Short Interjection: March 7

I'm not really in the mood to share this in my own words (micro-blogging does take its toll over time), and besides I've got tons of stuff to attend to, but suffice it to say: Eraserheads, part 2.

Link.

The Bucket!

Maybe it's about time we started listening to those homeless loonies shouting on megaphones about how "The End" is supposedly near and how "All ye sinners should repent!!". Apparently, the world's ending soon and I didn't even have a clue that it's about already about to blow up. Well, it seems that no one (at least among the people I've encountered today) actually has a clue of the upcoming doomsday.

Earlier today I asked around some classmates to see if anyone has ever heard of something called the LHC, and the most I got were arched eyebrows , quizzical eyes, and mouths half-agape with "Huh?". Someone did give a slightly more verbose reply "Light Harvesting Complex?", but that's beside the point. Well to be fair, if asked the same question a day ago, I would've probably just shrugged off the question as just another joke if I ever gave a damn.

I just got the heads up yesterday from someone's twit, and I found it strange that it didn't appear on last night's news. Given that, it's no longer suprising why the LHC draws blanks on most people, myself included.

What is the LHC anyway? Through the ever so reliable source that is Wikipedia I learned that this is actually the Large Hadron Collider, a 27-km long particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland. Aside from the fact that it's the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, it's also been notorious for the concerns that have been raised regarding its safety. Okay to call safety concern an understatement seems like an understatement in itself, we're talking about Doomsday scenarios here.

According to some physicists, the high energy collisions that are scheduled using the LHC can lead to some pretty bizaare (again an understatement) events. On the forefront of these is the creation of strangelets, vacuum bubbles, and magnetic monopoles. I'm no physicist, but from what I understand, you just wouldn't like them present in our Earthly backyard. But the real danger they say is the possible formation of low velocity micro black holes. Now the scientists over at the LHC say that, if ever created, these would immediately be degraded by something called Hawking radiation. But then some point out that Hawking radiation is purely theoretical, and it's never been observed experimentally, so what would basically happen is that the black hole would get stuck in Earth's gravity and would just start sucking stuff up, and pretty soon the world as we know it would be gone.
Well, that sucks (no pun intended). It seems I won't be seeing some large fireworks (ala-LOST) at the end of the world as I've originally imagined it to be.

Anyway, the LHC has already circulated it's first laser beam yesterday. Doomsday (the first day of actual particle collisions) is set at October 21, meaning I've got a little over a month to savor our remaining days, and do all of the following before we all kick the bucket:

1. Take out a huge cash loan. No, make that the hugest( if that's even a word). A prerequisite I guess, for the following items.

2. Cliff dive. I've always dreamed of jumping freely off a cliff on a lazy sunny afternoon wearing nothing but my boxers.

3. Beat the world record for the world's highest sky dive. I'm not even sure if this is even remotely possible with money gotten off a loan here in the Philippines, even if granted the largest loan in Philippine History. So I'll hire a US shuttle to take me up the outer fringes of the earth's magnetosphere then drop me off 70000km from the ground. Oh, and before all that make a huge bet with someone rich as to whether I'll survive the fall or end up as a big splat on the ground.

4. Rain. So, if the above stunt doesn't exhaust my funds, I'll head over to Makati, climb up the rooftop of the nearest skyscraper and start throwing the remaining money off the side of the building. I'll probably start off with coins to test the myth that a coin dropped off a building can kill a person since the terminal velocity is supposedly something close to a bullet. People will start to crowd up at the sight of dead people on the street, and very likely trample the bodies once I begin raining down P1000 bills. All while watching the ensuing riot with binoculars.

5. But then what if the LHC scientists were right and the LHC is completely safe you say? Well then I'll just replicate Thích Quảng Đức, and set myself on fire in public. This would probably be my perfect end since I've always been a bit of a pyromaniac and have always pondered about self-immolation.

BREAKING NEWS: Ely rushed to hospital.

Being a bio major, my academic load has reduced me to just following people's twits about the ongoing gig, along with the help of Twitter search (unfortunately Luis' twuzzer toy is still tied to Olympic updates).

So, to cut it short: Long break was called, but then it wasn't really a break, apparently Ely had a heart attack backstage, and now they're cutting the concert short.

Details are still murky, but you'd find some here

Here's hoping that he recovers...

UPDATE: Ely's conscious and in stable condition.

UPDATE: Ely's currently undergoing triple bypass surgery.

UPDATE: So much for all that drama, it was just elevated blood pressure. Sheesh.

And oh, the remaining three played a second set in saguijo.

Yet another HP screw-up

My wireless adapter just got fried yesterday, and a quick search on the intarwebz revealed that i was not alone. Apparently, this is just the beginning of the impending doom that's about to rain down on me. If these people are to be believed, sooner or later the display would probably malfunction, and that would be if I'm lucky since others seem to have crashed their hard drive right from the beginning. So I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I wouldn't have to suffer the same fate as these people. I've got an online backup system up and ready for critical files should anything happen, but then Mozy doesn't seem to recognize the new file formats Office 2007 uses, along with some of my ebooks, vector packs, and psd files.

The problem supposedly roots from a faulty motherboard that some Pavilion and Presario notebooks use, and it's interesting to note that I've already had mine replaced due to the same problem a few months ago, when I was still covered by the standard 12-month warranty. It seems that HP is just throwing out replacements even when it's already friggin' obvious that this isn't an isolated problem and the MoBo's they're handing out are bound to have the same defects. Although to be fair, even though they're quite slow, they've issued warranty extensions here, though I'm not quite sure if this applies worldwide, since the customer rep over at the local service center gave me some vague replies and just asked me to bring a copy of the said page when I bring my laptop in for repair. But given my past experiences with their service, I'm just opting for an external wireless card for now.

I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.

I'll skip out the horrendous details of the motherf***ing bulls**t of a Taxonomy exam I just flunked took a few days ago, along with all the lump of exams clustered around the next few weeks, to rid my mind of all these ideas that have been festering inside my empty skull for quite some time now.

Lately, I've been stumbling across more lunatics (as in hardcore loonies) than usual, which have prompted me to reexamine my own crumbling notions on sanity. (But then again it could just be that I'm only beginning to notice things I usually take for granted now that I'm more aware of nutcases, given that all those consecutive exams seem to be beginning to take their toll lately. The seeming incoherence of my statements, along with the extensive use of parentheses and strike-outs, only further drives the point home.)

While it might seem brain-dead easy (so easy in fact that "getting it wrong" is enough for you to be convicted by some as insane) to gauge whether a person is sane or not using what may seem as definite and concrete criteria, things start to get murky when you consider how exactly people define normal.

1. Sanity, or being what is called normal, can simply be seen as akin to falling under the mean or the general mindset. Think about it this way, statisticians didn't name that hump of a curve the "Normal Distribution" for nothing.

In a way, this reflects the general view (or what I perceive to be as general, as I'll explain later) on sanity, with the sane people falling under the big hump. As for why there are two skewed ends for the insane ones instead of only one, one guy sarcastically pointed out that when you're filthy rich and powerful, you cannot possibly be regarded as insane, but you would only be eccentric. All this seems obvious, since most of what our society would deem as radical or deviant does indeed seem insane to most of us. But then remember that Darwin and Copernicus were branded as lunatics during their time, yet at the present age we acknowledge that they were reasonably, in fact undoubtedly, sane. If you were to step in their shoes, you'd think you'd have no reason to call yourself insane, since in our era their ideas are, at least to a certain degree with regards to evolution, scientifically proven. This goes to show just how fluid the notion of sanity can be, and also brings us to my next point.

2. Remember how it is often said that a clear indication that you're truly out of your mind is when you don't think there's anything insane about your line of thoughts or pattern of actions? It turns out that it does have some basis, but only in the sense that you probably can be forgiven for thinking that it's the people around you who are acting or thinking strangely.

There's a concept in Psychology they call the "General Consensus Bias", and it has a lot to do with what our perceptions on what is normal or generally acceptable. It is a given fact that we think of ourselves as normal. What the General Consensus Bias simply states is that are line of thinking often goes:

a. I am a normal and perfectly sane person.
b. Therefore, through a, any normal and sane person should think, act, and behave like me.
c. Consequently, in accordance with b, people who think and act differently would probably have to be insane.

Okay, that might seem a bit too straightforward, maybe even crazy, but that is simply a distilled version of the General Consensus Bias, and most of us would have to admit that we usually apply that line of thinking in our everyday lives.

The notion of sanity is more fluid than what we think, or would like to think, it is. In summary, it's simply an overlap between your views and that of the general (or, again, what you perceive as general) populace. It goes without a doubt that the two influence one another, one way or the other. So the next time you see that filthy and smelly guy talking to plastic bags, try to put yourself in his shoes and do yourself and others a favor, take a bath try to figure out what sanity truly means. Nah, I'm just trying to screw around your head, trying to give you the sensation of a mindf*ck those exams gave me. =P