Experience is the union of action and consequence, and the flux of consequences reflected back are loaded with significance. The sticking of our finger into a flame, for example, means burn. But it also means regret, it means caution, it means checking curiosity, blame, self-censure, forethought, it means tears (some genuine, some malign), it means reaction to discomfort, dealing with involuntary response, and a whole ensuing causal chain of events, each link branching out in a likewise self-sustaining fashion with truly exponential breadth. Every grace of skin, movement, speech act, etc., is bound up with such an explosion of meaning that we’re only half aware of, and with each new experience the chain multiplies, for all the previous links of meaning are brought to bear on this new meaning. It is not so much the contents, but this activity itself which constitutes the life and fire of consciousness. Bliss peaks when this magnitude reaches such wonderfully unbearable proportions that the dams of the unconscious yield, and the tears flow hot. Language is not a series of connected picture-things appearing before the mind (what a mess the mind would be if it was!), it is precisely this explosion of meaning during experience called forth in the hearer by the speaker; and it rests as concrete yet invisible before the mind in its rejoinder as it did in its original experience. This concrete invisibility is the veil of the understanding. If you want to know how humans process language, look at how they acquire meaning in the first place.

“vertical” palindrome

suns,      mow,      pod

These are some pretty cool words. If you flip them upside down they still spell the same thing. They’re like vertical versions of a palindrome. I wrote a little python script and ran in on the standard linux dictionary file, and, to my knowledge, these are the only words in the English language that have this property. There were other words that spell different things when flipped upside down, like “owns” and “sumo”, but these three were the only ones that were the same. I didn’t count SOS as a word, but that’s pretty cool since it’s both a ‘vertical’ and a standard palindrome.

And now for something completely different

pdf of code. includes indentations

Here’s my python code for the first programming challenge on hackthissite.org. Basically I loaded both the scrambled words and the dictionary words into separate lists, checked for a one to one correspondence between the elements, and returned the corresponding dictionary term. She ain’t pretty, but she works!

Running. I hear my lungs scream from inside my chest, organized thought broke down two miles ago, time itself compresses, and, like Zeno’s paradox, I fall into an infinity of presence within myself. Then I pick my head up to the horizon and see Bliss, as if the very distinction between subjective infinity and objective infinity melted away: no pain, no thought, no self, just freedom!

Ignorant hands are clumsy, and purity is fragile; I see two kinds of people that don’t hide behind an exoskeleton-character for protection: fools and prophets. Often times the fool is the purest soul in the room. Me, I’m just another child playing hide-and-seek. So funny that the person hiding always secretly wants to be found.

It seems relatively easier for the strong to be magnanimous than it is for the weak: on account of their strength, the strong have less to fear from the disadvantageous consequences of selflessness. Yet, experience tells us that the weak are more likely to be selfless than are the strong. Why? Is it their familiarity with suffering that makes the weak unafraid? Does the notion of ‘strength’ extend further than physical, mental, or financial strength, such that the ‘strong’ are really the weak, and the ‘weak’ are really the strong? Or is it that the ‘strong’ ARE (‘)strong(‘) on account of their not being magnanimous (thus making the apparent discrepancy not so surprising)? All three? None of the above?

I wonder why is Nature never portrayed as a suicidal nutcase? Popular sentiment is practically drunk with the same romantic image of Nature qua righteous yet helpless victim, and Man qua rogue scoundrel foaming at the mouth, as if Man were not a part of Nature.

My last night of College

I was walking around State College today thinking about this being my last night of College — that never again will I experience this feeling of being an undergraduate, of having my entire life ahead of me with nothing to do with my time but live, love, and learn. 

As I walked I tried so hard to capture this moment, to solidify this feeling and place it on the mantle with all the other things that are precious in my soul. When I found that I couldn’t do this, I began to ask: why was it that I was ferreting about in my thoughts trying to catch moments of time, like meadows of fireflies, in test-tubes only for the sake of later being able to point at them with oily fingers — as if they wouldn’t die anyway! 

Did I even bother to ask time (the freest of free-spirits!) whether or not he wanted to be caught? How rude of me, I thought (is that why he eludes us at every corner?)! Perhaps instead of filling my mantle with jars of dead insects and rotting beauty, it might be more of a cosmic courtesy to simply APPRECIATE this moment, to value it for it’s freedom to yawn into the past, rather than snare it in selfish coffins — to let the moment not occupy a SPACE withIN me, but rather let it make an IMPRESSION ON me? Perhaps then this moment would become a PART of me, a part of who I am, and therefore be truly MINE – mine, yet without my possessing it? Aren’t these the things that are truly ours – the things we have even when we don’t possess them?

Colored blossoms scatter in the fall – this process is eternal, yet the blossoms themselves wilt and fade away. Everything fleeting is eternal, because everything eternal is eternally fleeting.

Palindromes

It’s 5:30AM and I’m still awake making incoherent palindromes:

I taste you duo; yet sati 

Niger is a sire gin

all images are sega-milla 

Said ‘tug-rim t-hegs’, “es geht mir gut, Dias”

       [–this one was pretty cool since it’s a bi-lingual palindrome. crazinessss]

now for a luger of won

peel sleep!!!!!!!

This is a cool video

Goa Ambient

ambidextro-craziness

Peter Aidu plays Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase” with two hands.

Michael Angelo Batio rips tits with two hands!!

3 Songs I like

Mike Oldfield: incantations part 4

Daemonia Nymphe: muses 

Daemonia Nymphe: daemonos

Thesis: Rang the SHC Gong today!

Thesis is done and accepted! Feel free to check it out. If you do skip over the abstract and the introduction, they’re boring and I only wrote them out of structural obligations. 

FiNaLtHeSiS