things and just view life as pure chaos. I have to admit, it's been a lot of fun.
Now, for more funny things, I stumbled onto this site. It had no explanation but the title and I'll be damned if it didn't deliver. Tattooing Pigs
Every once in a while the facts to a news story are way more insane than anything the human mind can make up. Best Sentence I Have Read All Year
Of course, all art imitates life, so art can only be less ridiculous than life itself. This is difficult to believe while looking at some surreal artwork.
Speaking of crazy life, there's been a big fuss made over the BP Gulf oil spill in the US. While talking to a friend, we realized that this spill could be the end of us all and everything as we know it. To begin, if the leak is not stopped, it will end up... well, pretty much everywhere (even as far as the Arctic), which isn't even close to the scariest thing that can happen. You see, tropical monsoon season is close by, with storms forming near the coast already. These storms will pick up not only water, but the oil as well and then head in the direction of cities (worst case scenario). Think about that for a second. A giant twirling mass of wind, water, and oil spinning at 200 km/h. Now what happens if someone lights a match? That's right ladies and gentlemen, giant hurricanes of fire are about to engulf our civilization. You can't make this stuff up. But wait, there's more! A good portion of the oil picked up by the storms can very likely end up in the atmosphere. Once again, all it takes is a spark to light up entire skies with fire. Of course, this was all speculation by two rather stoned individuals, but nevertheless, it is scary how easy it is to imagine this happening. Here is a video making fun of the spill.
Well, on that bright note I must take my leave. I will leave you with a task that I have not been able to complete (yet). Maybe you will have better luck.
What's up guys? I know I said I was going to keep up with my blog more often but... I totally lied. I've been completely swamped with schoolwork and with exams coming around the corner I just haven't had a second to myself (that's a lie). Also being lazy and partying too much can't have helped. The point is I'm writing now, so enjoy :).
I'm going to start by linking to an incredible essay by Kurt Vonnegut. Kurt Vonnegut is, in my opinion, a very talented writer and a really cool dude. He is known for his lightning fast wit and just generally being awesome. This essay deals with how humans give value to literature. I've always known that War and Peace holds a little more juice than Captain Underpants, but the exact reasons why have always seemed unclear. To have a seasoned writer like Kurt give his point of view on the subject is fascinating. If you don't want to bother reading the entire thing here's his conclusion; it sums up his point nicely and tells you all you need to know.
But there’s a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it’s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [indicates blackboard]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.
And if I die—God forbid—I would like to go to heaven to ask somebody in charge up there, “Hey, what was the good news and what was the bad news?”
I saw another very interesting article about a sort of open forum which involved several writers answering questions from the audience and debating among themselves. This took place near the end of Vonnegut's life and the picture above illustrates his unusually blunt answer to a girl who was asking for some sage advice from a man who's seen it all. Warning: It's a long read.
Okay, on another note, I present to you some of the greatest lines to ever to grace our unworthy television screens. I was surprised by just how entertaining and engaging 10 minutes of Arnie's shenanigans were.
I wrote about chatroulette once before, and it seems as if gold keep pouring out of this wonderfully perverse invention. Here are some pictures of a complete brat being an asshole to people. Hilarious.
Okay that's all for now, next time I'm going to write about Aldous Huxley's death, so stick around, you might learn something.
PS This is funny. Transcript: Yo-Hemphead! Look what you washed by not checking your pockets! Lets hope the seal was tight enough not to let much water in! May I suggest you lay it out somewhere safe to dry! Love, mom :). P.S. Where's my clear tape?
A few days ago I had a sobering experience that reminded me just how quickly a good day can turn into a bad day. One moment everything is going your way and within seconds your mind is fraught with fear and anxiety, completely forgetting the safe feeling of security you just possessed. It makes me wonder about the validity of things that you feel. How real are they if they can be overturned and forgotten in mere seconds. Anyways, it's been a while since I've had an experience like that, and since I've been having terrible luck ever since.
The picture on the left is interesting to me because this seems like exactly what happened. To anyone unfamiliar, Sisyphus was a dude who stirred up some shit and got punished by the gods. They gave him the task of rolling a boulder up a hill and then they'd push it down so he would have to start over again (not sure what he did but that punishment is pretty hilarious). So basically, a Sisyphean task is one that is impossible.
A lot of people have been saying that Obama has not done anything yet, to which I reply with the following graph. Now, I don't really like discussing political issues, but every once in a while something worth mentioning comes up. I'd like to end this blog with a video interview of one of the coolest thinkers of our time. Richard Feynman is a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, and is amazing at explaining complicated concepts in simple everyday terms. Here is one that particularly caught my attention because he was basically unable to explain magnets and the magnetic force, and he gives a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why.
Okay that's all I have for now, its 3:30am and I want to sleep. Peace out internet.
It's been a while since my last post (due to schoolwork/chronic laziness), but it has since come to my attention that I have at least 1 devoted reader, so I will try to keep these posts as regular as a well functioning colon.
Lots of things have happened since my last post, but first thing's first. Congratulations to Jeff Bridges for FINALLY winning an Oscar for The Big Lebowski. The Dude lives on!
As I've mentioned before, I have a procrasination problem, and I've been using this very true picture to motivate myself Anyways, now that we've got the pleasantries out of the way, on to more stimulating crap. I saw another fascinating Ted Talk that I just had to share with you guy(s).
In this video, Daniel Kahneman (from wikipedia: "notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology.", so you know he's one cool Jew.) talks about our experiences vs. our memories. He explains that there are two separate selves, the remembering self, and the present self (who only exists for about 3 seconds at a time) and the discrepancies between experiences and our memories of them. An interesting point he brings up is the lack of reason for how much weight we put on our memories, when in reality we spend much less time remembering something than actually experiencing it. Seeing as he is an economist first, these ideas must have come from an economical point of view, yet its very interesting to see his breakdown of our psychological processes and mannerisms with regards to something as fundamentally important and scarily uncertain as memory.
Before I finish, I wanted to remind people just how sexually kinky the Ancient Romans were. Most people probably don't realize that Ancient Romans were much more open sexually than today's culture, (for example, they had no problems with gays, but I guess today that can just be blamed on religion. Which btw leads to stupid shit like this) which is interesting because it begs the question "Why?".
Okay I'm done for now internet, see you next time.
Whew, its been a crazy week, and I'm just about ready to start doing schoolwork again. After all, I had taken a 3 week intermission from my academics, counting the week before reading week, reading week, and the week after (this week). I'm pretty far behind in all my classes but not too worried. If life has taught me anything it's that you can do a lot of things in the very last moment with absolutely no consequences. My name is David Murday, and I am a procrastinator. This can probably be said of most of the student body, which is interesting because it shows little correlation between the tendency to procrastinate and various personality traits. Mostly, I think, people procrasinate because they like the rush it gives them. The rush of being on the edge, always teetering between failure and success, danger and safety. I wonder if this behavior is a side-effect of some sort of aspect of our western society, like a living mundane life, or the deadening of feelings through over-stimulation. Either way it doesn't really matter because I doubt I'm going to stop procrastinating any time soon.
A little while back I posted a link to a personality profile that was studied in order to better understand cold-reading (what "psychics" do), and this time I wanted to show a cool elaboration done by Derren Brown. Link (stupid video wouldn't embed)
Also, to show just how cool Russia is, here is a Russian teenage mutant ninja turtle comic that places a giant anthropomorphic bear as their leader, and includes Batman. (I can't really tell what's going on) Crazy Russian Comic
That's what I have for now internet, see ya later. -Murday
Bill Gates was featured on Ted Talks a few days ago (great site fyi), and he gave a pretty interesting talk about poverty, energy, and climate. Check it out if you have time.
Personally, I've never been convinced that human CO2 emissions are responsible for the current climate change, but he makes many good points about steps we can take to reduce poverty, and use energy more efficiently. Not very comforting was his belief that we will require energy "miracles" to reach some of these goals, which he seems to think will require a sort of Manhattan Project to happen. Somehow I have a feeling that the before we get to his goal, factor P in his equation will drop dramatically.
Here are some of the pics I tried to post yesterday while failing miserably.
Posts
