Saturday, November 29, 2003

Unfortunate, yet not
Strange, innit.

Sometimes the most random things happen. You actually get to do something useful, and it makes you very excited. Yet the thing that's really concerning you is still as unaffectable as ever..

Eh.. I've seen so much happen this last week or so. So much random, BRILLIANT stuff. And I can't do the simplest thing right.

The thing is, the more I think about it, the more I have to ask.. was I ever successful in that, even before?.. If not, what can I actually learn from it?

Eh. Too much going on in my head to make sense of everything. On one hand I'm doing brilliant. On another hand I'm actually achieving things for God. But despite God's power working through me... ...!!

Oh my word.. I think I know what I've been doing wrong. Sudden inspiration or what?.. heh

My focus has left the father
I'm still focussed on God, but I've forgotten his father-like-ness
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Man, Toby.. you hit the nail on the head.

Been exhausted the last couple of days- hence not had a lot of willpower to post anything up.

On Thursday out huddle had a "Bible" study. But, God being what he's like, he had other plans.. heh. Instead we just prayed for each other during the time when we would have had Bible study.

It was awesome.. The things that were told to the other guys I don't really remember that well, because it means a lot more to you when it's the word you're recieving.

Toby said "Dan, the word for you is "Wisdom". Then he said a lot of stuff, basically expanding on that, that Wisdom is to be the main thing I long for, and find. It's all been written down, but I don't have a copy yet. This kind of blew me away, because wisdom is exactly the thought that's been on my mind recently. I'm so fed up with intellect- it's a useful tool but it has been elevated to something greater than that. In truth, intellect is nothing without wisdom. And in the same way, wisdom is nothing without some degree of intellect- but there is not as much a shortage of intellect in the world as there is one of wisdom.

The problem as I see it is this: To the majority of people these days, their brain is their God. They fully rely on it, and come to accept every conclusion it makes without a second of doubt. They fail to see that there is something far greater which can be relied on, and that in fact their own brain is but nothing compared to it.

I'd continue on that thought but right now I don't have the wisdom to keep it from being condemning.
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Wednesday, November 26, 2003

   Danny's Wacky Antics
Well, I dunno about "Wacky".. but heh. Crazy methinks.

Lemme give you the rundown..

It's 3:45

in the morning.

Now, if I were to even attempt to go asleep now (like I have for the past while now) and actually succeed, I'd have little or no chance of getting up by the time I need to be up in order to make it to TT on time.

I'm giving the "word" (a short talk) at morning prayers tomorrow though, so I really can't afford to be late by.. well, any amount. AT ALL.

So I'm not going to sleep. Instead I'm going to... well, not. :p

RANDOM FACT

In terms of popularity, I am # 1020 on myotaku.com. That's a good 1,757 further up the ladder than I was this time yesterday. w00t!!! (leeteh boi has been teaching me der l33t. Bwahah :D)

I realise that those first 1,757 didn't really have a lot of activity anyway, but please, don't spoil this moment for me :p
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Little thoughts
Am I the only one who has no idea how to put a background image or something on here?

Maybe so.

Could someone please enlighten me? :p

I am very bad at HMLT









....(yes, the mis-spelling was intentional)
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I'm with Soley

*refers to guestbook*

I wanna join hehalolo--.. hehaloli-.. hehahololicu-.. hehaholics anonymous. Now.
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Reading Old PMs.. aka the search for remarkableness
"You are a very remarkable person."

The very first PM in my box, right at the bottom, simply says this. I recieved PMs before this, but they all needed to be deleted.

When I read this again I felt both encouraged and convicted. Encouraged because of what I know I can be like; convicted because I've lost the very thing that I had in those days.

These days I seem to settle for being a mediocre person. And OK, seeing yourself as remarkable isn't too healthy, but..

meh..

I need to get to work. I'll continue this later
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Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Ecclesiates 1
The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
"Look! This is something new"?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.

I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

What is twisted cannot be straightened;
what is lacking cannot be counted.

I thought to myself, "Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge." Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
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Space
Wisdom is not just knowing when to talk- it's knowing when not to talk. Knowing when to push forward and when to allow things to take due course. When to take action and when to trust that action will be taken.

Sometimes we are the ones called to do things, sometimes someone else is, and sometimes nothing needs to be done. True wisdom comes from knowing what distinguishes each.

(You can't tell this from here, but I posted this on here before my wisdom threa on OB)
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Monday, November 24, 2003

Stuck in my head:
"Sweet child, where has your innocence gone?"

...

Don't ask me. I'm as in the blue on this as the rest of you.

Random Observation:

I just noticed the word "Community" up in the myotaku panel thingy. Wow.

No really, wow..

Because that's kind of what the internet has become for many people- a replacement for community.

What is community?

Community is something like what goes on in the TT households in my street. We live next door to each other, but unlike most neighbours we have a tendency to walk into each other's houses without knocking, borrow stuff from one another's houses (usually ending up with a whole array of stuff in each house from next door), and generally hang around.

This is the sort of thing most of the world misses out on- you just don't get true community any more in most places of the developed world. I feel tempted to say "what is the world coming to".. but meh. I've lived here the last 20 years- I know damn well what it's coming to.
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   Tangents, World Records, Pi and Reality
This is what you get for working somewhere where you don't have to be focussing on the job in order to do it: lots of time to think. Some thoughts are entertaining, some are challenging. Today I had one of each:

Tangents

This is related to a conversation I had with Sara the other day. Eventually we got onto the subject of tangents. Ie. drifintg away from the subject of a conversation. However we also mentioned the mathematical kind.

Well

I was thinking about it today, and decided that the word "tangent" to describe a drift away from conversation is mathematically incorrect. See if you can follow my reasoning:

The fundamental attribute of a circle is that it is in constant acceleration towards it's centre. The easiest way to think of it is a bullet travelling around the earth at speed enough to never lose altitude. It is always accelerating towards the earth's centre, as is the affect of gravity, and thus it travels around in circles.

Now, if the bullet were to go off on a tangent, it would stop accelerating and simply keep going the way it was last going, in a straight line.

I'd like to take a moment to show my carefully prepared diagram on the matter:



Conversational tangents, however, go a completely different way from the way they were going.

That, and I'd be quite disturbed if my conversation was comparable with a circle- ever repeating itself. No. I propose a new model.



The flow of the conversation is more realistic. It generally goes all over the places, however, it always gets there gradually. The conversation travels along a random route, reaching certain topics but generally spending a lot of time in between topics.

A "tangent" is characterised by a leap in the conversation to a certain topic without any actual movement towards it. This often confuses others in the conversation, who are prone to ask "where did that come from?".

Hence due to the leap-like nature of the conversation I propose that "Tangents" shall be renamed "Conversational leaps". I'm already forwarding my request to all major dictionaries, linguists and mathematicians as you read this.

Remeber: Vote NO for Tangents, and YES for convo leaps!!






And with the silliness over, onto the serious stuff

World Records, Pi and Reality

A random series of thoughts went through my mind at work today, all initiated by one of my workmates telling someone this:

"The world record for the number of melons broken by headbutting in a minute is 16".

This led me to thinking about world records.

I recalled that one particular world record is the number of digits to which Pi has been calculated.

This led me to think about numbers.

I began to think "why is Pi, the exact number that it is?". Then I began to think "what if it wasn't".

Then I began to think "what if we lived in a universe where 2+2 actually was 5?..

It's unfathomable to us, but the thing is, it's perfectly possible that the universe could have been structured in such a way that mathematics works that way.

What if we lived in a universe where the laws of science were completely different, and had different constants?

Bear in mind that this universe, from an atheistic point of view, is merely a probability. When the "big bang" took place, beforehand, the laws of physics would have worked in all sorts of weird ways we can't even begin to comprehend.

The very manifestation of the universe in the Big Bang (speaking from an atheistic, scientific point of view) is the determining factor in how the physical laws turn out to be- they could have been like anything, but they just happened to turn out like this.

So, what really is reality if it could have turned out so many different ways? And what really do we know? The truth is we don't. Even the most intellectual among us is dumb in the proper perspective.

How can we even begin going to answer questions like "is there a God", "why is the universe here?", "what is our nature?" and "where do our feelings come from?" with such a feeble understanding of the universe?

And yet some of the "brains" of the planet like to believe that they have answered all four of those questions: "No", "The Big Bang", "Animal", and "Chemicals" respectively. But how can we really be sure? Science as a pure, atheistic tool can not answer these questions but only give technicalities:

Looking at the universe as it is now, technically God need not exist in order to keep it going.

Looking at the current state of the universe, it looks as though it all started from nothing, billions of years ago.

Judging by certain things we know about biology, we appear to be on the same level as animals.

Looking at chemicals in the brain interact, indicates that there is a certain chemical associated with a certain emotion or feeling.

I'm not writing this primarily to discredit anything which science says- but to challenge your views on it. Science is not a be-all and end-all.

God may not appear to be required to have created the universe or to keep it going, but it doesn't mean he isn't there.

The Big Bang may have been the start of the universe, but it isn't necessarily it's reason for existence.

We may be built in the same way as animals, but it doesn't mean we are not different from them in any more than an intellectual sense.

Love may be associated by chemicals, but that doesn't mean love is a chemical interaction.

With every thing you look at in the physical, bear in mind that there is so much more that could be behind it. In a universe that could have ended up as any of an infinite number of possibilities, even if you know everything there is to know, you know nothing.

Don't rely on intellect. The intelligence of some people is their downfall, for it blinds them from the truth that they are nothing but a weak, feeble, stupid little being. But those who recognise this fact and use it to grow will gain the most valuable attribute of all- wisdom.
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