sooo...yeah.

Nice to see UFC 71 last night. Rampage was on his game, and that hook he countered with was so clean, right on the button. It's good to see that the myth of Chuck Lidell is broken, because so many people hadn't realized how sloppy his striking really was. In most of his fights, he took a lot of punishment then whipped his arm and dropped a bomb. It's nice to see this renaissance of sorts in MMA, where people are starting to get GOOD at everything. I hope other fighters start taking note, because they won't be able to get away with having a strong chin or being able to cut weight anymore. I really hope Rampage beats Dan Henderson in the next match, he's just so damn charismatic.

Not much else is new right now. I'm tired of living in Houston, tired of my useless roommate who can't do any actual work for himself and calls everything "bullshit man", most of all I am sick and tired of fucking powerpoint. Fat people, I'm sick of those too.

Speaking of fat people, we were at a restaurant before the UFC and I overheard a bit of a conversation at the table next to me. It was 4 big fat geeky guys talking about how they could "take those 2 guys in a fight" and about how many bullets it takes to "take somebody down". Man, playing on Xbox is not real life, repeat after me.

I'll update with an interesting post soon enough

A rather interesting little story by Isaac Asimov:

The Last Question

It made me smile.

Read, laugh, realize it's true.

Click!

Yo dawgs, sup y'all? hahahaha.

I went to San Antonio this weekend. And I must admit that it was a very cool city, I can see why people like it. I'd call it the Vancouver of Texas, it has more culture than anywhere else I've seen down here. The river walkways reminded me of being...*not* in the US, especially Texas. Going to a French Bistro (well, ok, a Texas Bistro) next to the river was more than decent. I dig.

What else? We saw the Alamo! Woo...not really. After hearing a big speech on the "legendary defense of the Alamo" and how they "gave their lives for something bigger, freedom." Shit man, I'm so sick of that. I actually saw several children wearing shirts with "God's Army" written on it. Yeah, this exists people.


I also conned the girls (the only people who wanted to go to San Antonio) to join me at Ripley's Believe it or Not! museum. That was so cool. Guess who I saw(or likeness thereof)? Tycho Brahe. You know it, everyone's favourite 16th century alcoholic astronomer...with a golden nose. All You Can Smoke tour anyone? Yeah, yeah! And seeing a big wooden sculpture of the devil was also pretty cool, he looked so damn suave, how could you not like him? haha.

Also checked out an interesting series of caves. Since they put in humidity doors, everything was dripping wet and looked like it was out of a creepy sci fi movie. When we finally reached the stone we could touch, it was quite slimy. Interesting. Lots of bat guano as well. huh.





To top it all off? We did a Simpson's style drive thru wildlife preserve. Haha, I know, I know, so Texas. But we got to see some cool animals. And we got some food bags and handed out pellets. But it mostly involved throwing the pellets at the animals to try to wake them, that being said I never hit them. Though, this Zebra ate out of my hand. Cool, they have rough lips.



Ok, well now time for the meat of my post. As I look around the US, I feel like I am in the last days of Rome. While in San Antonio, I went to a club and rather than drink, I simply observed. If this is what the culture is going towards, I'm scared. Surely, the club isn't the best place for an overall description of culture, it's an extreme, but it's an accurate example. I see this young generation unconcerned with their future, making themselves happy with their purchases. While this materialism is apparent to everyone, I just am noticing how it is being forced on everyone, but EVERYONE JUST SWALLOWS IT UP. It is expected that you wear bling (gold chains, diamond earrings, oversize Rolex watches, etc...), have new expensive clothes you wear but a few times, and order the most expensive drinks at the bar. I talked with one military fellow, and he said he was going back to Iraq so he could buy another motorcycle. Risking your life for a machine? All the most popular songs (Fergie, Akon, Black Eyed Peas, Pussy Cat Dolls, etc...) just talk about how you should just display your wealth. Spend it all, girls are expected to have jewellry bought for them, ride on 24" chrome rims (everyone has them), and that will make you happy.

Maybe it's not spending money that gets me so worked up, but they just fuck it all up. I mean, going to the bar and buying the most expensive scotch just because it's the most expensive? C'mon guys, that's not classy, that's just sad. The new popular Akon song (don't ask, I have to hear it everywhere) fucks up the name of the Lamborghini...jesus. I guess people need to realize, the objects don't make the person, the person makes the objects. This will sound like me bragging (and maybe it is a little, just a little...), but I will look better in my mere 30 dollar shirt than most Americans will in their 150 dollar one? Why, because I clean myself up, have some respect for myself, don't have a huge gut hanging over my waistband, walk upright with shoulders back, and smile. Even GQ, my favourite magazine, was talking about how often rich people wear suits that look worn. One CEO goes as far as letting his chauffeur wear his suits for the 1st 2 years, then he'll wear them after that. Is this just me? I mean, what you wear, and "own" should not define you, it should compliment you for who you already are. This means that you don't but excess either, but exactly what you need to get the job done.

Whatever. It don't matter I suppose. Everything is going to shit. Our oceans are turning into plastic, click. Ethanol is a joke. Coal still accounts for most of the world's emissions, and it's not going to stop. Nobody here seems to care. I dunno, it's hard to fight. I guess it's easier to ignore than to deal with it.

Wow, and I thought I was the only one.

Click!

I know, I know, bullshit entries. But, I'll do a real one at some point.

Cure for cancer? Hmm.... Click(?)

I don't know how true it is, but something you should look into if it interests you.

Aloha all, it's me again. Big suprise.

I've been really addicted to Bullet the Blue Sky by U2 today, that and Buck 65. I dunno what that says, but the musical extension of my mood.

I cooked a dinner today for all my classmates, and I don't think it went that well. Everybody was really awkward and really silent during dinner, and all the compliments felt really forced. Well, I tried, and I enjoyed it. As well it gave me something to do all afternoon, albeit a fairly expensive endeavor. Gotta try everything once I suppose. I also managed to slice the hell out of my index finger, man, that sucks.

Saw 28 Weeks Later today as well. Good zombie movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Zombies are definately the scariest of the classic horror movie villians in my book. I mean, having your loved ones and people you know turning on you and attacking is a pretty scary thought. Without giving too much either, it demonstrated some interesting parts of human nature, you ultimately have to look out for yourself. When the characters did that, I didn't blame them at all, but I could see the struggle.

Processing is getting pretty interesting, they are finally letting me get my hands into the software so to speak. Just give me the code dammit, I'll figure it out! All the factors you have to weigh and work are interesting. Seeing something you don't want in the data, then you have to think about mathematically and geophysically what it means, then you have to think of which program you want to use to get rid of it. Then you have to think of the algorithm in the program in how it runs and what parameters the program uses, not to mention all the technical syntax details, it gets pretty complex. That's good though, I need something stimulating.

DJ Food is in Calgary on June 18th (or 19th, one of the two). So I'm going, whom else will join me? Nicko, B?

Looking for wiskey today to make a marinade for all the salmon I got, I ran into issues. Apparently you can buy beer and wine on sundays, just no liquor. *sigh*, Americans are so fuckin weird sometimes. I'm sick of Texas, I can't wait to get back to Canada.

I dunno what else to say. I bought a bunch of shit this weekend, and it temporarily made me feel good. Luckily I had actually needed new clothes. Now, new laptop!

Peace y'all

Starbucks...it rocks. Click!

I wonder why Christians get so offended by the fact that other people don't believe in God. They don't even want to engage in discussion about it, they just get upset. Is it because they no they have no rational arguments to include in the discussion? Hmm...

I went to the Houston Space Centre this weekend. It sucked. Basically for little kids, but even they would get bored with it I think. The tour of the facility involved just looking at the big brown buildings, seeing the training centre with replicas of the compartments of the space station (basically white cylinders), and the coolest part was the Saturn V rocket. But everything felt like it was straight from the 60's, I mean c'mon NASA, you're supposed to be the most technologically advanced agency in the world!

Saw Spiderman 3, and that was a big letdown as well. I mean, it started off very cheesy, which is to be expected, but it should get more serious throughout. And it didn't! I mean, if you want to showoff an asshole Peter Parker, don't make him a goof fer chrissakes. Make him a real dick, and not just dancing down the streets pumping his hips at girls. And what the hell? Venom was in the movie for all of 20 minutes, and then they killed him off. Good job Sam Raimi, you ruined what was potentially the best setup for a villian in the Spiderman series. He's supposed to be Spidey's ultimate foe, but he decided to focus the movie on Peter Parker being a jerk to his girlfriend. Hell I don't need to go to a movie to see that, go to the bar on the weekend.

This brings me to my next point, Americans are dumb. Really dumb. During the previews to the movie, all the absolute worst films I could think of were getting racous laughs and applause from the crowd. Jesus. During the film it was worse, people clapping and laughing at the obvious joke setups, hollering out "Don't do it Spiderman", and getting teary eyed at the supposed sad scenes. These were middle aged people too! Yann and I spent the movie laughing at the atrocious acting, and groaning at the supposed funny scenes. It was funny to see the French stereotype being played on screen next to actual Frenchmen. They were all frustrated, "That's not even how a Frenchman would say it!"

Oh yeah, I love Club Monaco. It's awesome, being stylish is a lifestyle baby. There's a big difference between fashion and style. Style is innate, fashion is for people who don't know any better.

So uh...party on, I'll be back in cowtown as of June 8th (or 9th, something like that), for 2 whole weeks.


EDIT: Ahhh Dilbert: Click.

Oh crap, I thought I did a complete backup of my harddrive and I hope I didn't. Because I'm missing all of my papers I wrote in school...crap.

The reason for this is that I saw a couple of my friends arguing about the philosophy of science on Facebook and they were getting it all wrong dammit. Science is wonderful, the method is damn near flawless because it doesn't give favouritism to any idea, only the one that is most right. People get so caught up in the word and feelings they have towards that big bad science without realizing what it truly is. It's just a method for understanding the world, based on observation of what's going on, making logical/causal conclusions from that, and taking baby steps. Those are some of the hallmarks of science, others are that a theory should only be considered if it has a counter-thesis, that being it is possible for an event to occur that would prove the theory wrong. Accuracy is important, it has to actually do something for you for you to start using a new theory over the one you are currently using. As we are getting down the chain of importance, aesthetics starts coming into play. I'd rather have a neat, pretty little theory than a big ugly mess, all things being equal.

The next problems is that people treat science like it is something ontological, i.e. out there independant of people. Well if you look at the formulation that I just proposed, science is intrinsicly linked to people. It is a result of how we are viewing the world, and trying to making a systematic way of understanding it. All you post-modernists, Nietchieans (however you spell it), and existentialists will cry, "But system is bad, Freddy claims that any system is flawed, I'm a big follower." Yeah bite me, read this: Click!

So what was Asimov getting at? Ok, a system may have a flaw in it, hell I'll buy that Godel showed that every system that could be modelled by first order logic (WITH IDENTITY!!!!) is incomplete. But that doesn't mean it's always the same fucking flaw now does it? If a system has a flaw that is unrelated to the problem at hand, who the hell cares it has this problem? In mathematics we deal with this all the time, unless you are dealing with foundational mathematics problems or specific Godel statements, you use Zermelo-Franco axioms because they WORK PRETTY DAMN GOOD.

That's what pisses me most off about post-modernists. They claim that they don't need perfection, that it's a fallacy, but they posit that everything else must have it or it's useless when they try to argue their position. Sure science may not be perfect, but it's a helluva lot better than anything else we have going for us. So think of that when you load up your iPod on the car ride or train ride to work, wearing clothes made half way accross the world, to work on a computer system that is umimaginably complex. Has anything else in the course of history given us such tangible results when it comes to understanding reality? I don't think so.

\rant.