Origins

In the beginning god played music. He did this because he lived through the metaphor. He anticipated people reading the story. He wanted to write the story for their desires. Turns out he was wrong. First they messed up the story. Then they argued over it. It was lost on their ears. When KMFE asked God for the meaning of creation, it was so apparent that KMFE knew nothing of the music that for frustration and embarrassment God could not answer him. Thus has been God since then. KMFE stood on a mountain top and asked his question and received no answer, because God could not face him. And it was with this memory that KMFE met EKA. EKA was introduced to KMFE by dead philosophers. They are weak, the new friend said, but I am strong. “Kant even discusses the morality of having gout,” KMFE explained to EKA during one of their discussions. “He does to morality what the Ontological Proof does to God: gives it life only by sucking out all the substance, till you could walk right through it.” “His counter to the Ontological Argument is quite elegant,” EKA protested. “And that's just what makes him spineless. He can see the fallacy in the ontological argument, but he can't see the flaw. The argument is invalid because it assumes that the sofa that exists can be distinguished from the identical sofa that does not, but the argument is simply WRONG because it reduces the sofa to something you can't even sit in.”

Plastic Angel

KMFE sat in the corner of the parking lot. All around him there was lightening. He saw a small plastic angel from a soft-drink bottle on the ground and picked it up. He asked it to help him survive through the storm. Looking up at the sky he squeezed the angel so the plastic formed white creases. The lightening diminished and the sun started to show through the clouds. KMFE promised the angel not to abandon her after it was over. He headed back up the mountain. Beyond the second hill he met the Goat Man. The Goat Man was a botanist living with goats in the hills. This ecosystem is unique in the world and the blackberries are threatening it, he told KMFE. I wonder if he knows I have an angel in my pocket, KMFE asked himself. That night KMFE suffered every conceivable pain. The lonely bludgeons from C-puff's lair attacked him ceaselessly. He could never tell how many of himself existed. KMFE grabbed the angel off his pillow, tripped down the stairs and out the screen door. You cannot keep an angel. You cannot keep an angel. KMFE threw his undeserved token out of sight into the darkness. He stood silent a minute as the pain dripped away from his body. In the morning he was sure the Goat Man had found the angel.

Life

God: I just can't do this. I can't be that cruel. He slouched in his chair and stared at the desk. Saturn walked in looking distracted. God didn't look up. Saturn found the book he was looking for, then noticed God. Saturn: Something wrong, God? God: I'm not creating life, Saturn. I can't put them through that. Saturn: Well, it's your decision. But it's the only way you're gonna survive. God: I know, Saturn. Just let me mope on this for awhile. Saturn stood silently for five minutes, then spoke again. Saturn: If you don't create life, no one will remember you. You'll disappear into an eternity of nothingness. You won't feel the passage of time. You won't exist. God shuddered. He wished Saturn would let him stop thinking about it. Saturn: You know all along you would come to this point. We knew it too, before you were born. God: I know, Saturn. Please go away. Saturn quietly left the room. Half an hour later God got up from his desk and went to find Saturn. God: It just seems so cruel, Saturn. To put people through life, suffering from birth to death. Confused, unsure why they exist, dreading the future. And so many of them, created in the world only to be imprisoned forever in immaterial nothingness. All just to preserve some old deity. Saturn: It's cruel God, I know. God: I thought you might try to tell me about happiness in life. Saturn closed his book and set it on the table. Then he straightened up and faced God. Saturn: I wouldn't try to tell you that, God. Happiness just leaves a person something to be bitter about. The universe was made to be cruel and it will be so until the end. God stood there biting his fingernails. God: It's really very simple, isn't it? Saturn: It is. But it's your decision. God walked back into his room. A few minutes later he came out again. God: I won't do it, Saturn. Saturn: Suit yourself. He didn't look up from his book. God waited a few seconds and then left to go to bed. Saturn couldn't be so cruel, either. He had know God since God was born, and hated to see his friend vanish. Saturn put his book down, walked into God's work room, and created life for him.

The Puddle

At 0830 it was too dark to read so EKA shut "MATLAB for Engineers" and got lost trying to find the bus stop. It was colder than yesterday and starting to get windy and he wished he'd brought a second coat. Douglass campus is the only one he knew he could get lost on, and nothing looked familiar anymore.

Finally he came to the Puddle, where he knew there was a REXB stop on the other side. Walking around the water he tripped on a low stone bench and dropped the MATLAB book into the Puddle. EKA stopped for a moment. It wasn't such a great book, but he didn't like to just leave garbage in the pond. As he stood there trying to think of a way to fish it out, a person emerged from the site of the book's weird misfortune. In front of EKA was a man with leaves and branches growing from his head, vines winding around his legs dangling into the water. In his arms he carried another person, a man in his twenties who was either sleeping or dead.

EKA, unsure of how to react, stood watching until he saw the bus's luminous windows in the corner of his eye. About to forget MATLAB and head for the bus, EKA noticed that the sleeping cargo was his MATLAB professor Blase.

The three of them stood that way for hours. Buses came and went, the night turned into morning, but no one would find EKA; he never told anyone where he was going and did not carry a cell phone. Even his roommate wouldn't wonder, since Allen always went to bed by midnight and expected EKA to be gone then.

The sun was up now, and both EKA and Blase would have to be in SEC-110 soon for MATLAB lecture. Sensing class would not meet today, EKA took the bus home and went to sleep.

You seem like the type of person who would...

This idea is due to someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

It's an icebreaker game: you take turns saying to someone else "You seem like the type of person who would ..." and finish the sentence. The more you offend people the better it breaks the ice.

"You seem like the type of person who wouldn't use soap."
"You seem like the type of person who would write about dumb games like this."

The 'Math is Always Right" Principle

This idea is due to Charlie Loelius and Owen Healy.

The Math is Always Right principle:

When a mathematical model and reality disagree, the interpretation is that the math behind it is right, but it is applied incorrectly to the situation.

Corollary:

This leads to the impression that math is always right.

Corollary:

This leads to the impression that reality is always wrong.

Example:

You predict the time for bottle of ketchup pushed off a table to hit the ground. The number is close but not quite right. The math behind the model (quadratic equations, the real number system, calculus) is considered to be fundamentally valid, but other factors (air resistance) made the model not completely accurate in this situation.

The interpretation you did not use is that the model is fundamentally right (takes into account the entire physical situation) but the math behind it (the real number system) is wrong in this case. Either interpretation could theoretically have been used to resolve the situation.

Another Example:

Catholicism = 2
Protestantism = 3
Judaism = 5

Therefore Catholicism + Protestantism = Judaism.

The math is clearly right, but the application to this situation is absurd.

Exact Numbers

Recently I have been counting steps as I walk. I pick particular short stretches along frequently traveled routes and count each time I walk them. The numbers vary quite a bit. I can't say, for example, that a stretch of sidewalk is 54 steps long, but I could give a pretty good guess of the mean at 54 and the shape of the distribution.

It's natural to believe that the exact number of steps does not exist, because once you walk it, it vanishes. Each time you try to count it, you will get a different number. The distribution eventually takes a characteristic shape, but each time you walk it, the outcome is unpredictable.

Now another counting problem. Count the number of ants in New Brunswick. You can't actually go and find every single ant. Even if a team of 100 people committed a year to it they wouldn't find every single ant. You'd have to get some kind of an estimate. And it wouldn't be exactly right, and every time you did it, you'd get a slightly different estimate.

Now the question is, does the number of ants exist? First, a slightly less weird question: is there any way to observe the exact number of ants directly? My inclination to this question is no, simply because I haven't thought of a way to do so. Then a slightly harder question: is there a way to observe the exact number of ants indirectly? Another way to put it, is the number of ants divisible by three, and how would we ever know? The question this is getting at is, is there any way in which whether the number of ants is divisible by three will affect our experience in a way that is observable to us? This is the really careful way of asking, is the world in which the number of ants exists any different than the world in which that number does not exist? Which is yet again a really careful way of asking, does the number of ants exist? Again my inclination is no, but only because I haven't thought of a way to make it exist.

Anyone who thinks we live in a deterministic world hasn't looked around them recently enough.

Desk Writing

SEC-205 has some of the best writing on the desks. Here is a sample:

Hello person sitting at this desk
Hello, o you fr
Hello to both of you.
Hello you three.
Goodbye
You say goodbye and I say hello
ppl, go see Forgetting Sarah Morgan...
Ridiculous
Yeah I wanna see that (and Ironman)
I like bunnies. <-- bunnies? No one likes bunnies!
Hello you four. Though I will be parting my seat forever, I wanted to let you know your messages were entertaining. I shall take your advice and see the movie. Farewell fellow desk writers.

It's not goodbye, it's _I'll see you later
Farewell to you all !! :)

Relativistic Asteroids

I have long been bothered by the lack of relativity in the arcade game asteroids. This problem has been addressed! See Relativistic Asteroids.

By the way, does anyone know a portable way to embed an applet in xhtml 1.1?

Stall Writing

I found some beautiful writing in the bathroom in Scott Hall. It was in several different handwritings.

A MAN WHO HAS A
"WHY"
TO LIVE
CAN DEAL WITH ALMOST
ANY
"HOW"

A MAN WHO HAS A
"WHAT"
TO DO
PROBABLY WON'T
TRANSCRIBE
FORTUNE COOKIES
INTO
BATHROOM STALLS
Unless their
"what" to do
is to
transcribe
fortune cookies
into
Bathroom
stalls
I think we all need
a hobby
THIS IS MY
HOBBY
THIS IS MY
PASSION.