On The Shoulders Of Giants

Today was a good day and I’ll tell you why, if you’re interested.

Today was the second day of me borrowing Hani’s car. I woke up at 8 by a call from them regarding a form 54. I went back to bed and hibernated until H called me out of bed sometime after 10. I drove her to a doctor’s office and came back home. Showered, printed the aforementioned form, called my sister and chatted with her and by the way, she is doing pretty well. I picked up H and we went grocery shopping and we went nuts on the produce and got sandwiches from the deli. Came home, stuffed the fridge and had lunch. Then, we went to UCSB, I took all my books from my office in preparation for turning in the key. We parked the car, H went to College of Creative Studies to inquire about joining the program. I went to the library and picked up three books on public relations (of all things). I went to grad division and asked about my graduation. I faxed form 54 to them, found H and went to the admissions office together only to find it closed. One of us is leaving and the other is coming. On our way back we filled the tank and took the car to car wash.

When home, our neighbor and her two sons came over and talked Spanish with H for a while. They are a lovely and vulnerable immigrant family. I showed a vidoe of my nephew, Ali, to the boys. They are so shy and don’t understand English. They left. I went to my room, sat on my phone chair and talked to Negar. As I was talking to her, two gigantic twin dogs walked into my room and started sniffing and licking me. I was like “What’s going on?” It turned out they were neighbor’s dogs and they had just wandered in. I talked to Kambiz. He wanted some clarification about my my blog invitation email. He is starting business school in a month.

I dropped off H at her massage parlor at 6:45 and went to ACE to return the shower extension thingy, only to find the return department closed. This was the second time this happened today. I dropped off the Krishnamurti books at the public library and went to Borders. I went to the business section and got two business books and a book on branding. I paid for the books and asked to speak to the manager. I told the manager that I was disappointed that my favorite bookstore puts the Obama Nation book which is full of lies as their number one display book. Yes, I did stand up for Barack. She thanked me and gave me the corporate number to call. I drove to Hani’s apartment and called him out. He gave me a ride home. I asked about his two labor papers and complained that he hasn’t sent me a copy of the first one. He said he will. Tomorrow we are going out for his birthday. I got home, did the dishes and now I’m listening to Nordic Lounge and writing this and it is 9:39 pm PST.

I’m feeling very optimistic about the business right now. I have to stay up late tonight and do a lot of writing and reading. So long.

I bought some potatoes about a month ago. I just put them - with some salt and olive oil - in the oven to bake them. Potatoes are patient with me. I like potatoes.

I have finally decided to read the bible from cover to cover. It’s an intellectual cardio-marathon. I have a feeling that this is the time for me to read this book and I will get many ideas from it.

I have to admit that I have been hit by the internet bug too and my attention span has severely shrunk in the last decade. It will be a challenge.

After reading my friend Khalid’s review of the Joker character in the Dark Knight movie and thinking about it, I started to think of Karl Rove. Most of us know what happened: Karl Rove indoctrinated W, made him the president and with the help of Dick Cheney ran the show for eight years. And all of us who are old enough, know what they did. Was Karl Rove the Joker who wanted to create as much havoc as possible? Was he a nihilist? And if he was, did a nihilist actually run the most powerful country in history for eight years? And if the answer to all of the above is yes, my next question is to Republicans: how did you let this happen to you?

In a sense, the past seven and a half years were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney’s shot at running this country through W. And what we saw of that show was not pretty. It was classless, crude, careless and arrogant. How could half this country let this happen?

My way of making sense out of all of this is to focus on powers of deception. How the “economy of mind” leads to intellectual laziness and becoming prone to deception. Why Americans are so intense on “economy of mind”? It’s just an observation that I have found out that it is easier to find someone help me move than to find someone to spend the same amount of time to help me go through a problem. Call me crazy, but I think this has to do with the Grand Jihad which is to work on the inside as opposed to the Minor Jihad which is to defend yourself on the outside.

Is there such a thing as fate? Or do we need to believe in god to believe in fate? Let’s define fate such that we don’t. I’ll call something fate when some scenario comes out of the blue where you did not expect it and something just blows up in your face and you just have to suck it up and take it in stride. One of those things recently happened in my life and I have been asking myself “what does it mean and why does it happen?” Tonight, I think I found the answer and I want to share it with you. I think the answer is a lesson in humility. I feel much more humble since then and it has made me a better person.
There’s a poem that translates to “The times are constantly at odds with the free.” This is from the Raze No album. This had baffled me for three months. Until tonight, when I found out that it means that life will teach a lot of lessons of humility to the free ones.

I used to believe that my biggest asset was my sanity, that is my ability to reason, my ability to apply logics to problems. I have recently started to think that sanity only takes me so far, but what could take me even further is perhaps insanity, the ability to transcend reason, to make a leap of faith, to go where the logic would not take you. Perhaps Occam’s razor need not be true in all cases. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye.

In the world of start-ups, everybody talks about exit strategies. The venture capitalists provides the seed money, the business grows, breaks even and after about six years, venture capitalists want to cash out of their investment. Usually there are two options: initial public offering (going public in the stock market) or getting acquired by a bigger company.
I was thinking about the analogy between a start-up company and a person’s life. It seemed to me that planning for one’s death is like planing for a start-up’s exit. The very relevant question here is whether we believe in life after death or not, because the answer to this question can dramatically change one’s plans for one’s death. Is it possible to have an exit strategy that is independent of the answer to this question? Is it possible to prepare oneself for one’s death such that at the moment of death - assuming that there is such a moment, as in American Beauty - one can look back at their life and say “I lived a good life and I’m ready for my death”? Is it possible to live one’s life such that one could never be caught off-guard by death? To my limited understanding, it seems like it is possible. I hope I can live my life, such that whenever death visits me and I had a moment of reflection, I could say that magic phrase.

I have already made up my mind about who I want the next Israeli prime minister to be.

It is time for another daily wrap. I woke up an hour later than I had planned. I really needed the sleep. I got ready and drove Randi’s car to my old home. I packed up some stuff and went to school. I met with Bob, the lab manager. I got the instruction material I needed. I went to a meeting with other TAs and the professor. I had a salad at UCen. I went to my discussion section. I liked my students and I engaged them in a conversation about electromagnetic waves. It seemed like they appreciated it. I went to OISS and got an OPT application form. I went to the lab and I helped the students with their experiment. I took the bus back home. I read the WSJ on my way. There was an opinion piece about Inbev’s offer to buy Budweiser and the xenophobia around it. I got home, I did the dishes and I took a shower. I was browsing the web. Heather came home with her friend Jamie and we had a good conversation. Heather and I went to the liquor store and bought what we needed. I’m hanging out at home, watching George Carlin’s videos and Heather’s cat is hanging out with me.