Long nights, short insights.
Each second can tick, but then will pass us,
not to be remade, set still or undone.
Each moment’s fate is to live once only,
to vanish away when its end must come.
This instant leaves but the future follows,
when long-known events come calling at last.
But they too must tick, slide by, be finished,
to become one with all other times passed.
This why I don’t believe we ought to listen to the environmentalists on global warming, utterly regardless of whether the anthropogenic climate warming models are accurate:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/…/money_for_nothing.html
When rationally examined in terms of net present value and opportunity cost, I’m pretty sure that programs and regulations to limit global warming — even assuming absolute success, which is absurdly unlikely — are inferior strategies to simply letting the earth warm and using the gained economic growth to pay for solutions to the ensuing ecological problems.
I’m not even convinced that a warmer earth will be a bad thing. Suggestions of “extreme weather” are unsubstantiated scare-mongering. The most significant ramifications appear to be large-scale coral bleaching (i.e. oceanic biodiversity loss) and loss of coastal lands to either flooding or erosion as the sea levels rise a couple feet. The latter effect does not necessarily matter to wealthy nations, as the Netherlands has shown. Warmer climates mean milder winters, increased evaporation/precipitation, and longer growing seasons.
This is one issue where short-term thinking may make us better off.
I’m mostly done with school, I’m mostly done with what’s left of school, and I’m mostly done motivating myself to turn “mostly” into “completely.” Half of what’s left is school-as-usual and half is finishing things that have been back-burner for so long I’ve half forgotten what needs doing.
What I’ve got left:
-putting in the minimum effort to squeak by in my least-important class
-writing the second halves of two extraneous papers that have no impact except on my self-respect
-cleaning the heck out of my apartment and packing up my life
-tying up some loose ends… a turtle, a trial, a transfer, and a trip or two, to name a few.
Watching Iron Man made me want to build something. Maybe not an armored combat exoskeleton, but something electric/mechanical, y’know? I ended up taking apart and fixing a broken cordless power screwdriver. The motor’s wiring had shorted out or something, so I rewound the internals with higher quality electromagnet wire, removed the 2.5V rechargeable battery, and wired it up to a spare 5V power supply I had lying around. Boom, crazy torque.
Now, I’m thinking I ought to use the battery for something. I don’t have the parts lying around to boost up the output voltage to the 5V necessary for ipod/cellphone backup power, but I could run a CD player off it or something. Basically, it’s good for anything that runs off two AA/AAA batteries. Rechargable flashlight is another thought. Hmm.
The power’s flickering a little in the thunderstorm. I’m glad I have a UPS hooked up for my desktop.
I believe the goal of mankind ought to be to make a world in which the only material deprivation is self-imposed. I cannot, in good conscience, permit the forces of incompetence, tyranny, or chance to impose their damage upon a thinking being. Powerful forces cannot be fought except by collective action. To this end, I hold that the highest goal of government — indeed, its only justification for existence — should be to support and improve the lives of its citizens. Likewise, I cannot limit the free-thinking decision of a human being to make choices towards a self-destructive end. Freedom only exists when a person’s fate is self-imposed, for good or ill. The value of individual freedom ought be held above any pragmatic end except where doing so limits the freedom of others.
I believe the goal of mankind ought to be to make a world in which our collective struggles are waged solely against history’s attempts to wipe the slate clean. What existence do our daily victories earn if they are allowed to vanish into dust without record or lasting consequence? A thought is gone in a moment, an act survives a lifetime, and a monument lives as long as stone can fight the wind and earth — but the memories and knowledge of the human race are the only portion of its accomplishments which might last forever. The pursuits of the mind which can be realized in action are the greatest measure of human progress. Lost wisdom and forgotten knowledge are the killers of immortality. When conflicts drive humanity en masse backwards on its winding path to the future, they do not merely end the existence of living beings: they rob those who lived before of the significance garnered by their advances.
I think the goal of mankind ought to be to make a world in which the existential act of being can take its rightful place above the pragmatic act of survival. The only thing which is truly unique to each individual is his subjective experience of being. Indeed, the sensation of being a thinking entity is at the very core of humanity. People on the edge of survival cannot look inward — the mind must be focused on accomplishing each task because failure may mean death. Subjecting a person to constant fear or deprivation keeps the mind from seeing itself. To bar a person from any introspective examination of being is to rob him of the only experience which every human can share. It is likely impossible to make every human happy or close to it, but we could at the least permit everyone the opportunity to be fully human. Sufficient physical security to stop, pause, and reflect on what one is experiencing now is the one luxury I wish everyone could enjoy.
I just bought 10 sheets of printer paper for $0.50.
More precisely, I just spent $0.50 of the remaining $27.35 of my print quota for the year. They charge everyone $35 up-front and don’t refund unused quotas. You could say I just saved fifty cents. I prefer to think that I just tricked MU into giving me 10 free sheets of paper on which I can do my homework, but in reality, they tricked me into giving them twenty or thirty bucks every year for no particular reason.
I wonder what they do with the income from their little printer scam. Buy new printers, I hope. Hitt St has some humongous new laser printers that had to have cost thousands of dollars. The old ones were 3-4 years old, tops. They worked fine. My tuition dollars at work.