I find myself thinking about the finite nature of life. I eventually came across a “realization”, per se.
I noticed that everything that can be measured in the universe is finite. Nothing is infinite. The universe is always sure to use entropy to ensure that everything comes in nice packets. Nice finite packets. We play around with infinity all the time, but such a thing doesn’t exist, it’s an abstract extrapolation of our currently valid number theory. I humbly believe that the finite nature of the universe will eventually lead to two things:
A loss of a belief in a God: God and everything you can associate Him to is primarily infinite. Mainly as a way of avoiding real-universe finite constrains such as velocity, time, or entropy, the infinite has been used in (as far as I’m aware) all main world religions.
A change in the definition of the universe, in terms of boundaries: The only real-universe idea of infinity that’s widely believed today is the idea that the universe is infinite in space. As far as scientific progress has gone, we have ample logical evidence to infer into theories in which the universe is finite. These ideas have been proposed for some time now, but no experimental or theoretical evidence has shown this to be true.
This car is beautiful. It just is. It’s a shame its an obscure manufacturer that has few chances of survival, and that it’s an electric car, not a hydrogen fuel cell one, but nonetheless…
You’ve all probably heard about the issue regarding some Spanish Olympic teams and the “asianized” photos that raised up such a storm on the web. At first I was 100% confident that all this hype was just overreaction, because within Spain, nobody really cared. It’s not the not caring as if you don’t give a shit, it’s the not caring as in: “What? This is racist? You’ve got to be kidding me.” So that’s how it all went down, the international press gave Spain a lot of heat because of several racist issues in sport, and Spain, as a whole, pretty much ignored all of it. Which was fine, until Spain began to gain a reputation of being a racist country. I won’t argue that a large portion of Spanish society is racist, but you begin to see that most of it is rural and aged >40. But that wasn’t being criticized. What was being criticized was the idea of talking about race and using it in conversations as normal things, not being scared of them because of political correctness. That’s the issue. Nobody makes a big deal about it in Spain, is that good? Bad?
Most of the world seems to think it’s bad, which lead me to begin to think, “hey, maybe I was wrong about this, maybe we really are stepping over the line.”
Here’s what I eventually came to as a conclusion:
I’ve lived in the US, I’ve lived in Spain. And as much as I try to see how offensive the photos were, I can’t find a reasonable argument for why they were. If there’s one thing I have to criticize about the US in the racism issue, its that being overly PC sometimes hurts your case. The photos were seen by Li Ning (Spanish basketball sponsor) which made no comments on the issue. The Spanish Asian communities made no comments on the issue. As far as those concrete photos go, I can’t but say that for me, they can be considered as distasteful, but not racist, and in no way were they meant to be offensive.
There’s an issue that I did see troubling. And that’s the Spanish society’s contempt with racial divisions. In the US you have your Asian American groups and your Latino groups… etc. But nonetheless there’s still a cohesiveness between the society, and even though stereotypes exist they don’t determine who is first and who is a second class citizen. In Spain, however, immigration is still a relatively new idea, and even though cities like Madrid are filled with immigrants, they don’t assimilate into our society. I see that as a problem. What’s worse, normal society won’t feel good letting them in, and that’s bound to create tension and problems. The US is a country of immigrants, and Spain is not, there’s no way of changing that other than accepting immigrants and allowing them to build up a niche which is absorbed into Spanish society.
It’s pretty, but not nearly as much as 90% of most >100,000 € cars.
It’s hideously fast but lacks the passion of a Lamborghini.
The interior is very very nicely made but not superior to any > 100,000 € car.
Now, the Veyron does a magnificent job at topping almost all of the lists, so why shouldn’t you like it? You see, the Veyron is designed for its utmost goal, speed. Sure, it reaches 400 km./h. in a straight line, but who drives at anywhere near that speed anyways. Most you can legally put a car up to in Spain is 120, and at about 200 things begin to get very risky. The car is an engineering masterpiece, but I can’t think of any coherent reason of buying this 1,000,000 € car if you can get something that gives you the same power and interior, and on top looks much better for about 200,000 €. You could say that the 1001 HP would be significant in terms of acceleration, something you could legally experience, but the Veyron isn’t even the fastest around the Top Gear track!
Bottom line, if you have the money to buy the Veyron, buy a Zonda instead. It won’t get you to 400 km./h., but that’s OK, because even if it could you would probably be dead before you got there.
We have no seasons in Madrid. It’s not like i’m expecting the trees to change color in autumn, the flowers to bloom in spring.
In Madrid, we don’t have seasons, we have temperature variations.
It’s true, look at a picture of several people in Madrid. Guess what season it is. Only way is by looking at the clothes. It gets old, and much more quickly when you’re annoyed.
Some stuff happening lately: Classes are getting harder, especially Physics, which is why I’ve decided to go to an Academia! (Won’t explain what that is, lets call it “backup classes”.) It’s the easy way out, sure, but then again I’ve had enough cowboy fun for this year, it’s time to get practical.
Adding to my dispair, apparently I have a blocked salivary gland, which is making eating miserable and may need surgery soon (hopefully not, seeing as it’s hopefully an infection.)
I’d like to say that I’m optimistic as to this year, but my original plan of transferring relies on 2 things:
Not fucking up too much.
Having the admissions comittees understand that in my university we follow the following approximate USA -> SPAIN grading method.
I started Mandarin classes on Saturday. It’s something I’ve wanted to do, and since I’m heading head-first into the abyss that it the Spanish public university, might as well make that a double and add some spice to the equation.
I’m thinking of taking up rugby too, but this is something that I have to think about a little more before I decide.
My goal is to learn 300 characters by the end of a year, more if I decide to go to China or Taiwan during the summer.
It has to do with university professors taking their job with a different attitude. We all know you’ve been here for more years than anyone else in your department, but please refrain from insulting the students’ capacity to do math. And please write legibly. Oh, please keep yourself focused on what we’re doing. Listening when asked questions might be a good start too. Overall, please take it a bit more seriously, and overall in a more humble way.
That would be cool.
P.S. Very few of my professors are like this, but it takes just one to fuck up an important class, and that’s enough to fuck up your year.
First of all, I start university on Monday. I will be attending the Escuela Superior de Ingenieria Industrial, which is the equivalent of the Industrial Engineering major within the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (in Spain, each major has their own building.) I had initially thought I would start sometime in October, as public universities in Spain do, but this was cut short by my decision to take a common pre-university course at the university in order to evaluate how fucked you might be. This course covers Physics, Math, Chemistry and something we have in Spain called “dibujo tecnico,” translated roughly to Technical Design, it is what I like to call “an art class for nerds.”
And since I come from an American School, I’ve never taken it.
The other three are pretty straightforward, I might have some problems with Chemistry but nothing too harsh, and I’m pretty sure Math and Physics will simply help me get back to speed (I’ve noticed I can’t do math nearly as fast as I could, kind of like an athlete that hasn’t trained for a few months.)
Which brings me to my main statement. Why can’t we do design with computers? In 3d even, it would make everything much more manageable and interesting (not to mention easy, at least for me.) The private university to which some of my friends are going (the private equivalent of the Politecnica) has much less old fashioned drawing and much more new computerized design. Just because we’re public doesn’t mean we can’t be modern!
But alas, since at the public university here your opinion does not matter, I must continue on and get ready to draw like I’ve never drawn before.
But then again, quoting the great Jeremy Clarkson, “how hard can it be?”.
I quote a recent article from IEEE Spectrum on surprise, Continental’s lack of intelligence in, surprise, fuel management, specifically in Newark airport, something which may be familiar from my older post.
And then, just a few minutes later, the pilot came on the public-address system again: “Uh, folks, we’re going to make a quick stop for refueling.” Huh? Passengers looked at each other in surprise. Flight attendants passed rapidly through the cabin checking seat backs and tray tables and strapped themselves in. Minutes later, we landed at Stewart Air National Guard Base, in Newburgh, N.Y., less than 100 kilometers from our destination. After a long ride on the ground past National Guard cargo planes, we parked and waited for the fuel trucks.
Are you serious?!?! I have never even heard about an unplanned refuelling stop on a regular airliner. And more to the point, its not like they were flying a new route for which the fuel requirements were only mere estimates, they were flying a regular route! This is the third time I see articles bashing Continental for its stingy attitude with the gas. They better adjust before they gain the reputation of filling their tanks only half full. If you thought high fuel prices were bad for a company, low passenger rates will finish it up.
My new machine since yesterday is the HP Pavilion 6880. After a day’s use and almost completely customized to my likings, I have two main thoughts on this computer.
Im like a kid at a candy store with the new capabilities of this computer, the last computer I had was a desktop that was supposed to run at 1.7 GHz and 512 MB RAM with an OK graphics card, but after 7 years of use it had deteriorated into a lagging, feeble computer that could barely run two applications at once.
Vista is not the devil, Hitler, rattlesnakes and death put together as it was painted to me by many people and online articles. Coming directly from an XP, it took me little to no time to get adapted to Vista, and many of the new features seem truly well thought out.
As I encounter problems (I know they’re there… somewhere…) and use it more often, I’ll post on how the computer fares. Hopefully well.
Oh, and I strongly recommend viewing CBS’s new TV show, “The Big Bang Theory.” They only have one season out so far but by what I’m hearing season 2 is on the way. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen.
Oh, and apparently the rest of the press is caching up on the “Southwest method of doing business” in the airline industry. The Condé Nast Portfolio has an interview with it’s ex CEO. Enjoy.
