the mediocrity codex

They say heartbreak is the best inspiration. This is heartbreak inspiration There’s been a stray around our house for the past few days. The first couple of days we fed it food…bad idea. But it’s hard to say no to a stray sometimes, especially when they end up in your own backyard. But it got the crazy idea in its head that it isn’t a stray. It loves people. Whenever we step outside it immediately starts to rub on our legs and try to be petted. But it isn’t just trying to scratch for fleas. I know because it otherwise sits around and can’t be bothered. But once we show it some attention, it’s clear she just wants to be loved.

Man, I feel like I've been sucked into a time vortex. You know how there are those days that just swoop by so quickly that you don't realize that time is passing by and before you know it you've been wearing the same clothes for the past week and you don't seem to know anything anymore? I just read the Steam news stream. READ it. PERUSED it. And came away informed. INFORMED! Normally I pride myself on being at the forefront of updates, both great and insignificant, but this past week I find myself knowing absolutely nothing. Sengoku came out? Darksiders was on sale? Indie Game releases on Steam left and right? Paradox making a huge publishing push? I'm so out of it. So, dear readers, catch me up! What have I missed? I feel like I've come back from a forced vacation from a job I love and all my coworkers have found new friends and started new projects while I was gone. I want the news, man. I want to dive back into the slow roll of the waves and the interm...

I've been hovering around this idea of morality and "rightness" and a kind of absolutism for a few weeks now, so I hope that you can bear with me as I continue to do so. I haven't yet been able to put a finer point on why it's a constant element on my mind, but I can tell you that, by Jove, it certainly has been coming up a lot. A lot. Of especial import today was a documentary I watched on netflix. I owe a huge debt to Netflix, as it's recently allowed me to reach unprecedented levels of both "hip" and "smarts" that had been hitherto unreachable at such a low rate, price, and convenience. I barely have time to read books because I'm so busy watching things I never knew existed! So the film was called "Bigger, Stronger, Faster*" with the asterisk cryptically stating "the side effects of being American". It's a documentary about the demonization of steroids and steroid use following a number of hi...

I like mad libs. If you don't know what mad libs are, they're a sort of a word game that was especially popular in the 80's, and less so in the 90's. The intrigue of this little activity came from the fact that you (the reader) were given the opportunity to obliviously insert your own choice of words (as long as it was the correct part of speech), into these pre-determined blanks. It was a play on the term "ad lib", which is short for the latin phrase ad libitum or "at one's pleasure". In a more practical sense, it used this phrase to conjugate itself with the idea of improvised comedy (also popular at the time). Some mad libs books perhaps gave you a title or a topic with which to guide you on your choice of words, but otherwise it was a laissez-faire carnivale of word soup by the time your words had been chosen (hence the "improv" part). As you read the story, you would then insert your nobly-chosen syntactic vittles when prompted an...

Recently I've been spending many of my hours listening to and reading a number of articles on STR.org (Stand to Reason), a christian apologetics website, which address various philosophical and intellectual challenges to a christian worldview. It's a cool resource, and a great way to pick your own mind and plow the fertile ground of thought for new ideas and clearer thinking. At the same time, there are a number of formidable and useful secular sources that also address these challenges in a decidedly christian-less way. Which camp do I fall into? Well, I'll let you figure that out as we go along. What I've been thinking about most recently though is the idea of "good" and "bad" (I also posted something on this a little while ago, though, admittedly, with a lot less thought and research). It's also been presented as "the problem of evil" or Euthyphro's Dilemma (a discourse by Plato, where Socrates is having a dialogue with a man n...

Borders is going out of business! Well, it has been for awhile . How does a 40-year old company with 19,000 employees go bankrupt? "A series of missteps". It's funny how easily that simple phrase can be used to characterize any number of tragic failures, business or otherwise, that have come and gone. Take the Black Death for example. Who knew that not rushing to bury the rotting enemy corpses that were flung (by them) into your town but instead making your swift escape would bring a disease so contagious and lethal that it would end up killing a third of the population of western Europe over the next 2.5 years? A series of missteps, indeed. Or take President Franklin D. Roosevelt, an otherwise meritiorious individual who did well beyond his duty for the good of men, who, through a series of missteps, ordered the internment of 120,000 people in the interest of "national safety", in spite of the fact that many of them were legalized immigrants and even ...

Ok, sincerest most seriousest apologies for any of those who are reading this. I am about to mention a viral video that you may or may not be aware of, after which you have now become aware of because of my mentioning it. And for that, I apologize, most sincerely and seriously! The video I speak of can be found here . If you are too lazy to click through a link, I've also embedded it here: Okay, breathe. Breathe. After an experience like this, the best thing to do is to not react. I mean, what's the use of reacting, really? She's just a kid. Remember that. The car in the video is automated. Her friends are all underage. They can't even have driver's licenses. What are they doing driving a car? And those dresses. Who lets their 13 year-old wear clothes like that to a house party teeming with other similarly dressed kids doing things that only intoxicated adults would do, including record a slow-motion music video featuring underage girls and evocative auto-tunin...

I recently had the opportunity to read through the entirety of "Brave New World" in a single sitting. I would call it more of a privilege, but I don't want to alienate any of my readership more than I already do with my various rants and introspectives... Not that I had much else to do on a 14-hour plane ride, but still, it was far from a chore or a bore to read the novel cover to cover. It was also the first time I had ever read it and, though I don't recommend doing so on a regular basis, I felt it was a great way to do it. Attention span deficits aside, there are so many novel-reading experiences that feel vast and epic, but I think this is in large part due to the fact that they are read over long periods of time, during which our minds attempt to fill in those blank spaces (in terms of novel-reading) with relevant or speculative information. It adds to the fiction, so to speak. But the original work itself actually remains unaltered. So, in other words what I...

I'm watching a video about "the social animal" , humans. It's interesting, engaging. It's, ironically, somewhat alienating as well. I know that it seems intuitive to believe that seeing and hearing a talk about people would make me feel more connected, more human than not. But it's not. It's making me realize how little people know, how little I know, about people in general. When I'm enlightened about mathematics, or chemistry, or even psychology I feel an immense amount satisfaction, as though I've opened a large dusty volume that's been closed for a thousand years and, to my great elated surprise, find that I can read it easily and that the ideas contained therein are intelligible and in fact aligned with my own.  But not right now. Right now I feel so, so disappointed. I feel disappointed because, if what this presentation is saying is true, then humans have fallen a long, long way from where they once were. Is it so hard to talk about em...

We treat women like rice because they stick to all our meat We like cars and PCs because they use electricity We can't write no papers or poems or autographs But we supplement our words with abnormally accurate pie graphs What, what, what you gonna say now Chinese, Japanese, ain't the same anyhow we can't always be seen, but we rock in every scene even though we take our time we still can find the best ways to succeed Like copying ipods, iphones, ipads and what and dropping phat beats that have already been cut by the blacks and the mexicans but man who gives a damn because when you hear it in the club it's like, man oh man Then on the TV it's like, Ken Jeong beeeotch! Quakes don't stop us, the shakes don't stop us, We drive fast cars because no brakes can stop us CNN even said it, tsunami's gonna regret it even with 10,000 lost, we still don't let it let it break us down, we got 1 billion plus and an army on the way still don...

I'm backposting today, so even though the timestamp on this entry is going to be on tuesday, I'm actually writing this today (Thursday). It's like that movie, Timecop.Or Deja Vu or something. Anything with time travel that only works in one direction. I have the benefit of working with a boss who has the same religious beliefs as I do. While we certainly don't have the same work ethic (not that I do not strive for the same that she has, I am simply saying that I don't have it), it's quite the boon to have this other thing in common. It actually makes our interactions, conversations, and even disciplinary lectures more meaningful. Can you believe she still lectures people? I mean, just everybody. I'm not the only one she talks to as though I am completely ignorant of SO MANY facts about the world. It's in her nature to teach. Back on topic, I bring up this point only because it's relevant to what happened today (Tuesday). I've been having a lo...

There used to be a recurring feature on NBC local news called "Unsung Heroes". It was basically a chance for local people to be recognized and rewarded for their efforts in their neighborhood, acknowledging the fact that even though there's innumerably more newsworthy things going on in the world at large, it's nice (and cool and ratings-effective) to simply focus on a few things right in your backyard. I used to love watching the news just for that feature. "Unsung Heroes" was in fact one of the many things I wanted to always wanted to be. An Unsung Hero. Of course, the irony there is that being an Unsung Hero means being ignored. To wish to be an Unsung Hero for the purpose of recognition goes against everything that the Unsung Hero stands for. Man, I was a stupid kid. Anyway, today the point is that far too many so-called "non-essential" individuals go unnoticed for far too long.  I'm not talking about myself in this case. It's a c...

"God" is a hotly debated topic. It has been for ages, it is in the current age, and it will certainly be for ages to come. Now, that is not a prophetical statement, but rather more of a well-founded assumption based on the nature of the topic and the observations made about the discussion of it. "God" is impossible to prove by empirical means and "God" is largely indistinguishable for any other theistic (or atheistic) assumption made upon which any philosophical arguments are made. In light of these two facts, "God" will be a topic of infinite unresolution into the indefinite future. But let's step back for a moment from that bleak, emotionless perspective. Let us instead proceed in the realm which we know best, that is, the human realm. The realm of emotion and logic, pursuit and remembrance, intuition and evidence. It's in this realm we live in, and it's in this realm we find ourselves thinking abstractly and concretely, often for...

Some people might think the following argument is simply a convoluted, obfuscating, and misguided attempt at justifying laziness and irresponsibility. I think it's a solid argument for the existence of futurebots Make no mistake, the following argument is an original work, an attempt to corroborate the evidence with the truth to prove the existence of sentient robotic lifeforms in the midst of our present-day meanderings. I have often felt that my mind worked differently than many of the people I've worked with. There are times when I would reach entirely different conclusions to conversations, events, emotional responses, and even factual causatives than my peers. For example, once a friend asked me if I had ever thought about becoming a pastor, and I could only think to reply, "aren't we all evangelists of some sort already? It's not as though we don't attempt to foist our beliefs upon unsuspecting strangers with only limited evidence to support an alrea...

wanted to share something. it's an off day for me. this is easier than writing an original piece for today. the following post is video-game related, but by no means limited to the realm of gaming. To rage, or not to rage... Is it really a question? by Jacob "Vandy" Van Der Werf I love me some Left 4 Dead 2, but it can be hard to get a good game going because people give up so easily. If your whole team makes it to the end of Dead Center as Survivors, and then you Charge somebody out a window as Infected, they’re probably going to rage quit. Knock the whole team off the ledge? Rage. Boom them as they get out of the elevator and separate them in the chaos of the horde and BAM, you guessed it… More often than not, the score discrepancy is small enough that it could easily be made up in the next round, but people don’t care. People that only care about winning will cut and run to avoid potentially fighting a losing battle. And of cou...

The heart is an amazing organ. It’s one of the essential pieces of the human body; without it, blood would sit limply in our veins and arteries (indeed, veins and arteries would have no real purpose!) and our cells would quickly use up all the oxygen in it, asphyxiating themselves faster than you can say “and this little piggy went to Kathmandu.” Important as it may be, the heart is essentially an enormous muscle (or rather group of muscles) that functions as a pump. It draws blood in through the veins and out through the arteries, from the body, to the lungs, and back to the body again. This group of muscles, only about the size of your fist, moves about 2,000 gallons of blood a day. That means it takes your heart only about 5 minutes to circulate all of the blood in your entire body one time. Pretty impressive for such a small piece of equipment! Obviously today’s focal point is the heart. Namely, Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). HLHS is a congenital heart disease (present ...

Work has been slow lately. Painfully slow. I feel like I’ve written that phrase at least 3 times in the past three weeks. What happened exactly? I get in at 9:30. Pop my head in and say hi. Any tasks? Clean the lab. Make some tubes with some stuff in it. Label them. Get to my desk by 9:35. Write down said tasks. Clean the lab. Make some tubes with some stuff in it. Label them. Read Kotaku, Penny Arcade, and Firing Squad. It’s now 10am. The Chinese volunteer is supposed to show up by at least 10am. At LEAST. But he doesn’t, so I call him. And he sounds like he’s just woken up. I ask what time he’s going to be in, and the only words he can seem to get out of his mouth are “I will be there later.” I wait a bit longer. My boss comes over the bench to pick up something from the printer and asks me what I’m doing and why the volunteer hasn’t arrived yet. I tell her I’m reading, which I am. I’m reading Mere Christianity and my hidden Firefox window has Kotaku, Gmail, and Penny Arcade op...

  I like to read. I like to read works from various authors and various times. I enjoy the sense of exploration, the sense of discovery, and the sense of affirmation I (most of the time) get from reading. I find, however, that no matter how diverse I think my reading habits have become, I continue to be drawn back to the same authors, the same times, and the same ideas that I have explored and discovered before. Now, what I’ve begun to realize (apart from any sad sentimentality felt towards the progressive loss of leisurely intellectual pursuits and other such octogenarian concerns) is that (aside from my clear penchant and enjoyment of such material) any ideas that one enjoys (which can be myriad and many or homogeneous and few) deserve more time . Granted, it is easy to argue that such things like philosophy, psychology, science fiction, religion, and theology certainly require more time than other ideas, but what I’m saying is that this principle ...

Today we speak of gum. That very same gum that we chew, that sticks stubbornly to the bottoms of our shoes, that may become horrifyingly tangled in our hair. Gum! What exactly is gum? Gum is gum base , the foundation for all of gum’s marvelous gummy properties. It’s what’s responsible for gum’s chewy nature, it’s malleable, yet resilient character, and it’s amazing ability to make and break from numerous tiny pieces to one cohesive unit. Of course, gum base formulations differ from one brand to the next, and each formulation is a trade secret. How else could companies each make claims of ultimate gum superiority? Still, every gum base contains the same basic components: ·          Elastomers – for that spring in your chew ·           Resins – so your gum can come in sticks, bars, and even rolls ·          Waxes – keeping gu...