#madwriting

The fact of the matter is, I can't sleep.  People used to tell me that I sleep so well because I have a clear conscience.  Maybe tonight I am feeling guilty.

ANTM ~ Cycle 16 ~ Episode 8 (2011)

I'm thinking negatively today.  Instead of thinking of the world as my oyster (and what does that mean anyway?) I'm thinking of it as a garbage dump.  Like a vast wasteland, it doesn't matter if I put forth energy into cleaning it up, it's so massive and polluted that it doesn't make a difference what I do.

Instead of believing that people are altruistic, I'm believing that everyone is selfish and greedy and that's no kind of world that I want to live in.  I'm thinking about long-range missiles and oil-consumption.  I'm thinking about John Edwards and his love-child.  I know it is useless to toss and turn over things I cannot control.

I'm also thinking about myself.  I preach about reducing waste and recycling, yet I drive a gas-powered vehicle 400+ miles per week and drink coffee out of styrofoam containers daily.  Some people think about the world as something we have no control over, like it doesn't matter what we do, entropy of the universe is always increasing.

On a good day, I imagine each person making small changes that add up to a big difference.  I imagine the ideas spreading by education, "teach a person to fish and he eats for a lifetime," something like that.  But then some days hormones take over and I can't do anything but cry and look around for the nearest exit.

My previous post described public/private.  A doublet of talks I attended last week by Uma Chowdhry furthered this line of thought.  I heard that corporations are now allowed facebook pages (with the new timeline feature) which give them the appearance of being equivalent to a person.  Corporations hold certain values and skills, for example DuPont has core skills (polymers, fluorine chemistry) and values (safety, teamwork), but they are not a human-like entity.  Although the buzzwords of sustainability can be found everywhere these days (did you know that 7% of Americans eat fast food daily?) its hard to believe that corporations care anything about solving the world's problems.  Unless you think that making money for shareholders is the most important problem to solve in the world.

Stephen Wolfram ~ Singularity Summit 2011 ~ Rule 30

Given that I watched a talk by Stephen Wolfram about finding a computer program that explains all the complexity of life out of all the programs in the world (and all combinations thereof), I asked if DuPont would move to share non-patented non-published data with the public, such that it could be mined at large, and the answer was NO because the intellectual property of corporations are their bread and butter.  I can understand that.  She said that it was simply too much data, and it would not be likely that anyone would be able to make sense of it.  I simply do not believe that.  I would much rather like to believe Wolfram and the power of possibility.  Hey, I might not be a gifted computer scientist, but I do like searching for patterns in nature.  With the wealth of chemical-biological information tied up in corporations like DuPont and Monsanto, I wonder if we (ALL OF US: industry, government, universities, tinkerers) could better make sense of nature if we had more data.

Therein lies my public/private theme.  Putting a happy face out for the public, while keeping valuable information private, puts a big frowny face on this bitch.

ANTM ~ Cycle 9 ~ Week 6 (2007)

And another thing that keeps me up at night is trash.  Speaking of fast food... I spent Earth Day 2012 at Disneyland in Anaheim.  The amount of waste generated there must be immense.  The amount of electricity to run the park is staggering.  For entertainment?  What's it all about?  I was reading about recycling of aluminum and although Americans are recycling more cans, they are recycling less food packaging.  When you eat at home, you cook the food in re-usable pots/pans and eat the food off of washable ceramic dishes with metal utensils, then store the leftovers in plastic/glass reusable containers.  What about when you eat on the go?  Or outside the home?  Bingo!  Waste!  When are people going to get the message?

If you want to use the words "sustainable" it doesn't follow that you are a corporation who only cares about making money (hello First law of thermodynamics) not everyone can be making money all the time unless money equals entropy (hello Second law of thermodynamics).  But by what law is it true that the universe is constantly expanding and there's no way we can control or understand it?  Is that faith?  And if we are guided entirely by faith, who is to set down the rules?  And if we follow one set of "rules" or dogma, does that mean everyone else is wrong and they should be put to death?

Another talk I went to was Tim Steimle.  I really liked some of what he was saying, but he always has a great way of making me feel really stupid.  As he starts to drift into the lexcion of hard-core spectroscopy, my thoughts wander, and then I remember, "Hey pay attention, this is why you don't get this stuff!"  It's great to be a "forever student."  Like a cycling mentor once told me, "You gotta ride with people who are faster than you.  If you never get dropped, you'll never get faster."

I forgot to mention that the fireworks at Disney brought tears to my eyes.  Twice.  That Tinkerbell was something else.  If wishes and dreams can come true, I hope to feel better tomorrow.  Thank you and goodnight.