Der Antichristmas

"We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war to the death against this higher type of man, it has put all the deepest instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of evil, of the Evil One himself, out of these instincts--the strong man as the typical reprobate, the 'outcast among men.'"

--Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist

"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be."

--Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

Have you ever read something, and had the strongest urge to go yell at the author because of the complete and total incompetance of their logic? I feel that way about Descartes right now. Trying to create geometric philosophical proofs is the most innane and worthless idea ever. Perhaps its not the idea that I dislike as much as his technique of trying to apply the techniques of the immutable and logical (math and geometry basically) to the inherently imperfect, imprecise, and ambiguous world of belief and opinion. But I try do that all the time too, so am I really realizing a deep-seated self-hatred...? Anyway, he thus comes to conclusions that are either wrong, occasionally correct (by pure chance, I think), or about inherently ambiguous topics--the body-soul separation, for instance (here he was clearly wasting his time). But rather than recognizing that his interpretation of reality is relativistic and unabsolute, he declares it as being precise because he has just made some overly embellished metaphor to Euclidean geometry in the process of establishing it. Following this process, a typical sentence might read: "If only all of the lesser minds of our continent could realize the higher plane of such reality as I have so simply deduced here, then humanity might raise itself from it dolorous state of mental obfuscation to see the light struck forth in this discourse and realize progress toward the greater Truth of God with the enlightened guidance of His most revered Scriptures..." I think perhaps not.

In other less messy news, I have a great new aspiration in life. I've been a ravanous patron of Portland's Thai eateries for many years, and I find that I'd like to have Thai food without the inconvenience of having to always drive to a restaurant. This is for three main reasons: 1) I can't drive (a consequence of my laziness in all matters outside the scope of my brain), 2) eating out a lot can be expensive, even if I know all of the hold-in-the-wall spots that are amazingly good and amazingly cheap, and finally 3) I'm incredibly busy and I don't have the time to go somewhere to eat (not that making it is much faster, but I can make more at a time and I can split the labor with my mom). So I'm endeavoring to learn to make some of my favorite dishes. The careful reader is probably doubting my resolve somewhat since they would be aware that I am very lazy in most matters, but I'm proud to say that I've made my first step! Sort of. I made some pretty reasonable traditional Yakisoba noodles today. This of course is Japanese food, which I also like very much. Not quite Thai, but I figure, Japan is on the way to Thailand, so its good enough for starters.

My studies of electricity and magnetism are well under way. I blazed through the section on electric fields with continuous charge distributions, which wasn't too difficult and involved some fun integral-building. It's a shame that my abilities are currently limited to only single-variable calculus, because it seems like you could do some really interesting things with more complex math. Anyway, I'm starting the section on Gauss's Law now, and I think this where things start to become somewhat challenging. Thankfully, difficulty is almost always directly proportional to the degree to which math and science is compelling.

Finally, I'll be taking votes on which American author I should pick for my paper in English. I have to read 3 books by the author and write a comparative analysis of sorts. Anyway, I've narrowed it down the following choices (I actually think that I already have made up my mind on who it will be, but give me your thoughts anyway):

1.) James Baldwin
2.) Henry David Thoreau
3.) James Agee

I wish everyone a happy "Kwanhanzmas" and a good winter-solstice-pagan-festival-break for all students.