"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct was, and the only way, it does not exist."
~ Friedrich Nietzche


"Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move,
doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love."
~ Hamlet



"I don't mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips
And smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary
And softly spoken lies
You never know just how to look
Through other people's eyes"
"Pepper" - Buttsurfers

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit,
and its filled with people who are filled with shit,
and the vermin of the world inhabit it"
~ Sweeney Todd



I have people I like. Artists, writers, philosophers.... here is an incomplete list. Because I felt like making a list at 3am in the morning.


Ernest Hemingway, Nietzche, Virginia Wolf, William Faulkner, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Shakespeare, Jonathan Marshall, Stephen King, Louisa May Alcott, Philip Pullman, Douglas Adams, Chuck Palahniuk, M. Night Shyamalan, Lois Lowry, Siddhartha Gautama, Dorothea Dix, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Janis Joplin, Van Gogh, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, MARK TWAIN, Margaret Mitchell, 

Tags: people, quotes
Current Mood: devious

"If you want to express yourself, your true nature, there should be some natural and appropriate way of expression. Even swaying right and left as you sit down or get up from zazen is an expression of yourself. It is not preparation for practice, or relaxation after practice; it is part of the practice. So we should not do it as if it were preparing for something else.

This should be true in your every day life. To cook, or to fix some food, is not preparation, according to Dogen; it is practice. To cook is not just to prepare food for someone or for yourself; it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in your activity in the kitchen. [...] Whatever you do, it should be an expression of the same deep activity. We should appreciate what we are doing. There is no preparation for something else."

- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Try sort of expanding this thinking to everything you do. The hobbies you have, the career you take, the friends you keep, all of it isn't just "oh, this is what I do" or even worse, "this is what I HAVE to do", it's an extension of what you are. As it's part of who you are, it's especially important to choose activities that you actually find fulfilling regardless of societal or cultural constraints. What happens if you follow a lifestyle or life goals that don't resonate with what you truly want? It becomes unnatural and you deny your nature. You don't put your being into what you are doing, you just see it as "something that has to be there", something that you have to make an artificial part of yourself that slowly eats away at you like cancer.

What can you see your nature manifesting as? There's not that much of a discrepancy between what you "want" to see nature manifest as and what you "see" your nature manifesting as - most often, the activities you love the most are the ones that manifest yourself most easily, with a bit of effort (or perhaps no effort at all, if effort impedes you too much). For me, I want it to come out in science and martial arts, and of course in the fun I have with my friends. Finding what you love and eventually doing what you love, all the time, should reach a point where expression of your natural self comes from every facet of that activity. So, if I work hard enough and consciously enough at it, it can reach a point where you can determine my entire personality and state of being through how I fight or how I do science or how I crack up at something while on an adventure. It's all natural, just as your movements are natural or your posture is natural. All it takes is absolute mindfulness of how you do things and what you naturally gravitate towards. It doesn't have to be restricted to how you sit. When what you do reaches that point, it turns from being an 'activity' that you do into something else entirely, I think.

Tags: musings
Current Mood: rushed
Current Music: office doldrums

I might have to revise my estimate for when the first Turing test will be passed, to be more optimistic. We're starting to come really close!

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4934858.ece

"I was one of those judges, and yesterday, I was fooled. I mistook Eugene for a real human being. In fact, and perhaps this is worse, he was so convincing that I assumed that the human being with whom I was simultaneously conversing was a computer."

"In Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Turing suggested that a computer could be said to be thinking if, in a text-based conversation, it was impossible to distinguish its responses from those of a human. He predicted that by the end of the century, computers would have a 30 percent chance of being mistaken for a human being in five minutes of text-based conversation."

Looks like Turing's prediction was about 8 or 9 years too short. (Well, except that to really guarantee it's at the 25-30% level you need to do it again and again... which hasn't been done.) But the real challenge will be getting all the way from 25% up to 50% (to where the best the judge can do is literally toss a coin to try and guess which is the computer and which is the human)... this may take several more decades. Or it could happen within the next decade. Either way, it's gonna be damn interesting to watch!

Tags: accelerating change, singularity, turing test

Hm, I seem to have forgotten to update this thing.

Ok. Let's see what has happened.
Pretty much nothing of too much interest event wise.

Lots of work. Plus I've decided that I want to start my own business. So I can do all my various jobs under a company name, and also many things could then be turned into business expenses. That's what they really are though. Because life is a business.

What else.

My old phone pretty much was dead, so I got a new phone. And not so surprisingly I got an iPhone. Why? Well this is why:
1. It consolidates 3 items in my pockets. A camera, an iPod, and a phone.
2. I hold onto phones for many years, basically I love my phones until death. If I'm going to have this phone for that long I might as well get this one.
3. I tend to usually get the cheapest phone at the stores, which usually is perfect for what I need. I like phones that are JUST phones, and nothing else, with no stupid camera or whatever. This makes sure they are small and do exactly what I want them to do. It's the same reason why I love using TextEdit for all of my writing. But unfortunately that breed of phone has disappeared from stores, and you can no longer buy phones that are simply just phones.
4. It allows me to do my job better.

Anyhow, as I've told several people over the past few days, I don't really like this move for a big reason. Though I am a big technology nerd, I am a firm believer that people should not have their noses pressed up against a computer screen all day. Now I have the capability to do that, and I know it will be tempting. But I think I'm mature and self controlled enough to realize the whole world isn't inside a screen. Only parts of the world are in there. There is a duality and you cannot just see one side of things.

What else. Hung out with Tonja, Wayne and Michelle. And I've been watching a lot of movies like usual.

I saw Stray Dog today, another Kurosawa movie which was amazing. He seems to do really well with the urban setting, like with Ikiru. His samurai stuff is good, but it all seems a bit legendary. His urban films are a lot more down to earth and real, a lot easier to relate to.

All I can think of for now.

image: hah, b3ta kids are full of woo yay political humor
movie: yet another picture per day thing, this one is for 8 years

Current Mood: recovering from a headache
Current Music: Rainy Day, Dream Away - Jimi Hendrix

A happy meme.

Post 10 things that are going right in your life right now. I don’t care how small. You’re happy with your cup of coffee. You saw a flock of geese flying over. ANYTHING. Things that make you happy. Things that make you smile.

Companionable time watching baseball with wild_irises the last couple of nights and klwalton last week.

Wheeee, the Phillies won tonight. One more win, and they're in the World Series for the first time since 1993. This makes me ecstatic.

Also, wild_irises introduced me to a new author who is quite good. That's always a joy.

The Internet, which allows us to connect with people we would otherwise never meet and get to know one another mind-first. Without the Internet, I'd never have met gramina, much less fallen in love with her. I'd certainly never have moved to California, or met any of the people I know through LJ, which includes alanbostick. Yes, we met first in 3D, but it was at a party of LJ folk.

My friends on LJ and the strong, loving, complex overlapping communities I'm involved with.

My freelancing situation is starting to come together. This is also something to thank the Internet for -- as well as the power of social networking, with or without computer chips.

There are some wonderful new babies in the world.

I have so much love in my life: my partners, my friends, my chosen family, my birth family.

It's fall, my favorite season.

Gabriel loves me, and she is smart enough to close the laptop when she wants attention. (For new readers: Gabriel is my cat.)

California is a beautiful place to live.

(I know that's 11. I'm happy.)

Current Mood: happy

got it from filkertom:

When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride. Preferably not "As you wish" or the Inigo Montoya speech.

So hard to chose from...but I think my personal favorite is one of Westley's lines:
Hamperdink:"First things first, to the death."
Westley: "No. To the pain."

In the course of or great and new manifestations of technology.
We will seek an aesthetic as been a driving motivation in human civilization even before we manifested as Homo sapiens sapiens, As we might do in our new manifestation.
Look at my visor and you might see the systems function, as they need to be.
That way when I play a message it will say and warn you and me ethereally.

In the future or in this now do we learn to speak.
Who is it we speak to.
In the islands of space and time.
Now niste the future finish.
I hope the days are to fly as we ascend in time.

Seeds they do speak of growth and life it will transform to chrome.
Don't be lonely metal children as you will of course connect.
Ends and deeds do send.
Endeared to the message.
Packaged and kept.

Quod Erratum Demonstratum.
Would they play with etc.
Can it be to see the game that might  to be.
In a moment it will be.

Islands moments and spaces and places.
Running on a surface in space I do transpose and displace.
Under the acronym.
Now read the moment.

Tags: islands

I came into work and Cool Nerd Girl asked, "When are you going home?"

This is something a lot of Japanese ask you and it can be translated to one of two things: either 1) they want to know because they'll be sad you're leaving, or 2) they want to know because they want you gone.

I knew it was the former in this case so I told her and we lamented not having enough time for fun things, and I went back to work.

Until another techician came up and asked, "When are you going home?"

Not sure if it's the 1) translation. Might be 2). I have no clue. Twice in one day? That's kind of odd.

I actually started to worry. I was like "shit, I should've gotten over my fear and talked to everybody a bit more, even if they were douches at the beginning, I shouldn't have held grudges, I should've worked harder, I should've tried to keep being their friend even if they didn't want it, blah why should I care it's their fault, no it's my fault, blahblahblah, I should've tried to be happier so I could get along with people, blahblahblah"

Until I went to the Advisor and asked if anything was wrong.

MM: Have you heard any... gossip? Around? Because two people have already asked when I'm leaving and it's sort of unnerving. Is there a problem?
Advisor: What? Who asked you?
MM: Well, Cool Nerd Girl did, and that's okay, but then ______-san asked afterward.
Advisor: Well, ______-san wants to know everything. *rolleyed smile*
MM: Heh, yeah, I guess so. Well okay, as long as there isn't a problem.
Advisor: Well there IS a problem, you're leaving! In three months we have to get somebody to replace you. I told the Department Head today that we need to hire a technician to replace you and he might have mentioned it, I think that's why people are curious.
MM: Well okay. I mean, if there's still a conflict between me and my coworkers then it's important of course, but just for the record I don't care as much about it anymore. So, as long as everything's okay.
Advisor: Yeah I'm sure it's fine. Don't worry, as you well know, all of us are replaceable. :p
MM: ^_^;;;

Tags: dialogues
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "it's a small world" ringtone

Last night lots of people had bad dreams or insomnia. So I created a poll.

( so, how did you sleep? )

Current Mood: sleepy