Reading (For Dummies)

I'm not dead

Really. Something bad happened to my web server. I'm 99% sure that it involved someone unplugging their computer for winter break and forgetting to reconnect the thinwire loop (our building in Germany uses thinwire, and if someone unplugs for the network and forgets to reconnect the loop, everyone loses internet access...it happens pretty often). Well, things seem to be alive now, so I'll be posting again. With pictures. Coming in a little while.

Going Home?

Now I wonder if I'm going home for Christmas?

Anyway, with all luck I'll be there on the 19th, so after tomorrow morning, it's radio blackout. Of course, if my plane crashes or whatever, I guess it'll be the end.

My thoughts have been returning to Japan again a lot. I guess partly the buddhism thing, but more because I can speak a peck of Japanese, and I keep running into Ayaho (who doesn't speak English, so we share broken Japanese/German greetings), and of course there's my new friend Jens who lived there for a while. So I've added a few new toys to my wishlist

All this thinking about moving somewhere new have reminded me why I moved somewhere to begin with. Gabbin' with people. I haven't been doing that enough lately. I had the idea tonight to go down and try and talk with some of the musicians downtown with my dictionary, maybe I'll try that when I get back. How *do* they stand out there in the cold all day?

You know you're reading too much Zen

Last night I dreamt that one of my professors stopped in the middle of his lecture, and wrote on the board, "What is quality in Formal Models of Concurrency?" Being the only American in the class, (and thusly the only one who read Zen and the Art), I got all cocky and sure I knew the answer. But I didn't. I've never been frustrated in a dream before.

Other funnies:

What would happen if Hogwart's had email.

Oh, and while Googling my friend DFC, I found a somewhat appropriate group.

Otherwise, no news. Just getting cleaned up and packed for a trip to the US soon. Whee.

Partay'ing some more, etc

Sorry for the delay in updates. I'm actually much better than this, but I have an excuse.

Ow...

On Friday I broke (well I've downgraded the status to "really badly sprained") my middle finger. I can type again and move it around a little, but it hurts if I actually have to do anything forceful with it. So playing guitar is out. I'd like to give a shout-out to Drs Bisignano, Stone, and Farren for the toothbrush/fingersplint. Now I have a teeny tiny toothbrush head. I'll keep it for hiking.

Also after rock climbing on Friday, I went to Ferri's place, where I was again extended an invitation to join his fraternity. That would be pretty funny....Initiation involves fencing. You have to fence a live opponent, the top of your head and your eyes are protected but your face is left vulnerable to slashing and I suppose scarring. US Frats have lost their gusto. Or their bollocks.

Saturday was Christmas shopping (actually didn't get much shopping done...). And a partay at night.

Nick with his Polish fly-girls

Nick is the American bloke that I mentioned earlier. He's in Dresden studying to be a translator. His German is flawless, and I'm told he can speak a peck of French as well. He and I gabbed a bit in English. I also met the best German english speaker to date, Thomas, who was originally from Hungary. We gabbed a while too, about visas and things.

Some of Bob's homegrown

After much vodka and a bit of the above, it was 3am and time to go home. I missed meditation this morning...ohwell. Next time, Gadget, next time....

A psuedo-experimental rant

Nam myoho renge kyo ka?

So people have been asking me about the Buddhism thing. Okay, actually the only person that's been asking me is myself. So I thought I would expound to the world (well, more to myself) on my own personal pulpit. I don't do this sort of thing as much as I used to, but I'll get to that.

I'm a scientist. If anyone were to ask me to describe my religion, that would be it. I believe what I see, anything else is just a hypothesis to be tested, and more than likely disproved. So what am I doing? Testing a hypothesis maybe. Buddhism isn't what I would call a religion (though it asks you to believe some things without proof).

What do I believe of Buddhism? Not a lot. Karma? What's that? Infinite rebirth? Okay if you're talking about temporal logic maybe, but that really doesn't matter since the temporal logic doesn't account for anything jumping branches (neither does our understanding of the nature of the time, which has been pretty well tested I think). Well, not unless it involves warp fields and tachyons....So about the answer I'm promising...I'm coming to it.

Okay, so what I will not accept on faith is simple enough: everything.

I notice myself slipping up on myself a lot lately, though. I've become a lot less polite and warm than I once was, a lot less concientous of other people; I'm unable to focus. I'm excitable, goofy. I used to be more interested in the Big Questions: what is consciousness, what is reality, is there such a thing as a soul? For years I asked such questions to myself and to other people; I decided to pursue an education in computer science with a bit of philosophy thrown in. I hoped artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences would shed some kind of light on the answers I sought. I've become an arrogant bastard, under the assumption that all this scientific knowledge was helping me see something nobody else did. But nope. Dead ends, both of them...nothing to see here. They don't answer any questions, they just provide solutions. There's an odd sort of difference.

Maybe it's through applications of substances that I lost sight of my questions, but probably it is more attributed to being into science and math for too long, and too ununderstandingly. Of course, maybe I'm burning out. Not a happy thought, but who knows? I still wondering what to do to make a living. Okay if I'm disaffected, I'm not alone.

So I'm meditating, probably with a cult. Don't get me wrong, they're good people, after a fashion. And it's hard to believe everything you read...there was a brief spat with a Soka Gakkai member who (I'm told) wanted to make moolah off the whole thing, so he started a disinformation campaign against the current Nichiren Shoshu school. So it's hard to say what the truth is, but my assumption is never trust an organized religion, and I won't be changing that rule any time soon. I just keep my eyes and ears and open, and meditate and chant what I can. And for those who scream deprogram!, remember I went up against the best once. I'm just as stubborn as my old man and twice as good at math.
Wait for it....

So if I don't believe in the basic tenants of the religion/cult/philosophy/whatever, what am I doing, sitting in front of a piece of paper I can't read, chanting words I can't understand*? Well, perhaps I'm being sure. Shakyamuni Guatama and the other Buddhas were happy and wise in a final sort of way. My friend David from Syracuse reminds me of these stories every time I see him, it's a calmness and rationality that any computer scientist would envy...That would be nice. I joke with the Germans here that the Buddha introduced me to SGI. I'm kidding, but only slightly.

But I'm not sure if I believe that their enlightenment was true; maybe something in the buddhas' brains just broke and their state of 'enlightenment' was nothing more than improper levels of dopamine being released. Who knows? I'd like to...

The buddhism has a basic lesson in the philosophy: those seeking the answers won't find them. Perhaps, in a strange way, by being skeptical for the answers while meditating I'll see something that my scientifically trained mind doesn't. Or maybe not. It makes sense in a very non-logical sort of way, so maybe I'm halfway there already.

My whole trip overseas is sort of working for the same purpose...getting out of the river for a while to see if things look different from the banks, getting back to my roots of quasi-philosophical computer nerd. So perhaps I should answer people honestly now, when they ask, "Why did you come to Germany?" Truth, and Japan was too damn expensive.

If nothing else, all this provides a means of some mental relaxation, useful in a self-help sort of way, even if I scoff at that stuff a little bit. Mind over matter always, except when the matter is too heavy for you to physically lift...that's the general policy to take with regard to self-help. Well, I think I've expounded enough on this topic. I suppose what I'm saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but then it's not really supposed to. Feel free to leave questions and answers, I'll listen to both :).

*well, okay, that's partial truth. I can actually read some parts of the Gongyo. Not enough to make sense of anything, but I guess a year of Japanese has left me remembering a few words...

More on the War

Another really worthwhile article, this time Re: War on Iraq. I started off being vehemently opposed to engaging Iraq; lately I've been becoming less and less sure about that stance. Good things could come of it, but only if the US could prove there is a reason to strike...

Gasp...

My brother recently sent me an email criticizing me criticizing the United States so much. I guess he's right, I have a tendancy to be pretty harsh. So, in an effort to defend my native land, I offer up this tasty morsel of brain food (courtesy of k5).

Hiking Exhausted

.....

Today Ferri and I went hiking near Frauenstein in the Erzgiberge Mountains. They are certainly beautiful. Especially today. A frost settled on everywhere lately. The temperature hung between -10 and -6C (I guess that's in the mid-teens to lower 20s in Farenheit). So it was a bit cold. But it made me appreciate more fully the beauty of GoreTex. I wonder if they make GoreTex pants....

The "snow" you see in the pictures is actually frost, accumulated fairly thickly.

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Frost

Strangely the frost grows in the direction that the wind blows from. An icy "fog" (which is what it is) sticks to things as it blows by. The fog was everywhere, but it wasn't ice crystals. More like water molecules that were frozen but isolated, awaiting the opportunity to form a lattice by attaching to another water molecule. It makes me feel like I understand how snow forms a little better now. It must be an interesting process in the clouds...

I think we hiked about just over 20km, but hard to say. I didn't bring the GPS. Ferri unfortunately slipped and fell into a creek on the way back...I can't imagine walking for several hours in this temperature with wet feet, but he didn't complain. He strikes me as a real mountaineer.

Keep a sense of humor

Urge to kill roommate rising.

I'm guessing the party will go on until 3am, which kind of sucks for me because I'm going hiking most of the day tomorrow. So I've made up my mind that I'll be seeking a new apartment. Of course I can't quite afford one at this point, but I'll figure something out...

I debated briefly pitching my tent in the park near my building. But there's freezing rain coming down now, and I haven't put seam-seal on the tent in 2 years. So maybe I'd better hold off :).

Get you War On

Damn, I can't sleep (roommate is having a huge fuckin' party in the flat..oye). So I'm reading web comics. DFC links to this web comic occassionally....Get Your War On. Hilarious.

For more fabulous news about the war on terror, turn to this 2600 story. All your camera are belong to the man.

The Sportszentrum

Rock climbing today. I only got a few hours of sleep last night...just couldn't sleep (and I can't again tonight). Not really sure why that is. Today our lesson focused on the real cliffhanger-type stuff...jumping a 6 foot gap to a vertical spire. So we stood on benches and had to jump out horizontally to the bouldering walls. it's was pretty cool. I was kind of impressed with myself, my arms were holding me to the wall on the horizontal jump bit better than Ferri's. He showed me up later though, when he climbed the the Green Route (6-), for conversion charts try here. The tiny size of the handholes left me amazed, and I wasn't the only one. The girl on the wall next to us almost dropped belay when her jaw dropped...

Some photos...

My favorite climbing wall (learning about ceilings...)

Housewife training?

More bizarre than our spire-jumping training was the regular training the students give each other. One of them brought in this psuedo-nightgown sewn together out of bedsheets. She made some of the women climb wearing the nightgown, nightcap, a blindfold, and slippers. Wearing a blindfold seems to be a popular training excercise among the students here....develop your sense of touch as opposed to your sense of sight.

After the gym, I reported to work. I even got to talk to one of my professors on the bus back from the gym. I touted the calming benefits of rock climbing, how it gets your brain to stop thinking about math. Maybe he was amused maybe not. I then started relating his theories on tree transducers to the lambda calculus. I have a feeling he was less amused about this...but I could be wrong. I have a theory that his idea for tree transducers is no more capable (in fact is equivalent to) a lambda calculus parser. Part of me says I really understand what he's saying and this is so. The other part of me has some doubts...I need to compare some proofs for what can be parsed in the lambda calculus by different styles of interpreters...

After work I went over to Ben's place and did gongyo. Good winding-down from a pretty hectic day. So it's gongyo every day or two for a while. The only bit of buddha I'm getting out of it so far is running out of breath trying to keep the chant unbroken.

Go Dan...

The only advice column I've ever read is Savage Love. This week's issue has some great advice for Bush...

Mixing it up

Spent much of tonight getting my website in gear. Trying to get the templates to look just so. And I'll be adding more (static) areas. Not whining past history, just some of my regular horseshit essays and what not.

Die Liturgie des Buddhismus

Today Benjamin Schwarz from the local SGI group came over, and tossed me a copy of Nichiren Diashonen's translation of the Lotus Sutra. An aspect of Soka Gakkai that I will probably never understand is why chant in Japanese (or any language at all. I thought 'Om' was supposed to be okay ;-)). Ohwell, it will be good practice for my Japanese skizzilz as it's 30 pages of tough kanji and complex grammar...And I have to memorize it.

So today we did Gongyo, much to the amusement of my roommate (who was in the kitchen, finally washing his dishes).

Sleep? What's that?

Okay, I'm really supposed to be asleep right now, but I stumbled on an interesting gay rights story that maybe everyone should pay attention to. So link, and let's let America go the way of the Roman Empire (only in a good way).

Googling

I too have fallen victim to my own vanity, and tried googling myself. And searching for some old high school friends. What's funny to me is that I'm more popular (well, on the internet) than any of the guys I thought would be at least moderately famous by now. I guess posting to mailing lists and putting out security advisories and getting interviewed does that.

But what's really amusing? Everyone in high school knew me by my real first name, and I no longer use it. Searching for the old me doesn't turn up my person until the third page. All these false results, probably anyone trying to find me can't. I debate even posting my real first name here cuz it's a silly one. So good luck to anyone searching :).

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...

A real eye-opener of the priveleges of being an American was my trip to Praha last week. I didn't think it was a big deal to just hop over to the Czech Republic. After talking with Tariq and Zeeshan the other night, I realized that it's not the same for everybody...if they want to visit Prague, they have to purchase a tourist visa for 80,00€ several weeks in advance, and they'd better leave before the visa expires....

So I won't be giving up my American citizenship just yet....

But still this makes me wonder. Funny, didn't something similiar to this happen in Channel Zero?

Are Germans Rude?

Today at the supermarket: I am waiting, next in line, for the Express Checkout Line (10 items or less, Cash Only). Up comes an old woman, who glares at me, pushes in front of me. I protest, but only in English. She has a cart full of food....at least 40 items. I wait like a patient little person for the register to scan everything. It takes a long time because the Express Checkout Line doesn't have a belt, it's just a cash register on a stand (which can only fit the cash register). So the checkout guy has to juggle all the food around. She then opens up her wallet and pulls out a credit card. So the checkout guy has to run halfway across the store to a regular checkout line, remembering the total bill, so he can run it through.

Hm...

Walking home from the supermarket: A woman pushing a baby carriage cuts me off walking. I go to walk around her and she *jogs* to stay in front of me, then swings in front of me and stops.

Double Hm...

Maybe it's cuz I'm a foreigner....

Living with someone

Okay, whining alert.

Whenever I've lived with someone, I've always tried to pitch and do my share of the housework, and always thank the other person when they do their share. I even started off doing this with Roland and Martinas when they came back. When Roland got sick, I started doing all the housework. He stopped saying thank-you, and he never started again. So I stopped doing his dishes.

The experiment

Two weeks into my experiment. I wash all my dishes after each meal, and even have to wash some of his dishes because we have a limited supply of things like bowls, cups, and silverware. Commendably, they cleaned the bathroom yesterday (and it's looking a lot better), but still.....I don't want to wash the soup pot that been's there since the middle of November...

Chasing Shakyamuni...

I finally made it to Tozo this morning, and people were there. I even managed to keep up the chant for whole hour and a half (though I must admit, my throat was a little dry towards the end...must bring tea next time). I don't know the Gongyo yet, but am working on it....

So, for you, an Outsider's analysis of my crazy form of meditation. It's a bit dry, but maybe you'll live....

Now, more work...

Sreeni

Here's my pal from India. People have been wanting to know. He teaches me how to cook all my crazy food.

By popular request...