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It's as though the progression of "high" art today is happening too fast. Discord in visual and audio media seems to be increasing at a pace that the tradional ear tuned to tonality and clear expression cannot keep up with. I really do try; I listen to and watch the art that grows out of the academic world, but I just don't find myself understanding it, let alone enjoying it. Meanwhile the television is inundated with music that is manufactured very much the same way any other product is. Marketing analysts teamed up with psychologists figure out what harmonies and musical ideas and emotional themes are particularly desirable, and then design their media fr success; it is beautiful in a way more scientific than anything else. If art is to be a reflection of life, it must hook up with experience in some way however abstract. If I see a painting and I cannot bring it into my world of experience (or vice versa) in any meaningful or revealing way, I question its vaue ...

A footnote to day 177's entry: I think I may have accidentally given the impression that the 'analytic' moral theories prescribe selfish acts to people, which most of the time they do not. In fact, it is widely accepted that, for example, Utilitarian and Kantian moral systems demand a tremendous amount more than you probably do in terms of helping others and generally being a charitable and altruistic person. They look down on ethical egoism with contempt. The original criticism still applies, but that should be noted anyway. ----------------- People have images that they carve out for the world to see. In some sense we're all show-offs, because whenever we're in public we make a deliberate series of choices about the visual, audio, and semantic content people receive from us. Of all the people who allegedly "don't care what other people think" (i.e. almost everyone) I'd guess maybe 1 or 2 percent of them are telling something remotely close to the...

Every rejection from a girl, notice of termination, and otherwise similar gesture of "I don't want you around anymore" has begun with a series of compliments, and usually ends with more compliments. We're taught this as debate tournament judges, always to sandwich every criticism between compliments. But that's for high schoolers. Now that we're adults, the whole exercise just seems facetious to me, and thorougly useless when it comes to mitigating the disappointment. And what's more, I find it downright confusing. Sometimes I just want to write the girl who said no (via email)back and say "well if you have all these nice things to say about how great I am then why are you saying no??" Because, either they're just being polite (aka dishonest), or they're pretty much contradicting themselves. Same thing with my old employer Denny's, who fired me for, no kidding, stealing a bowl of cold cereal. "Jared I hate to do this, you...

Sometimes I try to think of how much of our lives are spend doing "worthwhile things" Subtract a full third for sleeping, and countless more hours altogether doing little activities of'preparation' for the real living: working (making money to buy things), getting dressed, doing laundry, cleaning, shopping, other chores, shaving, showering, clipping nails, checking email, organizing, planning, balancing cheques, paying bills, making obligatory phone calls, cooking... The list goes on. Where does the living happen? For some people that is all of life. People call me lazy, or unkept, or slobby (though I do shower every day!) because I avoid these prepatory activities, but I really do not think that's the reason.

As though to offer a sense of balance from my dream two nights ago, last night was all about myself having to take care of my baby sister all on my own. It was strange in the dream, she was a baby even more fragile than real-world babies; the slightest breeze could be dangerous, so I had to do all these overly protective things just to keep her alive and well. In a sense, it was like a confrontation with death in a totally different way. Unlike the previous dream, my own demise was nothing short of fully irrelevent. I had no concern whatsoever for it. It is what I believe to be one of the biggest flaws in much of modern moral theory; a lack of selflessness. For the sake of logical consistency, a moral theory cannot prescribe selflessness to anybody, for that would either set people into diffrent categories of responsibility than others, or it would render everyone selfless (note multiple definitions here in usage), and defeat the point of valuing others altogether. So morality is inst...

I hear ghost stories all the time; anecdotes from people who insist, or who know people who insist to have seen inexplicably strange happenings in so-called haunted houses, or wherever. People claim to see paintings moved, lights turned off and on, drawers opened and closed, sounds of footsteps, even furniture re-arranged, all without any living humans involved. Allegedly. And when I say I don't believe in ghosts, I get these "well how do you explain this..." stories. And I can't: I can't individually explain how furniture moves itself, or how footprints get made without people involved. What I can do, however, is note that it is a much smaller stretch of the imagination to use human dishonesty as an explanation rather than the existence of re-animated dead people with no discernable physical composition and (somehow) with causal powers over the world. In short, my answer is always that people lie. They lie to others, and they lie to themselves. I don't have a...

Played a fun game of poker last night. 10 dollars was the buy in, 11pm was the start time, and a 40 of vodka was the drink of choice for Colin, Jordan and I. The first act of the game ended with myself up significantly, Colin down significantly, and Jordan breaking roughly even. Conversation was good, spirits were high, and times were fun. The second act changed things. My luck turned, and a string of bad hands and decisions put me back to even, then down. Colin made a slight comeback, and Jordan pulled into the lead. The agreed-upon end time of 1am flew by, ignored by all. The conversation, as per usual, turned to philosophy: this time we ended up on faith, debating with an increasingly adversarial tone as to how much of our belief systems fall into such a category, and whether the distinction between faith and reason is absolute, or a simple matter of probabilistic degree. Jordan wanted to push the position that faith is always to a certain degree a part of our belief systems, regard...

Very rarely do I take time here to mourn a death. Honestly, I'm terribly scared of dying, and the more I really think about it the more things in the world seem to fall away before my eyes. I do believe that death is the end, that - the conscious being - the thing that thinks - the point of view - is simply and utterly extinguished along with its decaying vessel; while by very definition I cannot understand or conceptualize such a notion, every so often in moments of silence and focused contemplation I get what one might call a very small and sudden sense of it. There are exceptions: A shoutout to the late George Carlin, who passed away today (rather, yesterday, as it is just past midnight). He was one of my favorite comedians and critics, and one of the very, very few honest people to find such a famous voice. To get up on that grand stage and speak of the human condition in its matter-of-fact, biological and moral truth, is a feat of confidence that few have ever acheived. There ...

Though I do not believe it is alright to download media illegally, I do have a certain sense of understanding about TV shows, because television can be so infuriating to watch because of commercals, and nobody wants to wait a whole year and pay 75 bucks for the DVD sets. American Idol is probably the archetypal example of commercials being intentionally placed right at the precise moment where you don't want to see a commercial. The most tense, tingly, powerful moment of anticipation, moments from resolution, cuts away to obnoxious commercials. I think there is a phenomenon in television now, where the shows, knowing this is how they'll be functioning, in fact build their progressions around the commercial breaks. Watch a show on DVD, and you'll notice quickly that it has several points of semi-anticipation that cut out and back in - ie. where the commercials would have been. This may seem insignificant, but it speaks to the fact advertizing is the single and sole reason wh...

Let's not go too hard on the airline companies for charging extra on fuel, and having terrible customer service. Truth is, they're trying to run their business models on jets built over ten years ago when fuel was much less than half of what it is now. It is no wonder they're charging extra, and slashing staff costs. And keep in mind, it's not like flying should be cheap. You're jetting at 30,000 feet with a hundred other people (or many more) in a thousand-ton steel/aluminum can at 600 miles per hour, for hours on end. That kind of thing sounds like it should be damned expensive! I just wish, so dearly, that the airline companies would give you the real price off the bat. This must be the number one reason people hate them so much, they advertize flights for literally hundreds of dollars less than true price, neglecting to mention the plethora of surcharges, fees, and taxes. I still think there are people out there who appreciate a bit of corporate honesty. Just te...

...To continue from yesterday: Speaking of oil companies, I've notived in the media there's a pretty loud call on the part of the government and the public for OPEC to increase its output, in order that prices will fall back down. It only seems fair, since they have the capacity to do so, and the reserves to supply the demand. Meanwhile, oil execs are getting dragged in front of congress to testify, responding to demands that they justify their companies' obscene profits. But wait just one second. Aren't the oil people doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing? This is CAPITALISM! The whole point of having a company is to maximize profit. Why on God's green earth would any sane oil company intentionally sell more of its non-renewable product for less money? That's the complete opposite of running a business properly. So when Saudi Arabia "...sees no reason to increase production," (quoting from CNN) be not surprized. Why would they? They'...

A lady pushing credit cards at a booth in the Calgery airport stopped me and offered me a credit card deal that sounded pretty good. I kindly declined and started walking away when she interrupted my walk with more of the sales pitch about travel rewards, perks, air miles, introductory interest rates, and so forth. She simply did not stop talking, so I felt obliged to turn back and listen out of politeness. She asked for my name to begin an application, and I again kindly declined. "Why not? It's the best credit card." She replied. And honestly I could think of a reason. Maybe it was the best card, maybe it would be a great decision to apply. It was a weird point of consciousness wherein I felt irrational for turning down the offer! "I don't know why not, but I then don't really need a reason. Thank you anyway." "If you don't know why not, then you should sign up, you have nothing to lose!" And now I was just annoyed. I turned to her and ex...

I am convinced that people look for ways to be offended when they really aren't, because that scares other people into not saying certain things. Have you ever noticed that the people who complain that racial profiling for crime is racist never complain that gender profiling is sexist? How DARE we look at the muslim with a little more suspicion at the airport (which I can't help but do; this suspicion is immediately followed by guilt), but nobody cries foul to the fact that we'd only ever have said suspicion toward a man, and never a woman... ---- On a side note: And has anybody ever read the Qur'an? I've read small bits, and the muslim God really has no qualm with people spreading His word violently. In fact He encourages it readily. The whole "72 virgins" thing isn't a joke; suicide bombers are doing precisely what their holy book tells them to do. Allah is not kind to the infidel. Mind you, neither is the God of the Old Testament. I really do feel ...

You hear non-religious people say it all the time: "If only there was a God! That would honestly be great, if there was a supreme moral arbier in the universe looking out for my every action and running the universe with me in mind. It's really too bad there isn't." I used to say that, until I came across a few authors who vehemently claim that such a wish is, in reality, a wish for slavery. When we ask for the comfort of a god (or fantasize for it anyway) were asking for a kind of absolution that only the slave can have. And the price for that is extremely high. And still, there times when I do wish I were this sort of slave, though I no longer say so with a smile.

I write from Calgary today, home of a bustling population, beautiful warm weather and endless skies, and what until this afternoon I thought was my LSAT test location. Unfortunately the gods handed down a little bit of bad luck when the LSAT people changed the test location 10 days ago to Edmonton, and failed to notify me. So there I stood, outside the only empty room in a busy university 200 miles from where I was supposed to be. Why did they fail to notify me of this change, I do not know. I do know I was the only person who was not notified, because I was the only one there. And in what you may call an act of rebellion, I decided it was a good idea to spend the remainder of the daylight up at Lake Louise experiencing everything that is the opposite of bureaucracy, of logic and analysis, of fluorescent lit classrooms and steel chairs and no. 2 pencils. To experience some of the natural world in a state relatively unchanged from its state thousands, even millions of years ago...

I feel motivated to write one last blip about drugs, before I (hopefully) abandon the topic on this site altogether. I've gotten the ranting mostly out of my system now. Don't waste life on cheap things. Don't seek to impress shallow people and indulge shallow intentions. Don't seek spirit in the dregs, or alleyways, or stale apartments. Do not seek to purchase it or put it into your body. I contend with the utmost sincerity that the so-called "recreational" drugs are at worst destructive, and at best utterly useless. If you want to get high, get high on life. Climb a mountain, put yourself into some real pain, and feel the triumph as you look out over the landscape from the peak. Read a great novel. Solve a challenging puzzle. Hear and feel human-powered musical vibration. Learn something new. Catch a breeze and watch two butterflies dance around each other in courtship. Stare into a crackling fire with the stars as its stage. Listen to the methodical ocean w...

I enjoy a lot of the shows on the Food network, particularly Kitchen Nightmares, Iron Chef (original), and Rachel Ray's Tasty Travels. But, one of the things I can't stand about the whole network (and arguably the biggest problem with having shows about food) is watching as people try to emote the taste of things for the viewing audience. It's just so awkward to watch someone put food in their mouth, go "mmmm" and try to express the gastronomic satisfaction of it all. The only thing more annoying (in this ball park) is when someone takes a sip of wine and pretends to know how good it is. I saw this hundreds of times yesterday working the oyster/wine fest at my hotel job. The wine rep would describe six or seven different flavours and hints in his bottle "oak, cherry, apple, honey etc etc" and the people would sip and kind of make this nodding "mhm" gesture, as if to express experience of these tastes. My BS meter was off the charts. There were ...

Being labelled a "hero" by news organizations isn't so hard as it used to be. Just this week a few boy scout kids got killed in a tornato and CNN posted photos up on their front page calling them "heroes in death." Is that all it takes now? All one has to do to become a hero is die tragically in a freak accident? How is that heroic? There's this fear in America of being labelled unpatriotic. Politicians and newspeople, especially, are constantly had to this rigorous standard where everytime they respond to something about a tragedy, or the war, or the troops, or homeland security, they have to make sure be extra patriotic hero-worshippers every time. Now even a few boy scouts, who died (tragically) in a simple unfortunate weather event, are heroic for some reason. Watch one of Obama's speeches. He is unable, ever, to criticize John McCain's war policies without starting with a paragraph of compliments and praises to McCain for his "years...

Humans are disgusting creatures if you think about it. We're literally covered in millions of microscopic bacteria; veritable ecosystems live within our mouths alone. We deliberately eat mold and living bacteria (cheese, yogurt), we and eat the muscle and organ flesh of other creatures whose DNA patterns are vey nearly identical to our own. We consider mopping our tongues around in each other's mouths to be a romantic and fun pastime, not to mention the even more horrifying pastime of licking and sucking on each others organs responsible for reproduction and waste excretion. We pick our noses, pick our assholes, pick wax from our ears and crusties from our eyes, belch, fart, shed skin and hair constantly, and we even spread viruses by merely breathing the air. Magnificent creatures, we are.

One of the perks of working in the restaurant industy (or hotel catering in my instance) is that there's always food around. The nicer the place, the nicer the food. The place I'm at now has amazing food: the Blue Crab restaurant. Everything is fresh, made from scratch, and incredibly expensive for customers. Yesterday I showed up for work and there was a wrap sitting there with my name on it, literally (a note pinned to it saying it was for me). I'd be a blimp if the job didn't involve walking around all day. Many of the events we cater (in the various halls and booked rooms the hotel has) are corporate functions of one sort or another, and a shocking number have oddly vague titles, itineraries, and descriptions. There's a lot of self help, self-actualization, self-management, profit potential, power this and dynamic that. And they love lists, all of them. It's always the top however many ways to increase productivity or maximize whatever else. And I can say wi...

For your pleasure, here are the top ten women on TV I'd like to date, and why. And this is not just based on hotness, but also personality. 10. Anne Dudek (Amber; House). Cutthroat Bitch! That "I'm a sweet girl but I might just kill you in your sleep if it helps me out" look is enticing. 9. Hayden Pantierre (Malcolm in the Middle, Heroes) I remember some time ago saying to myself "In about 5 years she's going to be smoking hot." And here we are. It's more the babysitter from Malcolm in the Middle I like personality-wise, but the girl in Heroes, hotness-wise. 8. Beverly Mitchell (Lucy; Seventh Heaven). For some reason the really religious girls are attractive. Probably because I'll never get one, ever. 7. Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle; CSI). Looks and booksmarts. What more could a guy want? 6. Jenna Fischer (Pam Beesley; The Office). Witty, sarcastic, always up for a prank, and reasonably good-looking. Jim took way too long to make his move. 5. Jennifer M...

Whenever I see a predator about to kill its prey, I always root for the prey. Just yesterday (true story) a hummingbird flew through the open balcony doors into my house and got stuck at the ceiling trying to fly through the skylight windows. The cat waited patiently for the hummingbird to give up and hover down a little... which it eventually did. And the cat just does it to be nice. It's his way of thanking me for all the cat food. In the two weeks I've lived in this house so far the cat's killed and presented to me three mice, a sparrow, and the hummingbird, as mere trophies. It's hard not to be annoyed at the cat, but the cat is in fact doing something very kind and human-like, just with a different object than a human would normally use. And it should be humbling to point out that it wasn't far back in human history a dead animal was as good a gift to us as it is to a cat today. Do you want to get your neanderthal woman to do 'that thing' tonight?? Noth...

Walks of life are so very divergent. I feel tremendously out of place every so often, when I'm at a night club, or a surf shop, or a mountain bike store, or on the ski hill, or at a bingo hall, or a casino, and at many other places. It is easy to identify a certain mentality in people that one either clicks with or does not. With relationships, this may be why people often end up not getting along in spite of being 'perfect on paper' for each other. I've met women who I thought were just right... we've had so much in common when it comes to opinions and desires and ideas and other inclinations that 've figured it couldn't go wrong. Yet, somehow, it can always go wrong! I'm increasingly of the mind that very basic worldviews underlie many of people's relationship problems. I believe firmly that two people can look at the exact same thing and see entirely different things, even as simple a thing as a tree in the wind. Disconnects that I've had with...

Sometimes we fancy ourselves hipocrites, becase we're willing to act morally in some situations but not others, even when the respectve situations are nearly identical. We're happy to help our friends, or loved ones, or even a stranger if that stranger is right in front of us, but we couldn't care less about the ubiquitous starving Africans. I don't think this makes anybody a moral criminal. It is difficult, if not impossible to muster empathy when knows absolutely nothing about those individuals for whom he empathizes, let alone a group of indviduals characterized as such. Isn't the notion of empathizing with a group of people self-contradictory? It is no wonder we don't care all too much. So let's call people what they really are. I don't hesitate to admire somebody when he or she stands up for a family member or friends over a stranger. It's how we stay cohesive as families, friends, an communities. The "world community," I suspect, will...

Probably the number one reason I'm skeptical of pollsof all sorts is that people often don't have very strong beliefs about things. I remember once, reading a study in moral philosophy about two separate polls given to groups of people regarding a moral situation, except each poll was phrased differently. It was some situation about administering a cure to a group of people, many of whom might die if left untreated. But the cure was also deadly to a small number. Anyway, respondants of the poll that phrased the act of curing as "saving 80%" overwhelmingly reported that the cure was the right thing to do, while respondants of the poll that phrased the act of curing as "killing 20%" reported in larger numbers that curing was the wrong thing to do. Are we this malleable morally? That study speaks strongly to the conclusion that a mere semantic difference can tip our views about a difficult situation. That is disconcerting to say the least. But then I got ...

I'm writing the LSAT this month. It basically is a three hour test using the exact kind of questions that all people hate to deal with. The logical reasoning section consists of logic questions both deductive and inductive... all sorts of A's and B's and if's and then's and not's and therefore's and so forth. The comprehansion section consists of incredibly thick and esoteric chunks of non-fiction, followed by questions about validity, author's intentions, inferencences, implications, and all the rest. And the worst section of all is the analytical reasoning section. It's those questions where some vague situation is set up... "Sherry is taller than terry, and perry is shorter than terry but taller than larry. Harry is shorter than larry but taller than terry... blah blah blah..." And then they give you a bunch of hypothetical additions and ask you to deduce outcomes. Sometimes it's about incomes. B makes more than C, D makes less than ...

Under the wire tonight for the blog! Today was fantastic... a full day with the family: parents, grandparents, aunt and uncles. Convocation was in the morning, followed by lunch, followed by a nice dinner out. Though I finished all the degree requirements over a month ago, receiving the actual degree today brought a great deal of closure and triumph to the process. But, as I sat at dinner with two older generations of family at my sides, I pondered most deeply the notion that in good time I may be the grandfather watching my own grandchildren graduate from university. That time, I suspect, will approach much more quickly than most of us tend to fancy. And over dinner tonight much of my long-held cynicism about marriage and children dissipated into meaninglessness. It occurred to me that all this idealizing a life of independence and freedom from the burdens of union and procreation is just talk from young mouths. My grandparents, and parents, value family above all, infinitely so...

Covocation is tomorrow morning. It's been a long haul, but finally I can frame and hang that 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of quality paper saying that I am, certifiably, at least somewhat smart. The degree, offcially, is in Philosophy (Hon.), with an interdisciplinary minor in Applied Ethics... snazzy stuff! Anyway, it did take four years, and it really wasn't the easiest program to go through, so I think the two sentences of horn tooting were earned. It's hard not to look at great accomplishments, whether they be sport, musical, artistic, academic, architectural, or anything else, and not be terribly intimidated. It's funny sometimes, I see pianists playing difficult music and I'm genuinely intimidated and wowed by watching and listening, in spite of being able to learn and play the same music myself should I so choose. But do not forget, great accomplishments take equally great periods of time. A good pianist becomes that way not by raw talent but by many thous...

I feel for the car companies thee days, I really do. Times have changed so quickly over the last few decades. Gas, crazily enough, is pretty much the same price as bottled water now, and this frightens and confuses me on a number of levels. The car has never been a cheap, or environmentally healthy mode of transport. Car companies have relied for nearly a century on advertizing strategies opposed to such notions. Cars, you are told, define your youth, or your manhood, toughness, sportyness, nostalgia, need-for-speed, wealth, refinement, sex appeal, class status, or one of many other useless classifications. But now, suddenly, car companies are forced into an incredibly difficut bind, because the fact of the matter is that if you're looking for an inexpensive, reliable, environmentally healthy mode of transport, you need look no further than your feet, or your bike, or the bus station (or in my case a scooter). Any transporting device that has the qualities we now look for is almost...

Today is another one of those days where I have a few things on my mind worth (arguably) writing about: Can anybody give me one good reason why coffee couldn't be sold in little bags the same way that tea is? It seems to me, intuitively,that the whole coffee filter system is a roundabout way of doing the exact same thing that a teabag does. Why not coffeebags?? Just imagine them. It's so simple, so obvious, and yet they do not exist. Jordan once told me his idea for a product he thinks would fly off the shelves at the toy/novelty store where he works: the "world's largest tube of toothpaste": it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Well, maybe not the world's largest, but still very large, say holding a full liter. The only problem I can think of is the crusties at the end, they'd build up and that might be gross. Personally I think they should sell a writing tool that's a pen on one end and a pencil on the other. Or, one of those multi-pens ...