Musings of a Compulsive Thinker

Pleasant Things

A light rain shower falls while the sun still shines, and rainbows reflect in every droplet of water clinging to the leaves.

Receiving a genuine compliment.

Hot cocoa and clothes fresh from the dryer after you've been out in cold, wet weather.

The first blooming flower buds in spring.

The sun shining on white mountains and frosted trees the morning after a snow.

You tell a joke and your audience laughs sincerely.

Your dog is overjoyed to see you when you get home.

You secretly admire someone from a distance, and they greet you with a smile -- the warm, happy feeling you get inside.

You give someone a gift, and they are genuinely pleased.

A hot shower after a long, hard day of work.

Waking up in the morning feeling refreshed instead of tired and weary.

The gentle rocking of a boat in small waves.

Waking up on a fine morning from a pleasant dream, and realizing you have no appointments to keep.

The satisfaction of a completed job well done.

Comforting words from a friend when you need comforting.

Rain after a dry spell.

You say something to make someone smile.

Discovering the solution to a difficult riddle after much thought and deliberation.

A bird singing in a snow-covered tree, to remind you that winter is not eternal.

The end of the workday on the last day of the week, heralding the start of the weekend.

A day off.

The feeling of elation after you win a contest.

A beautiful work of art.

The soft, contented purring of a cat when you scratch lightly behind its ears. It turns its head to press harder into your hand, enjoying the attention.

A cooling breeze, just enough to ruffle your hair, on a hot day.

The sun shining through a break in the clouds after a rainstorm.

The graceful air you feel when you put on elegant clothes.

You are expecting an unpleasant chore and learn that you don't need to do it after all.

The joyful tolling of church bells after a wedding.

Seeing loved ones or old friends that you haven't seen in a long time, and sharing fond memories.

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Labels: everyday, ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 1:22 PM 0 Comments

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Martin A. Schwartz wrote a thought-provoking essay on how scientific research makes us feel "stupid" and why that's perfectly OK. He shares an anecdote from his days as a PhD student, in which he came across a question that no one could give him the answer to. "That's when it hit me," he writes. "That's why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve... The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can."

That is a foundational idea in scientific research. As Schwartz puts it, "Science involves confronting our 'absolute stupidity'. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown." The scientific process (ask a question, form a hypothesis, test your hypothesis, and draw conclusions) is being "stupid" in a productive way. "Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time... The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries."

In summary: going through the scientific process = productive stupidity. Or, as in the titular quote of this post, "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." That wonderful gem is from Irish writer and Nobel prizewinner Samuel Beckett, who clearly understood that we learn best by trial and error; whether or not we ever reach our original goal is relatively unimportant, as long as we clear up some of our stupidity along the way.

Read Schwartz's full essay: "The importance of stupidity in scientific research"

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Labels: engineering, philosophy, ponderings, science

posted by the alygator @ 10:33 AM 0 Comments

Around the world with a shoebox

I don't remember where I found this prompt, but it struck me as an interesting question: "If you were given a free plane ticket around the world and a single shoebox for luggage, what would you pack?"

The shrewd, calculating side of my brain immediately responded, "Define 'luggage.' If the shoebox is my 'carry-on,' do I get a 'personal item' like a purse or a backpack as well?"

If the answer to that question were to be "yes," well, that really kind of takes all the fun out of it. For the sake of discussion, then, let's say that anything I take with me (barring the clothes on my back) must fit in this shoebox. Obviously, I can't bring everything I would need; I would be able to purchase and discard most things along the way. So what would I wish to have on this trip that is (a) small enough to fit in a shoebox, and (b) expensive and/or difficult to obtain?

After some thought, I think that my shoebox "priority" items would be the following:

Passport
Wallet (including the usual ID, credit cards, etc.)
Cash
Contact lenses and/or glasses
Digital camera (with an extra memory card)

Extra space might go to my Neti pot, and a couple of extra pairs of clean underwear and socks.

I'm ready to see the world!

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Labels: imagine yourself here, ponderings, travel

posted by the alygator @ 1:13 PM 0 Comments

The Omnivore's Hundred

This list comes from the Very Good Taste blog. As per the given instructions, I have bolded all the items I’ve eaten, and crossed out any items that I would never consider eating.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding - I am repulsed by the very idea of this.
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes - Home-brewed mulled apple mead, courtesy of Matt.
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper - I like my taste buds just the way they are, thanks.
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal - What's the point of eating something if your tongue is scorched after the first bite?
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu (pufferfish)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette - I almost crossed this off, but 'never say never'... right?
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini - I've had both, but not together
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill - It would have to be extremely fresh roadkill.
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie - Food of the gods, seriously.
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a 3-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

How much of an omnivore are you?

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Labels: everyday, food, my future, ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 5:29 PM 3 Comments

The future is now?

Reading this article in a recent issue of Technology Review, I had to stop and think that (a) some people have really been weirdly accurate in their visions of the future, and (b) we might be able to live under Their umbrella in blissful denial and/or ignorance, but Big Brother is here and They might be more powerful than we like to think. (And that, right there, is a frightening and thorny dissertation for some other time.)

Quoting MIT professor Robert Fano, 1970:
"Computers provide access to knowledge, and knowledge is power... Big Brother may well take the form of a computerized and centralized information system which has become essential to the operation of society. Thus, the societal exploitation of computers... may continue on the automation of existing functions in human organizations, with a concomitant centralization of information and control... [which] leads to the evolution of organizations into superhuman entities with their own goals, largely insensitive to human values."

Of course, the flip side of this argument is, as Fano explained, that "societal exploitation of computers" could take the opposite direction, toward "turning the power of computers to the service of the individual." His main point was a warning: "Unless computers are made truly accessible to the population at large, there will develop a dangerous power gap between those who have access to computers and those who have not, and particularly between organizations -- whether public or private -- and the private citizen."

I think it's important to recognize the current reality of both of Fano's visions for the future. With that in mind, it's also important to note that by the very nature of the Internet, and the resultant collaborative sharing (or not) of information -- privacy rights, for example, and how private your on-line information actually is -- our situation is still growing and changing as society adapts new technology to its own ends in various ways.

(Full article: "Community Access," by Matt Mahoney >>)

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Labels: everyday, ponderings, science

posted by the alygator @ 2:04 PM 0 Comments

The technological singularity: future or fantasy?

Over the weekend, I read this fascinating series of articles in the June 2008 issue of IEEE Spectrum, addressing the concept of the "technological singularity" which some say will happen by the year 2030. Spectrum executive editor Glenn Zorpette describes it thus:

"The singularity is supposed to begin shortly after engineers build the first computer with greater-than-human intelligence. That achievement will trigger a series of cycles in which superintelligent machines beget even smarter machine progeny, going from generation to generation in weeks or days rather than decades or years. The availability of all that cheap, mass-­produced brilliance will spark explosive economic growth, an unending, hypersonic, tech­no­industrial rampage that by comparison will make the Industrial Revolution look like a bingo game." (Full article >>)

Some believe that this singularity will lead, in short order, to a kind of technological rapture. One of the skeptics, science journalist John Horgan, describes this view flippantly, but not inaccurately:

"Like paradise, technological singularity comes in many versions, but most involve bionic brain boosting. At first, we'll become cyborgs, as stupendously powerful brain chips soup up our perception, memory, and intelligence and maybe even eliminate the need for annoying TV remotes. Eventually, we will abandon our flesh-and-blood selves entirely and upload our digitized psyches into computers. We will then dwell happily forever in cyberspace where, to paraphrase Woody Allen, we'll never need to look for a parking space... Notably, singularity enthusiasts tend to be computer specialists, such as the author and retired computer scientist Vernor Vinge... and the entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil. Intoxicated by the explosive progress of information technologies captured by Moore's Law, such singularitarians foresee a 'merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence,' as Kurzweil puts it, that will culminate in 'immortal software-based humans.' It will happen not within a millennium, or a century, but no later than 2030, according to Vinge... Kurzweil says he has adopted an antiaging regimen so that he'll 'live long enough to live forever.'" (Full article >>)

Researcher John Casti, however, foresees the singularity going in the opposite direction:

"I think it's scientifically and philosophically on sound footing. The only real issue for me is the time frame over which the singularity will unfold. [The singularity represents] the end of the supremacy of Homo sapiens as the dominant species on planet Earth. At that point a new species appears, and humans and machines will go their separate ways, not merge one with the other. I do not believe this necessarily implies a malevolent machine takeover; rather, machines will become increasingly uninterested in human affairs just as we are uninterested in the affairs of ants or bees. But it's more likely than not in my view that the two species will comfortably and more or less peacefully coexist -- unless human interests start to interfere with those of the machines." (Full article >>)

Here, then, is a view of a different kind of singularity (which is, in my opinion, a more plausible one), as proposed by MIT robotics professor Rodney Brooks:

"My own view is that things will unfold very differently... an artificial intelligence could evolve in a much different way. In particular, I don't think there is going to be one single sudden technological 'big bang' that springs [a human-level artificial intelligence, or AI] into 'life.' Starting with the mildly intelligent systems we have today, machines will become gradually more intelligent, generation by generation. The singularity will be a period, not an event.

"This period will encompass a time when we will invent, perfect, and deploy, in fits and starts, ever more capable systems, driven not by the imperative of the singularity itself but by the usual economic and sociological forces. Eventually, we will create truly artificial intelligences, with cognition and consciousness recognizably similar to our own. I have no idea how, exactly, this creation will come about. I also don't know when it will happen, although I strongly suspect it won't happen before 2030, the year that some singularitarians predict.

"But I expect the [AIs] of the future -- embodied, for example, as robots that will roam our homes and workplaces -- to emerge gradually and symbiotically with our society. At the same time, we humans will transform ourselves. We will incorporate a wide range of advanced sensory devices and prosthetics to enhance our bodies. As our machines become more like us, we will become more like them." (Full article >>)

The questions are many; the speculation runs rampant. Will machines ever be as smart as humans? Will they ever achieve "consciousness"? Will they be our helpers, our caretakers, our overseers? Eventually, time will tell -- assuming that the human race doesn't first undergo some kind of cataclysmic event (e.g., an Andromeda strain, a nuclear holocaust, extraterrestrial enslavement, the Biblical end of days, etc.).

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Labels: engineering, my future, philosophy, ponderings, science

posted by the alygator @ 11:24 AM 1 Comments

Once More to the Lake

Summertime, cool morning air, the idyllic lake surrounded by towering trees: this is one of those iconic, near-perfect experiences which, once passed, we wish could have stretched for just a little longer.

"I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen ... as I was always the first up I would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along the shore in the long shadows of the pines. I remembered being very careful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral."

(excerpt: "Once More to the Lake" - E.B. White, 1941)

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Labels: imagine yourself here, literature, ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 1:39 PM 0 Comments

Culinary excellence

A little while ago, I had the opportunity to enjoy dinner at the Flagstaff House Restaurant here in Boulder. I was impressed by many things: the location, the food, the service. This was a dining establishment the likes of which I had never experienced previously, and it may be a long time before I do so again.

The one thing which struck me most, however, was our waiter; he was a perfect gentleman, and unlike any waiter I had ever encountered in real life. Maybe "handler" was a better descriptor for his role. Regardless, what really impressed me was his commentary on every single menu selection we made: "Excellent." I'd say, "I'd like the quail, please," and he'd respond with, "Excellent." My sister would say, "Can I have the rabbit loin?" and he'd reply, "Excellent." Every single time. It seemed so very high-society, and sort of quaint in a very classy way.

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Labels: food, imagine yourself here, ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 12:04 AM 0 Comments

Wanderlust

I've got it bad. I have always romanticized the adventure of traveling: cruising down the open highway, rolling across the country over railroad tracks, making a brand new journey. Perhaps this is part of the reason that I prefer not to travel by jetliner; on the road or on a train, you get a real sense that you're actually traveling. I love looking out the window and discovering a new panorama at every moment. I want to freeze every one of those moments and remember it, treasure it, because who knows when I might pass this way again; for each moment I have experienced, every place I've ever been, one thing remains true: I came, I saw, I moved on. And while it's nice to slow down, maybe even stop for a while and really experience a place, I want to keep moving, because there's something new another mile down the road, around the next bend.

Every single time I cross a set of railroad tracks, see a train, hear a train engine's horn, I want to follow those tracks, I want to catch that train and see where it takes me. Interstate highways are a perpetual temptation; I usually manage to curb the impulse, and I pull off at my planned exit and go wherever it was that I meant to go, but I always think, What if I just kept going? San Francisco, here I come. Or Cheyenne, or Chicago, or Albuquerque, or whatever else may lie ahead.

The open road: the steady hum of the engine, the rhythmic rumble of pavement under the wheels, milemarkers ticking away the distance, an endless stream of asphalt stretching ahead and behind, land spread out wide all around. Every now and then I find that I have come unexpectedly into a moment that is almost a kind of nirvana; in those moments of near-perfection, I could just keep following that road, going onward forever.

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Labels: everyday, imagine yourself here, ponderings, travel

posted by the alygator @ 5:56 PM 1 Comments

Go Montana!

This kind of thing gives me hope that my constitutional rights are still relevant.

From the Washington Post (full article >>):

"Montana officials are warning that if the Supreme Court rules in the D.C. gun ban case that the right to keep and bear arms protects only state-run militias like the National Guard, then the federal government will have breached Montana's statehood contract.

"Nobody is raising flags for the Republic of Montana, but nobody is kidding, either."

If it comes to a Republic of Montana vs. a Big Brother kind of America, well, I know which side of the border I'll choose. I'd rather not leave my personal safety and that of my family in the hands of someone else, especially in light of the legal implication that the police are not obligated to protect the citizenry. Also, I can't afford to hire a personal bodyguard.

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Labels: everyday, my future, ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 12:27 PM 0 Comments

Sunrise over the Nevada desert

Once upon a winter morning, in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, I come to realize that the desert can be startlingly beautiful in its own way.

There is a hint of the pink-tinged, gold-warmed edge of dawn in the sharp, cool, dry brand-new-morning air. Dusty white frost powders the scrub brush, clinging low to the packed, sandy earth; sparse and brown-green, sagey, yellowed, the brush has a marathoner's wiry robustness, scrappy and thin like the deep, hidden water that the desert so jealously hoards. Thin, delicate sprites of clouds hang wispily around the mountaintops, the kind that burn away before the dry warmth of day. The sun works up slowly, hardly enough for warmth but enough to paint the brown, gullied mountains in a sweet, sugary, candied-fruit shade of orange-pink. It glimmers, shimmers, little baby heatwaves illusioning through the raspy dry air. Thin ice barely covers the green creek that winds in that corrosive, sinewy, side-twisting way through the painstakingly eroded gully in the flat spread of land ahead of the foothills. A low, single-wire fence gives substance to some hypothetical line through the desert; the fence is no taller than the scrubs, just man's attempt to toe a line in the shifting sands, no good hindrance to anything save a few plodding cattle and the uprooted vagrant tumbleweeds.

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Labels: imagine yourself here, ponderings, travel

posted by the alygator @ 10:40 AM 0 Comments

Appalachian mornings

A typical early morning in the Appalachian Mountains has its own slow, distinct charm. A wide, still river slides placidly along beneath its shroud of mist; vaporous fingers trail languidly through the reeds along the water's edge, silent over the marshy ground, settling stealthily into the hollows -- lying in wait, perhaps, or merely in molasses-thick lethargy. Thin white mist floats over a dirt lane, fills the fresh-plowed furrows in the quiet fields, hangs like smoke under the trees, swirling in the low spots between the worn hills like an old banjo tune. The morning light is soft and diffuse in the solid humidity pooling near the ground, blanketing but not quite touching, hovering shadow-like, light and airy, between gravity and evanescence, smoking down out of the slowly warming air.

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Labels: imagine yourself here, ponderings, travel

posted by the alygator @ 9:45 AM 0 Comments

I went to Salt Lake City and all I got was...

- Dry, irritated eyes and nasal membranes (really, their air quality isn't great)
- Bigger sleep deficit (Discovery Channel in the hotel, and not sleeping in my own bed)
- Up-front, standing-room-only view of Chris Sharma's awesome whipper off the top crux move of the USA Climbing men's national final route
- Bad case of nerves from seeing a bunch of tractor-trailers and RVs blown sideways off of I-80 by strong cross-winds in Wyoming
- A new perspective on pantry management

It's really the last item that I'm here to talk about. When we were in town in late January, the local supermarket chain Macey's was having their annual "Family Preparedness Sale." They were advertising great sale prices on gallon-deep cans, five-gallon buckets, and ten-pound (and larger) sacks of freeze-dried blueberries, dried beans, rolled oats, cracked wheat berries, instant milk powder, powdered eggs, and myriad other items, pretty much all you could hope for.

I don't have anything against Mormons personally; I'm not going to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't believe. However, there are two things I really admire about the whole Mormon culture: this preparedness thing (if the apocalypse ever comes, the world will be rebuilt afterward by Mormons, and by fortified back-country mountain folk and the paranoid freaks who have fully-stocked fallout shelters in their back yards), and their work ethic. There's a lot to be said for a serious work ethic, too.

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Labels: everyday, food, philosophy, ponderings, travel

posted by the alygator @ 8:26 AM 0 Comments

Bones and My Future?

I am just fascinated by skeletal structure, joints, bone tissue: individual bones, and how they all fit together. Human bones are especially fascinating, maybe because I can identify with the subject matter. I love studying x-ray images. I have a segment of a bison spine in the big freezer in the garage; it's been out there for over a year, and I still need to clean and sterilize it, but it's there for when I find the time, and eventually it will be something cool to display on my desk. (I lobbied to gain custody of a humerus or femur as well, but they've been reserved for the dog.) The myriad times I've been in physical therapy, I pestered my therapists with questions about anatomy and joint structure, bone mineralization, cartilage, scar tissue, muscle attachments, ligaments, etc.

Bones are cool.

I have concluded that I will very likely continue my education; the biomedical field is one of two likely areas of study (the other being air quality and/or environmental policy). Should I go the biomedical route, I suspect I'll end up doing something bone-related. On the far engineering side of that field, there are narrower areas such as bone fracture mechanics, material properties and mineral composition of different types of bone, and orthopedic implants. Another area that I've started thinking about in the last two weeks is physical anthropology; there, I could specialize in anthropometry, forensic identification, musculoskeletal adaptations in certain groups of people (such as increased calcification around the knuckles of rock climbers), or something like that.

So, bones. Yep. They're fascinating ("cool"). (I'd really like to get a replica human femur or humerus to keep on my desk. Vertebrae are also nifty.)

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Labels: my future, ponderings, science

posted by the alygator @ 10:11 PM 0 Comments

Zen for geeks

I used to write a lot of poetry. This was something I scribbled on paper a couple of years ago. I came across it the other day, and just reading it left me with a pleasantly relaxed mindset.

It's untitled, but I like to think of it as a kind of poetical zen (for geeks, and other people who think too much).


I could spend hours
right here,
lying among the flowers,
breathing in the air:
sheer, sunlit atmosphere.
Breathe deep --
the flowers love to share --
and worries lose hold
on the edge of sleep,
as if this fresh earth smell,
both new and old,
is some chemical debonder
of stress;
it soothes as it wanders,
permeating
and percolating
with feather-light caress,
until every care
diffuses through the shell
of my skin, to the air,
to be lost, finally,
inconsequently.
If I wait
a long, long time, maybe
it will permeate
all of me;
and I just might
sublimate
and float away,
my very DNA
taking flight
to come apart
sequentially,
the tiny atoms of my heart
mingling with the atmosphere
to be Breathed,
essentially,
through the very lungs of Earth,
my double-helix unwreathed
in a kind of rebirth;
and fade to black,
from whence I came,
lacking form to hold my name --
carbon to oxygen and back.

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Labels: imagine yourself here, literature, philosophy, ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 3:33 PM 0 Comments

So much for the new habit...

I have failed miserably in my goal to post here at least once every week. In my defense, I've been working full-time all summer. But now I'm back to school, perhaps for the last semester of my academic career (but let's not think about the implications of that quite yet), and I'm hoping to have a little more free time in which to indulge my blogging.

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Labels: ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 3:04 PM 0 Comments

'Tis the season

The season for big undertakings, I suppose. In August I will finally take the train trip that I've been planning for at least the last 7 years. This week my dad will depart on a 30-day backcountry hiking expedition across the Colorado mountains. One of my sisters is currently vacationing in Hawaii; the other one is on the way home after competing in the USA Climbing youth national championships.

Why do we travel this time of year? This is when everybody takes the big family vacation, while the kids are out of school. Popular destinations are a zoo during the summer. The rest of us, logically, should therefore prefer to do most of our travelling outside of the peak season... but we don't. We follow the crowd, and then we complain about how crowded it is. People are such silly creatures.

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Labels: ponderings, travel

posted by the alygator @ 4:22 PM 0 Comments

Blogging as a habit

I've heard that if you do something 25 or so days in a row it becomes a habit. Now, I think that expecting to make a blog post every day (especially considering the fact that I maintain more than one blog) is unreasonable. As we can all see from my previous posts, it has been rather a sporadic thing on my part. However, I would like to change that. I have also heard it said that the more you write, the better your writing becomes; this seems like an acceptable forum in which to practice. And so I shall.

I am stating here and now that it is my goal to post to this blog at least once every week.

Starting now.

Feel free to send me nasty emails or snide comments if I fail to meet this goal.

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Labels: ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 10:54 AM 0 Comments

The Alygator Show

Have you ever had the feeling that you're on TV and no one told you? I have this feeling frequently. Sometimes I'm half-convinced that my life is a strange reality show; at these times I think it's more fun to suspect and speculate than to know for sure.

Once in a while, when I'm home by myself, I might think of something amusing and start laughing for no apparent reason. (Really, I crack myself up sometimes.) Then I'll have that "I have an audience" feeling, and I feel obliged to explain, out loud, to anyone who may or may not be listening, what was so funny.

Yeah, I know I'm crazy.

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Labels: everyday, ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 11:46 AM 0 Comments

Row, row, row your boat

I work, and I study, and I make small talk with various acquaintances over coffee or breakfast or a game of cards; and sometimes, like now, I wonder what all of my efforts are leading to.

Oh, of course, I have these pretty ideas in my head of a nice house and a picket fence and 2.5 kids and a dog, but I suppose nothing on this earth is guaranteed. Sometimes that thought can be a little bit depressing, but this time (and some other times) it makes me sit back and realize, once again, that I am completely in God's hands, no matter what may or may not happen; and that makes me feel a little hopeful and a little apprehensive, but mostly I am at peace with the simple fact that God has a plan and he knows what he's doing.

Some people liken this to being adrift at sea; the analogy is that we, the sailor, have no control over where the boat is going, but simply must take what is thrown at us by the wind and the waves, keeping in mind that God will guide our boat where he means it to go.

I don't like that analogy. As an admitted control freak and amateur philosopher, I find it hard to accept that we play no part in sailing our own boats. Rather, I like to think that we have cast off with a fully functioning rudder and oars and sails, but with an incomplete map of the sea. We may have a destination in mind, or at least navigation check-points that we mean to reach during the course of our journey; we may have a timetable we wish to keep. But we are working from this incomplete map and from our imperfect knowledge of the sea and its hidden intricacies, so we can never know with absolute certainty what path we will follow to our final destination. Sometimes we will sail with the prevailing winds; sometimes we will struggle to tack in a different direction; sometimes we will be caught up in a current that we cannot fight. Every decision we make will have some dependence on our navigational fix; if we want to see the journey through, we must strive to remain properly oriented. But after all, God will guide our boat where he means it to go, with or without our help.

As Thoreau wrote, "It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course."

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Labels: my future, philosophy, ponderings

posted by the alygator @ 1:08 PM 0 Comments