Just watching some videos and listening to webcasts about "Smart Grid" development and Electric Vehicles (EV's) and thought about how speakers at professional and academic panel discussions are introduced to the listeners by their accolades and achievements. Are people better off as productive units of an socio-industrial machine? Aren't people better off as people? rather than as automatons working like bees or ants for a runaway train society? A balance needs to be struck between efficiency and respect for human beings.
The Golden Rule of doing to others as you would have them do to you. If you dehumanize yourself by reducing yourself to your lowest common denominator in terms of work output or efficiency and your dreams and desires to 'utility units', it is ever more conceivable that you can dehumanize those who you misunderstand to be working 'for', and to be 'contributing to'. Humanize yourself and give back the humanity to those around you.
...ramble on...
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
What's on the menu tonight?
Just cooked what looks like a fabulous dinner for myself, courtesy of COSTCO and Fairway Market for my soup and pre-fab meatballs. It goes a little something like this:
La Zupa: Creamy chicken soup with broth, celery, artichoke, etc.
Il Primo Piatto: Bortellini's Alfredo Sauce (Garlic Flavored), Peas, Brussels, and Green Onion bottoms served over Rigatoni (very nearly al dente)
El Secondo Piatto: Meatballs delicioso with Asparagus broiled in a spiced virgin oil.
First/Second plate eaten simultaneously, with coffee and cookies n' cream (heavy duty ice cream sandwish style) ice cream for desert.
This well deserved meal comes to me after spending the better part of the day in Red Hook, Brooklyn assisting my friend/colleague/superior, Marty, at his and his friend, Sean's Bamboo Bike Studio. They're preparing for increased production at a plant in Ghana but still serve 2 customers per weekend - this weekend being warm and welcoming for me as the 'Family & Friends' weekend.
I'm still preparing for my trip to San Diego (got the UTSR Gas Turbine Fellowship!) for the summer and hopefully well beyond. Ken Retus is helping me out at the moment with scoping apartments out, but it looks like I'll be getting a good deal in the lively neighborhood of Pacific Beach (12 blocks from the beach) nicely located between the beach and the office (heaven and hell? jk - I'm excited to continue learning at Solar Turbines) and also with UCSD Engineering students for roommates to boot!
Can't wait for Cory to finish his MCAT next weekend either, we've been only hanging out once a month but he and I and Sage got to tour Central Park briefly together and I went thrifting with Sage quickly. Okay, talking with mom on the phone now, till next time.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
March 23rd, procrastinating through the 22nd hour...
Just had to write these incredible one liners down. As my brother and I have discussed before about our own particular way of writing, either auto-journalistic, lyrical, poetical or prosaic, we are great writers but in an odd respect. We both felt confident, at that moment, that we were capable of writing great pieces of work to be remembered for all eternity, however in the end, we both knew and even admitted to each other - that our books would contain a vast expanses of one-liners. Anon anon, without further adieu.
"I'm don't play the Games of Life 'cause I'm to busy Living'Em."
"Laughing is like loving but loving we were not having"
More will come back to me soon enough after I pass out of this purple haze.
Just had to write these incredible one liners down. As my brother and I have discussed before about our own particular way of writing, either auto-journalistic, lyrical, poetical or prosaic, we are great writers but in an odd respect. We both felt confident, at that moment, that we were capable of writing great pieces of work to be remembered for all eternity, however in the end, we both knew and even admitted to each other - that our books would contain a vast expanses of one-liners. Anon anon, without further adieu.
"I'm don't play the Games of Life 'cause I'm to busy Living'Em."
"Laughing is like loving but loving we were not having"
More will come back to me soon enough after I pass out of this purple haze.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Getting Geared Up
Just spending a bit of a weekend with the mums, went out shopping to use up a pair of gift cards, ate a nice dinner. What a gift‽ "Hey, here's $25." "Gee, thanks!". Next thing I'm at the store spending $50 on top of that for things I suddenly "like".
Today's Vilma's birthday, but I couldn't be prepared for it, which I feel sorry for.
I wanted to really get the C.D. Payne book, "Youth in Revolt" but didn't have the notepad I wrote the title down on with me at the time. And! we found out that Barnes & Noble service is the worst in the world! Need a book? Don't ask those baboons. Can't remember a title, but just part of an author's name? Oh well. So as Starbucksy as Borders are, I think I'll stick to them. Hey, who really likes sitting like a lazy ass and shopping online all day long - you just can't browse and experience a book the same way. Books are like babies, they need to be held.
Tomorrow I will enter my metamorphoses, and like a dried, shriveled cocoon, I will leave behind my fun loving self and reconnoiter with the soul-selling tactics of the unemployed.
Ta ta.
Today's Vilma's birthday, but I couldn't be prepared for it, which I feel sorry for.
I wanted to really get the C.D. Payne book, "Youth in Revolt" but didn't have the notepad I wrote the title down on with me at the time. And! we found out that Barnes & Noble service is the worst in the world! Need a book? Don't ask those baboons. Can't remember a title, but just part of an author's name? Oh well. So as Starbucksy as Borders are, I think I'll stick to them. Hey, who really likes sitting like a lazy ass and shopping online all day long - you just can't browse and experience a book the same way. Books are like babies, they need to be held.
Tomorrow I will enter my metamorphoses, and like a dried, shriveled cocoon, I will leave behind my fun loving self and reconnoiter with the soul-selling tactics of the unemployed.
Ta ta.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Free Stuff
FREE!!!
I need to work out this theory a bit better, but there needs to be a Treatise on Free Items. Title needs work too, but it's interesting to think or conceivably study how people utilize free things. Be it tangibles or intangibles, people use - or misuse - free items. To maximize someone's utility of something, at no cost, leads to the true but illogical solution of infinite utilization. Even if this is over utilization for the given user.
Don't get me wrong, I love free. I have two sayings for example: "Nothing tastes better than free" and my new life motto (which happens to rhyme), "I don't believe I can say no to free". I love good deals, and I love free deals. I'll admit - even I fall victim to the irrational behavior of free-dom. But there are things we as a society have used too freely, and we have blundered our nest so to speak.
But I try to keep level headed, and keep things in perspective. Society is not 'you all' or 'all of them'. Society is me. I am society. Get it straight, society is composed of individuals, and all thoughts of democracy aside, the individual is what counts. It really does. And listen to Ghandi - be the change you want to see. So everyone - stop complaining about energy prices, and stop using so much! Demand and supply, yada yada yada, it's true but you need to dictate it yourself, every day, and not let others dictate it for you.
So enjoy free offers, free lunches and what have you, but watch what your taking and see what effect your unlimited free consumption of something has - after you've overdone yourself, and after we've all overdone ourselves.
I need to work out this theory a bit better, but there needs to be a Treatise on Free Items. Title needs work too, but it's interesting to think or conceivably study how people utilize free things. Be it tangibles or intangibles, people use - or misuse - free items. To maximize someone's utility of something, at no cost, leads to the true but illogical solution of infinite utilization. Even if this is over utilization for the given user.
Don't get me wrong, I love free. I have two sayings for example: "Nothing tastes better than free" and my new life motto (which happens to rhyme), "I don't believe I can say no to free". I love good deals, and I love free deals. I'll admit - even I fall victim to the irrational behavior of free-dom. But there are things we as a society have used too freely, and we have blundered our nest so to speak.
But I try to keep level headed, and keep things in perspective. Society is not 'you all' or 'all of them'. Society is me. I am society. Get it straight, society is composed of individuals, and all thoughts of democracy aside, the individual is what counts. It really does. And listen to Ghandi - be the change you want to see. So everyone - stop complaining about energy prices, and stop using so much! Demand and supply, yada yada yada, it's true but you need to dictate it yourself, every day, and not let others dictate it for you.
So enjoy free offers, free lunches and what have you, but watch what your taking and see what effect your unlimited free consumption of something has - after you've overdone yourself, and after we've all overdone ourselves.
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