"I was saying Boo-urns"

Today is not so good. I didn’t sleep much last night because it was hot and muggy. I feel that I would be better suited to bear the heat if only I could breathe, lack of oxygen really puts me out. Now I’m at work, which is actually the best part of my day so far. Its air conditioned and quiet, but I still feel fairly crappy.

Showering is overrated. I avoid it whenever possible. You people who shower every day, shame on you wasting water like that! Every other day is way more than enough. I can be skuzzy if I choose to be and if I don’t smell bad/if I’m not near you you can’t complain on any reasonable basis.

My bike is now fix-fixed. Its actually my brother’s old bike, but it’s a pretty sweet Gary Fisher. I had it all tuned up and everything thing then the tire tore itself apart and now I’m finally riding again. But I am doing so cautiously since I don’t want another crash like I caused in May.

I’m in the 900's (out of 1200 pages) in Les Miserables and its all this stuff about an insurrection and this big barricade they’re building. It would possibly be more riveting if I knew more about French history in the 18th and 19th century, but as it happens I don’t.

In my efforts to read through the Bible again I’m stuck in Exodus. I just can’t handle the crazy things they do. Aaron makes the golden calf for the people to worship and God gets angry, and Moses asks him what’s going on so Aaron said, “Well, I asked all the people for their gold and made them a calf to worship,” like it’s some kind of excuse. These people are nuts.

Ok, pensions again.

Humidex of 157.

It is hoooo-ooot (that says hot, not hoot). I guess I can handle no air conditioning, you’ll all know if I make it to the other side.

I love those tiny spoons they use to give you ice cream samples.

Muzak

Well, I feel as if I caused a small tumult with that last post. Understand that I didn’t write the whole thought, I thought I would spare you the long description and pondering. If you’re wondering more about my theory (I’m looking at you Peweyon/Anonymous) just call me! I know you know my phone number, don’t give me that face. So on a light note, this is rando-post.

Firstly, my friend Dinah (whose blog is on the sidebar cuz I don’t feel like figuring out in-post links right now) did this on her blog and now that I have an iPod and have put ALL of my music on it, I will do it too. Ok, iPod is on shuffle and…. go!

1. Hand – Jars of Clay: This is off the “If I left the Zoo” album which is probably my least favourite of their albums, but good just the same. I don’t know, no significance here. Moving on.

2. Carried Away – Sonicflood: This is the live version of a worship song, the album is awesome, really high energy, good for shuffling down the sidewalk.

3. Entertaining Angels (alternate mix) – Newsboys: Ok, I adore the Newsboys, especially their mid older stuff (everything from Going Public to Step up to the Microphone) and this song is actually from the Entertaining Angels single disc. I got this CD because it has this wicked remix of Shine, the rest of the songs I’m indifferent about in their remixed fashions. If you know Newsboys, you will know what I’m talking about.

4. Some Days are Better Than Others – U2: This is off of Zooropa and I bought it in first year, so it’s memorially connected to that. In O-week (which is what we called frosh week at TWU, O stands for ‘orientation’) our leader dudette gave everyone in our group goldfish and I named mine Zooropa. Oh yeah, and U2 is awesome.

5. M – Chantal Kreviazuk: This is my favourite song off of her Colour Moving and Still album, it’s slow and semi-emotional and she just has a great voice. I know people look down on Chantal for her recent hair colouring commercials, but I don’t hold it against her. Her voice rocks and she can’t really help it if she’s beautiful AND Canadian.

6. Made to Heal – Our Lady Peace: Hehe, that’s funny. Since Raine Maida is married to Chantal Kreviazuk. This song is from Spiritual Machines which is my favourite OLP album, its just good strong songs that must have come out of electric jam sessions. Their social commentary is interesting throughout the disc but their songs are better.

7. The Beautiful Letdown – Switchfoot: The crossovers that they are they make decent, upbeat music. However most people miss the subtle satire in their songs.

8. Planet Telex – Radiohead: From the public friendly The Bends it’s a good introduction into Radiohead. I personally prefer the weirder stuff, especially Kid A, love that album.

9. Wake Up – Alicia Keys: She’s my key to the R&B world. At least she’s a real artist who actually plays the piano and still takes lessons and practices and everything.

10. Yellow – Coldplay: Solid. Coldplay are amazing, shut up all you people who say they’re just copying Radiohead or U2 or something, because I don’t want to hear your crap. They do not sound the same, if you’ve ever actually hear the other bands. I feel you just picked that up from some stupid MTV commentary and then decided to spread it around before thinking for yourself. A lot of people are down on Coldplay for being depressing and making you want to drown slowly in the bathtub. I, however, feed off of depressing music, there’s just something about it that you just can’t get a fix for anywhere else. The video for Yellow is cool, you have to watch carefully to see all the coolness that is actually going on. And Coldplay is the best live show I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing, even better than U2.

Yes, these were chosen from shuffle, if that makes it any less self-indulgent.

Out.

Theoretically speaking

A central problem in differential calculus is that of initial conditions. Other problems include finding integration techniques for complex equations and estimation procedures for non-integrateable ones, but I’m not talking about those right now.

A common application of ordinary differential equations is predicting the weather. The initial conditions are things like temperature, barometric pressure and location of cold/warm fronts. Meteorologists (with previous legwork done by the indispensable mathematicians) plug these parameters into equations to predict what the weather will be like tomorrow, the next day, 5 days from now. But you’ve probably noticed that they never predict beyond 5 days and this is because we cannot get exact enough measurements of the initial conditions and there is necessary error involved. The error of the prediction increases the farther into the future you go and it becomes to great to be useful.

So, what I’m thinking is that life in the physical sense is essentially predictable. This is theoretical, so bear with me. If we knew all the initial conditions, where all the atoms and sub-atomic particles are originally located, their potential energy, velocities, mass and any other possible property that could be measured, we could predict where they would go and what would happen. If the motion and activity of every such particle could be known then this predictability would possibly give us an accurate look into the future. We would know what leaf would blow in which direction on Sunday at 2:32:45 pm. We would know because there would only be one possible action at each moment in time based on the initial conditions.

If we think of thought as electrical pulses and waves in the brain then it too would fall under this assumption of predictability. If we don’t think of it that way, then this means nothing, so I’m going to suppose we do for a moment. That means decisions of individuals and opinions and feelings would also be predictable and therefore everything has always been set in place, from the beginning of time and everything will happen as it always did.

Not trying to say that choice doesn’t exist, just that it might be predictable. Except for the fact we would never be able to get precisely exact initial conditions for anything, so we can’t actually see into the physical future. Do you follow me? Likely not, I’m not often good at getting my theoretical ponderings across to others.

Good night and good luck

So, in the building where I work there’s a security desk out front and the guards, I’m pretty sure, are told to greet the people coming in and out of the building. So I get a nod of the head from the supervisor guard in the morning and a weird look from the guy who covers lunch. But, when I leave at 4:30, there’s the afternoon shift guard who happens to be quite entertaining.

I often leave the building with a co-worker of mine, another lady who heads the subway, where I leave her to walk the rest of the way home. And every night, we go down the elevator and bid farewell to our favourite security guard – Brad. His name isn’t actually Brad, we have no idea what it is, but we call him Brad. My other friend tried to think up ugly names for him, but all the ones we tried actually sounded quite dashing, so we named him after Mr. Pitt himself and I find it appropriate.

Brad is probably about my age, early 20’s and could be a summer student like myself. Who knows, we never actually talk to him. But on to why he is entertaining. The first few times we went through this rountine it was a simple, “Good-bye,” “Have a good evening, ladies,” at which point no special notice was taken. However, one day we got the eye-brow lift along with our good-night. Hmmm… minimal intrigue there, but I think it gets better.

The next week, one night we got what I like to call the ‘movie-star look’ with one eye-brow raised and the big teethy grin. He could have been doing that shoot-you-with-his-fingers thing and it would have fit perfectly. We giggle and comment as soon as we get out the door. Yesterday was a funny day too, I think he was trying out the debonair look.

Anyway, he amuses us and I’m sure we amuse him. Here’s to Brad, the afternoon security guard.