Well, as much as I wanted to be able to HTML this thing together on my own, I've decided to fall into the preformatted Blogger set-up, with a couple minor tweaks of my own. It looks like I will have to combine my brain farts into this thread as I don't really feel like paying for a more advanced account. I plan on playing with the code some over the next couple weeks (obviously this will be done when I should be studying for my finals). If you have any previous experience with using these templates and want to help me figure out how to make this work leave a comment for me, or e-mail me. That's all for now.
July 30, 2004
July 20, 2004
35 Years From the Moon
Today marks 35 years since humankind first walked on the moon. It is one of those things that I wish I had been born early enough to witness, not so much for the political triumph and national pride that it likely held for so many Americans, but from a point of scientific discovery. I hope that I live long enough to witness the first human footsteps on Mars, that is in the event we don't find life, intelligent or non-intelligent there, as I think we have enough issues on our own planet that it would be unfair for us to go claim another organism's planet just on the premise that we can, and they are too simple to do anything about it. Think about the similar situation of early simple organisms on Earth, and the possible "butterfly effect" implications it would have on our evolution if some advanced being came and disturbed things. Not only that, but the threat could exist that an organism from Mars inadvertently brought to Earth on a return mission could have adverse effects here. And now of the Trekkie tangent, I will restate that I would love to be alive to witness the first human steps on the moon, to be part of the first generation to have visited another planet, like the people alive in 1969 who came to recognize Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (with unfortunate lack of recognition, myself guilty as well, of the relatively few further astronauts that have been to the moon), who will go down in history with the likes of explorers like Magellan and Christopher Columbus. The accomplishments of Armstrong and Aldrin of course will be more much better documented, and will not be open to the debate that always goes with the name Christopher Columbus. Such is one of the features of a steadily advancing civilization.
Thoughts about something relevant to my lifetime, relevant in the way that the first steps on the moon were anyways, also got me thinking about important inventions through time, and I came to the realization, that while many people agree that the most important inventions to the human race came with the developments of the radio, telephone, automobile, and most importantly flight, and space flight, I also feel that some of the proliferations of my time will have, or already have had a significant impact on the human race. The most obvious, and undeniable of these has to be the personal computer and subsequently the internet. Granted the personal computer existed in some forms before 1983, but certainly was not a household name, let alone a household occurrence as it is today. Early public bulletin boards, to the best of my knowledge first came into existence in the early to mid 80's, and I think the world wide web after that point was an inevitability, and one that today gives everyone, at least in the first world, almost instantaneous access to almost anything. World news, local news, sports news, radio and TV broadcasts digitally sampled for computers, friends, entertainment and so on are just a few of the broad classes of information, communication and entertainment available at a few keystrokes. It really has tied the world, or again, at least the first world, together, and I can only assume that the same will follow for the countries currently struggling right now to achieve the idyllic first world status. I won't use this as a venue for the whole discussion of international relations for now, but nonetheless, I think it is inevitable that the entire population of the world will one day turn to the internet as a major (but necessarily not the only) tool for communication, entertainment, and information, as the first world already has in my lifetime.
Thoughts about something relevant to my lifetime, relevant in the way that the first steps on the moon were anyways, also got me thinking about important inventions through time, and I came to the realization, that while many people agree that the most important inventions to the human race came with the developments of the radio, telephone, automobile, and most importantly flight, and space flight, I also feel that some of the proliferations of my time will have, or already have had a significant impact on the human race. The most obvious, and undeniable of these has to be the personal computer and subsequently the internet. Granted the personal computer existed in some forms before 1983, but certainly was not a household name, let alone a household occurrence as it is today. Early public bulletin boards, to the best of my knowledge first came into existence in the early to mid 80's, and I think the world wide web after that point was an inevitability, and one that today gives everyone, at least in the first world, almost instantaneous access to almost anything. World news, local news, sports news, radio and TV broadcasts digitally sampled for computers, friends, entertainment and so on are just a few of the broad classes of information, communication and entertainment available at a few keystrokes. It really has tied the world, or again, at least the first world, together, and I can only assume that the same will follow for the countries currently struggling right now to achieve the idyllic first world status. I won't use this as a venue for the whole discussion of international relations for now, but nonetheless, I think it is inevitable that the entire population of the world will one day turn to the internet as a major (but necessarily not the only) tool for communication, entertainment, and information, as the first world already has in my lifetime.
July 17, 2004
Noises in the Bush
If a tree falls in the bush, and no-one's around to hear it, it better make a sound or we better watch our backs cause those ingenious little squirrels are going to come hunt us all down, and repay us for generations of abuse to their kind. Just think of that next time you're staring into their beady little eyes...there always seemed to be some devious lofty plans hidden behind those black glassy all-knowing eyes. Of course, there could be no other way for it to fall without making a noise, we all know raccoons, bears, wolves, and runaway garden gnomes (because you know the forest is where they disappear to, and all this time you thought it was those "punk kids" down the street) are too technologically inept to accomplish such a monumental feat.
A Whole Bunch of Nothing, And More!
...So here I sit again, adding to the vast number of dead links, dormant sites like those telling me what to stock up on for the coming of the New Millennium, and the Y2K apocalypse upon us, and otherwise useless crap, collectively known as personal web pages. As always, I have plenty of other stuff I SHOULD be doing, but accomplishing nothing always gives you that warm tingly feeling inside, and so here I sit.
My aim for this site is to provide a kind of working journal of media, links, and my own personal thoughts (hopefully insightful, but more likely nonsensical and irrational). I do not expect that any of what I put on this site will be particularly interesting to anyone, but it will provide me an outlet that I will some point look back at and either shake my head at the irrelevance of, or be envious of times past when I had the time to sit and put together things like this. If any of this does manage to have any entertaining, or stimulating value for you, then go ahead and fill up, hell, even help yourself to seconds if you wish...just don't make a mess, and leave a quarter in the jar at the door on your way out.
My aim for this site is to provide a kind of working journal of media, links, and my own personal thoughts (hopefully insightful, but more likely nonsensical and irrational). I do not expect that any of what I put on this site will be particularly interesting to anyone, but it will provide me an outlet that I will some point look back at and either shake my head at the irrelevance of, or be envious of times past when I had the time to sit and put together things like this. If any of this does manage to have any entertaining, or stimulating value for you, then go ahead and fill up, hell, even help yourself to seconds if you wish...just don't make a mess, and leave a quarter in the jar at the door on your way out.
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