wasabi

Graham complained that recent additions to my Mediocre American Novel have not ended in a meaningful manner. I think I fixed that a bit. Episodes 10 and 12 now end a bit better. I also put a somewhat personal piece up. I'm not sure if I should have. Then again, I'm not sure who, if anyone will read it, or if they will care.

I finished the perceptron I have to write for school. It's an idiotic exercise, since I got the entire mess working a better way earlier this summer, but no one seems to care. Now I have to do it again. I guess this is preparing me for life, or more of it. Preparation seems to consist of doing stupid things. Life consists of doing stupid things, so the more stupid things are done, the better.

If you like stupid things (or want to see my old implementation of a spiking neural network), go here. If not, I suggest that you read the brilliant story below. The greatest work of the 20th century is not likely to be a piece by Joyce, nor a piece by me (my work all ranks as the best of the 21st century). Instead, the greatest works are children stories as they are much more humane than most novels. Humanity is usually bad, being humane is good. I tend to think most plants are more humane than the vast majority of people.

In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of-
The cow jumping over the moon
And there were three little bears sitting on chairs
And two little kittens
And a pair of mittens
And a little toyhouse
And a young mouse
And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush
And a quiet old lady who was whispering "hush"

Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Good night cow jumping over the moon
And the red balloon
Goodnight bears
Goodnight chairs
Goodnight kittens
And goodnight mittens
Goodnight clocks
And goodnight socks
Goodnight little house
And goodnight mouse
Goodnight comb
And goodnight brush
Goodnight nobody
Goodnight mush
And goodnight to the old lady whispering "hush"
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises everywhere

-Margaret Wise Brown

-Clement Hurd

The thing that appears to be a pancake on this rabbit's head is actually something called dorayaki. It appears to be some sort of sweetened pancake sandwich made with azuki bean paste. I still have no idea how or why the pancake came to reside upon the rabbit's head. Here is a recipe for dorayaki that I found:

INGREDIENTS 1 packet of pancake mix 2 eggs 1 1/3 cups of milk 2 tablespoons of sugar (optional) Fillings 1 cup azuki beans 1 1/2 cups of sugar pinch of salt -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- METHOD Fillings 1. Wash beans and place in large saucepan full of water. 2. Bring to the boil, then drain water. 3. Add 5 cups water to beans and boil rapidly. 4. Reduce heat and simmer until beans are soft. 5. Strain water from beans into a bowl. 6. Place beans in sieve and mash through into the bowl of water and discard skins. 7. Pour watery pulp into cotton bag and squeeze out the water. 8. Return to heat and add sugar. 9. When paste is thick, add salt and mix well. Pancakes 1. Place pancake mix in bowl. 2. Add eggs and milk 3. Mix well with a spoon or rotary mixer. 4. Drop spoonfuls of mix on to hot plate. 5. Turn when mix begins to bubble. Preparation of Dorayaki Take one pancake and place a spoonful of bean paste on top, then place a second pancake on top of the paste.

God is love.
     -John 3:16

God: Divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Sprit, Mind.
     -Mary Baker Eddy

If God had a name, what would it be?
And would you call it to his face if you were faced with him
In all his glory? What would you ask
If you had just one question?
     -Joan Osborne

God knows I'm good.
Surely God won't look the other way.
     -David Bowie

my god sits in the back of the limousine
my god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
my god pouts on the cover of a magazine
my god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
     -Trent Reznor

I just destroyed some code, and spent a few hours destroying it well. The experience was a bit like when I used to build model airplanes, cars, and such. There is a horrid moment that seems to last forever when glue sticks to your finger and you accidentally mash 40 carefully placed, glued, but not yet dry pieces together, ruining the entire thing.

I have been writing a binary perceptron. It's basically a really stupid neural network, and because I retained the structure from the more elegant solution to this problem I wrote earlier this summer, the code is far too complex. In playing with the firing function, I managed to squish far too many little pieces into one horrid, broken mess. Now I can't bear to look at it.

Does sunshine smell like anything? Send thoughts and comments to ben@nonplatonic.com

          Spur of the moment

Facing wine, I missed night coming on
and falling blossoms filling my robes.

Drunk, I rise and wade the midstream moon,
birds soon gone, and people scarcer still.

		-Li Po

I just got back from San Francisco. I had my car searched for drugs, saw a "drug free zone" sign on Telegraph, drank coffee in some tiny Italian cafe, and nearly died biking around the downtown. Tamalpais has a sign now that says bikers shouldn't go over 15mph (and above 5mph in one section).

The spiking neural network almost works as well, but I'm pretty sure that none of my immense readership gives a damn about that. Here it is. Let us close with a poem, though I have no idea what it means:

In the Kingdom of Death his name has dropped from the rolls
The Southern Pole-Star lists him in its Book of Lives.

			-Li Po

School draws ominously slower for me. There is no point anymore. I know that I will not be satisfied with a standard BSME job when I graduate. Everyone dreams of being rich. A $50,000+ salary when I graduate doesn't constitute rich to me. I don't know what I will pursue afterwards. I have been considering an MBA afterwards at the UW. Will that bring enough riches? Why does money still carry so much importance to me? Too many questions, nobody to answer them.
From my experiences I have determined that I don't want to 'work' in the normal sense of the word.

Various sources suggest that our civilization will not advance significantly in my lifetime. I struggle to find meaning to my life on a daily basis. I ride my bike, using the material sting of lactic acid in my legs to distract me from the spiritual pain. But like a drug, I develop a tolerance to it with continued use. Where do I turn now for relief?

Trent Reznor says that God is dead. Marilyn Manson says that God is in a TV. Either way, "He" can't be of any help to me.

My brother almost died when he was born, but he survived. In the last few years I have grown to love my brother, but was his survival an act of God? I doubt it. Some say ignorance is bliss. Should I teach him blissful ignorance or the painful truth of existence?

I may have just finished the spiking neural network. I guess I'll know whenever I get up tomorrow and see how the debugger faired. With that in mind, I might well be off to San Francisco tomorrow provided two things happen or don't. School draws ominously closer.

Drunks fear the police,
but the police are drunk too.

People in this town love them both
like different chess pieces.

	-Rumi

"What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days."

-James Joyce, Araby

What of the morality of killing ants? My bathroom is infested. I set loose my vacuum cleaner on the poor bastards, and they made little whooshing sounds as they wre sucked to their doom. It's horrid because they weren't really causing me any pain, nothing more than little black specks on white drywall. I killed them for being black.

It makes me wonder, how sentient are they? I know they must find it unpleasant to become one with the innards of my vacuum cleaner. I even realize it is bad to kill them. I, however, value some modicum of comfort over their lives. Is their something larger than us that will one day value itself over us? Are we nothing more than cosmic detritus?

It does pose a good argument for why god, if there is such a creature, is so different to our suffering. Perhaps god doesn't deem it important. To an ant a human probably seems omnipotent. Certainly if a human devoted themselves to making an ant's life more pleasant they could do a more than decent job. If only god cared about us that much.

"You're so young." she said. Perhaps I am, but I do not feel it. I feel old and broken, tired by cruelty. I have never felt young. My earliest memories entail planning, trying to understand how things could be built and change. Nowhere have I had youth, unadulterated freedom.

Still, perhaps I am young, foolish, and as Rachel McVeigh once said, naive. I still don't understand what half the horrible things people do to each other are, much less what they are called, or why. I still think things can get better.

I want company. I need someone to hold and hold me back. We can tell each other that everything is all right, despite whatever the world might say to the contrary. I want to whisper sweet nothings.

Genuis Child

This is a song for the genius child.
Sing it softly, for the song is wild.
Sing it softly as ever you can -
Lest the song get out of hand.

Nobody loves a genius child.

Can you love an eagle,
Tame or wild?
Can you love an eagle,
Wild or tame?
Can you love a monster
Of frightening name?

Nobody loves a genius child.

Kill him - and let his soul run wild!

--Langston Hughes