Update: 3rd September, 2010

Have to improve knowledge on Mathematica usage.

UK Visa / Tickets obtained.

Want to find classic Hong Kong movies (action / comedy). PPStream?

Research paper to write. Need further information on products.

Want more books. Penguin paperback classics.

University starts in 24 days.

Will build a computer. Not going to be cheap.

Institute / Faculty of Actuaries. Should make an appointment.

Packing half-way done. Need to weigh luggage.

None-prescription medicine allowed on flight?

Philosophy and Blood

The Dexter series continues to amaze me, but I think I should not have watched it at one in the morning. Blood and gore and screams do not fare well with the mind of someone trying to sleep.

I started reading a book I recently downloaded – The Absurdity of Philosophy by Jeff Smith-Luedke. I have not been exposed much to philosophy; there are numerous technical jargon that I have no knowledge of. Particularly there are several schools of thought or philosophies which are often quoted and assumed to be common knowledge by the author which I am ignorant of. Plato’s cave often crops up in philosophical arguments, perhaps I should start from there. Likewise ideas on absurdity (by Albert Camus) and nihilism (by Friedrich Nietzsche) form the very basis of the book – I should study up on these before I proceed further.

I have another book titled Introduction to Philosophy which is basically a introductory picture book for philosophy. But even in this book, the concepts stated are often beyond that I can comprehend. It definitely garners a second read though I had given up on the first read through.

Philosophy may be a derived science, a social science, a field of science I have no intention to study, but it seems interesting, challenging even. Rather than continue be bored by familiarity, it is better to dabble in the unknown and see where it takes me. Whether I would find myself unable to stop fiddling with philosophy or get fed up mere hours into it, I do not know.

Mind and Thoughts

I realized today that I do not want to live to an old age; I find the process of losing one’s mental faculty slowly and steadily to be highly undesirable. One may say that this process is gradual and would be indiscernible to the aging person, but that is what makes it all the more frightening. I would not want to be one of the ancients, being unable to think clearly nor act with a perfectly rational mind. Better die early than suffer an existence with an unclear mind.

On an utterly different note, I just had an idea for a website:

I am thinking of creating a collaborative news website; a combination of Twitter and Wikipedia perhaps. Instead of having news articles written by seasoned journalists and compiled from major sources, this website would have user-generated articles – snippets of what they have observed on a daily basis. Moderators should be selected to allow them to monitor the traffic of input; filters should be in place of course, but human-based control should still exist to override default actions and allow certain exemptions.

One feature of this website would be a real-time search engine operating parallel with the text input field. This would allow keywords to be identified and compared with other articles recently contributed by users which would then in turn allow accurate categorizing of the new article. This categorizing method would result in all of the articles being collected into a single page whereby individual entries are shown and sorted based on legibility and user-approved ratings. A master entry would then be created and edited by moderators.

Of course, this idea would be to waste unless I implement it, or at least find someone to help me create it. Research has to be made in order to ascertain whether similar websites have been created. Most importantly, I have to start planning.


Note: Google has this? Hmm.