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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

	2008.06.25  12.32 I do not know how to be more sorry He hung himself. He was so happy to be anywhere new, doing anything new. He would lie SO flat up on the little bathroom window. He would coo at anyone he could see from the kitchen. He would play tag under the bathroom door. I let him hang himself. He loved the outside so much, I felt horrible keeping him caged inside forever. And so I bought him a noose - a harness - designed specifically to avoid this. He was such a chin cat. Ears cat. Belly cat. he would lie facing upwards and crawl using the bottom of the kitchen chairs. When he was little - so little ago - he would sleep on my pillow beside me. This morning, he didn't curl up into john's vacated spot in the bed. He didn't pose lion-king style on my chest to watch the bus. He won't welcome me home at the door. It already feels so wrong in this house. There is no more cooing. Instead I'm haunted by visions of him hanging there To the last second I thought the harness had worked. I jokingly called out to john to take a look and as I picked him up so much was wrong I'll never forget how it felt to pick him up I swear I felt a heartbeat just then, but he never took another breath I'm so sorry, Zeno. I'm so sorry for failing you. It was so preventable. I'm so broken right now. I've never dug a grave before. He was so beautiful, and had such a personality I raised him and it's my fault he died. I'm so sorry he was so young... cooing at you from above the kitchen cupboards meowling all night for attention catnaps with four paws right in the air two paws on your lap, watching you do absolutely anything Running laps of the house knocking over every damn unattended water glass licking window-mist, plastic bags, your entire hand... playing almost-fetch attempting somersaults whenever he saw you so happy. So much life in one little body. and then evaporated... into memories with a thin nylon rope I can't think about what I would give to take back such a horrible mistake I'm sorry if I am not the same for a while, my friends I've lost something more dear to me then I was able to recognize I'm sorry, Zeno. I love you so much.

	2008.05.25  23.36 I ran a marathon today. This is no longer a repository of life-changing thoughts and events, however I would like to post this just in case I stumble back upon this blog in future. I cut off my dreadlocks - I had them on, incidentally, for 420 days in total - about two weeks ago. Today I ran a marathon. I don't regret walking for a few kilometers in the middle, I don't regret the sunburn, and I don't regret forgetting to get my medal engraved all too much. I do, however, regret not running my marathon with my dreadlocks. Sure the wind-and-water in my hair was nice, but I didn't see a single other set all day. I am still coasting off my runner's high. I do enjoy my life :D

	2008.04.21  16.12 I realized just now, while doing some spring cleaning in the area of my bookshelf, that I am very happy as an an educated, left-leaning twenty-something. I'm happy to know that there are enough people that identify similarly to warrant a stereotype.

	2008.01.20  20.29 Erin just recently posted a question similar to the following and I thought it would be a good idea to mirror her request. What books, from any period in history, would you recommend for me to read? This upcoming term looks to be fairly relaxed and I have much to devour. -zoe-

	2007.10.22  22.09 I'm too busy to worry keeping up with friends. This only disturbs me when I have time to think about it. I really fundamentally enjoy creation. Doing what I'm doing is the best thing I imagine I could be doing for my psyche - this action focuses my restlessness, and I have sustained longer and more consistent periods of satisfaction than ever before. Unfortunately this way of life ultimately is vulnerable to the most obvious of attacks. Constant input/output is certainly a great way to feel alive and purposeful, which is the essence of humanity I precisely enjoy, but I'm finding it encourages a disposition against the dispassionate. I could easily be accused of self-confinement, of lost socialization, by those who prefer to define humanity in terms of the interactions it affords. I could be easily accused as a workaholic, but I have independently volunteered for every act I am subjected to every day. I prefer it over rest. I like expending this effort, barring a few catastrophic (and I'm realizing, absolutely necessary) fall outs. I love what my mind contains. I feel like I've reached a significant platform, instead of wandering about a conceptual haze. I by no means have the capability I would ultimately want, nor do I have any appreciable understanding of the world around me, but I feel like I am on my own solid footing for the first time since I was quite young. I can't put my finger on what I miss. Nearly every time I try to fill in this blank I end up disappointed. The most crucial point is that I allow myself to feel disappointment - historically speaking, a safe, self-centered haven for me. It might go beyond a lack of passion; I have recently found a number of very intellectual, passionate informed people very worth learning much about, however I'm finding it difficult to motivate myself to do so. Matching histories must not simply suffice; free thought isn't enough... what can you tell to people that have inferred everything you have already? What pleasure is there in comparing conclusions when every attempt amounts to comparing assumptions? I suppose this guarded nature is intrinsic to experience. Why are so few willing to throw themselves into something they love? Is this compromise so unappealing to most? Why don't people *pick* something to be passionate about, even just for the sake of feeling alive? I just got wind of some life-altering news that I have yet to openly announce because I'm not sure how. My parents don't know. Uttering the words will force an unspoken separation, it will further cement my chosen approach and further develop the caricature I imagine I've become to most that used to know me personally. But I feel so *good*. I don't get it. Music: Battles

	2007.05.24  10.46 Whoa. Okay I just had a great idea - the problem with linking consciousness to quantum effects is that of the scales involved - quantum effects should just be ironed out. Except, of course, when these quantum effects are resonant - like a swing, the timing and location of pushes directly determines how big the swing gets. So how do we characterize "well-timed" quantum influences? I need to learn more about the physics of the brain, but I know that using principles of concatenated error correction preserves larger-scale resonance. Yes, I said it. Error correction. Quantum systems have configurations that are self-correcting (if the system has an ideal state, minor deviations will correct itself given a little time); hierarchies of these systems would be stable and resonant at time lengths and spatial durations much larger than the characteristic scale of influence of a single quantum particle. Maybe consciousness is quantum resonance - and the molecular materials of our brains are self-correcting quantum systems. We should probably look at the electro-chemical processes of our brains and see if there's any similarities to the quantum error-correcting codes we've come up with over the past couple years. ALSO! Question: What, in your opinion, is the best suggestion for ending world poverty? ( I'll allow you to impose upon yourself any pragmatic restrictions. ) Music: Annihilator

	2007.05.15  16.49 Update from Mars Here are some things that have been buzzing around my brain lately. -How can we detach ourselves from classification by division? It seems that the largest difficulty we seem to have is in nonlinear thoughts - where things aren't just polarized between good/bad, left/right. Many suggestions for improving many such standard ways of thinking involve diversifying the relevant scales used to describe our thoughts - for example, arranging two sets of polar opposites as a compass - but this is simply shifting our one-dimensional thinking into two. The same problems emerge. It's all just a consequence of our comfort level with rules, I suppose - we like being able to be precise and accurate and well-understood and all these fantastic things, which has led to a language that in and of itself is very divisional rather than relative. Divisional discussion is easier, less cluttered with comparative descriptors and more limited. It also tends to polarize peoples' thoughts, impressions and suggestions... and often this overall language is self-supporting through the actions it induces. Such behaviour is also very much a rut - we need a clear reason to leave it instead of simple a clear improvement to work towards. It's dehumanizing and the way we talk to one another has become completely saturated with examples of it. We often confuse absolute-sounding statements with facts. This is not new but it has been seriously bothering me lately - the simplest effort of moving from 'black and white' to 'black, white and gray' essentially doesn't change the way we talk - only inserting uncertainly caveats. Gray, depending on context, could be as wide-ranging as "unknowable" to "equally valued", from "indifferent" to "torn", which are important distinctions yet not much of an improvement because they themselves are divisional terms. Presumably, by including enough polarizing terms which cross on exactly the point we wish to get across, we can talk in this fashion but it is quite a lazy language, and most likely the reason we lean away from the entire landscape of gray/silver/semitransparent/whitewash. Much like most things I propose, it involves spending some serious initial investment in effort, and language shifts are monstrously impractical to forcefully implement. I'm trying to personally detach myself from a simple and ambiguously abused dividing line of 'good' and 'bad' - not entirely, just on average - the arbitrary positive/negative scale appended to everything, seemingly for no other reason than that every scale needs to be equipped with one. This could possibly be reformed as a hippie-it's-all-subjective bit, but I wouldn't be so brash as to use those terms around my friends. Another thing to think about - this time for my mathie readers. I have to learn something about projections. I have a bijective function that maps a 2^n space to an encoded 2^n space, and I want to know what conditions imply that, given some 2 dimensional vector v (with basis vectors a and b for this 2d space), if you take n tensor products of v, encode it, and project it onto the 2d subspace spanned by the encoded a and b that you get precisely that v in return. (I know why this specific example works, and can tell you everything you'd want to know about the subspaces involved - group theoretically I can also list off the stabilizers of each subspace, but there's a generalization I need to put my finger on). There's two ways to process this 'equality' - by allowing arbitrary components in the 2^(n-1), 2-dimensional orthogonal subspaces in either the encoded or non-encoded subspaces. (i.e. tracing the equality backwards or forwards through the projection, as it were) If any of you have any ideas for resources, let me know. oh oh oh and one last thing - are there generalized 'prime numbers' on a complex sphere? I'm thinking there might be some cool relationships to look at between pure states and prime numbers - when a product wavefunction collapses it projects onto one of its prime components. I've heard of the Cesium atom and its energy lines lining up with the zeros of the Riemann Zeta function (which is all about primes) as well as a few other odd ties between prime numbers and quantum mechanics and was wondering if you guys had any thoughts. I've also been thinking about significance, and how it relates to both the physical brain and psychological identity. How is it that we can prescribe significance? Even by deliberately placing as little importance as possible on a single event we attach significance to it, which induces a vortex of concentration on the topic. XKCD illustrates it effectively: If the question "what is the meaning of life" is meaningless, why does the human mind always revisit it? If I'm to stop focussing on something, and distraction is the only thing that removes me from that vortex, how is it that distraction rearranges the significance of an event? How else can I indirectly change how significant I find something? Is there inherent significance, meaning a physical inclination for me to assign significance to a given thought, moment, interaction? How does this generalize to humanity? Can I figure out if what I *think* is significant is simply due to this instinctual reaction or due to boredom of the mind? How does this fall in line with my idea of quality? Lastly, I've become acutely aware of the surroundings I particularly enjoy. Through a combination of psychology, an artistic attention to detail, hedonism and the recognition of internal satisfaction due to higher-order thought I've found a balance I've always somewhat sought... ... but have previously rotated through on a much longer timescale than lately. Through this I've been able to (somewhat) divide destructive self analysis into its healthier components. It's been pretty refreshing. Now all I need is to PUBLISH all these stupid little results I've raked up. Hmm. -zoe- Mood: summer! Music: Dr. John

	2007.02.15  17.15 The Quantum Just a thought: what if the problem behind non-locality was actually a consequence of backwards time-travel? Here's how I'm thinking about this: we have to set boundary conditions for any eigensolutions to a system - for instance, in a particle in a box we get a host of discrete solutions given zero boundary conditions - and so, what if all these collapsed quantum wavefunctions were just a product of the future boundary conditions? I measure a particle at point A in time, and at some future space-time measure it to be B, and in the meantime it waves around like some string? Don't we describe standing waves in terms of two propagating waves in space - one forwards, one backwards? Would time not act analogously? I have to think about this more. This would in fact give rise to the superposition of all possible paths as described by QFT.... Back to work. (Statistical update: working for Ray Laflamme, working on 5-qubit quantum state purification protocols in liquid state NMR - about to run my first test tomorrow. My kittens are a year old and adorable. I love my boyfriend very much. Applying to the bigass grad schools is a bitch (suck it, GREs). Running a marathon in May. Pretty much haven't seen any of my friends this year - I miss you all desperately. Feeling busy and smiley!)

	2006.12.16  14.13 You know, through exams, through sickness and worry and self-doubt and stress and sleep deprivation and brutally forced motivation.... ...I forgot that, as cliche as it really is, watching the sunset can pretty much smooth over anything. The world really is beautiful, isn't it :D Mood: busy Music: Clutch - Droid

	2006.12.09  20.19 In the spirit of continuously improving myself, I have a question for you. Much in the same way I wonder now and again if I have lettuce in my teeth, I want to ask you for your thoughts (I'm alarmingly oblivious at times, and it's certainly possible I've never noticed an annoying character trait of mine). Please, if you have the time, post a reply to this post anonymously with whatever "areas for improvement" you feel I have, of any kind, in completely blunt terms. Please do not post any compliments. I won't delete or reply to anything written. Thank you very much for your time and honesty - I do appreciate it :D

	2006.12.09  11.31 "If I don't make it known that I've loved you all along, just like sunny days that we ignore because..." I wrote the following on Wednesday and forgot to post it, so here it is: this post is just to recount what I've just been through. What I'm still recovering from, actually... this probably won't be exceptionally coherent seeing as I've been asleep for the greater part of 2 days now, eating only applesauce... I just had by definition the best week imaginable in BC - insofar as that I led a completely indulgent lifestyle in pretty much every regard. You should see the whistler pictures - I didn't think it would be possible to surpass the previous "best weekend ever" in whistler, and I'm so very impressed that it did. Perfect conditions, fantastic company and delicious delicious everything! I came home at 3:30am to 3 awake roommates to break the news to me that they'd lost Kaz while I was gone. A few times. So instead of sleeping, I walked around waterloo all night calling for him. Went home to start writing an assignment I'd been told about that very day that was due... that day... and quickly fell into the most brutal sickness I think I've ever gone through. I thought it was stress; I couldn't eat, sleep or concentrate despite needing to do them all. I called my father; he told me to go for a walk and calm down. I thought I just needed to think about something else for a while, so I called Mark to see how he'd been. Shortly thereafter due to concern he showed up as I fell completely into what was later determined to be some combination of severe sushi poisoning, lack of dehydration, stress, blah blah blah . I have never been so vulnerable in the care of another human in my adult life. After the second lapse of unconscious convulsions Mark drove me to the hospital and I called my mother. I was convinced I was going to die - but only when I was actually conscious. It was definitely preferable to be unconscious in that sick nightmare state, because with consciousness came awareness of why I was not just previously aware of what was going on. Waking up with IV drips, an oxygen mask and a heart monitor is not something I'm accustomed to. I regularly run half marathons, damnit. I appreciate the kink in the routine thought process, though, I suppose, even though I've slept for almost all of the past few days since. They found Kaz. I was given an extension on my exam. I've ... I'm going to DO something with this life. I am. I'm going to accomplish something, give back to the world. What I have is far too beautiful and is due to the hundreds of years of human effort before me - and I can't simply ignore that fact because it's stylish. I find so many people so compelling... the styles in which they live their lives, the lives they lead, the thoughts they confess to me when they find it within themselves to confess them. Depth is such a beautiful thing - and there is nothing, NOTHING more compelling than that very fundamental human connection. I want to improve life around me and feel it - and not just through small scale feel-good humanitarian movements. I need to be careful to walk a very, very careful line if I'm going to do the most I possibly can in this world... this is something I have figured out about myself that is invariant through everything I've seen. No matter how many different lifestyles I feel drawn to, no matter what or whose life I weave myself into this desire for accomplishment (which is NOT synonymous with wealth) won't abate. I've been doing a lot of thinking about nothing to do with what I'm supposed to be studying for. I'm feeling much better now, still sleeping lots and unable to consume certain things (Coffee being the more crucial of these thus far). I've been provoking deeper discussions in the style I used to do in high school and it's making me feel so very, very alive. Not with the alertness that regular exercise and sex brings, nor with the wide-eyed glory of my much-missed caffeine dose, but by stretching a mental muscle that has been restrained for a long, long time. Playing tame is not fun. As much as this is a much needed call to arms on the larger scale I'm finding it difficult to apply that to the immediate need to do well on these specific exams. Best of luck to everyone on theirs! Mood: sore Music: Pantera - Shredding Skin

	2006.11.17  14.58 Part Deux I don't seek to reinvent the language. I more seek a repopularization of the way I understand language to have been spoken earlier on - where ambiguity is not necessarily frowned upon as it is today. People would simply describe in more detail, more terms and from more angles, scopes and levels of abstraction, and the overall meaning of a concept would be taken as something of an intersection, some sort of a common ground for all the terms employed. Precision has become more in demand than accuracy, and I imagine this is largely in step with the introduction of science into our collective consciousness. (HA! FINALLY!! I PEGGED DOWN MY DAMN "TOO MUCH MATH IN SOCIETY ARGUMENT! BWUAH HA HA HA ) I don't think that words naturally deteriorate into fuzzier and fuzzier terms as people gently stretch their definitional 'boundaries' . I think people have simply allowed themselves to stretch these boundaries themselves because it's interesting to do so - I mean, to have raped an exam certainly demands more immediate attention that to have done exceptionally well. The demand for constantly new and constantly creative (and consequently tangling in a dash of artistic expression) has superceded the pragmatic utility of these terms. I have problems with the consequences of these actions and not the actions themselves. Creative expression is gorgeous and leads to innovation in thought. Within this very rant I have employed terms that are not words and yet are very clear in their meaning. It's the irresponsibility of the populace to educate themselves on the accepted, 'unstretched' definitions (ambiguous and imprecise or not) that lies at fault - and this would require a diligence I can't see us employing unless it became a pet issue of society. Moreover it would require us to correct each other when a term is misused, which is admittedly an embarrassment and a hassle not worth worrying over on a case-by-case basis. I'm still constantly surprised that the most powerful man in the world is excused from the proper use of his own language. That startles me whenever I think about it. However, it is not only politicians who enlist the misuse of words - it is employed satirically to the point where near-meaningless statements are used as a constant running social joke. The media on its own deserves a medal of recognition as a champion over historical linguistic boundaries. I think some of the problem is our reliance on the assumption that terms CAN be defined precisely. As some replies have brought to light, there cannot really be a precise understanding due to the interplay of the words themselves and the complications they try to describe. Perhaps my 'averaging out' approach holds out against this idea. What is piety? Maybe if we can only point it out rather than write it in terms of other words then we should do more pointing. Let's go with what works, even though success is not a theoretical absolute - we DO understand each other. Despite all the ways we could misinterpret each other we don't do so very often. Instead of blaming the ambiguity of the words employed we might instead take personal responsibility for such a misunderstanding... It is for this reason I attacked the legal word-tangle jumble - because they capitalize on the idea that people are not responsible for any statements that are not unavoidably explicit. If there is at all any room for misinterpretation then that means money for the plaintiff. We demand that our terminology completely forces us into a particular interpretation instead of following it to its natural conclusion. On the note of jargon - jargon should be used as a tool for those with a skillset - the knowledge of such jargon should not be the skillset itself. But that's another topic. I understand that my stated goal is largely unaccomplishable from this point in history - it would indeed be a major shift in the way we even think about language. However movements more drastic that this have taken place in a very short time frame (our relationship to civil liberties for one) and certainly no changes could be made if nothing at all is said. You miss all the shots you don't take, after all. -zoë- Mood: creative Music: Sepultura

	2006.11.06  19.58 Ready Go! My, my, now that was a larger time gap than one I wanted to have at the outset. Who knows if this new format will actually take hold. The point is I'm finally over the midterm push and can let my thoughts roam to more interesting things. I'm still tangled up in definitions, presently. I'm currently giving a lot of thought to the idea that our language-loosening is largely responsible for our major cultural shift over the past 6 years - which has a lot to do with the internet as well, I find. People are allowing looser and looser definitions of terms (which is, I think, largely due to the fact that it became VERY uncool to correct people's grammar or look down upon the misuse of words) and consequently our very definitions have to change to fit the trend - What does 'violence' or 'terrorist' or 'measured response' mean, anyway? The triumph of the english language in global science and academia (and to a degree even media) is largely in part due to its flexibility and its ability to incorporate virtually any new term seamlessly - well as seamlessly as english goes. I think this obvious point is taken to be invariably beneficial to us - I don't think we often think about the problems with the imprecision it initiates. The explosion of our law system is clearly one of these consequences. (Should I bother trying to tie this into a prison rant I have boiling? no, not today...) People have to hire professional interpreters of precise language to wander through any of that legal junk. They, in turn, make the legal dialect more difficult and seemingly alien as to encourage the reason of their very existence. Oh yay. But who cares if we have yet more cultural overhead? We don't seem to care that the basic operating cost of a north american life is skyrocketing along with all these superfluous programs (insurance is now a given for almost anyone, as is internet, etc) and I suppose that's allowable, but there are some serious consequences due to our language shift that go far beyond dollar signs - I would argue that we've allowed our political administration(s) to tangle terminology to justify many things that, in plain language, are completely disgusting suggestions. So that was more of a rant than a point. My apologies. Another angle I've been examining which I find far more compelling presently is our relationships to definitions altogether. We seem to have a sense that if terms are not precisely defined they are simply incomplete definitions. Many philosophical dilemmas arise simply due to getting caught up in the techincal tangles of definitions - what it truly means to be "alive" or "conscious" or "ethical". Consequently, so do many political dilemmas, seeing how they're so closely tied together. Instead of trying to expand the definitions we already have I believe a new approach needs to be taken on en masse - let's expand our vocabulary instead. When a term refuses to suffice, let's not try to hammer it into submission if such an action forces it to collapse into a contradictory mess, instead let's reintroduce the appropriate terms. This will certainly help our double-thinking tendencies. However this is such a dramatically unappealing proposition for the generation of absolute specialists. We know our own jargon and compete against those who also know how to appropriately apply it. Appropriate application might in turn be cultural - my, my, what a whirlwind of cyclic idiocy. The point is that we are forgiven from learning the most basic applications of alien jargon - we trust other people to take care of it instead. okay this point-thing clearly isn't working for me. Ah well. I guess I needed to fit in some depth tonight. And even still this was all just preliminary material... perhaps I will continue this later. -zoë- Music: Desert Sessions

	2006.10.19  14.04 Track Change This journal is going to change. I've been writing extensively - almost obsessively for the past few days - about things that I can not come to terms with enough to publicize on here, even in 'private' form. I now realise that this should not be a frustration, but instead an indication that if I am to use this service - especially in the manner of "being accountable for my beliefs" as I've always upheld - then I can no longer simply treat it as a soapbox. Therefore, I have resolved a shift in the way I treat this thing. I seek more participation, because otherwise this is just egotistical self-sustaining applause. I am consequently going to primarily post summaries of the thoughts that have been running around my mind recently, with no design of coming to generalized conclusions. I find such conclusions are becoming more and more dangerous anyway. This way I can keep track of what's been on my mind as well as actually promote discussion on these subjects... I invite each and every one of you to discuss with me what I post. I envision it as something much like a list of very welcome conversation-starters, because as many of you are probably aware, one of my favourite activities is direct, open, intelligent discussion. I don't know why this is so - I think it must have something to do with my appreciation of what our minds have accomplished and are able to do - but I know that I rarely tire of it. I would be held far more accountable if I actually answered to each individual that wanted to discuss these things with me - plus it would turn into an evolving state of mind instead of an exercise in defending some pre-prepared ranting belief. If you don't have me on MSN, email me and inquire - I imagine that will be the most likely avenue of discussion for the next little while considering my schedule. I'm not seeking ideological debates - although they can take that form if you wish - but moreso I just want to know what you all think about the topics that are running around my brain. Simply throwing them into the wind is no longer working. So on that note, today I've noticed two large trends in my thoughts: -I've been thinking about how we deal with information. It is the general consensus of the previous generation and quite arguably ours that the more access to information the better. However, this has led us to a state where every individual is knowledgeable about very little about many topics, which in turns makes them easy prey for catchphrases and misleading summaries. I'm thinking that another consequence of this is our very polarized beliefs - we barely have time to give proper consideration on a great many things before we're expected to either pass judgment or walk away apathetically. What do you think? -I've been also thinking about how our food supply potentially fuels the way we look at the world - seeing as we don't need to worry about saving food over the winter or never worry about supply I think we may have lost the one ingredient in our lives that insisted that we consider and form well thought-out long-term plans. I can't think of any activity that actively promotes long-term sustainability apart from within specific economic sectors, and even those are abstract and detached (interest rates and savings plans for instance). Clearly our lack of long-term focus is taking a number on some very precarious systems - our political, environmental and nutritional habits are just a few - and because nothing in recent memory has collapsed we assume the trend will continue. Maybe a minor collapse is in order, much like an inoculation? Mood: determined Music: Zep - Good Times Bad Times

	2006.09.23  01.56 Future I know exactly where I'm going, but it's hard to come to grips with leaving a lifestyle I came to love so much. I just rearrange... so much goes through my mind so often I feel it's hard to pin anything down anymore. this all certainly doesn't feel balanced, but it's all so impossibly appealing. expressing thought fragments is much harder after a night out... it's been damn nice :D

	2006.07.28  16.51 We're pretty much preoccupied with being offensive or taking offense to what goes on around us - as is particularly evident with contemporary comedy. Looking at Vonnegut as perhaps one of the initiators of black comedy, with perhaps Dr. Strangelove walking alongside, we've removed one layer of comedic bashfulness at a time to arrive at a state where the Aristocrats is hilarious and Family Guy and South Park are some of the most popular shows available. I do recognize the stated goal of completely destroying artificial social taboo and removing all unofficially imposed forms of censorship but there is more going on than just that now. Today's form of comedy, no doubt a backlash against the imposed political correctness of the early nineties, seems to award everyone the ability to make critical, crass comments on just about anything - especially on things they know nothing about. On a sidenote - observational humour is generally lame unless it actually points out something new - Giggling over Tickler SticklerTicklerTickler is ridiculous when you think about it. Almost every "genuine" criticism that seinfeld has about anything can be dismissed with a very quick reality check. Any analysis of humour renders it dry, however, and I do have to worry about intellectualizing something that is definitively separate from analytical classification. In an era where everything is digitized and shared and spread everywhere across the ever-increasing garbage heap that is the internet I still don't want to spew unnecessarily, but I do believe that there is a point here. Humour is generally taken to be from outside the system, as some outside observer making claims about what's going on inside, trying to portray what we do as ridiculous or, as it is the case with black humour, trying to mock our self-imposed topical restrictions. What's left unsaid is the impact our comedy has on our collective consciousness - it is no mere observer. Of course this remains uninvestigated - it's not very flattering to be the one to break humour down and take things 'too seriously' - the natural instinct of most would be to say 'lighten up' at this point in the conversation - but why is comedy such a sacred cow, above critical discussion? But enough apologia. I do think that comedy needs to be recognized as part of our cultural evolution - otherwise there's no real way to explain this racial/sexist/explicit turnaround other than obscurely through the fruition of the materialistic sexual madonna movement. More generally, I think people need to keep theory in mind. This notion expands to art, to sex, to politics (think animal farm) - the question if the actions that arise out of a certain theory are left to their own devices, do they remove themselves from the intended goal? The goal of contemporary black comedy - to remove our preconceptions of a division between the laughable and the morbid - acted out through constant offensive and traditionally disgusting comments just leave the impression to the next group of followers that being so crass is just standard. This is also seen in the art world where Picasso led the idea of abstraction from an alternative with a stated goal into the Reign of Fire (the 65 million dollar canvas with three stripes of colour on it). If a movement catches on out of its intellectual plausibility, often that intellectual plausibility is lost in the second-generation bandwaggonners into a unintended realm of unjustified 'liberty' in a sense. There's no need to attribute positive qualities to these endeavours for their sake alone; there was a reason they were 'shunned' before and it was not due to backwards-thinking intellectual confinement; it was because the actions themselves were not of the same quality as the existing ones. So long as Madonna is a skank to illustrate the discrepancies between the way we treat promiscuity between genders she has *some* sort of intellectual defense, some motivation, but if she's a slut just because she's not supposed to be, well, that's completely counterproductive socially. Norms should only be overturned if they have been found to be insufficient in some way - not just because it makes headlines. But yes. We have been brought into a time in history where everything is laughable and at the same time seems so very removed - from a TV generation into an internet generation we definitely feel like observers of society, not participants, because it's so much easier to find our own little niches that agree with our own particular ideologies that criticize the rest of 'everyone else' - in a laughable way. Everyone gets to feel 'in' on something when our major critique of our political leaders arrive through comedy - and as such the severe problems that should be acknowledged as such are treated as unavoidable, and almost desirable as useful comedic seedlings. Our preference to laugh at problems such as latent racism and the whoring of every goddamn female teenager drives all serious critique into the ground and does nothing to make anyone want to CHANGE anything. Ultimately it diffuses all motivated and serious activism. I think this all stemmed from my recent discovery that racism is not-so-slowly becoming 'okay' - especially with respect to muslims nowadays. The original intent of racist humour in my eyes was the overt mockery of anyone who still thought there could possibly be any mental distinctions along racial lines. Anything like that feels completely forgotten - you have no idea how many off-colour asian jokes I hear around campus - and I wonder what this will do to us overall. Yes, stereotypes only stay alive if there's evidence to back it up, but if people are *looking* for an asian behind the wheel of a car with its blinkers on then they will note the times they've proven themselves right and by in large dismiss the others. The thing is that it's become difficult to point this out without seeming as if I'm missing the point of the comedy altogether. Of course, when asked directly, no one is actually 'racist' - they just say all the things that racists do and it's hilarious. My worry is for the next generation - those who don't have the theoretical underpinnings condemning it. -zoe- Mood: productive Music: Metallica - For Whom The Bell Tolls

	2006.03.20  02.40 I have this nagging unrest that I need to come to terms with. I spent all week defining consciousness in a ten page paper that I'm ridiculously proud of. I believe I put together a respectable rejection of the theory that consciousness is computationally based. Instead, I offered the alternative view that our consciousness was a kind of resonating firing frequency of the neurons in our brains - ie if the neurons fire in a particular, repeating pattern it generates what it feels to be conscious. Any changes in those patterns would be our cognitive (ie computational) ability - for instance if the pattern 'shave and a haircut' led to another mental pattern 'two bits' we'd call that a 'rule' - because we'd suspect one implied the other. (too obscure?) The point is that our minds worked on a state-to-state basis. I think a lot of reality works this way - it makes sense to see things on a functional setting because it's pragmatic, but I think the state-to-state model appeals to me theoretically, especially neurologically, but physically in general - it soothes the question of free will when you consider every moment to be an initial condition for the next one, and ALTHOUGH quantum effects are too small scale to impact the whole - the scale is about 3 orders of magnitude too small - there IS room. The average certainly works out, but how that average outcome is distributed certainly could impact the chaotic system of the mind. Hot damn. I really like having studied cognitive science, though. It's helped me resolve many of the suspicions I had about the relationship between quantum mechanics and our minds. This is what I came for - I wanted to not only ask the right questions but figure out answers in the best way available to our species... if answers exist then philosophy must incorporate them and their scientific grounding lest the discipline itself become stale and dated. The point is not just to question, it is to learn about the world through our attempts to answer those questions - I hope philosophy doesn't choose to quarantine itself in the face of mounting exterior input. I enjoyed writing that paper so much.... so much so that I'm definitely entertaining the idea of applying my math/sci background to the social sciences later on in life, once I've passed my point of futility in quantum mechanics. http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/2333-American-Education,-1895.html Sometimes I really dislike our collective affinity for describing our path through time as one of 'progress'. I can't help but lament over this fact when I see the above article presented shortly after reading about the removal of calculus from high school. There's the initial reaction of disgust, wistful regret, yadda yadda... but past the emotional instincts there's the plain cold truth: we're all, collectively, underachieving while patting ourselves on the back. I'm SO old fashioned. What is it that am I continually searching for? The only thing I'm sure of is driving me further down this uncomfortable, disheartening trail... it could just be being human, after all. If so, I'd have no way of localizing it and consequently no way of resolving it. If that's the case, I've made a terrible mistake. Periodic silence almost makes it worse - much in the same way a background buzz is more annoying if it keeps switching on and off. I failed to submit an assignment tonight - the first such major blunder this term. How heartbreaking. I really need to get my shit together, but I'm finding it rather hard while caught up in this internal mental vortex. You KNOW you need more, Stef, and it's up to no one but you to get it. Get out of your rut and do what you're good at. So many of my discoveries have already been brought to light - it's yet another combination. A wiser combination? I'm feeling increasingly stupid, so no, I can't use that term. You have this nagging, all-too-human trait of recognizing a solution and not acting upon it. Some things are indeed out of your control, but not this. Make a plan and make it work, or stop worrying about not having a plan. Or, better yet, act upon the plan you know must follow. I don't remember the last time I gave myself a pep talk. -zoë- Mood: awake Music: Subcutaneous Phat - QOTSA

	2006.02.10  02.21 Statistical update: I was recently offered my dream job - working for the Institute for Quantum Computing here on campue for a Mr. Gregor Weihs - described as follows: "Quantum Cryptography uses single photons and entangled photon pairs to establish identical secret random keys in two remote places. We are working on creating a link between IQC and the Perimeter Institute. The project involves optics, in particular the development of sources of entangled photon pairs, single photon measurement and time-correlation. Eventually we want to create a cryptographic application that uses the keys for unbreakably secure communication." If you know me well enough you know that whenever anyone talks about entanglement, quantum computing or Perimeter I get even more excited and bubbly than usual. This is what I've been looking for since before first year; talking to Michele Mosca, switching programs, everything. This is really, really big news for me. Another statistical update: I am buying a kitten over the next few days. Or hours. Brain rant: I don't know if I've ever ranted on here while drunk before. I doubt I have. I require a base level of sobriety for the abstraction I need to feel comfortable talking on here at all. Fundamentally, on the most basic of levels, I despise every fucking thing around me and always will. It's an intolerable and unforgiving basis for every other thought I have - built to oppose the very thing I hate most about my existence. I hate soma and I hate the pretty picture painted overtop it. I hate the fact that I've come to grips with my desire for it. I hate how much I can get away with all the fucking time and have no one blink an eye. I only respond to the best of my ability when my ability to do so is in question, and yet I seek simplicity. I have no anchor anymore. And all it takes is the mildest of scratches. What's wrong, Stef? I *LIKE* being remote. It's a question of control, not will. Fucking alcohol. This is why I was there, just in case you didn't know. It was always a question of control. There is really so much I want to do with this world. I want to stretch into something completely unrealistic and comfortable. I hate you and everything to do with you. I hate knowing that this is both exactly who I now prefer to be and exactly the person I never wanted to be. goddamn it I miss the ignorance... and at the same time I desperately enjoy knowing that so many of my thoughts are now beyond description. I literally could not possibly describe the internal mental abstractions I am in possession of. There are certainly times in which I feel as if the world is lethargic and vapid... and as I now gaze at such emotions I again arrive at a stupid unproductive, reflective, theoretical outlook. I am so tired of everything. There is no debate, there is no discussion. There is mutual, vain affirmation and token disbelief and disguised band aids. I no longer have a defined goal of whom I want to become. Realignment is dangerous when left unopposed, after all. Tonight is the night that I finished the alcohol from my cocktail party in BC. Maybe I'll reinvent myself again in the next few years. I feel as if I lack a reason not to. Melodrama can be cute, after all. Right? Right? I an owed a certain quota of ignorant idiocy, am I not? fucking alcohol. I hope you largely avoided this mood. What do you think? Mood: pissed off Music: ZEP

	2006.01.16  23.07 Oh school, how I missed thee... Almost everyone in the class agreed that humans *should* have the capacity for logical thought, but that there remained much outside of logic that we needed to be able to retain - supposing, somehow, that emotion and logic were natural opposites. This has wandered through my thoughts for the last little while - what our mental composition tells us about the way we perceive reality. We assume that since we've evolved into this pattern it's naturally superior. It's a position my mind falls into quite often - the belief that I should not be so naive to think that I've somehow outsmarted millions of years of evolutionary refinement. But we also can't assume that our minds and our social structures are invariably improving. At least they're improving with respect to our immediate desires. That's always nice. So what battles should I pick? Along some twisted path of logic I've managed to excuse away much of the journey. Now this detachment is having a hard time reconciling itself with day to day reality. My skeletal understanding of life, streamlined and isolated and distilled into its purest structural form has taken hold and I don't like it, really. The mental battle-dance was so appealing to my over-active mind. What's left to devour? Irrelevant details? Meaningless preference? Please. Yes, of course humans should have a capacity for logical thought, and just because I've only ever been exposed to humans with a slew of additional and not necessarily contradictory characteristics does not make me think that this is naturally better. Abstractly speaking, we'd be a far more functional society if we could think exclusively logically, I imagine. So the debate comes down to one of preference, of value judgements, of overarching goals. What's the real goal here? Is the aim a more functional, evolved fair and enjoyable lifestyle? For all? In whose future? Or does it again fall onto the overabused, weight-bearing fence dividing personal and societal gains, near and long term? I don't want to think that this recent ideological viewpoint is a direct consequence of some sort of resignation... I've always been very wary of a mental shift in this direction for that very reason. I totally bought into youthful idealism and I am reluctant to turn my sights for anything but a 'better outlook'... which is turning out to be irrevocably 'wise', bland and open-minded. I refuse to hold onto something purely for its esthetic purposes, but I am somewhat hesitant to believe that I've already started to classify boundary beliefs as unbalanced and on the whole naive. I'm too young for such things. I need to be able to come to grips with my mind. I must. When did I ever become so dry.... I like entertaining the possibility of deciding whether or not my mind should be so overactive, in a completely normative sense. Its futility and immediate and ironic answer amuses me. .... well at least I thought it was funny. Time to apply to some more jobs that I don't want. I need a drink. -zoe- Mood: cynical Music: Orgy

	2005.12.26  16.39 ...And to all a good night! What a fantastic christmas present. So yeah! Hey everyone, I'm back in waterloo and I'd love to spend time with you all. How's this week sound?

	2005.12.08  11.55 Tick Tock Dear Future Self; Please don't ever forget how great this felt. Don't forget what it felt like to unintentionally smile and sigh whenever you caught a glimpse of blue skies. Remember how often your thoughts were complimented by giggles, how great it felt to blink away hours night after night through that straightforward, happy, dreamlike haze. As great as things will be, don't misrecollect by comparison how fantastically happy you have been while out here. Don't dismiss your newfound and crucial perspective. You have been given a fantastic opportunity; remember how impossibly excited you were by it on the day you wrote this, before and since. Fifteen days ago, against all the rules you've historically made a point of playing by, you made a monolithic decision that's somehow been smoothed over like some blip in the radar. Never, ever downplay its significance, Stef, nor deny its actuality. You made - and kept - an enormous promise to yourself. Look back on it with the pride it commands. Fifteen days from now you will be saying goodbye to everything you've established this term except for irrefutably its most important development. You will finally bring to a conclusion the endless countdown that's become almost an assumed component of your life. There's a reason why you couldn't ever quite get anyone else to understand those select fundamental points - they were never quite capable. It's the alignment of those particular ingrained idiosyncrasies that make this so improbable, and make it feel so absolutely rightful. There is quite literally no one else in the world you would prefer to be with. That is in no way something to be taken lightly. So, future Stef, listen to who got you to where you are today. I've set you up absolutely perfectly. Laugh lots, rock hard and enjoy the rewards of that very wise decision you made so long ago. -zoë- Mood: excited Music: Sled Zeppelin

	2005.11.12  03.52 Dear Sir, Thank you so much for all your time. I am so appreciative of everything you've done for me since I've been out here. You've been my anchor and the best of friends. You have been excellent company and I am so very grateful and happy. There are times where I really feel like I understand you. It's unbelievable to listen to someone explain your own ideology back to you. I've moved past the novelty of the situation, past its incredulousness - it's been such an interesting mental switch-over - and am now seeking the manifestation of all of these glorious ideas. Damn. I really need to stop getting myself into these situations. I'm learning a lot about my country, my culture, my mind and my interests. I stumbled into near-perfection here. It's been a great re-alignment period; I'd been so dedicated to one particular mindset that to be able to have to time to be selfish and crazy and free has been immensely beneficial. Perfect timing. I'd forgotten what I had in question. I am going to sleep with pleasant thoughts. Life makes sense. Mood: enthralled Music: Portishead

	2005.11.10  15.21 Today I finally came up with a number. Through all the data manipulation, cuts and triggers, through all the histograms and all the analysis, through channels and corrections and skewings and function fits... the final summary of my entire last month of work is a single number. 94.7cm. CERN says 257cm. The manufacturer says 'up to 400'. So to hell with ninety-four-point-fucking-seven. Now I say "Thank god BC gets a long weekend in November and I get to go home and make cheesecake". Mood: sweet Music: The nine inch nails I'm missing.

	2005.10.31  16.07 traditionalism in the face of modernization. (aka quite bored at work) Beauty used to be a measure of health. At present, it is almost more a measure of wealth and north american upbringing. It's arguably at the stage where one can 'decide' how much beauty they want to have. Plastic surgery is barely frowned upon anymore; instead it's televised. Neither is promiscuity. Part of the women's sexual revolution was the realization that effective contraceptives have removed a lot of the necessary sexual hesitation that traditionally was attached to the sorts of women you'd want to associate with. Being a 'whore' nowadays is by in large popular. Strippers are better described as 'confident and liberated' rather than 'desperate victims'. I know this. This is progress, sure. The glaring imbalance in the way we described sexual enthusiasm across genders had always bothered me. And certainly it would be ridiculous to try and dissuade the persistent, apparently all-consuming sexual appetite of men. Consequently we have, on a large scale, matched the sexual ravenousness of the most hard-core free-love communes of the 60s. So what's a young traditionalist to do? Should I continue to mock the ever-expansive culture of emotionless sexual gratification? Realizing that it is in fact a change I don't expect culture to shy away from (except for the fashion industry's periodic conservative-yet-stylish phases) should I realign my thoughts to avoid being dismissed as archaic and old-fashioned? To those who probably haven't even heard of the word 'archaic' before? Sigh. It feels as if I've aged more slowly than those around me - as if I grew up in the days where 'Don't judge a book by its cover' was one of the last ivory towers still standing. Part of me wishes - emerging from the nihilist side of my brain - that traditionalists like myself should stop swimming upstream and instead let such emptiness decay under its own weight, as it were. Once sex stops being sensationalist and glorified as being anything to do with 'risque', we might be able to appreciate it for its beautiful intimacy, that shared vulnerability. We never wanted to repress anything; we just wanted the warmth to be worth something in addition to the heat. Maybe it's time to turn down the volume of my war cries. I must make an effort to pick my battles wisely, and I imagine that sharing this point of view with the one that counts will allow me to completely authenticate my position (and probably mutually offer a dash of self-righteousness). As much as I would love to have everyone else understand, secretly I'll admit that sharing this vulnerability with one other is quite appealing - sharing something precious that seems otherwise lost and forgotten. Mood: calm Music: War Pigs - Sabbath

	2005.10.20  00.52 late night musings We forget we're animals, and this detachment lets us expect 'greater' things of us - like charity. It blows my mind, for instance, that we have organized ourselves as a species so that when a natural disaster hits halfway across the globe we have immediate access to its progress and its imagery. I mean, out of the sheer goodness of our hearts, the world stopped and held its breath for a month to watch these poor, poor people - and moreover we personally donated 4 billion dollars of our well-earned money to answer their rooftop demands for help. For a month there was no news except for the most recent photographs from New Orleans. The final death count: 1193. That's over 3.3 million for each tombstone. That's astronomical - and does not include a penny of the billions that Bush found room for in his carefully planned budget. We know that life is a precious commodity and have taken it upon ourselves to protect each other at all costs. Judging by our previous work, I have high hopes for Pakistan's recovery. I mean, we know that it took about 4 days for New Orleans to cover the media and hence our daily conversations. I suppose the news that 80 thousand people have died will soon call us to arms, or at least to our chequebooks, and out of our amazing human nature we shall restore the lives of the unfortunate. I'm so proud to be a part of a species that recognizes that if we improve the lives of our weakest members we shall all grow as a collective. And not only are we helpful but intelligent and efficient - for instance, we have optimized the search for those who are still alive by finally giving up searching in the more hopeless regions of devastation. Life over limb, I say. We have also grown and matured culturally. No longer do we seem to want the media's ever-glaring post-tragedy sensationalism. In its place we are mindful of what might be the next pandemic. Even though the world health organization is saying that it's not something to panic about, we're now quite conscious of potential upcoming disaster. And rightfully so. We must keep our eyes on the road ahead. I am equally proud to note that today, almost 2 weeks after the first quake, all individual donations from all countries pledged to Pakistan surpassed 20 million. For those keeping score at home, that's $250 a tombstone. Which is perfect, because there's a great tombstone company in China that specializes with bulk orders. And when you think about the boost it will inevitably give the construction industry, it makes you feel really great to be human. ... you're damn right I'm disgusted.