Journal Entries
Free will
Posted Mar 19, 2002
These are just a few thoughts I had a while back. I was looking through all my old writing folders and thought this might make a good journal entry:
What matters most to me is not a physical thing. You can't touch it, you can't see it, and you can't sense it. But it is the single most important thing to me, and to everybody on the planet. What I treasure most is my free will.
Free will is a funny thing. While treasure my free will, I am not entirely sure whether or not it exists. If every event has an explanatory cause, then having an explanatory cause makes an event not free. Are human actions "events"? Are human actions free or predetermined on a sub-atomic level? If free will doesn't exist, then its illusion must. And if this is an illusion, it's close enough to the real thing. At least, I don't *feel* like I'm not in control of my mind, or that there even *is* a "me" to be in control. That's not something I'm going to dwell on.
Free will lets me make my own choices. I can choose to do whatever I want, but I must face the consequences for my actions. I can choose not to go to school, but the consequence would be receiving a poor grade for the year.
I see free will as a little different from freedom. While free will is the ability to make decisions, freedom is the opportunity to make them. A person in a body-freezing coma has free will, but no chance to use it and therefore no freedom.
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Latest reply: Mar 19, 2002
"Why are you wearing a towel?"
Posted Feb 12, 2002
I heard that a lot today as I walked around school with a white gym towel over my shoulder. The answer I invariably gave was this: "It's Life, the Universe and Everything Day!" As you can imagine, I got a lot of funny looks. You might even be edging away from me (in cyberspace) right now. But the point is, today is Life, the Universe and Everything Day. Why? It's simple.
My good friend Vidmaster determined recently that since the number 42 has such great significance, something should be done to recognize that. Today, February 11, is the forty-second day of the year. What more reason could you want to celebrate?
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Latest reply: Feb 12, 2002
I'm back!
Posted Jan 16, 2002
Well, everybody, I've returned after a brief little break from the internet. I was having a few problems for a while because my school decided not to let me go on here before class. That's most of the time I spend on the Guide--before first period! But it's all worked out now. Seriously though, how many people out of twenty thousand missed me? Three? Maybe four? Oh well. I'm back now, and that's what matters.
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Latest reply: Jan 16, 2002
Patriotism--my view
Posted Dec 30, 2001
On September 11, about 8:00 AM, nearly my whole school trooped down to the library to watch newscasts of burning buildings and the same falling planes, over and over again. In about an hour, the hallways were filled with drawings of American flags and slogans.
"We won't stand defeated! We'll fight back!"
"Planes good, terrorists bad!"
"God Bless America!"
"We love the USA!"
Or just: "PATRIOTIC POSTER! by John and Bill"
Months later, these posters are still hanging in the halls. Once I put a piece of paper up informing the student populace about National Book Week. Within a few days it was replaced by a blank wall. A few weeks ago I taped the the Thingite Manifesto on the walls of the bathroom for a bit of humor. It's gone now. Why are the PATRIOTIC POSTERS allowed to stay up while others are removed instantly?
Because, in the eyes of the students, that would just be un-American.
I have nothing against patriotism when it's real. How many God Bless America posters were hanging on our walls on September 5th? How many slogans were created without reason, just for the sake of supporting our nation and not for the sake of conformity?
This was a lot easier to think about in my mind than it was to write out in a journal. What I'm feeling is hard of describe--perhaps it can be best explained in a recent editorial cartoon in the local paper: a man sits at a table, holding a "United We Stand"-brand coffee filter imprinted with American flags, shouting in frustration, "Enough is enough!"
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Latest reply: Dec 30, 2001
Dec. 1 Speech Meet
Posted Dec 2, 2001
Yesterday I got up early to travel to a speech meet in a nearby town. I competed every hour and a half four times, and got really sick of my speech in the meantime. Repeating and repeating and repeating...
My event is HOI--Humorous Oral Interpretation. It's the easiest of the events (except maybe Serious Interp) because all you have to do is read from a binder something another person has written--no memorizing or quick thinking. The hard part is in the presentation. You have to hold on to your binder with both hands all the time (no gestures) and keep your feet planted firmly on the floor without moving them. Since most HOI-ers use many different characters in their pieces, this means that we have to develop lots of different voices and body positions, until the end result sounds/looks like Donald Duck dodging bullets in the Matrix.
The piece I'm reading this year is the insult scene from Cyrano de Bergerac. It's very fun to perform, because Cyrano belts out twenty different insults in varying tones, and each one must be presented differently--mostly accents pitch. (If you have not read Cyrano, you should. It's about a French guy with a big nose. Basically. There's plot and stuff too.)
Even though I didn't score very well in the meet (Scores: 5 5 5 3, each round out of seven competitors, 1 being best) I still had a lot of fun. HOI is the liveliest event, and full of entertaining personalities. I met some new friends and got to listen to hilarious writing. The not-fun part of the meet was the awards ceremony. Though my school--Flathead--is the only school in its size class and can never score anything but first for that class, we still got beaten heavily by the other schools. Of course, that was without our varsity team, which was off in the state capital humiliating the college prep schools. So it's all good.
We have another meet next weekend (Dec. 8) and a really big one after that (Dec. 14 and 15). I'm looking forward to competing in them and doing this all over again.
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Latest reply: Dec 2, 2001
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