well, blogger doesn't seem to like my pictures very much...so i'll go ahead and try to get you a link to the file den that has them on it...
ok...hopefully this works for you guys.
i'm pretty excited.

well, i've been a bit negligent lately and i'm sorry for it. i've been working like mad on my motorcycle and it's about to become drastically different from what it used to be. i'll try to post pictures later on this evening once i'm home from my class.
but why post now? because i've got quite the thought process going on and i want to hear your opinions, critiques and reactions to it. i'm sure most of you have had these thought before and can lead me down some interesting paths.

what is time? it is, at its very basis, the way we humans measure change. we have created it becasuse we observed random events- we humans are amazingly skilled at seeing patterns in random events, of making sense of the natural world and codifying what we see- and felt that it could not possibly be the result of chance. nor could the fact that we age and die. all of these things were related somehow and that somehow was the idea of time. with time we can track these changes over the span of moments, years, decades or millenia. we can further codify the world. but since it is a human invention, time cannot possibly apply to all of the matter in the universe. it only applies where we are, here on earth, and where we are looking at the moment. without our hand time is no longer observed or real. but we've been here a very short time. to assume that there was time before us is a mistake. there were events before us, a general progression of randomness before us but there need not have been our invention before us. how could there be? and without time, since we cannot prove it beyond our own existence, there is no use of the concept of a beginning nor of an end. without a beginning there is no need for creation nor an unmaking, an apocalypse. thus, God need not be out there looking over us with his beneficient eyes. without a beginning there is no need for religion because there is no root cause, no chain of causality, only random events played out on a cosmic scale. can we be the product of this? i believe so. with an entire universe to play with random chance could easily be playing out this very scenario on multiple, perhaps infinite, other worlds right now. there is nothing to stop it.

well, it's just that season again in washington, it seems.
allow me to first point out that i was moved to the point of tears by the murders at VT. i identify with those victims on a personal level and wish that they never had to feel the pain they have and are now feeling. i think the same thing about iraqis, which is most of why i hate this war we're in there. but there are certain things that aren't to blame here.
guns are not to blame. guns cannot do a thing without humans to use them. and, as the popular argument goes, illegality won't stop people who really want them from getting them. like the kids who carried out columbine all those years ago. they were underage but that didn't stop them from having an uzi, shotgun and 9mm handguns. in the same way, these laws do nothing to stop criminals in any city. illegality will only serve to disarm the general, law-abiding populace.
another point, brought up today, was the fact that australia has had no "mass shootings" in about 10 years. that is quite true and it really hasn't hurt them to take the weapons out of the hands of unstable individuals. but truly it does little good in either case.
let us take the shootings this week as an example. even one armed student in one of the rooms would have helped to save lives if not for a rule that no guns may be brought onto campus. who did this prevent? certainly not a murderer but most certainly all those students who do not want to be expelled and lose years of hard work over a gun. it is sad that they did not have the option of defending themselves and other students from this man.
and it is absolutely ridiculous to blame this whole episode on the gun shop cho purchased his 9mm from. he has no criminal record, nothing of note to suggest he shouldn't legally be able to buy a gun and didn't raise any red flags with the shop staff. i could purchase a gun in the same manner for self-defense and they would never be able to guess the difference.
And a good point that comes to mind: why do we keep hearing about how this breaks all the old shooting records? why are we inviting another, larger killing simply for sensational journalism?
anyhow, i'm quite open to all your comments on this and would welcome the discussion.
if you'd like more reading, albiet quite in favor of gun ownership, go here. it's got some good analysis of data used in favor of gun control.
talk to you all soon.

solid, complete bullshit.

i feel the need to comment on the Imus debacle and the ensuing fallout. mostly because it should not have happened. and i'm not talking about his remarks, i'm talking about the use of him as a scapegoat.
there are a lot of things that don't work well in american society but the issue of race is very much on our minds lately. it's not a bad thing but our reactions as a society are completely wrong-headed and are, indeed, only making the problem worse.
when you single out rich white men to take down, like Mr. Richards and Mr. Imus, you certainly make quite a spectacle. but what does the power want? they want spectacle because they control and profit from them. do not think for a moment that this does anything to change our society in a meaningful way; if there was a chance that this would result in more equality it would never have gotten any coverage. all that the episode is going to result in is the scapegoating of more people and a deepend coarsening of race divisions. no doubt many people are now thinking, as i felt myself all too easily slipping into, thoughts of how black people got Imus canned. about how they made sure this issue blew up in this way. i would also be completely false if i didn't mention the fact that all of this was started by a very liberal media watchdog group. so it seems that those people who wish to free us of bias, racism and corporate greed have succeeded only in making things worse through the use of all of those three to push their agenda.
i do not consider myself to be a politically correct person. i say some very insensitive things about most minority groups. so do you, if you are honest with yourself. but i am not, and will not be, a racist. that is something i will not allow. i have accepted that while the culture i have been raised in is different from others, indeed from black culture in america, it is not better. i am not better than any living man. my experience is different but we are all Life, we are all Men, and we all think and feel and try to work for a better future. I may be different in my thinking, speech and appearance but I, like anyone else, am no more than a man and no less. that's the message that is being lost here. that is the message that should be delivered to the world. even though Don Imus, my buddy Darrell who lives on the street, my friends Gabe and Micah and myself are very different people we deserve to be treated as a whole human being deserving of respect and equal treatment. Don Imus was not treated how you or I would want to be treated in that situation. But he did not treat the Rutgers women how he would want to be treated. He made a mistake and he is sorry for it. This does not give anyone the right to treat him like a sack full of shit, ever. He, as a human being, deserves so much more from us.
Act towards others as you would have them act towards you and these problems of race, gender and denigration will dissapear.

please forgive the inevitability of the disorganization of this post. it's stream of conciousness in action.

I do have to say that there are a few great things about seattle in winter:
It's really cloudy pretty much six straight months which means you love the sun when it comes back,
Due to the clouds, it's quite possible to read way too many books which means that...
When the summer comes you have more ideas than any other group in the country to discuss with anyone else out there.
Gotta love Seattle!

William Faulkner's Nobel Acceptance Speech

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.