I have nothing inspiring to say.

I am still alive today.

My memory seems to be getting worse as time goes on. At times I wonder if this is why time seems to be speeding up for me.

I have an 18 mile run tomorrow. I am determined to make this run work. I’m trying a few new things tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens.

I am installing the armv7 cross compiler for the hp touchpad. I want to try to install a linux remote desktop client called ‘rdesktop’ on the touchpad.

The Knot

The walls rise high above, the tension palpable. Before me lies my goal, the reason for my existence, what I must do in order to survive. I remember to focus, before I lose sight of my reason for being here. As I progress towards to center, I think of all those who are counting on me, all those who cheer for me in their own way, and of course my family. If everything goes right, I can play a key role in furthering their amibitions today. The ground is rough. I must consider my moves as I approach. One false step and I will face a great fall. One, two, three steps, slowly but steady, I follow the path that has been laid out for me. As I reach the end, I feel all around me, allowing my senses to take in the surroundings. The liquid before me appears almost jewel-like. I find that as I take it, it coalesces around my mandibles and I find it easier to carry. Slowly, I continue along the densly trodden path back to my colony, back to my home and to my queen. As I leave the knot, I realize I will return some day, but when that may be is something I shall only know on that day.

The other day I started wondering about the continuing relevancy of Superman (the DC comic hero, not the Übermensch) as an American cultural icon. Historically, the character was first realized in a 1938 comic magazine immediately following the brunt of the Great Depression. He was seen as having a “strong moral compass,” and as “someone who could fight the crooked politicians and businessmen.” The character in itself is fairly generic, representing the desire for power and vanity typical of the male sex. The genre is paralleled with great monetary effect by a focus on the ‘shounen’ demographic in the Japanese anime and manga industry:

So, it appears that the government is going to shut down tomorrow. Apparently, the powers that be have decided they can’t come to an agreement on how to fund the government for the rest of the year.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that not everyone involved with this situation has thought it through. In the end, life must go on and this country must move forward. However, the pending process seems a bit counter-intuitive as eventually someone will have to back down and compromise. Obviously, we’d save a whole lot of time and money if they just did it now instead of two weeks from now.

My head hurts. Today marks the first time in a long time that I’ve had a migraine with visual aura. Just my luck, I suppose—another in a long line of gifts from my parents. There isn’t a lot you can do in this situation to alleviate the pain other than sleep. I guess there’s probably some medication, or even some spiritual meditation that I could do, but I’m a bit too ignorant for those. I’m also fairly anti-medication unless you absolutely need it. So, what do I choose to do instead? Write. Yup, that’s correct. I choose to write when my head feels like I’ve been listening to loud music all day. Though, I suppose I can’t blame it all on my parents. They say that stress can cause all sorts of problems like migraines and headaches. Well that’s a relief; perhaps I’m not actually defective. If you just figured out via implication that I’m under a bit of stress, then two points for you.

Well, it turns out that Feb. 11 was the big day.

After about 18 days of protests, they finally got what they wanted. Mubarak has stepped down, and given control of the country to the “supreme military council”. However, I find it interesting to note how the regime has acted as we got to this point. What follows below is strictly my own recall of the events as they unfolded over the past two weeks. I want to write my thoughts here so that I can remember them for the future.

I’ve been watching fairly intently the recent protests in Egypt. It seemed (for me) that the earlier uprising in Tunisia was out of the blue. Granted, I don’t exactly pay very close attention to domestic issues inside other countries…

Regardless, I find revolution to be an interesting topic. Given that the U.S. was borne from revolution, its citizens tend to take an extreme interest in similar events around the world. We all decry autocratic regimes and call for revolt at the first sounds of corruption or grievance, and then love to point out conspiracies by those in power at the first sounds of revolution. It’s all great fun.

After watching Obama’s SOTU, I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about regulation. Specifically, I wanted to point out to him that I can understand the argument that regulations can be bad in certain cases.

One of the problems is that regulation is slow to change. It’s meant specifically to handle one set of problems. During the evolution of any system, the regulation continues to only solve that one problem. The only way to fix this is to update the regulation. Here is where it got a bit interesting. I compared writing regulation to writing software.

I might as well pose this question, as it has been on my mind for a while now. Sure, the answer is not necessarily cut and dry. However, there are definitely specific characteristics which could be considered necessary.

Of course, we’ve studied ad infinitum governmental aspects. Countries run by monarchies and despots don’t typically last forever, as our history has shown. Tentatively, it appears that we’re on to something with this (actually age-old) concept of democracy. This aside, however, I come to the real purpose for this post, and that is …

Humility. Some say that it is necessary for enlightenment. I wonder though; many people in this world live very one dimensional lives. They go to work, do their jobs, come home, take care of their children, and repeat the next day. They don’t have any money to live out their dreams. Better yet, they may have in fact belonged to families where superfluous thought wasn’t encouraged.

I don’t necessarily see the acquisition of humility in our society encouraged, but I wonder if it would really even make a difference if it was. I think that the need arises when people undergo some forms of mental exercise which benefit from its presence. We always forget though, that “normal” in our world usually involves leading fairly boring lives, where half of it is spent suffering, and the other half trying to make it better.