Comfort – Life - Enjoyment

[Post 27]

I went for a walk yesterday and was thinking about why people work – what the purpose of work is. I've come to this conclusion: We work to provide for ourselves or for a group comfort, life, or enjoyment. Comfort includes not only physical conveniences but also comfortable emotional states: peace, contentment, etc. Life includes the wherewithal to eat and physical, emotional, and spiritual safety. Enjoyment includes thrills, satisfaction, etc. Work accomplishes this for the laborer generally through the receipt of money (which allows the purchase of the work of others) and hopefully for the satisfaction of a job well done. Work is done for the hirer who has something he's trying to accomplish towards those ends. The ditch digger, the architect, the paper pusher, the president, and everybody else who expends energy all have the same goals and functionality. Some are selfish and labor only for themselves – perhaps at the same time denying these things to others, while many are generous and labor for themselves and others. Focus varies – some struggle to keep living and focus only on that. Others are so preoccupied with enjoying the moment that they literally stop living. In the end I think it comes down to at least one, and most of the time all, of these things. What do you think? Am I right?

-Schlange

Butt Munch

(Post 24)

Pardon the potentially offending post title, but that's really what we're talking about today - grasshoppers that stay on the move to prevent their hindquarters from becoming lunch. For those of you who want to read the whole thing you can read it here.

The main idea of the article is this: swarms of locusts get where they are going because the bugs in front are afraid that the bugs in back are going to nibble their bottoms. There were two paragraphs in the article that made me think about life in general:

The defensive movement away from the perceived threat sets up a domino effect,
as each individual locusts' movement causes them to touch another locust, which
then makes the second locust move away.

"You have millions of individuals all going in the same direction, because if they change direction much, they are likely to come in contact with each other," Sword said.

I think that sometimes people are just like this. We all move defensively away from everybody else, often because we are afraid of getting a "but chewing." That's what defines the direction of society. We all move in a direction that minimizes the negative contact we have with other people - thus we don't really go where we want to go, we just go where we all herd each other to.

Now, the locusts have a legitimate problem. They're cannibalistic and if they don't head for food they become food. We on the other hand have a tendency to imagine the things that other people are going to think. Most of the time we're wrong. Even when we're right we're spineless.

It's a pity.

-Schlange

Bl-ah-g

Post 18

I just posted a post in the which I made apologies for being away for so long and posting a topic that I'll discuss soon. The "cyber-ether" absorbed it with some mysterious error. I think the keeper of the void has it in for me. I still apologize, but not so nicely. Unpolished topic intro follows:

Topic will be:

"Most things you consider to be evil are really just lonely and lacking in social niceties"

Feel free to comment on the topic before I do, as I can't right now. Consider this virtual circle time.

Write in such a way that if your blog is called upon to die prematurely (as mine are prone to do) they'll have a happy reunion with the good blogs of the past. However, it's likely that their tarnished descendants (like this one) will end up going to the postMaster Demon (and yes I know that's not what it is, but Demon is far more appropriate than what's his bucket)

-Schlange

Minute Man

(post 14)

So, I have this Java Professor. He's a pretty cool guy, and I like him. He also works very much like a clock. He starts speaking at precisely the moment the bell rings and stops at exactly 12:50. Once I got to class 10 minutes early and slipped in the back while he was still teaching a different class. Just for fun I took a glance at the clock and took note of what he was saying. When he reached that point in the lecture in my class the clock said exactly the same time (one hour later) as it had in the previous class. The man is some sort of machine. Today, he had something important he wanted to add at the end of class. It was 12:50 and people were starting to leave. He said, "I'm sorry for keeping you, but I need one more minute of your time." He taught what he needed and then turned to the class and said, "thank you for the extra 58 seconds of your time. I hope you got something out of it." I've never been anywhere when someone actualy ment one minute when they said one minute.

I wonder what the world would be like if everyone could accurately estimate and stick to a time frame. What if "just a second" ment just a second, instead of "just 5 minutes", or if "just a minute" ment 58 seconds rather than "sometime between now and an hour."

A few years ago I saw segments of an 8 hour show from 1989, "Around the World in 80 Days," staring Pierce Brosnan as Phileas Fogg, with Eric Idle as his butler. In it, Phileas is the most punctual and predictable person in the universe. He arives at exactly the time he says and does what he's always done at that time and place, to the point that resturants know when he's coming and what he's eating and have it prepared and set before him as he's entering the doors. He bathes at exactly the same time and expects his water to be precisely 83 degrees.

If life was like that would things be easier or harder? I'd have all my assignments completed and on time. That'd be nice. Aside from that, I'm glad that things are the way they are - though I probably ought to work at making what I say be what I mean...

-Schlange

Pretzels

(Post 11)

So, I learned the key to a woman's' heart. (No, not pretzels, that's just a tongue in cheek reference to a talk about the "Soul Kiss" by President Spencer W. Kimball.) Homework. Really. I'm not even talking about 1967 slang, in which the term "homework" is innuendo. What I am talking about is what I witnessed today in the Computer Science programming lab.

So that you'll understand, let me explain the circumstance that today's (today being today, not "this age") programmers faced in room 1119 of the Talmage building:

It's Friday, February 15, 2008. Valentine's day has come and gone. Lab 3 is due for pass off at 6:00 pm. I'm in the lab at 4:05, I ran there the second I got off work. I'm hungry and tired but I've got to put the final touches on a program that's already consumed 30 hours of my valuable time. Suddenly, Armageddon arrives – or I wish it would. My program freezes any time I push a button. I can't do anything but use the Task Manager to kill it and try again. After 50 such crashes it's 5:20, and I still don't know where I messed up. Tension in the room is building. 20 or so other students are in the room and it's silent except for the rainstorm pounding of fingers on keyboards and a few TA's or private tutors talking the mortally wounded through the valley of death. It's 5:42 and every so often someone screams or pounds something or curses the heavens – the resounding "Why?!?" reverberating off the aching eyes of everybody else in the room. A student jumps out of his chair and thrusts his hands in the air like he's on a rollercoaster and its headed to heaven. He runs up and down the aisle and out the door, all the time laughing and shouting "It works! It works! It FINALY works!" We watch him run past the door three times before he dances back in so he can pass off the lab. It's moments like this that make you understand how things like the word "Eureka" were invented. Every couple of minutes somebody repeats this rendezvous with victory until it's down to me, a girl to my right, two Indians in front of her (from India – or so I guess based on the frantic foreign dialogue shooting from their direction that says, in a voice that defies language barriers, that they are as stumped as I am), and a girl with a guy who is helping her work through her code.

It's 5:49; my program is running now and I only have one more basic feature to add. I do it in three minutes and run the program again. -- *BLUG-RA-GOOP!* -- That's the sensation that runs through my body when even though everything else is working, my output is somehow completely wrong. That means I've got to debug – run through my over one thousand lines of code and look for whatever weird glitch I created. My lungs won't move for a second. This project is not going to make it on time, even though I'll still do my darndest to try (I actualy didn't get done till 7:40 or so). I need a minute to breathe and collect myself so I can decide on the smartest way to tackle my newest problem. So I stand up and stretch and look around. Looks like the girl in front of me is having the same kind of problem. She's pale and looks weary. Her buddy is staring intently at her screen. He suddenly gets a bright look on his faces and says "Look! It's right there! You just have to change that ONE word!" She gets excited as she figures out what's going on. With a few quick strokes on the keyboard, her error is gone. I watch them stop breathing while they compile the program and run it. It executes perfectly.

I wait for the victory dance. It doesn't happen. Instead, she grabs the back of the guy's head with both hands and pulls him in for a kiss… she starts with a quick peck and then dives in for the big one. I look away (PDA's embarrass me – I don't know if that makes me moral or jealous or both). I look back up and they're still at it. I try to focus on my screen but they're right behind it. They'll stop soon, I'm sure. I feel grateful as he pulls back, but my relief is short lived. A split second for a breath is all the time she gives him before she's sucking the life out of him again. I think they would have had a full blown make out session right there in the lab if she didn't have less than five minutes to grab a TA and pass off the program. She turns back to her computer so she can add her name to the help/pass-off queue. He's got a glassy look in his eyes. He's obviously oblivious to everything in existence. Neither his head nor his eyes move and his mouth is half way open. That look didn't leave until he took it with him.

Conclusion: If you celebrated the 14^th of this month as "Singles Awareness Day" maybe you ought to learn to debug.

-Schlange

Redemption?

(post 10)

So the point of this post is to attempt to recapture what I lost (see post 9 – "Pain").

Let's see, my main point was that when I participate in different kinds of media I get in different moods. Today that means calm, relaxed, thoughtful. I explored the way that media may have the effect of Pavlov's fabled bell. I figured I ought to start dinging my own bells every so often so that I can salivate on command. (If you're confused by the metaphor its ok… just try reading this post late at night, then you too will likely salivate – more like drool with fatigue and boredom.)

I also explored the way media might act like progressive muscle relaxation on the brain– tightening and relaxing emotions, brain juices, and something-something (my English teacher told me lists of three are always good). Anyhow, the time is 0-100 hours. My brain is tightening but not relaxing. Good luck getting anything beneficial out of this second rate rendition.

By the way… I'm typing this in word and using word to publish it to the blog site. It's an experiment, and a protection against, well, pain. Huzzah for spellcheckers.

-Schlange

Write Good[sic]

(Post 8)

This post is a response to another blog by Schmetterling (which I recommend to those who are interested in thinking about what makes writing powerful, and which might need to be read to fully understand this post) I'm not going to say anything really different, I just wanted to examine one of the points that stood out to me as having extrodinary value.

So that readers understand that “writing good” is not a grammatically smelly phrase, here is an important and defining segment from Schmetterling's post: “[T]hat a person may write or speak well does not necessarily mean that they write or speak good, and this is the distinction I wish to emphasize.”

Having placed that, this last part of the last paragraph of that post is what I’m basing the majority of this post on because it really struck a chord with me.

"To communicate truth with such clarity and power is a feat of Soul that I can no more than aspire to achieve, but I believe that to do so ought to be the quintessential desire of any person inclined to speak or write."

This was for me the most important thing schmetterling said. I think there is a large difference amongst the categories of writing well (using words in a way that is correct and sometimes pleasing - writing with the mind, as Schmetterling says), writing compellingly (writing in a way that makes people love what you are saying - writing with the heart), and writing powerfully (writing about the things that are a major part of you, that you can thus convey with the power of your soul). All of these things are individual characteristics of "writing good" as laid out by Schmetterling. Additionaly, I believe that these are gradiations of writing... some might take them seperately, but they really do build on each other. Writing with the heart is so much more effective if one can write with the mind - using it to find the words that say what is ment. Writing with the soul can't be accepted or even understood by anyone unless it is written with the heart.

These things are all methods to an end. I wish to aproach the same topic in the reverse. Let us now concentrate on the end. I believe that understanding and seeking the end to which one writes with mind, heart and soul is what causes the development of all three. The heart of writing that which is good is centered in the word truth.

The difference between compelling writing and "writing good" is whether or not the idea being communicated is true. In fact, writing good may not be compelling, and is thus set aside by the average reader because though one wrote good he did not make use of good writing. The result of writing good should possess three qualities that you mentioned: TRUTH conveyed with POWER, and CLARITY. If all words (written or spoken) were designed with this end in mind, then the mind, the heart, and the soul would work themselves out with help from God. Provided that those who wrote and spoke possessed truth, and wanted so much for it to be understood that they learned clarity, and loved it so much that they shared it with power, perfect communication would be the result: those that read and heard would always be compelled to believe truth and to use it. I suppose then that writing good requires an action – the seeking of truth.

What marks the difference between good writers and writers who write good? Good writers are motivated by self-centered objectives – status, pats on the back, great sales, etc. (and generally lack what Schmetterling called soul, because they cater to a soulless popular sentiment). The writers of good seek the edification of their readers. (Schmetterling pegged this one: "Without meaning, without the honest intention to uplift or improve, without Soul, a work is utterly worthless. If a person has nothing to say, they should not speak.") The writers of good want others to understand what truth is, but they know that they can’t teach others about what is without finding it for themselves.

As a general rule, truth can’t be discovered until other known truths are applied. Generally speaking, writing good is the province of good men.

There it is: Write good. Do it with mind, heart, and soul. Learn how by seeking for truth, clarity, and power; especialy truth. Love the truth. Live the truth. Write about the truths you are gathering about you, and become the epitomy of what you write.

-Schlange

When the World throws you Lemons...

(Post 3)

Today I've been astounded as I think of some of the great men and women who have taken the lemons the world has chucked at them and made not only lemonade and a variety of pies, but also industrial strength cleaning products and a decent shaving cream!

That's right, today I purchased "Foamy Lemon-Lime: Gillette Comfort Glide FORMULA."

It smells nice, but other than that I really can't tell a difference -- though I haven't shaved with a manual razor for over a year. Maybe my lack of amazement comes from my lack of use.

At any rate, my face is clean and my heart is pure. Hopefully when I arrive at the pearly gates they won't look too carefully under my fingernails...

Speaking of lemons, I was given an interesting statistic today in my Programming Class. Last semester my professor took a survey of all students in his classes (300 or so). He asked a broad range of questions, and statistically analyzed what characteristics belong to students of differing final grades. In the "A" range, nestled along with "Does every assignment" and "Turning lab assignments in on time" was "Being married."

How's that for a tart taste of citrus? I can only accomplish six sevenths of the listed attributes of "A" students... I hope that doesn't reflect on my grade. =P