I want more life!

More time to write, more affection, more hours in the day, more time to read, more intelligent conversation (only one person at my work can maintain intelligent commentary on whatever topic we hit upon).

I have to sleep less, work faster, type faster, think clearer... and find a way past my present location's complete FTP-ban (and ftp proxy ban) in order to upload texts.

I have to make a greater name, make a bigger difference, teach more people, be harder, overcome my own weaknesses and failures, and get more out of everything I do.

Because, like, I've lived a third of my life, and I haven't done a third of what I wanted to have done.

Tags: life, vexen
Current Location: Afghanistan

Isn't this just awesome? It's ideal and obvious that the most ancient life had to be the subterranean "extreme-ophiles" and anaerobic, heat-loving simple single-cell type, as nothing else would survive this:

“Chiron, a recently-discovered planetesimal, is on an unstable orbit near Saturn and measures 180 km across. The consequences of it hitting the Earth are too horrible to contemplate. And Chiron is by no means the largest known minor planet. Four billion years ago such objects would have been far more common than they are today. [...]

An impactor 500km in diameter would excavate a hole 1500 km across and at least 50 km deep. A huge volume of rock would be vaporized in a gigantic fireball that would spread rapidly around the planet, displacing the atmosphere and creating a global furnace. The surface temperature would soar to more than 3000 ºC, causing all the world's oceans to boil dry, and melting rock to a depth of almost a kilometre. As the crushingly dense atmosphere of rock vapour and superheated steam slowly cooled over a period of a few months, it would start to rain molten rock droplets. A full millennium would elapse before normal rain could begin, presaging a 2000-year downpour that would eventually replenish the oceans and return the planet to some sort of normality.”
"The Origin of Life" by Paul Davies, p140-141.

I read The Origin of Life while on holiday (I'm back now! Hi! Photos to follow!) and have got quite a few quotes from it. It is not groundbreaking stuff anymore, but it also gave me a good understanding of the hardy little critters that we call extreme, but they'd call cosy. It is us, desperately relying on the sun for heat and production, living on the cold, weather-prone surface of the planet that are the extreme ones, trekking out to the surface where we have to build our own metabolisms because everything is so cold!

Tags: abiogenesis, asteroid, bacteria, biogenesis, collision, death, disaster, evolution, extinction, extremophiles, life, meteorite, oceans, paul davies, rock
Current Location: Monchengladbach, Germany
Listening To: "Sex dwarf" by Soft Cell

Sometimes as our small black and white cat, Missy, wonders around sometimes I get the impression that she is lost and aimless. She doesn't particularly want to be fussed or played with, nor does she seem to want anything in particular. She wonders slowly and hesitatingly in and out, here and there... I can't help thinking that she pains over what the point of life is.

Why, ever, would you want to wake up, in this world?

I know my answer: To improve it.

But what is Missy's raison d'être?

Tags: development, existentialism, life, philosophy
Current Location: Mönchengladbach, Germany
Listening To: "War & Peace" by Solitary Experiments

I'll miss the semi-resurgent social life I've had...

In the early part of next year I will know if I am staying in Germany for more years, or if I am returning to (a random area of) the UK.

Tags: friends, life, location, london, moving house, uk

Evolution: Vestigial Genes & Organs, Extinctions and Inefficiency all hint at Unintelligent Design

A small page at the moment, but I'll be adding more. Especially, some quotes from The Selfish Gene, which is my in-the-car reading book.

We've been having dramas getting our washing machine and dishwasher working... the former is fixed now.

Tags: appendix, biology, creationism, evolution, humanity, life, richard dawkins
Current Location: Monchengladbach, Germany
Current Mood: happy
Listening To: "Hell" by Project Pitchfork

New page: "The Food Chain: Esoteric Lessons From the Energy of the Sun" by Vexen Crabtree (2007), conclusion reads:

"What appears at first to be a purely technical matter; studying the rise of energy from basic single-cell life forms through the trophic levels to the predators that gather food over massive areas, can lead us to some serious exobiological, philosophical and even theological debates. Firstly, advanced alien life is likely to find it hard to gain enough energy to survive from digesting us alone, so probably won't be inclined to try. But alien life may well use different metabolic pathways and different biological chemicals so we may find each other utterly inedible and potentially very poisonous. If life in the universe is generally carbon-based, then, it is possible aliens could digest at least parts of us. But they probably won't, as space-faring advanced species have probably out-grown genuine carnivorous diets, as perhaps we are doing by relying on increasingly processed food (eventually grown in vats) coupled with increasing care for animal rights. Now, dietary exobiology aside, the very fact that life evolved from its unconscious, automatic beginnings, to rely on a cycle of life and death (where life survives by killing other life) indicates that if the cycle of life has a 'designer', such a God is an evil one. Only an evil God would design life so that to stay alive, animals have to kill other animals. This 'victory of death' is the exact opposite of what a good god would have designed, where all animals and plants survive on mystical energy from heaven without need for killing or competing for food ('victory of life')."

Tags: aliens, biology, death, earth, ecology, energy, evil, evolution, exobiology, food, life, predators, prey, satanism, sun, trophic, vampires, zombies
Current Location: German
Listening To: "Recoil" by Flesh Field

New page: Split Brain Studies: One Mind per Hemisphere: Popular 'soul' theories are too simplistic.

The page looks at the experiments and conclusions of psychologists R.W. Sperry and R.E. Myers, R. Gross, Ornstein and others, who have concluded: "each of the separated hemispheres has its own private sensations, perceptions, thoughts, feelings and memories - in short, that they constitute two separate minds, two separate spheres of consciousness." [Gross 1996]

The conclusion on my page reads:

Split-brain studies show that in some situations, it is clear that our brain can contain two minds, two personalities, "two separate spheres of consciousness". Cases of multiple-personality can also result in very different personalities existing in the same brain. And some more extreme conclusions can be drawn: it is possible that all people have two consciousnesses but that each is only aware of itself. I will, however, only discuss here the fact that sometimes, the same brain contains two minds. This clearly has implications for studies of souls.

If 'souls' exist, it must be true that a soul can encompass two consciousnesses, with two different personalities, memories and skills. And if souls survive bodily death... which consciousness is it that survives? In Christian mythology, a bodily resurrection will occur, and the saved will ascend to heaven... in the case of split-brain patients, how are two separate consciousnesses reborn in the same heavenly body, which cannot contain the same biopsychical dysfunctions as the imperfect Earthly body did? It makes a nonsense of the simplistic theologies of the afterlife if we hold that 'souls' survive death, given the evidence of split-brain cases. This doesn't show that souls don't exist, merely that popular opinions about souls simply cannot account for all the possibilities that the biology of consciousness provides. It is probably closer to the truth, and certainly a correct implementation of occam's razor, to conclude that consciousness is a result of purely biological factors, and that no such thing as 'souls' exist, rather than try to reconcile them with split-brain and multiple-personality studies. Woefully, I have left Sam's masterful book, "Abnormal Psychology" by Davison and Neale, at work and won't get it back for 2 weeks. At that point, this page will be updated with more material.

Tags: consciousness, life, multiple personality disorder, psychology, psychosurgery, souls
Current Location: Germany
Current Mood: busy

I have been in my current job for three years. It's a rollercoaster ride, it is impractical for my studies, it separates me from my friends for long periods of time in barren foreign countries, I live abroad for years at a time, and I have to deal with the forcefulness of 'the system'... but I still like it!

I have to keep fit, I have to keep 'tied to reality', I remain practical, and have to socialize with many people, all day... sometimes working (for example) in a small hut with the same 10 people for 6 months... in a desert. All in all, it challenges me in many of my weakspots, and prevents me from over-using my strong points (computers!). So, as far as 'the challenge' goes, and for self-development purposes, it is still a very good job for me!

Anyway... been here three years; and at present I plan on staying here for another 10... or maybe another 20. There is little reason to change; no other job can offer the diversity and scope of this one!

Oh, and as a result of working late four days this week, most of us have today off. We deserve it!

Tags: life, vexen, work
Current Location: Germany
Listening To: "Timekiller" by Project Pitchfork

I'm a student... 'cos I'm a first year student, I'm a "fresher".

I'm studying Social Sciences with Sociology at the Open University. First module starts in a few weeks. Badly timed, that, 'cos I'm also getting married, going on honeymoon and moving house. I'm sure I can fit in some studying, too.

Anyway... I feel kind-of overexperienced to be doing an "Introduction to the Social Sciences" module... the pre-prep stuff they sent me was to do with quoting people, reading texts critically, and all kinds of other Scholar 101 things that I think I know rather well...

Also, as a third of my library can be applied to the social sciences, hopefully I can produce some well-researched and referenced texts for them... I've got to ask my tutor what their rules are quoting yourself in your own essays. I don't want to be done for plagiarism when it's my text in the first place! Might have to reword my own words in order to avoid copycatting myself!

Tags: life, open university, studying
Current Mood: excited
Listening To: Jellybean - The Real Thing

For those that don't know, I'm getting married within a month. Finally! We've been planning it since May 2004.

Many of you have invites already, many more invites are in the post or going to be delivered in person. All of you better come!

If you don't have an invite and you think you should have then *please* let us know, ok, so we can send you one!

It's going to be a great, fantastic day, in central London.

Wish the girl (who many of you know) good luck, and give the lucky groom (me) congratulations!

Replies to this post are screened so only I can read them.

Tags: life, relationships, vexen
Current Mood: happy
Listening To: "Tomorrow Never Dies" by Sheryl Crow

Whenever life gets you down mrs brown
and things seem hard or tough
and people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
and you feel that you've had quite enough.

<snip middle bit>

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Tags: intelligent life, life, monty python

unsure about everything, and I keep getting unsure... Job, life choices, the country I'm living in, the whole physical & technical career, relationships... nothing is going my way although if you're a pure materialist everything looks brilliant.

I'm not a materialist, I'm a very deep & personal person.

I'm in a job that is shallow, and in a relationship that talks about communication and depth, but doesn't live up to it.

I can't live shallow... I have to change my morals or change my life... just for now I'm going to have more patience. I've got near-infinite patience. But patience only lasts as long as I care, and sometimes the callousness and coldness does actually hurt me; and where I'm hurt, I stop caring about things. That process can only be overriden by intellectual excuses for so long, whether it's