I think the default setting on cell phones should be vibrate.
My roommate since day one has been pissing me off with his cell phone. I don't whether he is lying to me or not but his stupid phone is a literal loudspeaker. Supposedly, his phone is on the quietest volume but I would have to yell over it for him to hear me. It's insane. And I don't like his stupid music to begin with, so why do I want to hear a 2 second clip of it every time he gets a text or a phone call? Why would I want to hear it at an ear-shattering for a solid 10 seconds at 9 in the morning? I wouldn't. I don't.
The best part is when he gets up to shower in the morning and leaves his phone on his bed. Then his stupid friends start texting him at 9:15 sharp and he's not there to shut his stupid phone off. I want to throw it across the room...
Point is, I think the default setting on phones should be vibrate and should be able to only be able to ring depending on their relative distance from their owner. For guys, we have our phones in our pockets. No reason to have them on ringer. For girls, phones might be in your purse so I can understand a ringer. If you have your cell phone in your purse on a loud subway train, you might need a louder ringer. So the ringer turns on and gets louder in direct proportion to the relative distance from the owner and ambient noise up to a certain point, like if said owner leaves the room.
Because we must also assume that we LIKE the music of the ringtone of the idiot who ALWAYS has to have his phone on. I think he should have to ask people standing around him whether this song is okay. If it's not, you can't play it.
It's just public courtesy.
OH and don't get me started on people standing in line on their cell phones.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
On a related note...
Niall Ferguson said something interesting on the Colbert Report this past January...
He explained to Steven that since money isn't backed up by gold anymore, it isn't physically worth anything. The only reason money has any value is because everyone accepts it and trusts that it has value. It's an IOU that is passed from person to person with no true value other than the cost of the cotton-paper it's on. I thought that was really interesting that a twenty-dollar bill is only worth twenty dollars because the person I am giving it to as well as myself agree and accept that it is indeed worth twenty arbitrary units of repayment.
Size, weight, and quantity are all arbitrary methods of measurement. There is no reason why an inch is as long as it is but because the United States accepts it as such, that's how long it is. If everyone tomorrow was to accept the inch as a little but shorter, that would unquestionably change our perception of the inch. Same with the pound, the gallon, etc.
This relates to Socrates' challenge of Euthyphro's seemingly arbitrary proposition of piety. I won't get into piety because that again brings in "faith" which is neither quantitative nor qualitative. But the point is that I think it's very interesting how all of these mathematical systems are virtually meaningless without the global acceptance of their standards. (The respect I have for Socrates comes from his methods rather than the conclusions he wants to suss out of people)
Thus, it would be possible to have a universal standard for beauty, righteousness, and all other things that are unable to be quantified if we were to all simply to accept a standard for these things. It's not that we can't, it's that we won't. We just all can't agree on standards for these things which is why everyone's opinion differs.
An inch is an inch because no one can come up with anything better, nor rally the support for a new measurement system. Beauty for one person isn't beauty for another for more psychological reasons of course but no one will agree. Righteousness can't be agreed on of course because people will always want to be able to do what we want in a society where the liberal media says that's okay. Nevertheless, people still follow the laws set forth by the Constitution and by states because that's what they are told to do, because it is universally accepted that these laws have meaning.
Righteousness, it could be argued, was founded in religious tenets that said that the Gods have put forth these laws and we should obey them because that is what the Gods would want. For the longest time people were totally cool with that. People now say that they shouldn't have to not do what they want just because a God tells them to. They cite religious rules as arbitrary and meaningless which is only so because they do not accept them. The same people follow secular laws (which again, are founded on mostly ancient religious laws) because they ACCEPT the governments rule which in essence is equally as arbitrary. All atheists can trace their lineage back to parents who were devout and pious. just thought I would point that out.
I think that's all I have for this.
He explained to Steven that since money isn't backed up by gold anymore, it isn't physically worth anything. The only reason money has any value is because everyone accepts it and trusts that it has value. It's an IOU that is passed from person to person with no true value other than the cost of the cotton-paper it's on. I thought that was really interesting that a twenty-dollar bill is only worth twenty dollars because the person I am giving it to as well as myself agree and accept that it is indeed worth twenty arbitrary units of repayment.
Size, weight, and quantity are all arbitrary methods of measurement. There is no reason why an inch is as long as it is but because the United States accepts it as such, that's how long it is. If everyone tomorrow was to accept the inch as a little but shorter, that would unquestionably change our perception of the inch. Same with the pound, the gallon, etc.
This relates to Socrates' challenge of Euthyphro's seemingly arbitrary proposition of piety. I won't get into piety because that again brings in "faith" which is neither quantitative nor qualitative. But the point is that I think it's very interesting how all of these mathematical systems are virtually meaningless without the global acceptance of their standards. (The respect I have for Socrates comes from his methods rather than the conclusions he wants to suss out of people)
Thus, it would be possible to have a universal standard for beauty, righteousness, and all other things that are unable to be quantified if we were to all simply to accept a standard for these things. It's not that we can't, it's that we won't. We just all can't agree on standards for these things which is why everyone's opinion differs.
An inch is an inch because no one can come up with anything better, nor rally the support for a new measurement system. Beauty for one person isn't beauty for another for more psychological reasons of course but no one will agree. Righteousness can't be agreed on of course because people will always want to be able to do what we want in a society where the liberal media says that's okay. Nevertheless, people still follow the laws set forth by the Constitution and by states because that's what they are told to do, because it is universally accepted that these laws have meaning.
Righteousness, it could be argued, was founded in religious tenets that said that the Gods have put forth these laws and we should obey them because that is what the Gods would want. For the longest time people were totally cool with that. People now say that they shouldn't have to not do what they want just because a God tells them to. They cite religious rules as arbitrary and meaningless which is only so because they do not accept them. The same people follow secular laws (which again, are founded on mostly ancient religious laws) because they ACCEPT the governments rule which in essence is equally as arbitrary. All atheists can trace their lineage back to parents who were devout and pious. just thought I would point that out.
I think that's all I have for this.
Sub-prime crisis
Watching a video by Niall Ferguson on the historical origins of the economic crisis...
Basically, a sub-prime loan is when mortgages are given to people with "patchy credit histories." These are also called NINJA loans. (NO INCOME NO JOB NO ASSETS) Essentially in 2002 Bush said everyone in America should own a home. This gave more than 5 million renting and non-home-owning minorities mortgages due to relaxed standards by credit agencies.
The agencies felt fine because of a convoluted system of securities that "ensured" the money would be there if the owner defaulted on the loan.
To sum up, they de-regulated the market and gave mortgages to people who couldn't pay because Bush said it was okay..
Most of these people were minorities in ghettos... With no jobs...
I'll say no more.
Basically, a sub-prime loan is when mortgages are given to people with "patchy credit histories." These are also called NINJA loans. (NO INCOME NO JOB NO ASSETS) Essentially in 2002 Bush said everyone in America should own a home. This gave more than 5 million renting and non-home-owning minorities mortgages due to relaxed standards by credit agencies.
The agencies felt fine because of a convoluted system of securities that "ensured" the money would be there if the owner defaulted on the loan.
To sum up, they de-regulated the market and gave mortgages to people who couldn't pay because Bush said it was okay..
Most of these people were minorities in ghettos... With no jobs...
I'll say no more.
A Day in the Life... (and a little bit of whining)
So my average day tends to go as follows:
My alarm cuts through the silence as I lie warmly in my bed. Disgusted, I roll over, fumbling for the device and quickly shutting it off. My average reaction time is about 5 seconds.
I return to a comfortable position and cold-start my brain. I commence a thousand calculations concerning my plans, classes, homework, and exactly how much time I have before I need to begin these things. I try to determine if I have even another 15 minutes of untapped sleeping time before I have to force myself to get up.
Whenever I manage it, I get up, grab my towel, and head to the showers. I brush my teeth while the old pipes fetch whatever is left of the warm water after the other 5 showers in the building have already had at it. This generally takes about 3 minutes.
After I shower, I sit around to dry off; I check my email, text my girlfriend, just about anything that comes to mind.
Donning my headphones, I grab my bag and head to the cafeteria. Once inside, I walk around trying to decide what my body can afford to consume since it's far too late in the day for their greasy breakfast. I sit by myself as always. As I eat, I watch people. I watch them talk, I watch them eat, I watch them study...
Creepy as it sounds, its fun to watch people. To see what they do, how they tick, how they interact. You learn a lot. Walking to class I'll see people absently passing me by, their tunnel vision fixed on their destination. The people here rise from their homes and come to their classes, taking off at dismissal to go back home or to work. The students walk briskly by on the way to their cars, classes, or dorms. There is little communication and other than ambient noise it seems like conversations are a rarity.
George Mason University has disappointed me. I was led to believe that college was a unifying experience where you get to see what it's like to be part of a larger community--a much larger network. I feel like I missed the memo where someone tells you that's not the case. Maybe it's just me and all of my friends going to other schools, but I haven't been part of a large group of friends since high school. What it seems to me is that everyone I know has one of those in college. I don't know... but I think it must be something about Mason. There aren't a lot of unifying factors with only about 28% of it's undergrad community living on campus, all of which are conveniently divided into literally 5 separate and autonomous living communities.
What I think is also contributing is going to be a little touchy.
Mason waves this massive banner over the university with a massive golden and embroidered "D" on the front. That, of course, is D for Diversity. George Mason doesn't hesitate to tell everyone it can that it is the most diverse university in the universe. You've got students here from every state and all over the world, which is great for something like the UN. But this poses a serious issue with building some sort of community. The colossal language, cultural, and identity barriers that diversity puts up alienates the entire student body. The ethnic clubs on campus further reinforce cultural identity, forming cliques and separating the interests of the students as a whole.
I realize it's important to find people you vibe with or whatever and it's certainly important to never forget or deny who you are... but I just think that with the sheer amount of differences we have with each other with our cultures and languages, it just seems like we're only defining the lines that form between us. I'm certainly not an expert on international relations or anthropology but there has to be some way to force things to get mixed up. I just simply don't see the students at Mason being able to come together because of something they all have in common.
I'm not saying anyone is better than anyone else or that anyone is discriminating or segregating, but I think that if you look at it psychologically and sociologically, people feel most comfortable in their own groups. With Mason already segregating students with its inordinate amount of commuter students compared to its on-campus students, there are so many lines drawn between us that we can all hardly call ourselves devout Patriots, much less a community. But I suppose I have to concede that it is in the same fashion we all call ourselves American. From a sociological standpoint, we don't draw these distinctions on purpose, it just kind of happens.
Okay, so maybe I pictured college to be this Athenian community of learning where people held seminars on the grassy lawns and students walked shoulder to shoulder having intelligent conversations and everyone stayed on campus to enjoy indie music and each other's company. Where people would go from dorm to dorm from open door to open door shaking hands and introducing themselves. A place where in 20 years you could meet someone from the same institution and be proud to have common ground.
Well George Mason is building new residence halls and parking decks over those grassy lawns.
Who knows maybe my thoughts and conclusions are unfounded based on an entirely limited scope of observation and maybe the limited enjoyment I'm getting is a direct result of what I'm putting into it. Maybe also colleges everywhere are like this. Maybe since we're not all forced to be in the same school in the same classes with the same people for four years and forced to go to pep rallies and have school spirit we are finally allowed to break the mold and be our own people, forming our own tight-knit group based on close associations of commonalities and values.
I also think it would help to be somewhere where 84% of the student body doesn't drive away every night.
more to come on this subject I think.
My alarm cuts through the silence as I lie warmly in my bed. Disgusted, I roll over, fumbling for the device and quickly shutting it off. My average reaction time is about 5 seconds.
I return to a comfortable position and cold-start my brain. I commence a thousand calculations concerning my plans, classes, homework, and exactly how much time I have before I need to begin these things. I try to determine if I have even another 15 minutes of untapped sleeping time before I have to force myself to get up.
Whenever I manage it, I get up, grab my towel, and head to the showers. I brush my teeth while the old pipes fetch whatever is left of the warm water after the other 5 showers in the building have already had at it. This generally takes about 3 minutes.
After I shower, I sit around to dry off; I check my email, text my girlfriend, just about anything that comes to mind.
Donning my headphones, I grab my bag and head to the cafeteria. Once inside, I walk around trying to decide what my body can afford to consume since it's far too late in the day for their greasy breakfast. I sit by myself as always. As I eat, I watch people. I watch them talk, I watch them eat, I watch them study...
Creepy as it sounds, its fun to watch people. To see what they do, how they tick, how they interact. You learn a lot. Walking to class I'll see people absently passing me by, their tunnel vision fixed on their destination. The people here rise from their homes and come to their classes, taking off at dismissal to go back home or to work. The students walk briskly by on the way to their cars, classes, or dorms. There is little communication and other than ambient noise it seems like conversations are a rarity.
George Mason University has disappointed me. I was led to believe that college was a unifying experience where you get to see what it's like to be part of a larger community--a much larger network. I feel like I missed the memo where someone tells you that's not the case. Maybe it's just me and all of my friends going to other schools, but I haven't been part of a large group of friends since high school. What it seems to me is that everyone I know has one of those in college. I don't know... but I think it must be something about Mason. There aren't a lot of unifying factors with only about 28% of it's undergrad community living on campus, all of which are conveniently divided into literally 5 separate and autonomous living communities.
What I think is also contributing is going to be a little touchy.
Mason waves this massive banner over the university with a massive golden and embroidered "D" on the front. That, of course, is D for Diversity. George Mason doesn't hesitate to tell everyone it can that it is the most diverse university in the universe. You've got students here from every state and all over the world, which is great for something like the UN. But this poses a serious issue with building some sort of community. The colossal language, cultural, and identity barriers that diversity puts up alienates the entire student body. The ethnic clubs on campus further reinforce cultural identity, forming cliques and separating the interests of the students as a whole.
I realize it's important to find people you vibe with or whatever and it's certainly important to never forget or deny who you are... but I just think that with the sheer amount of differences we have with each other with our cultures and languages, it just seems like we're only defining the lines that form between us. I'm certainly not an expert on international relations or anthropology but there has to be some way to force things to get mixed up. I just simply don't see the students at Mason being able to come together because of something they all have in common.
I'm not saying anyone is better than anyone else or that anyone is discriminating or segregating, but I think that if you look at it psychologically and sociologically, people feel most comfortable in their own groups. With Mason already segregating students with its inordinate amount of commuter students compared to its on-campus students, there are so many lines drawn between us that we can all hardly call ourselves devout Patriots, much less a community. But I suppose I have to concede that it is in the same fashion we all call ourselves American. From a sociological standpoint, we don't draw these distinctions on purpose, it just kind of happens.
Okay, so maybe I pictured college to be this Athenian community of learning where people held seminars on the grassy lawns and students walked shoulder to shoulder having intelligent conversations and everyone stayed on campus to enjoy indie music and each other's company. Where people would go from dorm to dorm from open door to open door shaking hands and introducing themselves. A place where in 20 years you could meet someone from the same institution and be proud to have common ground.
Well George Mason is building new residence halls and parking decks over those grassy lawns.
Who knows maybe my thoughts and conclusions are unfounded based on an entirely limited scope of observation and maybe the limited enjoyment I'm getting is a direct result of what I'm putting into it. Maybe also colleges everywhere are like this. Maybe since we're not all forced to be in the same school in the same classes with the same people for four years and forced to go to pep rallies and have school spirit we are finally allowed to break the mold and be our own people, forming our own tight-knit group based on close associations of commonalities and values.
I also think it would help to be somewhere where 84% of the student body doesn't drive away every night.
more to come on this subject I think.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Life Starts Now for Three Days Grace
Post-grunge was society’s way of dealing with all of the raw angst that grunge didn’t have the chance to deal with... because it died. Three Days Grace’s self-titled 2003 debut was hailed as flawless by critics, celebrated by moshing metal-heads, and adored by middle-schoolers with a little too much hatred for their parents. To be fair, Three Days Grace was consistent from track to track with emotional, relatable lyrics and tight guitar-work. With emo anthems like “Just Like You” and “I Hate Everything About You,” how can you go wrong?
Three Days Grace’s sophomore effort, One-X was a solid follow-up according to the reviews and displayed a polished sound that was just as angry and powerful as before with such headbangers as “Riot” and “Animal I Have Become.” Three Days Grace experimented on this album with lower tempos and more variety in the dynamics, something they had done particularly well.
Unfortunately, with their follow up Life Starts Now, Three Days Grace’s critics aren’t as forgiving when they saw that the band has a serious case of the Linkin Park. You know, those bands who gained popularity with the tween crowds in the early 2000s who can’t seem to write a single happy song.
The first track on Life Starts Now, “Bitter Taste,” has traditional Three Days Grace style with its strong chorus and overall anger; makes one wonder when lead singer Adam Gontier is going to find someone who doesn’t hurt his fragile heart. Songs like “Goin Down”, “World So Cold”, and “Life Starts Now” are really just space-fillers that don’t seem to contribute much of anything. It’s not hard to predict what their subject nature are—heartbreak and anger.
The first single, “Break” is your classic Three Days Grace which would just be a song about advocating angsty preteen rebellion. The first half of the song is fine but the line “At night I feel like a vampire” made the rest of the song unlistenable on principle.
Songs like “Lost in You”, “The Good Life”, and “No More” are musical contradictions whose lyrics don’t really match up with the songs too well with the latter leaving the audience wonder just how much pain one can actually write about.
“Last to Know” is the album’s magnum opus with a lovely piano intro leading slowly into an electric interlude. Here, Gontier shows his true voice and ability with some lovely falsetto moments.
Overall the album was good and what is expected from Three Days Grace, but it still leaves one to start to wonder how long Adam Gontier can hate life for. Who is his audience? Those stuck in permanent angst? When Three Days Grace mature in content? But then again, I guess if you cant vocalize your frustration in music, where can you do it?
Can't think of a good pun for Life starts now. Maybe... wow now that this review is done, Life starts now. Lame.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Race to Witch Mountain
You may be asking yourself "Why, Dylan? Why?"
Well I came back to my Dad's house this weekend and I catch him and his girlfriend watching it because for some reason, they rented it. I'm not going to review the whole movie, just say some of the thoughts I had.
First, it's the story about two aliens who crash land on earth that look surprisingly like Hitler's Youth and talk with painfully proper English. You know, the kind that we would WANT our kids to learn and speak. Anyway, they land in Vegas since all aliens crash land in the mid-west and get in Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's cab. Long story short, they have to get back to their ship at Witch Mountain and get home.
So some stereotypes:
1. Aliens can assume the forms of humans (if they aren't already appearing as such).
2. Aliens have way more advanced technology and intelligence (since they have not only mastered long-distance space-travel but also know how to utilize their brains so they can do nutty stuff like telekinesis).
3. The government when faced with a flux of aliens no matter how large or small will do anything in it's power and seemingly unlimited resources to track, hunt, capture, and slice open the aliens from orifice to orifice to see what kind of green goo oozes from their bellies.
4. The government has unlimited resources and infinite nameless soldiers and guys in white lab coats.
5. Mankind is always in jeopardy and it takes not the cooperative effort of every human on the planet, but the reckless persistence of one seemingly ordinary and preposterously buff super-action hero.
Suffice it to say, I felt like I was watching the same Disney alien movie that had been packaged in different wrapping. I'm just tired of these alien movies that depict the government as a crazy black-suit organization that wants to cut up whatever it can find. I would think that the good doctor with a scalpel standind over the sedated alien (who I assume has a PhD in something related to space, aliens, or medicine) would think to himself, "Why don't we save the cutting for after we ask the aliens how to travel long distances in space and use telekinesis?"
I like to think that Obama would not only sit down to have a rational talk with the aliens, but offer them jobs and healthcare as well.
Well I came back to my Dad's house this weekend and I catch him and his girlfriend watching it because for some reason, they rented it. I'm not going to review the whole movie, just say some of the thoughts I had.
First, it's the story about two aliens who crash land on earth that look surprisingly like Hitler's Youth and talk with painfully proper English. You know, the kind that we would WANT our kids to learn and speak. Anyway, they land in Vegas since all aliens crash land in the mid-west and get in Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's cab. Long story short, they have to get back to their ship at Witch Mountain and get home.
So some stereotypes:
1. Aliens can assume the forms of humans (if they aren't already appearing as such).
2. Aliens have way more advanced technology and intelligence (since they have not only mastered long-distance space-travel but also know how to utilize their brains so they can do nutty stuff like telekinesis).
3. The government when faced with a flux of aliens no matter how large or small will do anything in it's power and seemingly unlimited resources to track, hunt, capture, and slice open the aliens from orifice to orifice to see what kind of green goo oozes from their bellies.
4. The government has unlimited resources and infinite nameless soldiers and guys in white lab coats.
5. Mankind is always in jeopardy and it takes not the cooperative effort of every human on the planet, but the reckless persistence of one seemingly ordinary and preposterously buff super-action hero.
Suffice it to say, I felt like I was watching the same Disney alien movie that had been packaged in different wrapping. I'm just tired of these alien movies that depict the government as a crazy black-suit organization that wants to cut up whatever it can find. I would think that the good doctor with a scalpel standind over the sedated alien (who I assume has a PhD in something related to space, aliens, or medicine) would think to himself, "Why don't we save the cutting for after we ask the aliens how to travel long distances in space and use telekinesis?"
I like to think that Obama would not only sit down to have a rational talk with the aliens, but offer them jobs and healthcare as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)