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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Mortality
Tuesday. 5.22.07 9:31 pm
During the Planetary Science conference this year, one of the main headline makers, one of a pair of scientists who rocked the community by discovering that the gullies in the craters on Mars may have had running water in the last six years, was unable to come to Houston to present his results because he had the flu.

Another presenter couldn't be there because his aunt was dying.

And as I sat there in my chair near the back of the auditorium, my notebook covered in doodles and sleep heavy in my eyes, it occurred to me that no matter how famous you are, no matter how many Phd's you have, no matter how many people have to kowtow to you on a daily basis, your carnal self, your body, still has the ability to trump every other concern. You are still a veritable slave to your health. Like that quote that I put in here before from Marcel Proust:

"It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body."

And wrapped up in our mortality is the fact that you can gain as much knowledge as you would like during a lifetime, and stack up degrees all you want, but when you die, all of that work that you put in learning all of that stuff, is gone. For nothing. I wonder if parents feel that way, if they have the terrible misfortune of losing a child. What if they've just put this kid through college, through law school maybe. All that money, all that time and effort, 24 or so years of worrying about the little guy, building him into a balanced, capable, employable human being so that he's ready to take control of the rest of his life and in an instant it's all for nothing. Of course that isn't true. Think of all the lives you've touched, just in the short years you've already lived? Sometimes I think the noblest ambition is to seek to be at least a mostly happy memory in the minds of all you've met. Everybody, even random people on the street or in the bank or at a restaurant. You can't make everyone happy, usually if you try to do that you eventually make the people you love much more sad. That's why it's a 'mostly'. Because if you make someone sad temporarily because you love them and it's best, they will eventually see that. As far as all this knowledge that you're gaining... perhaps if you have long been a professor and you've published dozens of papers, then all that knowledge was for something and it will live on. But most of the time we aren't professors who publish in the field or industry innovators who release a world-changing product on the market. All of that knowledge seems to serve to make us money so that we can get by. Just get by. Is that enough? I think in the end, the most important thing that you can do with knowledge is pass it on to someone else, keep passing it on, generation after generation, so that it will never die.

Can you imagine how much faster our civilization might have progressed if instead of dying, we lived for hundreds of years and just piled knowledge on top of knowledge? As it is it's like trying to get out into the ocean, with every five steps you take forward you are washed four steps back. However, there is that old saying... "Science progresses one funeral at a time."... that is, you sometimes need people to die so that other people with new ideas can explore them without being crushed by The Institution. This is why children are important, even if at first they don't seem to be a financially sound endeavor. You'll never make your money back on them, that's for sure, but money is another one of those things that you just can't take with you when you go.




In other news, I've been playing some crazy soccer, I might join the rugby team, and I am now one of two department representatives to the Graduate School Council. ::the EVIL coun-cil!::

mood: sore
watching: About a Boy
listening to: Keith Urban- Live to Love Another Day

Summers come and summers go, and I keep walking down this road
It's all right, it's ok
I'll live to love another day.
6 Comments.


RAH RAH RAH GOOO SCIENCE


I thought of you today. Not sure why, but I remember thinking of you today.

And I'm not a big keith urban fan, but that song is beautiful.
» Dilated on 2007-05-22 11:05:58

But we ARE piling knowledge upon knowledge. Just some of it slips away, that's all. We can't help it if Wolfgang, Albert, and Galileo couldn't give us ALL of their bright apples. I'd like to think that my suffering-s have had meaning...if only for my happiness one day. That it's for the smile I'll wear in my coffin. :)
» Silver-dot- on 2007-05-23 12:17:16

Hmmm. You could interpret that as "Killing off our scientists one by one will technologically advance our civilization".

What a morbid and funny thought. :P
» randomjunk on 2007-05-23 02:12:47

Thanks for your comment =) I do what you mentioned, minus the throwing the noodle at the cupboard, and my noodles tend to come out mushy. Not always, but sometimes. It's frustrating when I'm cutting it close to lunch time for Aubree.
» money4blogging on 2007-05-23 09:43:46

The Secret
I have been BEYOND reading the secret. That has become my new bible. I listen to the audio book to fall asleep at night I am listening to it during REM. I guess that is why I was even more disappointed. I mean, I set it out there and I even cleaned out my desk and my drawers and cubbards like I am ready to leave. I was sending the messages... Asking, Believing but not receiving.
» kkama67 on 2007-05-24 03:18:06

I would say that you can't kill a cactus, but you can. I have before. I will admit that it's not easy to, so it'd definately be worth a shot! Just make sure you have a sunny window to put it in =)
» money4blogging on 2007-05-24 09:42:48

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